I enjoy the holiday season and this year I have had my ups and downs, but in the end, have I been very fortunate. Therefore, I would like to give back to the gaming community in some small way. I find myself with a brand new extra copy of The Cthulhu Hack RPG rulebook by Just Crunch Games and I would like to give it away to a member of the Boxcar Nation. This contest is open to everyone no matter where you live. I will cover the cost of shipping. All you need to do is follow the three simple rules below. Share this contest where you like!
** Only comments on the Rolling Boxcar blog site itself will count. Following us on each social media sites gets you one entry (ie. follow us on both G+ and Twitter to get you 2 entries), but your comment must include your handles/names for verification purposes. We will follow you back on both social media sites as well if we are not already.
UPDATE – designer Paul Baldowski will also be including a full set of PDFS to go with the physical rulebook. A huge thank you to Paul for his generosity!
Previous Post Supporting Rolling Boxcars is Easy!
It's Christmas Eve at Mrs. Wilkenson's Orphanage of forgotten children. While the children lay in their beds, fulsome volunteers busily wrapping presents, assembling bicycles, and connected track for an anomalous electric locomotive and series of Pullman cars, which were silently donated to run under the large lush spruce decorated with chains of paper made by the children that slept. The work went on quietly and soon the task was complete. Each volunteer silently exited the orphanage and took great care as to not allow the closing of the large oak door to disturb the silent night, except for one. The next morning the children awoke before Mrs. Wilkenson to a Christmas miracle. Underneath the giant spruce lay boxes of colorfully wrapped gifts and a train, already in motion for quite sometime, speeding around it's base. But at some of the homes of the volunteers, there presence could not be found. Though it was quite obvious that these good-doers returned home, no sign could be found of them leaving again. What happened to them? Where is they go?
A mighty nice story seed!
The black sands ran red with Norseman blood that night. After months of no word or return a search party was sent out. They eventually found the village on the coast, but with no living trace of their brethren. Only bloody, rusted swords and helmets and damaged shields. Shields that bore deep cuts but not cuts made by any weapon known to any warrior. These were the claw marks of some monstrous demon. The party searched the entire area surrounding the village on the coast but could not find anything. No burrows, no nests, nothing. Even the ship was decimated beyond salvaging. The only indication of anything unnatural being on that beach…were large, webbed footprints all around the huts in the thicker dirt areas and strange, phosphorescent seaweed and slime. The party gathered what they could as a small recompense to the families of their lost warriors. What happened in that village on the coast was unnatural. Unholy. May the gods have mercy on any who set foot on those black sands of death again.
Wicked cool! Is @RyanAElliott072 your Twitter name?
Very cool! Don't forget to follow on us Twitter and/or G+ and list your usernames here so we can verify and follow you back.
It was a rare rainy day in Los Angles, making driving even more dangerous that usual on Christmas Eve, 193x. The police had given up on looking for the missing Mexican girls, but a PI had been employed by a group of concerned citizen pooling their money.
All of the trails lead to the docks . . . and vanished. Some suspected white slavery, others that they had just run away, but their families were sure that someone (or, in a few cases, something) had taken them. In any case, time was running out and light needed to be shown into the shadows of the docklands.
Mr. D's sixth grade class was a buzz with activity. Winter vacation was just two days away and tonight was the class play. All the students had been working hard, some learning their lines, a few working on costumes, and everyone helping to build the scenery. The play was going to be part of the school's traditional holiday festival, which was celebrating it's 108th year. Two students ran their lines while Mr. D, their teacher, coached their acting.
The play was called The King in Yellow and each student from the actors to the kid who always scored lowest on test knew that tonight's play was going to "bring down the house, " as Mr. D was found saying.
Thank you! Very cool story seed.
To complete your entry, please follow us on G+ and/or Twitter.
Wicked cool! I think I ate at that place once. Once was all it took!
I know I am following you on G+, you'll need to follow me as well. You can follow on Twitter for an extra entry.
Thanks! I followed you right before I posted the seed story.
Two ships meet at night off the coast of a small wooded island. The crew of one ship delivers stolen cargo to the other. The captain of the second ship pays well for such exotic merchandise.
Players/main characters are new crew on the first ship, the ship delivering the cargo. They begin to suspect that the crew of the second ship is not human. They begin to wonder about the true nature of their cargo.
I like where this one could go! Don't forget to follow us on G+ and Twitter. I need to know your names/handles.
It's me, Josh T. Jordan. I follow you on G+. I don't remember if I follow you on Twitter.
I suspected as much.. All is good. I have you entered.
It is 1608 and Queen Elizabeth's favorite alchemist dies. On the very night of his death, his household is thrown into disarray by a violent burglery. But, nothing seems to have been stolen? Unnoticed in the chaos, Doctor Dee's corpse has been stolen and replaced by a simulacrum.
Meanwhile, Shakespeare is shocked to find a new beverage is for sale in London — coffee. The shop has appeared outside the globe theater but, nobody noticed it being built. Has it always been there? No one can remember. But, it sells a miraculous black beverage that becomes the rage of London. Unfortunely, the coffee is brewed in a barrel containing the pickled remains of Doctor Dee. Soon the coffee obsessed rich and poor alike begin falling ill with numerous sorcerous maladies. The town is in chaos. Shakespeare is desperate to revive attendance at his theater and bring order back to London. He hires a desperate troupe of theater professionals to get to the bottom of things.
Way cool! I am huge coffee drinker, I may want to inquire further with my coffee houses in the future.
Follow me on Twitter for another entry in the contest.
"I do not truly comprehend the events as they have unfolded but I am committing my observations to paper to help fend off the sense of dread these unprecedented circumstances have grown in me over the past two months.
It all began with a young student in my introductory antiquities class. He was from a rural area, in the mountain country. Physically he was a specimen much like those I had seen when travelling through the Appalachians to follow up on a legend or rumour. His accent did not fit his physicality, however, being eloquent and carrying a confidence unusual for his years. The phrasing of his papers seemed to live in an earlier era as well, yet they were some of the best I had seen from any student here at Miskatonic.
His success soon drew the attention of his fellows and someone provided the dean with proof that the young man did not have the qualifications to attend our august facility. He was dismissed after a brief and inconclusive investigation of how he gained entry to the university.
After that I began to see the same fierce intelligence that I had marked in his eyes staring out of the faces of others at random moments. These interactions followed a pattern. I would feel eyes upon me, not know how long they had watched me I would raise my own to see this intelligence staring at me from the eyes of a stranger or even someone more familiar. They would meet my gaze only for a moment, then blink in confusion and move on with their day as though the last exchange had not happened. At first I was certain that I had imagined it, but it continued and became more frequent, always when I was at my work. I would catch staff in the library, students following me in the halls, even the cleaning staff here in my office.
I have noticed papers missing as well. Specifically my research into the rites of resurrection of the ancient Empire of Mjid. I warn you, these Mjidian rites are perverse in the extreme.
One day I managed to catch one of them watching as I left. A student from another department was in the hall outside my office, watching me leave. I waited at a distance and observed the student gain entry to my office through the locked door. How he came to have a key is beyond my reasoning. After a time of not more than ten minutes he left the office and proceeded to the little used recesses of the old building, climbing up an access ladder to the crawl space in part of the ceiling. I waited a full hour for him to return and then ascended the ladder myself once he had retreated from sight. In the crawlway I found a strange nest of papers mixed with pastry wrappers. Much of my research had been laid out on the walls with that of my colleagues in universities on the west coast and in Europe. He had almost completely reconstructed the ritual of Resurrection! I made notes in a pad I habitually carry and left all as I had found it. I fear to let it know I have found its secret, even if I do not understand its goals.
I shudder to think what these events mean. The blood sacrifice required by the ritual will result in a terrible loss of life if any of the people controlled by this intelligence attempts it! Who would gain from it? Is this some poltergeist possessing the innocent in the hopes of reviving himself? How can I stop such a creature? Who can I turn to for help? Who would not think me mad? Will the use of my research implicate me in the wrongdoing? Even if it doesn't, can I stand by and do nothing and still regard myself as moral?
Very nice! Strikes all the right cords for me.


Lewis, it was the first run in Q3 again for you that nailed it. Pole position for your home Grand Prix – how are you feeling?
LH: It's a special day. It's so special when you get pole position on your home turf. So many people have come here this weekend and they really do motivate me, so it's particularly special when you do get pole. Generally, it's not been the smoothest weekend. It's been a bit up and down in terms of set-up and balance. We made a change to the car, going into qualifying, which was perhaps not spectacular for a single lap but hopefully will be good for the race. Generally through qualifying I had a lot of understeer, so throughout the session we were putting in more and more wing. Also, the wind was all over the place and on this track that makes it very tricky. But I'm really happy with that lap. It felt fantastic – particularly the middle sector. My favourite part of the track, when you go through Copse and then Maggotts and Becketts, is just fantastic and I really hooked it up on that lap, which made the difference. Once I got to Q3 I kind of could just go all out and get that lap in. So, yeah, incredibly happy and my brother's here with me as well, so big thank you to everyone for all the support.
Tomorrow you have the chance to equal Nigel Mansell and Jim Clark as a three-time British Grand Prix winner. Tell us a little more about what the crowd has been doing to motivate you this weekend? Also, your two previous wins have come from outside the top three… so presumably this makes your task a little easier tomorrow?
LH: I've been very fortunate to have had those two wins here and the support has been incredible every year. It's the banners that are out there, it's the flags, it's the team caps, it's the messages that get sent every day through social media. I was replying to some just before qualifying and the fans really create the atmosphere and that buzz. When I'm about to start my lap or when I finish my lap, looking out of the corner of your eye and you know those guys are there, they're right behind you, so I hope that wave of energy that they give will help to carry us tomorrow.
You've taken pole a lot this season – clearly qualifying has been much, much stronger in 2015 than it was at this stage in 2014. What do you think has made the real difference, as far as you're concerned?
LH: I don't really know. Naturally, that was something that I wanted to improve this year. Last year I think I had seven poles in the whole season. It made the races a lot harder for me, to get past Nico on those occasions and win. So that obviously was a focal point. It's difficult to say where it's improved. That first lap in Q3 has been a really important one and generally just through the year I've been having good laps in that session.
Do you feel extra pressure trying to win your home Grand Prix for the third time?
LH: There's definitely extra added pressure. It comes from yourself, mainly, because you know that so many people save up through the year to come here, buy team merchandise and flags, plus the camping and hotels. They do all that and they are here to support you, so you just want to make sure that you put the icing on top of their cake. They're already having a great weekend with the great weather but if you can deliver a good result then there's that extra bit of pressure to do that. But I think that pressure is a positive pressure and one I would hope I can thrive under.


text:
share w circle
Combined ShapeALL TRENDING TOPICS
Why 'Star Wars' bombs in China again and again
The latest Star Wars movie has raked in more than $175 million in its opening weekend in North America, putting it on course to be one of the top-grossing films of the year. But in China, the blockbuster performed poorly, taking in only $12 million, a fraction of what other Disney franchises, such as the Avengers and Frozen, brought in. This is not the first time Star Wars tanked in the world's second-biggest film market. When Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi, the prequel to this year's movie, opened in China, it had a disappointing first weekend. The last four Star Wars movies made $250 million in China, which is only a bit better than the $200 million Spider-Man: Far From Home made
Qin Chen
Marvel's Shang-Chi casting ignites racism debate in China
Marvel's casting of Tony Leung, a beloved Hong Kong star, in the upcoming Shang-Chi film has stirred up an intense online debate in China about racism. Veteran actor Leung, 57, will play the Mandarin, the villain of the film. Idolized in China, many Chinese fans have questioned Leung's decision to take this role. The casting was announced by Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios, at Comic-Con in San Diego. Some Chinese internet users believe the Mandarin is a similar character to the evil Dr Fu Manchu, a fictional character widely considered racist. Fu was first created by British author Sax Rohmer in 1912. In the Marvel comics, Shang-Chi is the son of Fu Manchu, who was not announced a
Chinese cinema avenges unpaid debts before Endgame premiere
Move over, Thanos. A Chinese city has decided that deadbeats are a more urgent matter to take care of. A court in the eastern Chinese city of Lishui has teamed up with local theaters to make Marvel fans watch a video about bad debtors before they could watch the latest Avengers movie. People who bought tickets to a midnight premiere of Avengers: Endgame on Wednesday in the city in Zhejiang province were first shown a minute-long video shaming 60 "untrustworthy" people who failed to pay their debts. The naming-and-shaming campaign is the local authorities' answer to Beijing's call to build a nationwide social credit system that aims to enforce what the state deems correct behavior in the soci
Phoebe Zhang
This weird Tom Hiddleston ad casts you as his Chinese wife
A strange vitamin commercial Tom Hiddleston filmed for the Chinese market is blowing up on social media. But the responses to the ad have been vastly different in and out of China. The ad for Centrum multivitamins is shot from the viewpoint of Hiddleston's female partner: she wakes up to find the actor making her (us) a salad breakfast, before he compliments her, reminds her to take her Centrum supplements, and leaves for work. While many Western audiences have found the video unsettling, this advert has won a wave of praise after it was released on the Chinese internet on Wednesday. Why so? Here are six reasons that's made the commercial so successful in China. 1. It's vertical. The Cent
Viola Zhou
Hey, Hollywood. We just cast Shang-Chi for you. You're welcome
The news is out: Marvel is fast-tracking the production of a superhero movie starring Shang-Chi, "Master of Kung Fu." Hoping to recapture the movie magic (and maybe also the box office gold) of Black Panther and Crazy Rich Asians, the studio is looking to make this an all-Asian superhero flick. It's already lined up an Asian screenwriter, and is seeking an Asian director to helm the film. One problem remains: who to cast for the role of Shang-Chi himself, the titular Master of Kung Fu? In the olden days, Hollywood would probably have just cast Scarlett Johansson or Emma Stone and called it a day. But in these new, somewhat more woke times, they'll be looking for a genuinely Asian actor to p
Stan Lee's final creation was a Chinese superhero
Late comic book legend Stan Lee is known as the force behind Spider-Man, the Hulk and the X-Men, but his final creation was a Chinese female superhero. Just weeks before he passed away on Monday at the age of 95, the comic creator unveiled a new character based on Hong Kong singer Gloria Tang, who goes by her stage name G.E.M. Tentatively named "Jewel," the character is a world-touring pop star by day and a superhero in disguise by night. But it is unclear whether Lee had decided on her superpowers before he passed away. "Its my honour to have met you and share meetings on your creative and thought process," Tang said in an Instagram post on Tuesday. "You have been a big big inspiration to t
Zheping Huang and Viola Zhou
The Chinese Marvel fans forging Infinity Gauntlets in a DIY workshop
Why watch Marvel movies, when you could live them instead? In the central Chinese city of Xian, the fans at the MakerBeta space have spun fantasy into reality by recreating the weapons used by their favorite Marvel superheroes – from Thanos' Infinity Gauntlet to Wolverine's retractable claws and Doctor Strange's magical sling ring. Check out our video to find out more.
Angela Cheung
Avengers: Infinity Photoshop
Avengers: Infinity War opens on Friday in the US. American audiences will see Marvel's greatest superheroes sprinting towards danger. But in China, they're sprinting away from the authorities. At least, they are in Weibo user Qinghongzaolegebai's creative mashups of Chinese street life with Hollywood superheroes and villains. The 30-something designer and film lover has 3.5 million followers on the Twitter-like platform. His recent series "The chengguan are coming" has gone viral on Weibo. The pictures show Marvel superheroes photoshopped to look like Chinese street traders and food vendors, running away from the chengguan – urban management officers responsible for Chinese cities. The o
Adam White and Viola Zhou
Chinese fans swamp Disneytown for Avengers: Infinity War event
Chinese Marvel fans have been left disappointed after a red carpet event for Avengers: Infinity War on the outskirts of Shanghai filled up hours before the film's stars showed up on Thursday afternoon. The event was held at Disneytown, a shopping area just outside of the Shanghai Disney Resort. The film's producer, Marvel Studios, is owned by Disney. Organizers struggled to handle the crowds, while fans complained about an exhausting and confusing wait. On Weibo, a Twitter-like social platform, photos and videos have been circulating since Wednesday evening showing a large crowd at Disneytown with dozens of security officers trying to keep people in order. Shanghai Disney land today vs th
Inkstone Facebook PageInkstone TwitterInkstone InstagramInkstone Youtubeicn_Voice-Footer-SMLInkstone Flipboard

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Evolution as science versus religion was a later invention
By gcallah - August 30, 2013
"It is very interesting to notice how far later tradition has exaggerated the Victorian dispute and distorted our view of its nature. As James Moore has shown, it certainly did not appear at the time as raging between science and religion, but as cutting straight across both. Darwin's most serious opponents by far were the official scientific establishment of his day, and many of his supporters... were clergymen." -- Mary Midgley, Evolution as Religion, p. 12
Mary Midgley on Methodological Pluralism
"There is a real difficulty in grasping the vastness of the subject, in seeing that distinct insights need not be rivals, but can explain different aspects of life, and can eventually be compatible." -- Evolution as Religion, p. 9
A platonic argument for scientism?
"Now the full beauty of man's capacity to weigh, to measure, and to number comes to light. All are antidotes to error. They liberate our souls from illusory perceptions of what is greater or less or more or heavier, so that we may be governed by those things that we can weigh, measure, and reckon...
"Further: the best part of the soul is that which relies on calculation and measurement?
"Clearly."
-- The Republic, Book X
Top that, Nostradamus!
Even my jokes come true: Honda is now working on the ability to alert pedestrians via text message when something in the external world like a bus is about to hit them.
You will never need to look up from your smart phone again. The Kingdom is truly upon us.
The Genius of Wittgenstein
The story goes that Wittgenstein asked, "Why did people believe for so long that the sun went around the earth?"
His interlocutor answered, "Well, because it looks that way?"
Wittgenstein paused for a moment. Then he asked, "And how would it look if the earth went around the sun?"
The book of thoughts (Croce)
"I libri dei Pensieri vari rappresentavano sempre un grado inferiore dell'intelligenza umana. Sono osservazione spicciole e imprecise, le quali, meditate da persona che pensa e ha testa filosofica, vengono a confondersi in certi più generali princìpi, di cui esse sono o facili corollari o inesatte applicazione. Dico che rappresentano un grado inferiore dell'intelligenza, appunto perché questa relazione di corollario o di applicazioni non è in essi vista né determinata. Il filosofo, che li legge, non ha niente da impararvi, se non forse un certo modo arguto ed epigrammatico di far quelle osservazioni. Modo che, quando c'è, ha poi soltanto valore artistico." -- Pensieri sull'arte (1885), XXVI
The "book of thoughts" always represents an inferior grade of human intelligence. They are penny ante, imprecise observations, the quality of which, meditatedby a personwho thinksandhas a philosophicalhead, are conferred in somemore generalprinciplesto which the…
I Won't Take "No" for an Answer
Nor will I take "yes" for a question.
I just wanted you to know.
The Bully!
A photographer is in legal trouble for refusing to photograph a lesbian wedding. According to Noah Smith classificatory scheme, the photographer is a "bully" for thinking she should not have to take part in events that run against her moral beliefs, while the couple who had her dragged through years of legal hassles, despite the fact that they easily found someone else to take the photos, are the poor downtrodden little folks.
I bet Noah Smith, when he was young, complained about the bullies whose chins got in the way of his fist.
In an interesting side note, Dreher points out that his freedom of conscience principles are not a matter of whose side he is on: "If a gay photographer believed in good conscience that he could not photograph the wedding of Christian fundamentalists, then I think he absolutely should have the right to refuse, on First Amendment grounds."
And finally, isn't Vanessa Wilcock an inapt name for a lesbian?
Philosophers as writers
In a conversation with Peri Roberts and Pete Sutch, we found that we all agreed that how well a philosopher wrote was surprisingly disconnected from how great a philosopher he was. Let's look at a few examples of philosophers of roughly equal stature, from the same centuries (three out of the four pairs wrote in the same language, in fact), one of whom was a great stylist, and one of whom was not:
Plato: He would be known as a great writer alone: the ship of state, the ring of invisibility, the shadows on the cave wall, Atlantis, his mythical vision of the afterlife, etc.
Aristotle: Aristotle would not.
Berkeley: Remarkably clear exposition.
Kant:This.
Nietzche: Superman. Need we say more?
Hegel: "Science exhibits itself as a circle returning upon itself, the end being wound back into the beginning, the simple ground, by the mediation; this circle is moreover a circle of circles, for each individual member as ensouled by the method is reflected into itself, so that in returning in…
Desperate for cash...
I've begun money laundering operations:
I expect the Benjamins to be rolling in soon.
Gardening for Real People, Part VI
Got logs?
Have you taken down a tree but have no (known) use for the resulting logs? They work great for marking out a path through the woods:
And they can provide seating as well:
The mysterious hooded figures...
That lurk in the woods have requested that all posts on this blog that mentioned the forbidden dog park be removed. I have of course heeded that request, and so searching for them now will be of no avail. In fact, they have been purged from the Wayback machine as well.
If you happen to have read any of these posts, please remove them from your local cache. And then forget you ever read them.
Do not Google for information abou the forbidden dog park: the Night Vale Secret Police will not look kindly on such activities.
Press Announcements about Science, or Why Your Teen Can't Help His Criminal Behavior
Yesterday, two people told me that "A study showed that teenagers haven't yet developed the part of their brain that creates fear of bad consequences in the future."
Hmm... These are both bright people, but neither have been trained in the methods of critical history: In critical history, we don't believe our sources, we interrogate them.
And here we have a very good reason to interrogate. Let me relate a true tale: Years ago, my then three-year-old son saw a woodchuck in the backyard. "Can I go catch the woodchucker, Dad?" (Cute, huh? And Chomskean! The addition of the "er" recalls a story about Wabulon from a book on linguistics.)
"Sure thing." No harm, no foul: there was no way he would actually catch the thing, which would scamper out of the yard as soon as anyone walked into it.
But suddenly he stopped. He thought for a second and then asked, with a worried look, "Dad, do woodchuckers bite?"
You see, at three, he could en…
Gardening for Real People, Part V
An important part of garden maintenance is "Dead Heading" your roses:
(Although it is hard to capture in a photo, it is highly recommended that one douse oneself in patchouly oil before performing this operation.)
My son is a point guard
I think most of you would agree that I am not speaking nonsense in saying this, or introducing some "magical" element into my description of my son. Is a straightforward statement of fact, of the kind that would usually pass without any notice.
But what I wish to note here is that no sense can be made of this statement without the larger context of the notion of "a basketball team." It is not possible for a human being to be a point guard in isolation. He might dribble a basketball around, and even pretend to pass to others. But without the larger context of a basketball team, he is not a point guard.
The truth of reductionism is that sometimes good explanations of something larger can be given in terms of breaking down that larger thing into smaller entities. I did this all the time in analyzing the workings of the programs I was writing: when I found a bug, I looked for a particular line of code to explain the bug. But if taken as a methodological dictate, which in…
And though the days roll through my mind...
The everlasting universe of Things
Rolls through the Mind, and rolls its rapid waves,
Now dark – now glittering – now reflecting gloom –
Now lending splendour, where from secret springs
The source of human thought its tribute brings
Of waters, – with a sound but half its own,
Such as a feeble brook will oft assume
In the wild woods, among the Mountains lone,
Where waterfalls around it leap forever,
Where woods and winds contend, and a vast river
Over its rocks ceaselessly bursts and raves -- Shelley, Mont Blanc
Organs Are Explained by Organisms
And not the reverse. Livers don't go around detoxifying on their own, and occasionally bump into a heart and lungs and decide to make an organism. No, we only understand what organs do by seeing their role in the entire organism.
I mention this as part of the campaign to make the "mouth of truth" your anti-reductionist blog of choice. (Although Ed Feser is not bad either.) One interesting thing that has emerged is that some people are ready to deeply defend reductionism without apparently having any idea what it is. One commenter offered thermodynamics and Darwinian evolution as examples of successful reductionist theories, when, in fact, they are two prime examples of theories resisting reduction for over a century. For example, convection in thermodynamics is an excellent example of a theory which cannot possibly be reduced to the action of isolated molecules: what would it even mean for a single molecule to be undergoing convection?! It is a solid, scientific concept…
Your psychic health
Far from reducing to just the state of your neurons, it turns out that your psychic health hardly depends on you alone: the trillions of microbes living in our guts apparently also play a keep part in our mental state.
Rootless speculation
For the bad translation files:
In Italian, the speaker says "What would a tree be without its roots?"
Then he answers his own question, "Nothing."
In the English subtitles, this was rendered, "What would happen to a tree without its roots? Nothing."
So I guess the roots are optional after all.
The Road Is So Froggy
This little guy made his way onto my porch tonight. As you can see, he's about the size of a fingernail:
Oddly, despite his diminutive stature, when he jumped down from the railing to the deck he made a distinct "plop."
Psi power
By Wabulon - August 21, 2013
The economists among youse certainly know of the gamma function, the analytic construction of the arithmetic factorial function: n Gamma(n) = Gamma(n+1).
How about this function: psi(n) = d/dn ln Gamma(n).
Why is it interesting? (Those of you who have memorized the Chemical Rubber Company Handbook of Mathematical Tables or a similar encyclopedia, please abstain.)
Pottery II
A renowned devotee of Terpsichore
Had a fourteen-inch dildo of hickory
Which she rubbed with bay rum,
Belladonna, old cum,
Oil of myrrh, and coffee with chickory.
Whitehead on the naïve faith of science
"Science has never shaken off the impress of its origin in the historical revolt of the later Renaissance. It has remained predominantly an anti-rationalistic movement, based upon a naïve faith." -- Science and the Modern World, p. 16
Whitehead on the rise of science
"Science has never shaken off the impress of its origin in the historical revolt of the later Renaissance. It has remained predominantly an anti-rationalistic movement, based upon a naïve faith." -- Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, p. 16
Whitehead on the persecution of scientists
"In a generation which saw the Thirty Years' War... the worst that happened to men of science was that Galileo suffered an honourable detention and a mild reproof, before dying peacefully in his bed." -- Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, p. 2
Whitehead on Bruno
"Giordano Bruno was the martyr: though the cause for which he suffered was not that of science, but that of free imaginative speculation. His death in the year 1600 ushered in the first century of modern science in the strict sense of the term. In his execution there was an unconscious symbolism: for the subsequent tone of scientific thought has contained distrust of his type of general speculativeness." -- Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, p. 1
The Catholic Church was perhaps kinder to Bruno than the modern academy would be: While the church at least considered his ideas important enough to execute him, the modern academy would simply relegate his sort of speculation to the dustbin of "not worthy of serious consideration."
Yum! Fresh Cream!
This just opened a little ways down the road from me:
I keep asking my wife if we can stop. "We'll pick up some fresh half-and-half for the coffee, and maybe some sour cream for the potatoes!"
But she just responds, "Don't worry, I'll be bringing you there real soon, once I work out the contract details with Luigi."
I don't get it: why would she need a contract with some guy named Luigi to go pick up some half-and-half?!
What work is biblical inerrancy supposed to be doing?
We have 5500 hand-written manuscripts of part or all of the New Testament in Greek. The earliest of them are from the second century A.D. Scholars estimate that they differ from each other in several hundred thousand places.
Of particular interest is the fact that the story of the adulteress, the one in which Jesus talks about whoever has no sin casting the first stone, does not appear in any manuscripts or in any commentary on the New Testament before about the 12th century A.D. (Bart Ehrman speculates that something like the following occurred: one scribe in reading John saw Jesus saying things about not judging others. He thought, "I know a wonderful story that's been circulating about Jesus that illustrates that point nicely." He then wrote the story of the adulteress in the margin. A second scribe saw that, and thought, "Gee, this guy accidentally left that part out, and then had to write it in the margin. Let me get it in the main line of the text.") In an…
Worried about affordable housing?
Try allowing some development.
Here is an article describing how some residents in Queens are worried about their neighborhood becoming "unaffordable."
But it is often the very same people who fight tooth and nail against any high-rise development in their neighborhood.
If you want to keep a neighborhood affordable for the old residents in the face of newcomers desire to move there, you only have three choices that I can see:
1) Simply forbid people from moving where they want. That is obviously incompatible with being a liberal democracy.
2) Institute widespread rent control, with the usual bad results.
3) Allow new housing to go up to accommodate the newcomers, which, if built in sufficient quantity, will keep prices (and thus rents) down on the older housing stock. Once you add in the environmental advantages of dense urban dwelling, this even more so should be the preferred solution.
Of course, the owners in the neighborhood often hate 3, because it cuts into their profit…
The Scores of Scientists Who Suffered Severely at the Hands of the Church for Their Theories Include?
Over in the comments at Bob Murphy's blog, George Selgin writes:
"That many of the most illustrious members of this tiny group [of scientific thinkers] suffered severely at the hands of religious persecutors is (or ought to be) notorious."
I do not mean to pick on George, whom I regard as a very bright man, but here he is expressing a bit of "folk history" that I just don't see has much basis in fact. My interest is really about why this idea continues to circulate.
One of the first things our history of science lecturer at King's College, John Milton, told us was that on the vast majority of scientific topics, the church simply did not care. So when Buridan and Oresme challenged Aristotelian mechanics: the church just did not care at all, one way or the other.
Secondly, on the very few topics it did care about, it was always prepared to regard scripture as figurative, if the literal interpretation could be proven false. (So, since everyone knew t…
The primacy of the concrete
"The explanatory purpose of philosophy is often misunderstood. Its business is to explain the emergence of the more abstract things from the more concrete things. It is a complete mistake to ask how concrete particular fact can be built up out of universals. The answer is, 'In no way.'" -- Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 24
Confusing reductionism, determinism and materialism
One can hold one or two of the above doctrines without holding the other one or two. Some commentators here seem confused about this.
To get this clearer it may be helpful to consider the case of Hayek. He was certainly a materialist, and probably believed in physical determinism as well. But he was definitely anti-reductionist. He believed that due to complexity, there existed emergent properties at higher levels of organization that could not be reduced to the sum of their parts. But he still thought that they were material in nature through and through (there was no new substance like spirit or mind that entered into the picture to create the emergent level), and that their behavior was probably deterministic, even if impossible to predict exactly.
Several recent posts suggested to me that I should share this important Gedankenexperiment (I was about fifteen when it occurred to me).
Half time at the Superbowl. The President of the United States takes the stage and addresses his fellow Americans: "I ask you all to participate in an unprecedented and important scientific experiment. Without your cooperation, this vital research cannot be carried out, etc.etc." The country's most popular sports figure then takes over to explain the details. Roustabouts bring out a large fluorescent orange tarpaulin and place it in the exact center of the field, brilliant against the green. A small cage is placed in the center of the tarpaulin. In it is a hamster. Most popular sports figure: "OK, everybody, now, HATE THAT HAMSTER!"
What dialogue in Jesse Stone!
A little while back, I posted a translation of Croce discussing how the dialogue in Corneille was "false from top to bottom."
I've just found a modern example of this: the Jesse Stone movies that CBS made last decade. Tom Selleck and his interlocutors continually talk "how one talks when, while feigning to have a confidential word with another, one has every intention of letting a third person overhear."
It is very grating after a little while.
Contemplating a name change
Hmm... What if I legally change my name to "Pulitzer Prize-Winning Writer Gene Callahan."
That might generate an edge in marketing book signings, hey?
The Failure of Reductionism in Biology
From Charney and English, "Candidate Genes and Political Behavior," American Political Science Review, Feb. 2012:
Hence, a single gene can code for multiple proteins, something that is estimated to occur in 90% of all human genes. We cannot equate a particular allele straightforwardly with the production of a particular form of protein and from that with the production of a particular physiological effect and corresponding phenotype.
Once considered the paragon of stability, DNA is subject to all manner of transformation. For example, we retrotransposons or "jumping genes" comprise 45% of the human genome, that the genome play copy-and-paste mechanism changing DNA content structure, are regulated by the epigenome (and hence are potentially environmentally responsive), and appear to be particularly prevalent in the human brain...
"The dogma and collect their genetics until the 1990s was the genotype would predict phenotype. We thought that once we cloned and c…
Orson Scott Canard
He gained fame by writing a novel arguing that tricking children into committing genocide could be a good thing. But apparently over time he has become even more unhinged: he now believes Obama is preparing to train a military police force of minorities who will assault anyone who disagrees with his policies.
But this one really got me: "There are still people... who believe that Richard III murdered his nephews..."
Yes, Orson, and those people are called "historians."And just why do these nasty historians believe this? "That's because politically useful lies are treasures, not to be easily given up by those who benefit from them."
Ah, it's all the people who "benefit" today from smearing Richard III who are selling us these "lies." Like... like...
What is the point of blatantly public marriage proposals?
You know, the kind of thing when someone puts their proposal up on the scoreboard of a baseball stadium, or something like that?
It strikes me that the point is to bully the person being asked into saying "yes," by enlisting thousands of people on the side of the proposer, rooting for a yes.
Noah Smith's Car?
Yes, let's "coexist": unless we disagree about politics, in which case you are automatically a racist and homophobe! (I don't doubt for a moment that there are plenty of racists and homophobes in the Tea Party. But I am also sure there are plenty of people who are neither: their main interest is in lower taxes, or less gun control, or less regulation of building, etc. etc. What this person is doing by sporting this bumper sticker is the same thing racists do: taking a selection from a group and stereotyping the whole group as having the properties of the selection.)
Advice you will need
"Yields a falsehood when appended to its own quotation"
yields a falsehood when appended to its own quotation.
-- Quine
Youth sports build character
I was at the lake Saturday, which turned out to be the day the swim team was having their end of season party. This is a team of kids from age 6 to 18, but mostly concentrated in the younger part of that range.
Here is a sample of the DJ's playlist, in fact, three consecutive songs from it:
I've Got Friends in Low Places
I Love This Bar
Let's Get Drunk and Screw
Ah, the character building nature of youth sports on display at its best!
Pursuing the dream of reduction...
Quantum physics wound up turning on the dreamers.
If reductionism were true, then quantum physics ought to be its apotheosis. But essentially all of the founders of the discipline, as far as I can tell, at some point or another clearly expressed the non-reductionist nature of their findings. The little "bits" the identification of which was supposed to result in an explanation of everything else turned out to be nothing at all in isolation: only in their relations to other particles could they even be given meaning. (This is a far cry from the self-contained and self-existent billiard balls that materialists had imagined would make up the atomic level.) In fact, given the reality of quantum entanglement, what any particular particle is up to turns out to depend on the entire state of the universe. Far from supporting reductionism, this discovery simply reeks of absolute idealism.
The strange paradox of the reductionist individualist
Those who cling to the ideology of reductionism and yet hold to a libertarian or semi-libertarian position really present a strange paradox: They are insisting upon the importance of individuals in politics while at the same time holding that individuals don't really exist at all. After all, nothing bad happened to the electrons and protons and neutrons that made up Alexander Solzhenitsyn when he was thrown in the gulag. So what was the big deal?
Mid-August Garden
Extracted...
...from a comment by Mr. Fetz, this has, I think, a larger relevance and so should be promoted to a posting of its own:
I said that I know "a few" have. If a few Americans are murderers, are all Americans murderers?
And my reply: In a certain sense, Yes.
The Role of Law
"We come here to one of the key concepts Oakeshott's later work -- the conception which he finds pre-figured in the thought of Hobbes and Hegel, of society as a civil association -- an association among persons who, having no ends or purposes necessarily held in common, nevertheless coexist in peace under the rule of law... the [role] of law in a civil society is not that promoting general welfare or any other similar abstraction (such as fundamental rights), but rather of securing the conditions in which persons may themselves contract into mutually chosen activities." John Gray, Liberalisms, p. 207
Hanging out in the country
Where, as Noah Smith tells us, we white people go so that we need not have any contact with nonwhites.
Man, somehow I haven't quite got the hang of this country thing yet:
Wingnuts over America
The insane Washington Timesblames our withdrawal from Iraq for leaving the "door open to [a] sectarian battle for power."
Right. It wasn't invading the country and toppling the government that opened that door, it was withdrawing when we agreed to withdraw.
Feser Nails It
Here, discussing Alex Rosenberg:
The first argument claims that "neuroscience makes eliminativism about propositional attitudes unavoidable." A propositional attitude is a relation between a thinker and a certain proposition or content. When we say that Fred believes that it is raining, we are attributing to him the attitude of believing the proposition that it is raining; when we say that Ethel hopes that it is sunny, we are attributing to her the attitude of hoping that the proposition that it is sunny is true; and so forth. Neuroscience, Rosenberg tells us, shows that there is no such thing as believing, hoping, fearing, desiring, or the like.
Now in fact, it takes very little thought to see that "neuroscience" shows no such thing. For there is nothing in the neuroscientific evidence cited by Rosenberg that couldn't be accepted by an Aristotelian, a Cartesian, a Wittgensteinian, a Whiteheadian, or an adherent of some other metaphysics. What Rosenberg should say is: "Neurosci…
How to Bond as a Family
I just had a Facebook chat with all three of my kids at once.
And we are all in the same NYC apartment, no one more than thirty feet away from anyone else.
Hey, it worked.
Everybody is a poet (Croce)
"Si suole comunemente concepire la poesia come una sorta di sesso intellettuale. Poeta nascitur. Niente di più falso. La produzione poetica proviene da un stato dello spirito eccitato da certe condizione ed occasioni: Stato a cui chi è disposto molto, che poco, e chi quasi nulla ma non mai nulla. Sìcche tutti gli uomini hanno la possibilità di trovarsi in uno stato poetico, e nessuno ci si può provare sempre. La parola 'poeta' del linguaggio comune ha valore semplicemente quantitativo: Chiamiamo poeta chi nella la vita è più specialmente noto perché compone poesia. Intendente sanamente." -- Pensieri sull'arte (1885), XXIII
The common conception of poetry is as a kind of intellectual sex. Poets are born. Nothing could be more false. Poetical production comes from a state of spirit excited by certain conditions and occasions: A state to which some are much disposed, others little, and others almost not at all, but never not at all. So that all people have the poss…
The Sun Was Once a Planet
As Thomas Kuhn noted, in 1400, both the Sun and the Moon were planets, while the Earth was not one.*
But if today you were to campaign for calling the Sun a planet, you would be campaigning to redefine the term planet. The fact that once upon a time that definition was current makes no difference. So Blackadder is right.
Also curious in Murphy's post is this: "I agree with the standard Austrian position on this," i.e., that inflation is an increase in the money supply. Let us set aside the question of what it means to "agree with" a definition, rather than simply employing it, and focus on the word "standard": we have here a definition of inflation offered by Mises, and adopted by Rothbard and his followers. Has it ever been used by Hayek? Lachmann? Kirzner? Horwitz? White? Selgin?
Not that I know of. Apparently, what makes something a "standard" is its use by a small Austrian splinter group.
* And note, this was a matter of definition: wha…
Nice idea for a modernization
I'm usually not impressed with attempts to modernize Shakespeare, but this one intrigues me: making Romeo and Juliet an interracial couple seems a very natural update of the bard.
Wikiphobia
Wikiphobia (noun): the terror high school teachers experience at the thought that their students might look up something on Wikipedia.
Defining Inflation into Existence
Jonathan Catalan tries to defend the Misesian approach of defining inflation as a rapid increase in the money supply. His tactic is to say it really is no different than the monetarist approach, which sees inflation as always a monetary phenomena, but that Mises simply emphasized the cause while price indices focus on the effect.
This won't do. Once we adopt Mises' definition, we're going to have to say that we can have inflation even in a period when all prices are falling. No monetarist is going to call that inflation!
The fact is, while most or perhaps all periods of price inflation can traced to increases in the money supply, not all increases in the money supply lead to periods of price inflation. And the fact is, what people are interested in is "Why are prices going up?" and not "Is there more money around then there used to be?" Or, they are interested in the latter only in that it causes the former. It is analogous to our interest in germs: mo…
If a foreigner does not know a word...
The best thing to do is say it over and over again. Eventually, I guess, the meaning will become obvious to them. Or so thought the lady at the diner today, who kept saying to the Hispanic busboy, "Crackehs. Crackehs. Crackehs! Crackehs! Crackehs!" (This being Brooklyn, that final 'r' is not pronounced.)
Farce (Croce)
"Per farsa io intendo una rappresentazione comica della vita, non sussistente per sé ma avente la sua radice nei gusti e nelle disposizione particolari di un determinato uditorio. È il comico, non quale deve apparire all'universale coscienza estetica, ma qual appare ad una coscienza individuale. E la farsa non è perciò rigorosamente un genere artistico. Come non è genere artistico il romanzo del Montépin o del Boisgobey, che leggiamo dopo pranzo, e che pure ci aiuta ad ammazzare il tempo." -- Pensieri sull'arte (1885), XXII
By farce I intend a comical representation of life, not self-subsistent but having its roots in the tastes and particular dispositions of a certain audience. What is comic is not what appears in the universal aesthetic conscience, but that which appears in an individual conscience. And therefore strictly speaking farce is not an artistic genre, as the romance of Montépin or of Boisgobey, which we read after lunch to help kill the time, is not an …
I. Limerick
A computer with nothing to do
Was extracting the first root of two.
After ten thousand pages
Of zeros, the sages
Said, That's quite enough out of you.
II. Beholding Dürer
Some think God made us
As His hands, tools for doing
What He wished done,
Making what should be made.
By this thesis, Dürer's work,
Since it does not seem to be
A series of instructions,
I judge to be finished.
(c) 130806 by W. Bloch
Sincerity in art (Croce)
"La sincerità naturale, lo 'scrivete come parlate', in arte, è qualcosa di molto simile ai famosi diritti innati, spiritosa invenzione dei filosofi del secolo scorso, nell'etica: quei diritti innati, che'erano, viceversa, il frutto di lavoro di molte centinaia d'anni di storia, e che supponevano innati sol perché si metteva al posto dell'uomo naturale reale l'uomo ideale. La gente meno sincera, a che scrive meno come pensa, è la gente poca colta. E la pìu sincera, e quella che pìu ritrae nello scrivere del proprio pensiero, è la gente che ha ingegno e studio. Perché la sincerità (che in fatto d'arte è espressione metaforica = bellezza) è cosi fatta che, per arrivarci, fa d'uopo un lungo e tortuoso viaggio." -- Pensieri dell'arte (1885), XX
Natural sincerity, the "write as you speak" in art, is very similar to the famous natural rights, the witty invention of philosophers of the last century, in ethics: the natural rights were…
Rationalism in Kitchen Design
Noah Smith, take you head outta you..
I stopped by my local "redneck" bar in rural PA last night. As I came back from the can, I snapped this shot:
What?! Non-white people in a rural, blue-collar bar? Just look at the white people around them, all in a panic, fleeing into the woods!
Wait: they're chatting with the non-white people, having a good time! In fact, my friend Tito, looking at the camera, is pretty much the most popular guy in the bar. It seems about 90% of the people who come in know him, and walk up and shake his hand when they arrive.
In fact, for most of them, the thing they want to avoid about cities is not non-white people, but slums. And what do you know, that is the very thing Tito was seeking to get away from when he moved into the country. And, I bet, the same thing the black guy sitting next to him moved into the country to avoid. And probably the same thing the black guy who was DJing is living out here to avoid.
Noah Smith Offers a Hand to Blue-Collar, White America
"Hey," Noah writes, "you stupid, anti-reason, racist, fearful, mouth-breathers, I of the liberal elite will benevolently make an effort to save even such scum as you!"
I can't see how anyone could possibly ignore his advice!
Smartphone mania
(Hat tip to my student, Catherine Rios-Lunarejo, for alerting me to the web site collecting these photos.)
Sure, Tom, just 1%:
Bob Murphy Sings "I Will Go Down with This Schiff"
And he won't put his hands up and surrender.
Here, in the latest of his series of Karaoke hits, Bob has decided to side with the flat-earth Peter Schiff in his war against empirical reality. Some excerpts with commentary:
"For what it's worth, Scott doesn't just take the BLS' word over the experience of average Americans..."
The consumer confidence index, which was as low as 25 in 2009, now stands at around 80. It has been rising throughout most of this year. The experience of average Americans is very clearly that we are not in a "bad recession"! But I bet when Bob thinks of "average Americans," he is thinking of "the people I met at Porcfest," who have the same ideological bias towards seeing a bad recession that he does. (Of course, for the too many people still unemployed, the economy doesn't look great.)
"So: If all of the above just causes some sluggish growth in the economy, such that Peter Schiff doesn't even pass the 'la…
Evolution as science versus religion was a later i...
Press Announcements about Science, or Why Your Tee...
What work is biblical inerrancy supposed to be doi...
The Scores of Scientists Who Suffered Severely at ...
Confusing reductionism, determinism and materialis...
What is the point of blatantly public marriage pro...
The strange paradox of the reductionist individual...
Noah Smith Offers a Hand to Blue-Collar, White Ame...
Bob Murphy Sings "I Will Go Down with This Schiff"...


text:
Philip M. Coyne
retired from the New Jersey State Police in 2012 after 25 years of service. While serving as the Director of the New Jersey Regional Operations and Intelligence Center, the State fusion center, he led a task force comprised of law enforcement professionals from federal, state, county and local agencies. He had oversight of a team who were responsible for delivering tactical and strategic intelligence products to all law enforcement and private sector organizations in the State, as well as timely situational awareness reports for all type of crimes, threats and hazards. Prior to leading the fusion center, he was the Executive Officer of the Office of Professional Standards (OPS) and was the Division Criminal Investigations Officer. In his role in OPS, Major Coyne (Ret.) directed internal investigations, inspections, and audit functions for the State Police. In his role as Criminal Investigations Officer for the Field Operations Section, Major Coyne (Ret.) oversaw the activities and investigations conducted by detectives from approximately thirty stations, and served as the primary liaison between the Field Operations Commander and Deputy Superintendent of Investigations.
Other notable assignments Major Coyne (Ret.) served in included being Commandant of the New Jersey State Police Academy for two years. While leading an academy staff comprised of more than 60 sworn and civilian staff, he was responsible for the oversight of all training development and the delivery of programs for the organization. In that capacity he was chosen as the Superintendent's representative for critical matters of interest with the State Attorney General's Office and the Police Training Commission (PTC). As Commandant, he directed the update, restructure and delivery of a new recruit-training curriculum. Incorporating best practices in law enforcement training, Major (Ret.) Coyne supervised the creation of the Recruit Capstone Experience, a revolutionary program that was designed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the academy program through the integration of simulated, though operational patrol scenarios.
Mr. Coyne holds a Bachelor's degree in Criminal Justice from The College of New Jersey, and a Master's degree in Education, and certificate in Human Resources Training and Development from Seton Hall University. As a New Jersey Police Training Commission certified instructor, Mr. Coyne has lectured to state, county and local law enforcement officers in training programs throughout the New Jersey. Additionally, Mr. Coyne is an adjunct professor for the Penn State Justice and Safety Institute, providing leadership and management training to police executives throughout the northeast. Recently, Mr. Coyne has developed and delivered training programs focused on ethics, intelligence liaison activities and intelligence-led decision making that are offered to public safety and private sector professionals throughout New Jersey.
To contact Phil Coyne, please call our office at (732) 279-6657.


In the very first batch of mags, the front and back of the regulator were made on screw machines. The air flow hole from the on/off on the front half was always at the top where it is now. The back half of the reg had a hole drilled randomly 360 degrees in a circle that was machined into the reg body so the air would flow around and get to the hole.
John Sosta figured out that if you happened to get a reg where the two holes were 180 degrees apart, the air flow would be less than ones where the holes lined up. This was one of several things that could have caused shoot down in the first batch. John drilled several holes in the regulator so at least one of them would be close to the hole in the front reg. It worked great as a retrofit and when he did them he called them "Pro Mags".
In the next batch and all subsequent batches, we made sure that the holes lined up across from each other and the problem was permanently fixed. The name continued to float around for years and like in this case, people come across them and think they are something special. They were basically a 2.0 bug fix and it wasn't a very serious bug.
A little more AGD history for the archives.


Rheda Diane Whitt Brown, 79, of Ashland, KY, passed away Sunday, March 24, 2019 in Greenview Regional Hospital in Bowling Green, KY.
She was born June 29, 1939, in Ashland, a daughter of the late Samuel and Katherine Molsberger Whitt.
She was longtime member of First Presbyterian Church in Ashland where she spent many years in the Condit Circle. She was also a member of the Summit Homemakers. She was a beloved homemaker and enjoyed her years as a dance instructor at The Dance Studio in Flatwoods, KY.
Throughout their marriage Diane and Roger enjoyed extensive international travel and residency. Following retirement they settled at Lake Barkley for many years and enjoyed precious family time.
Those left to cherish her memory include her loving husband of 59 years, Roger Brown of Ashland, KY; son, Roger Douglas (Teresa) Brown of Bowling Green, KY; daughter, Melanie Arnold of Mason, OH; brothers, Michael (Diana) Whitt of Russell, KY, and David (Jill) Whitt of Atlanta, GA; sister, Mary Denise (Carl) Edwards of Lexington, KY; grandchildren, Andrew (Jill) Brown of Portland, OR, Derek Brown of Portland, OR, Ethan Brown of Nashville, TN, Ryley Arnold of Mason, OH, and Tucker Brown of Russell, KY; two great grandchildren, Homer and Garnet Brown of Portland, OR; and a host of loving extended family members and dear friends.
Funeral services will be held 11 a.m. Friday, March 29, 2019, at the First Presbyterian Church in Ashland with Rev. Julie Rucker Olt officiating. Burial will follow in Rose Hill Burial Park.
In lieu of flowers, donations in Diane's memory should be made to the Stain Glass Restoration Fund c/o First Presbyterian Church, 1600 Winchester Avenue, Ashland, KY 41101.


text:
Haymarket Media, Inc. is pleased to announce that Kathleen Walsh Tulley, VP of Content in the Medical Communications Group, was honored with the Marianne Dekker Mattera Mentor Award today at the 65th annual Jesse H. Neal Awards Ceremony for Editorial Excellence. The awards program is presented by Connectiv, The Business Information Association.
The Mattera Mentor Award recognizes those who have provided extraordinary leadership, inspiration, and guidance to their colleagues in b-to-b media. Tulley has had a profound and positive influence on the lives and careers of countless co-workers throughout her 35 years as a teacher, mentor, and role model. She oversees editorial strategy at Haymarket for more than 15 medical websites and publications. It is a key part of her job to recruit, train, and provide continuous professional development for the entire editorial department. Most of her mentoring is accomplished in one-on-one conversations and small interactive group sessions.
"Kathy does everything a good mentor should do," notes Haymarket CEO Lee Maniscalco. "She educates and motivates, encourages and energizes, advises and advocates, and offers strong guidance and support in a way that enables her co-workers to excel and thrive in this demanding business. She does it all with boundless energy, grace, and humor."
In accepting the award, Tulley said, "Having been on the receiving end of valuable direction and instruction from mentors in the past, paying this forward in the form of mentoring colleagues is my way of showing gratitude to those who have helped to form me into the professional I am today."
Tulley joined Haymarket in 2015 as Editorial Director for the Haymarket Medical Network. Within 2 years she had been selected as Outstanding Colleague at Haymarket by a workforce of more than 300 employees and was described as one who "performs her work in a way that elevates all around her."
The Mattera Mentor Award is named for the late Marianne Dekker Mattera, long-time chief editor of RN Magazine and Medical Economics and Managing Editor of Medpage Today. A former teacher, she made educating and mentoring a priority throughout her career in b-to-b journalism.
About Haymarket Media, Inc.
Haymarket Media, Inc. is an award-winning specialist content and information company. With 24 market-leading media brands, Haymarket offers unmatched expertise and insight through balanced, relevant, original content across a spectrum of media channels. Haymarket is home to highly regarded health care professional brands such as Clinical Advisor, Dermatology Advisor, and MPR among a portfolio of HCP-focused, specialty-specific websites, as well as the esteemed business media titles PRWeek and MM&M (Medical Marketing & Media).
About Connectiv
Connectiv (the Business Information Association, a division of SIIA) is the only global business information association that accelerates innovation for leading and emerging content, data and technology companies. Connectiv helps members move faster and smarter with collective knowledge, access and resources. We move business forward by providing the essential information and services that are pivotal for millions of global businesses to make the right decisions to drive commerce. Connectiv membership represents over 200 world-class business information companies who reach an audience of more than 100 million professionals. These companies drive more than $20 billion in annual revenues, and their collective industries represent a $400 billion global market. SIIA is an umbrella association representing 800+ technology, data and media companies globally. For more information, visit http://www.siia.net/connectiv.
Kelley.Slavik@haymarketmedia.com
Haymarket Media Group welcomes you to the World of Wonderly


Leroy Anderson, his wife Eleanor, and their young daughter Jane Margareta first came to Woodbury, Connecticut in 1946 to spend the summer in a cottage on Painter Hill Road. (They were not on vacation as some journalists have written.) 1 Captain Leroy Anderson had been released from active duty in the U.S. Army as Chief of the Scandinavian Desk of Military Intelligence. There was a severe housing shortage in the United States in the years immediately following World War 2. The cottage in Woodbury was on land that Eleanor's mother and her two sisters had recently purchased as a place to live when they retired. (This was not where Eleanor Anderson was born and raised as some journalists have wriiten.) 2 During a July heat wave and drought in 1946, Leroy was digging trenches to try to find some old pipes coming from a spring. He began composing several tunes, including Sleigh Ride (Sleðaferð), in which he envisioned as a musical depiction of the winter season long ago.
Since the cottage was not winterized, was not insulated and had no heat, the Andersons could not stay at Painter Hill Road for the following winter. Leroy and Eleanor moved to New York City in the Autumn of 1946 where they lived at 19 Parade Place in Brooklyn in an apartment that had been rented by Eleanor's uncle who had recently died. The Winter of 1946-47 turned out to be one of the snowiest winters on record in NYC. Leroy Anderson completed Sleigh Ride in Brooklyn on February 10, 1948. Sleigh Ride received its premiere on May 4,1948 with Arthur Fiedler conducting the Boston Pops Orchestra at Symphony Hall in Boston. According to BPO Conductor Keith Lockhart, Sleigh Ride is the Pops' signature work.
Meanwhile, Eleanor's mother and aunts decided to have an old barn on their Painter Hill Road property converted into a house. When the house was completed, Leroy and Eleanor moved to Painter Hill Road in 1949, making Woodbury their permanent home.
According to the composer's widow Eleanor Anderson, "Leroy didn't set out to write a Christmas piece when he wrote 'Sleigh Ride.' His intentions were to convey the entire winter season through the imagery of a sleigh ride, much in the way that Mozart did with his piece of the same name."
Eleanor Anderson remembers hearing Sleigh Ride in New York City department stores right after the first recording was released in 1949. Composer's intentions aside, this winter composition quickly became associated with the holiday.
I began Sleigh Ride in the summer of 1946 in a cottage in Woodbury, Connecticut, where my wife and I were spending the summer with our 18-month-old daughter. The original version began with what later became the middle section. I recall working on it in the middle of a heat wave, so there is no basis for the music except the title itself.
That same summer I also worked on Fiddle-Faddle and Serenata. After moving to Brooklyn, New York in the fall I finished Fiddle-Faddle on January 1, 1947 and Serenata on February 12, 1947 in addition to making arrangements for the Boston Pops concerts in the spring.
I had felt that the original theme of Sleigh Ride was not strong enough to start the number but would make a good middle section. I finally worked out a satisfactory main theme, introduction and coda and finished the orchestra score on February 10, 1948. Sleigh Ride was first performed on May 4, 1948 in Symphony Hall, Boston as an extra at a Pops concert conducted by Arthur Fiedler. Lyrics by Mitchell Parish were added in 1950.
Some 60 years after Leroy Anderson created Sleigh Ride, the composition is still ranked as one of the 10 most popular pieces of Christmas music worldwide. This is in spite of the fact that the word "Christmas" is never mentioned in the lyrics which Mitchell Parish wrote several years after Anderson finished the composition.
ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, named Sleigh Ride the most popular piece of Christmas music in the USA in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and again in 2015. Leroy Anderson's original recording of Sleigh Ride was the version most often played in 2010 based on performance data tracked by airplay monitoring service, Mediaguide, from over 2,500 radio stations nationwide. Sleigh Ride was aired 174,758 times in 2010, making it the most-played holiday song on radio for the second year in a row. Sleigh Ride was played 118,918 times during the same time period in 2009.
According to Steve Metcalf of Connecticut's newspaper, The Hartford Courant, Sleigh Ride has been recorded by a broader aesthetic range of performers than any other piece in the history of Western music. 4 Sleigh Ride has become one of the most popular musical compositions of the winter holidays throughout the world.
Also visit the official website for Leroy Anderson maintained by his family.
In recent years it has become popular for people from NYC to rent a house in Litchfield County, Connecticut for one or more months in the summer. That was not the case for the Anderson family. It was difficult for recently released military service members to find housing in the years immediately following the war. No longer employed by the U.S. Army and not yet the successful composer he would become, Leroy Anderson and his family could only afford to live with family. There may have been many other people who found themselves in the same situation. Journalists who write about events that took place 70 or more years ago should be careful not to apply perspectives based on current cultural patterns to their narratives of historical events.
Eleanor Jane Firke was born and raised in Champaign, Illinois. Her mother, Beulah Hubbard Firke, was a nurse. Eleanor's father, Charles Wesley Firke, was legal counsel for the Illinois Central Railroad. After graduating with honors from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, Eleanor Jane Firke moved to New York City for advanced studies. That is where Leroy Anderson was living and working as a musician and arranger. That is how Eleanor Jane and Leroy met in NYC. After Charles Firke's unexpected death during surgery in Decatur, Illinois, Beulah Firke moved east to Connecticut to be closer to her daughter Eleanor Jane, her only child. She found work as a nurse for the State of Connecticut at the Southbury Training School in Southbury, Connecticut. Mrs. Firke's two unmarried sisters encouraged their sister Beulah to find a place where they could all live together in retirement. Mrs. Firke found the property at Painter Hill Road. That is how Leroy and Eleanor Anderson and daughter Jane came to live in the cottage on Painter Hill Road. By the time the other two sisters, Eleanor Hubbard and Marie Hubbard, retired and came to live at Painter Hill Road, Leroy and Eleanor built a house 5 miles away on Grassy Hill Road.


Girls Incorporated of Greater Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to inspire and empower all girls to be strong, smart and bold. We achieve this mission by addressing the unique needs of girls through outreach programming, advocacy, and education, including the development of mentoring relationships.
Girls Incorporated(r) is a nonprofit organization that inspires all girls to be strong, smart, and bold. With roots dating to 1864 and national status since 1945, Girls Inc. has responded to the changing needs of girls through research-based programs and public education efforts that empower girls to understand, value, and assert their rights.Girls Inc. serves over 140,000 girls annually through 82 affiliates.
Would you recommend GIRLS INC OF GREATER PHILADELPHIA & SOUTHERN NEW JERSEY?


Data crunching is used to discover useful information especially when data is in large numbers. No matter whether you have small scale, mid-scale or large scale firm, data analysis helps driving your business goals towards right direction. With talented data crunching pro freelancers you can easily reach dynamic conclusions and supportive decision making to take your business to endorsed heights.


text:
Vestiaire Collective is a leading global marketplace & community for pre-owned luxury and designer fashion. All items are curated, authenticated, and checked before reaching the buyer. Since our launch in 2009 we have grown from a French company to a global one with an ever strong Parisian DNA. Our international vestiaire is now composed of 6 million fashion savvy members present in over 50 countries in Europe, the United States and Asia.
About our Tech Team!
Our technical team composed of 45 talented developers, product specialists, QA testers and IT support experts, has doubled in last 12 months. Our technical stack is based on PHP & JS (NodeJS, Angular), Swift, Kotlin and Java. In both technical offices in Paris and Tourcoing we are working in agile methodology.
Our aim!
In 2019 under a direction of our new CEO, Max Bittner, we would like to become a real mobile first company! That's why we need great Swift talents!
About You!
If you would like to be a part of our tech team, have a look on our website HERE. And remember: you don't have to have a sophisticated fashion taste to join us! ;))