We can assist you with a range of custom Noosaville accommodation packages if you are planning a wedding, birthday or anniversary celebration, hens weekend, girl's pamper weekend, golf weekend or simply a holiday.
We can take the stress out of organising something special and extraordinary for you and combine it with luxury accommodation in Noosa. We can organise Noosaville accommodation, transport, restaurant bookings, flowers, massage, beauty session or an adventure experience for those daring enthusiasts.
Reduced tariffs can be organised for larger groups and multiple apartment bookings for stays of 2 or more nights. Wedding transfers and complimentary nights can be organised for the bride and groom or their guests as part of your wedding booking.
Metzo Noosa Resort is a member of Noosa Wedding Association and can assist you with referral of wedding and event planning.
The Spirit House Cooking School holds cooking classes everyday from 9.30am to 2.00pm. Evening classes are held most Fridays and Saturdays from 4.30pm to 9.00pm. These classes are an excellent group activity for a pre wedding celebration or girl's weekend.
Why not book a specialised massage, beauty or fitness session in the privacy and comfort of your own apartment. Balancenoosa offer a variety of treatments and these can be added to your accommodation.
Noosa Cruising Restaurant offer superb cuisine prepared fresh on board. You will be treated to a relaxing 2-3 hour cruise of the Noosa River whilst sipping a welcome glass of bubbles and enjoying a superb breakfast, lunch or dinner.
Contact us for further details or to book.
Gondolas of Noosa offer a unique experience for those who wish to view the Noosa River from a different aspect or for the romantics at heart. What better way to ask that special someone to share the rest of their life with you or to celebrate a special anniversary.Gondolas of Noosa specialise in proposals, restaurant transfers and beach weddings.
Cruise Noosa with elegance, glamour and excitement on board the unique and gorgeous classic boat Noosa Dreamboats. Popular; with the boating enthusiast or wedding transfers. More information can be obtained by contacting us.
Noosa Hinterland Tours offer practical and affordable private transfers for groups of up to 21. Air conditioned for your comfort your private bus can be chartered for scenic tours, golf tours, shopping trips, wedding guest transfers. Contat us for futher details.
Private Transfers is a first class door to door transportation service that provides comfort and first class service. If you are looking for an easy transfer or a day tour to one of our well known attractions on the Sunshine Coast why not travel in comfort in an economical and stress free way. PATransfers can even provide that special car for your wedding day. Contact us to book this service.
Turn your next occasion into something special.The Noosa Ferry is available for your wedding, party, conference or tour. A unique way to access many of the superb restaurants and reception venues on the Noosa River.
Contact the reception on (07) 5440 7500 and we can discuss your options, book your luxury Noosa accommodation and your payment can be added to your account for the ease of one payment.


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A Bird's-Eye View of Nature's Hidden Order
By Natalie Wolchover
Scientists are exploring a mysterious pattern, found in birds' eyes, boxes of marbles and other surprising places, that is neither regular nor random.
Olena Shmahalo/Quanta Magazine; Photography: MTSOfan and Matthew Toomey
Natalie Wolchover
biologybirdsevolutionmathematicsphysicspodcastquasicrystalsrandom matrix theoryuniversality
Seven years ago, Joe Corbo stared into the eye of a chicken and saw something astonishing. The color-sensitive cone cells that carpeted the retina (detached from the fowl, and mounted under a microscope) appeared as polka dots of five different colors and sizes. But Corbo observed that, unlike the randomly dispersed cones in human eyes, or the neat rows of cones in the eyes of many fish, the chicken's cones had a haphazard and yet remarkably uniform distribution. The dots' locations followed no discernible rule, and yet dots never appeared too close together or too far apart. Each of the five interspersed sets of cones, and all of them together, exhibited this same arresting mix of randomness and regularity. Corbo, who runs a biology lab at Washington University in St. Louis, was hooked.
"It's extremely beautiful just to look at these patterns," he said. "We were kind of captured by the beauty, and had, purely out of curiosity, the desire to understand the patterns better." He and his collaborators also hoped to figure out the patterns' function, and how they were generated. He didn't know then that these same questions were being asked in numerous other contexts, or that he had found the first biological manifestation of a type of hidden order that has also turned up all over mathematics and physics.
Corbo did know that whatever bird retinas are doing is probably the thing to do. Avian vision works spectacularly well (enabling eagles, for instance, to spot mice from a mile high), and his lab studies the evolutionary adaptations that make this so. Many of these attributes are believed to have been passed down to birds from a lizardlike creature that, 300 million years ago, gave rise to both dinosaurs and proto-mammals. While birds' ancestors, the dinos, ruled the planetary roost, our mammalian kin scurried around in the dark, fearfully nocturnal and gradually losing color discrimination. Mammals' cone types dropped to two — a nadir from which we are still clambering back. About 30 million years ago, one of our primate ancestors' cones split into two — red- and green-detecting — which, together with the existing blue-detecting cone, give us trichromatic vision. But our cones, particularly the newer red and green ones, have a clumpy, scattershot distribution and sample light unevenly.
Bird eyes have had eons longer to optimize. Along with their higher cone count, they achieve a far more regular spacing of the cells. But why, Corbo and colleagues wondered, had evolution not opted for the perfect regularity of a grid or "lattice" distribution of cones? The strange, uncategorizable pattern they observed in the retinas was, in all likelihood, optimizing some unknown set of constraints. What these were, what the pattern was, and how the avian visual system achieved it remained unclear. The biologists did their best to quantify the regularity in the retinas, but this was unfamiliar terrain, and they needed help. In 2012, Corbo contacted Salvatore Torquato, a professor of theoretical chemistry at Princeton University and a renowned expert in a discipline known as "packing." Packing problems ask about the densest way to pack objects (such as cone cells of five different sizes) in a given number of dimensions (in the case of a retina, two). "I wanted to get at this question of whether such a system was optimally packed," Corbo said. Intrigued, Torquato ran some algorithms on digital images of the retinal patterns and "was astounded," Corbo recalled, "to see the same phenomenon occurring in these systems as they'd seen in a lot of inorganic or physical systems."
Lucy Reading-Ikkanda for Quanta Magazine
Torquato had been studying this hidden order since the early 2000s, when he dubbed it "hyperuniformity." (This term has largely won out over "superhomogeneity," coined around the same time by Joel Lebowitz of Rutgers University.) Since then, it has turned up in a rapidly expanding family of systems. Beyond bird eyes, hyperuniformity is found in materials called quasicrystals, as well as in mathematical matrices full of random numbers, the large-scale structure of the universe, quantum ensembles, and soft-matter systems like emulsions and colloids.
Scientists are nearly always taken by surprise when it pops up in new places, as if playing whack-a-mole with the universe. They are still searching for a unifying concept underlying these occurrences. In the process, they've uncovered novel properties of hyperuniform materials that could prove technologically useful.
From a mathematical standpoint, "the more you study it, the more elegant and conceptually compelling it seems," said Henry Cohn, a mathematician and packing expert at Microsoft Research New England, referring to hyperuniformity. "On the other hand, what surprises me about it is the potential breadth of its applications."
A Secret Order
Torquato and a colleague launched the study of hyperuniformity 13 years ago, describing it theoretically and identifying a simple yet surprising example: "You take marbles, you put them in a container, you shake them up until they jam," Torquato said in his Princeton office this spring. "That system is hyperuniform."
The marbles fall into an arrangement, technically called the "maximally random jammed packing," in which they fill 64 percent of space. (The rest is empty air.) This is less than in the densest possible arrangement of spheres — the lattice packing used to stack oranges in a crate, which fills 74 percent of space. But lattice packings aren't always possible to achieve. You can't easily shake a boxful of marbles into a crystalline arrangement. Neither can you form a lattice, Torquato explained, by arranging objects of five different sizes, such as the cones in chicken eyes.
As stand-ins for cones, consider coins on a tabletop. "If you take pennies, and you try to compress the pennies, the pennies like to go into the triangular lattice," Torquato said. But throw some nickels in with the pennies, and "that stops it from crystallizing. Now if you have five different components — throw in quarters, throw in dimes, whatever — that inhibits crystallization even further." Likewise, geometry demands that avian cone cells be disordered. But there's a competing evolutionary demand for the retina to sample light as uniformly as possible, with blue cones positioned far from other blue cones, reds far from other reds, and so on. Balancing these constraints, the system "settles for disordered hyperuniformity," Torquato said.
Hyperuniformity gives birds the best of both worlds: Five cone types, arranged in near-uniform mosaics, provide phenomenal color resolution. But it's a "hidden order that you really can't detect with your eye," he said.
Determining whether a system is hyperuniform requires algorithms that work rather like a game of ring toss. First, Torquato said, imagine repeatedly tossing a ring onto an orderly lattice of dots, and each time it lands, counting the number of dots inside the ring. The number of captured dots fluctuates from one ring toss to the next — but not by very much. That's because the interior of the ring always covers a fixed block of dots; the only variation in the number of captured dots happens along the ring's perimeter. If you increase the size of the ring, you will get variation along a longer perimeter. And so with a lattice, the variation in the number of captured dots (or "density fluctuations" in the lattice) grows in proportion to the length of the ring's perimeter. (In higher spatial dimensions, the density fluctuations also scale in proportion to the number of dimensions minus one.)
Now imagine playing ring toss with a smattering of uncorrelated dots — a random distribution, marked by gaps and clusters. A hallmark of randomness is that, as you make the ring bigger, the variation in the number of captured dots scales in proportion to the ring's area, rather than its perimeter. The result is that on large scales, the density fluctuations between ring tosses in a random distribution are much more extreme than in a lattice.
The game gets interesting when it involves hyperuniform distributions. The dots are locally disordered, so for small ring sizes, the number of captured dots fluctuates from one toss to the next more than in a lattice. But as you make the ring bigger, the density fluctuations begin to grow in proportion to the ring's perimeter, rather than its area. This means that the large-scale density of the distribution is just as uniform as that of a lattice.
Among hyperuniform systems, researchers have found a further "zoology of structures," said the Princeton physicist Paul Steinhardt. In these systems, the growth of density fluctuations depends on different powers (between one and two) of the ring's perimeter, multiplied by different coefficients.
"What does it all mean?" Torquato said. "We don't know. It's evolving. There are a lot of papers coming out."
Material Menagerie
Hyperuniformity is clearly a state to which diverse systems converge, but the explanation for its universality is a work in progress. "I see hyperuniformity as basically a hallmark of deeper optimization processes of some sort," Cohn said. But what these processes are "might vary a lot between different problems."
Hyperuniform systems fall into two main classes. Those in the first class, such as quasicrystals — bizarre solids whose interlocked atoms follow no repeating pattern, yet tessellate space — appear to be hyperuniform upon reaching equilibrium, the stable configuration that particles settle into of their own accord. In these equilibrium systems, it is mutual repulsions between the particles that space them apart and give rise to global hyperuniformity. Similar math might explain the emergence of hyperuniformity in bird eyes, the distribution of eigenvalues of random matrices, and the zeros of the Riemann zeta function — cousins of the prime numbers.
The other class is not as well understood. In these "nonequilibrium" systems, which include shaken marbles, emulsions, colloids and ensembles of cold atoms, particles bump into one another but otherwise do not exert mutual forces; external forces must be applied to the systems to drive them to a hyperuniform state. Within the nonequilibrium class, there are further, intractable divisions. Last fall, physicists led by Denis Bartolo of the École Normale Supérieure in Lyon, France, reported in Physical Review Letters that hyperuniformity can be induced in emulsions by sloshing them at the exact amplitude that marks the transition between reversibility and irreversibility in the material: When sloshed more gently than this critical amplitude, the particles suspended in the emulsion return to their previous relative positions after each slosh; when sloshed harder, the particles' motions do not reverse. Bartolo's work suggests a fundamental (though not fully formed) connection between the onset of reversibility and the emergence of hyperuniformity in such nonequilibrium systems. Maximally random jammed packings, meanwhile, are a whole different story. "Can we connect the two physics?" Bartolo said. "No. Not at all. We have absolutely no idea why hyperuniformity shows up in these two very different sets of physical systems."
As they strive to link these threads, scientists have also encountered surprising properties of hyperuniform materials — behaviors that are normally associated with crystals, but which are less susceptible to fabrication errors, more like properties of glass and other uncorrelated disordered media. In a paper expected to be published this week in Optica, French physicists led by Rémi Carminati report that dense hyperuniform materials can be made transparent, whereas uncorrelated disordered materials with the same density would be opaque. The hidden order in the particles' relative positions causes their scattered light to interfere and cancel out. "The interferences destroy scattering," Carminati explained. "Light goes through, as if the material was homogeneous." It's too early to know what dense, transparent, noncrystalline materials might be useful for, Carminati said, but "there are certainly potential applications," particularly in photonics.
And Bartolo's recent finding about how hyperuniformity is generated in emulsions translates into an easy recipe for stirring concrete, cosmetic creams, glass and food. "Whenever you want to disperse particles inside a paste, you have to deal with a hard mixing problem," he said. "This could be a way to disperse solid particles in a very uniform fashion." First, you identify a material's characteristic amplitude, then you drive it at that amplitude a few dozen times, and an evenly mixed, hyperuniform distribution emerges. "I should not tell you this for free, but rather start a company!" Bartolo said.
Torquato, Steinhardt and associates have already done so. Their start-up, Etaphase, will manufacture hyperuniform photonic circuits — devices that transmit data via light rather than electrons. The Princeton scientists discovered a few years ago that hyperuniform materials can have "band gaps," which block certain frequencies from propagating. Band gaps enable controlled transmission of data, since the blocked frequencies can be contained and guided through channels called waveguides. But band gaps were once thought to be unique to crystal lattices and direction-dependent, aligning with the crystal's symmetry axes. This meant photonic waveguides could only go in certain directions, limiting their use as circuits. Since hyperuniform materials have no preferred direction, their little-understood band gaps are potentially much more practical, enabling not only "wiggly waveguides, but waveguides as you wish," Steinhardt said.
As for the pattern of five-color mosaics in birds' eyes, termed "multihyperuniform," it is, so far, unique in nature. Corbo still hasn't pinpointed how the pattern forms. Does it emerge from mutual repulsions between cone cells, like other systems in the equilibrium class? Or do cones get shaken up like a box of marbles? His guess is the former. Cells can secrete molecules that repel cells of the same type but have no effect on other types; probably, during embryonic development, each cone cell signals that it is differentiating as a certain type, preventing neighboring cells from doing the same. "That's a simple model of how this could develop," he said. "Local action around each cell is creating a global pattern."
Aside from chickens (the most readily available fowl for laboratory study), the same multihyperuniform retinal pattern has turned up in the three other bird species that Corbo has investigated, suggesting that the adaptation is widespread and not tailored to any particular environment. He wonders whether evolution might have found a different optimal configuration in nocturnal species. "That would be super interesting," he said. "It's trickier for us to get our hands on, say, owl eyes."
This article was reprinted on Wired.com.
Hope That an Old Drug Might Treat Zika

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Perkūnas (, , Old Prussian: Perkūns, Perkunos, Yotvingian: Parkuns, Latgalian: Pārkiuņs)  was the common Baltic god of thunder, and the second most important deity in the Baltic pantheon after Dievas. In both Lithuanian and Latvian mythology, he is documented as the god of sky, thunder, lightning, storms, rain, fire, war, law, order, fertility, mountains, and oak trees.

Etymology

The name continues PIE *, cognate to *, a word for "oak", "fir" or "wooded mountain". The Proto-Baltic name *Perkūnas can be reconstructed with certainty. Slavic Perun is a related god, but not an etymologically precise match.  Finnish Perkele, a name of Ukko, is considered a loan from Baltic.

Another connection is that of terpikeraunos, an epithet of Zeus meaning "who enjoys lightning".

Perkūnas in written sources
Most information about Perkūnas comes from folklore songs, legends, and fairy tales. Because most of them were collected rather late in the 19th century, they represent only some fragments of the whole mythology. Lithuanian Perkūnas has many alternative onomatopoeic names, like Dundulis, Dindutis, Dūdų senis, Tarškulis, Tarškutis, Blizgulis, etc.

The earliest attestation of Perkūnas seems to be in the Russian translation of the Chronicle of John Malalas (1261) where it speaks about the worship of "Перкоунови рекше громоу", and in the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle (around 1290) which mentions the idol Perkūnė.

In the Constitutiones Synodales (1530) Perkūnas is mentioned in a list of gods before the god of hell Pikuls and is identified with the Roman Jove (Jupiter). In the Sudovian Book Perkūnas (Parkuns) is mentioned in connection with a ritual involving a goat. In Christian compositions, Perkūnas is a malicious spirit, a demon, as in the Chronicle of John Malalas or in the 15th century writings of Polish chronicler Jan Długosz.

Representation in mythology

Perkūnas is the god of lightning and thunder and storms. In a triad of gods Perkūnas symbolizes the creative forces (including vegetative), courage, success, the top of the world, the sky, rain, thunder, heavenly fire (lightning) and celestial elements, while Potrimpo is involved with the seas, ground, crops, and cereals and Velnias/Patulas, with hell, and death. As a heavenly (atmospheric) deity Perkūnas, apparently, is the assistant and executor of Dievas's will. However, Perkūnas tends to surpass Dievas, deus otiosus, because he can be actually seen and has defined mythological functions.

In the Latvian dainas, the functions of Pērkons and Dievs can occasionally merge: Pērkons is called Pērkona tēvs ('Father or God of Thunder') or Dieviņš, a diminutive form of Dievs.

Weapons and vehicle
Perkūnas is pictured as middle-aged, armed with an axe and arrows, riding a two-wheeled chariot harnessed with goats, like Thor or Celtic Taranis.

In other accounts, the thunder god is described as driving a fiery chariot through the skies with swift horses, or riding a fiery horse.

Perkūnas' family relations
In songs about a "heavenly wedding" Saulė (the Sun) cheats on Perkūnas with Mėnulis (the Moon); Perkūnas splits Mėnulis in half with a sword. According to another, more popular, version, Mėnulis cheats on the Sun with Aušrinė (the morning star) just after the wedding, and Perkūnas punishes it. However, it does not learn and repeats the adultery and is punished again every month. Other explanations say it is why the Sun shines during the day and the Moon at night. Though divorced, both want to see their daughter Žemyna (the Earth).

In other songs Perkūnas, on the way to the wedding of Aušra (dawn; the daughter of the Sun), strikes a golden oak. The oak is a tree of the thunder god in the Baltic mythology. Lithuanian Perkūno ąžuolas or  Latvian Pērkona ozols ("oak of Perkūnas") is mentioned in a source dated to the first half of the 19th century.

Other myths say that Perkūnas and one Laumė or Vaiva (rainbow) were supposed to get married on Thursday, but the bride was kidnapped by Velnias (the devil) and Perkūnas has hunted Velnias ever since.

Some myths mention four sons of Perkūnas (Latvian: Perkona dēli; Lithuanian: Perkūno sūnūs), who, apparently, are connected with the four seasons or with the four directions of the world (east, west, south and north). Sometimes there are seven or nine Perkūnai referred to as brothers. It is said in Lithuanian "Perkūnų yra daug" ("there are many thunders").

In some myths Perkūnas expels his wife (and in some cases his children too) and remains in the sky by himself. Some myths offer a very different story: Dievas lifts Perkūnas from the earth into the sky. Perkūnas has stones in the sky (which rumble during storms) - the motive connected to Indo-European mythology. Perkūnas dwells on high hills or mountains: compare Lithuanian toponymy of Perkūnkalnis, "mountain of Perkūnas", or Griausmo kalnas, "mountain of rumble."

In most myths, however, Perkūnas's wife is Žemyna.

Perkūnas and Velnias

An important function of Perkūnas is to fight Velnias (in Latvian, Velns). He is sometimes considered the antithesis of Perkūnas and is the god of the underworld and death. Christianity considers "Velnias" akin to their "devil", though this is not in line with ancient beliefs.

Perkūnas pursues his opponent, Velns, for picaroon or theft of fertility and cattle. Velnias hides in trees, under stones, or turns into various animals: a black cat, dog, pig, goat, lamb, pike, cow (compare to the Latvian representations of jods a creature with the cow hoofs) or a person.

Perkūnas pursues an opponent in the sky on a chariot, made from stone and fire (Lithuanian ugnies ratai). Sometimes the chariot is made from red iron. It is harnessed by a pair (less often four or three) of red and white (or black and white) horses (sometimes goats). Compare the Lithuanian deity of horses and chariots Ratainyčia (Ratainicza mentioned in Lasick's works; from Lithuanian ratai - "wheel"). It is a mythologized image of a chariot of Didieji Grįžulo Ratai ("Grand Wheels of Grįžulas" (Ursa Major). It agrees with Samogitian representations, in which Perkūnas is a horseman on a fiery horse. On his heavenly chariot Perkūnas appears in the shape of a gray-haired old man with a big beard of many colors, in white and black clothes, holding a goat on a cord in one hand and a horn or an axe in the other.

Perkūnas possesses many weapons. They include an axe or sledgehammer, stones, a sword, lightning bolts, a bow and arrows, a club, and an iron or fiery knife. Perkūnas is the creator of the weapons (Akmeninis kalvis, "the stone smith") or he is helped by the heavenly smith Televelis (Kalvelis).

An opponent of Perkūnas hides itself in the hollow of a tree or a stone (attributes of Perkūnas). The culmination of Perkūnas' hunt for his opponent is a thunder-storm; it not only clears the ground of evil spirits, but returns the stolen cattle or weapons.

Perkūnas is also connected to Thursday. Thursday is the day of the Thunderer in many traditions: compare Polabian Peräune-dǻn ("day of Perun"), Lithuanian Perkūno diena. Perkūnas is associated with the Roman god Jupiter in early sources. Thursday is a day of thunder-storms and rains, and also of weddings.

Prussian Perkūns

Simon Grunau (around 1520) describes a Prussian banner with Perkūns on it. The god is represented as an angry middle aged man with a twisted black beard, topped with a flame. It stands between young Patrimpas and old Patulas. Perkūns maintains the same central position in the description of the sacred oak in Romowe sanctuary. In front of the oak, the eternal fire (symbol of Perkūns) was burned. Special priests served at the sanctuary. Old Prussians would try to appeal to the god by prayers. Perkunatete was the mother of Perkūns.

Latvian Pērkons

Pērkons was strongly associated with Dievs, though the two were clearly different. The people sacrificed black calves, goats, and roosters to Pērkons, especially during droughts. The surrounding peoples came to these sacrifices to eat and drink together, after pouring beer onto the ground or into the fire for him. The Latvians also sacrificed cooked food before meals to Pērkons, in order to prevent thunderstorms, during which honeycombs were placed into fires to disperse the clouds.

Pērkons' family included sons that symbolized various aspects of thunderstorms (such as thunder, lightning, lightning strikes) and daughters that symbolized various kinds of rain.

Pērkons appeared on a golden horse, wielding a sword, iron club, golden whip and a knife.  Ancient Latvians wore tiny axes on their clothing in his honor.

In modern culture
Perkunas is occasionally mentioned in the novels of Harry Turtledove. He provides an important macguffin in The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump (1993) and is the patron god of one of the armies in Gunpowder Empire (2003).

Günter Grass, in his second novel Dog Years (1963), alludes to Perkūnas ("Perkunos") as a symbol of the dark human energies unleashed by the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930s.

The fictional parallel to Nazi Germany in the 1966 alternate history novel The Gate of Time by Philip José Farmer is called Perkunisha, named after Perkūnas.

The Lithuanian folk music group Kūlgrinda released a 2003 album titled Perkūno Giesmės, meaning "Hymns of Perkūnas".

See also
Hercynian Forest
Indra
Perkwunos
Perun
Thunaer

References

Further reading
  Nijolė Laurinkienė. Senovės lietuvių dievas Perkūnas (Perkūnas - The God of Ancient Lithuanians). Lietuvos literatūros ir tautosakos institutas: 1996, Vilnius.
 Lajoye, Patrice. (2018). The Storm God and the Hunter: A Fragment of an Old Balto-Slavic Epos?Le Dieu de l'orage et le chasseur: un fragment d'une ancienne épopée. Studia mythologica Slavica. 21. 27. 10.3986/sms.v21i0.7064.
 Tuite, Kevin. (2004). Lightning, Sacrifice, and Possession in the Traditional Religions of the Caucasus. Anthropos: International Review of Anthropology and Linguistics. 99.
 Tuite, Kevin. "Lightning, Sacrifice, and Possession in the Traditional Religions of the Caucasus (Continued from Anthropos 99.2004: 143-159)." Anthropos, vol. 99, no. 2, 2004, pp. 481–497. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/40466394. Accessed 28 Apr. 2020.

External links

 ausis.gf.vu.lt
 crwflags.com
 lituanus.org
 druidry.org

Baltic gods
Sky and weather gods
Thunder gods
Rain deities
Lithuanian gods
Latvian gods
Prussian gods
Jovian deities

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
September 28, 2017 Brian Foote
Pamela Means Band
Date(s) - Thursday, September 28, 2017
CLICK Workspace
iCal | Google Calendar
9 ½ Market Street - Northampton
Tickets are $12 in advance and $15 at the door.
The band is comprised of Pamela Means (guitar, vocal), Cinamon Blair (bass, vocal), and Iréne 'I-Shea' Shaikly (percussion, vocal). A longtime Pioneer Valley resident, Means views her music as both an artistic and political outlet — to her, the two are interwoven in the fabric of her lyrics and intricate guitar work. Her songs, although sometimes musing on softer matters of the heart, are often rallying cries for justice and racial equality. "I want to use my platform with purpose and produce art with substance," she says. "Socio-politically, it's a turbulent time and all the more important to use one's voice."
Means' most recent album is Plainfield (2016), titled for the rural Massachusetts town where she wrote all of the album's material during a self-exiled tour hiatus. That touring has taken Means internationally; she has shared the stage with the likes of Ani DiFranco, Pete Seeger, Neil Young, Indigo Girls, Joan Baez, Howard Zinn, Angela Davis, Eve Ensler, David Strathairn, Shawn Colvin, Richie Havens, Patty Larkin, Melissa Ferrick, Violent Femmes, Television, The Radiators, Adrian Belew, Leo Kottke, Janis Ian, and many more. She has performed at major music festivals and has composed for and licensed music to PBS, independent filmmakers, and folkpoet Alix Olson's multi-award-winning film and CD projects. But Means' strong fan base in Western Massachusetts makes her hometown performances especially memorable.
Tickets are available in advance via Eventbrite (service fees apply), and any remaining tickets will be available at the door. Complete information and tickets are available at http://clickworkspace.org/events.
CLICK Music is curated by Northampton-based musician and producer Anand Nayak and is supported in part by a grant from the Northampton Arts Council, a local agency which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency. Additional sponsorship is provided by the Law Office of Peter Irvine, Helen Blatz of Edward Jones, and Downtown Sounds.
Northampton Arts Inc.
Memorial Hall #1
arts@northamptonma.gov
© 2017 Northampton Arts Inc.


text:
The Black Keys Close Out ALTer EGO 2020: Relive Their Set
By Sierra Marquina Jan 19, 2020
The 2020 iHeartRadio ALTer EGO – Show
The Black Keys closed out iHeartRadio's ALTer EGO 2019 presented by Capital One at The Forum on Saturday, January 18. Billie Eilish, blink-182, Coldplay, The Lumineers, Rex Orange County and SHAED also performed at the sold-out annual concert, which was hosted by iHeartRadio's Woody of ALT 98.7's nationally-syndicated The Woody Show.
The Black Keys, Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, most recently dropped ninth studio album Let's Rock after taking a four-year hiatus between 2015 and 2019 and a five-year break between their two latest albums after 2014's Turn Blue.
"We took a break for the first time -- between 2014 and 2002, we've made eight albums -- Just 12 years, man; that's, like, a lot of records, that's more than most bands get to make, you know?" Carney shared with Rolling Stone while addressing those breakup rumors. "But when we decided to go back and make another record, we came back here in 2018. We hadn't been in the studio together in probably five years, but we've learned how to do these together."
The Black Keys performed a handful of tracks during their ALTer EGO set, including "I Got Mine," "Gold On the Ceiling," "Fever" and "Howlin' For You."
Relive more of The Black Keys' ALTer EGO 2020 performance and setlist below:
1. "I Got Mine"
2. "Gold On The Ceiling"
4. "Next Girl"
5. "Your Touch"
6. "Howlin' For You"
7. "Tighten Up"
8. "Lo/Hi"
10. "Lonely Boy"
11. "Little Black Submarines"


My first impression about the adaptor is how small it is, you really don't realize this on pictures online, when measuring its only 2 cm long and just 1 cm wide, so this thing is pretty small!
After testing the adapter with a generic Micro USB cable with my MacBook Pro and verifying that it actually works as a normal original lightning cable would, I started to think how I could carry this little thing always with me without losing it.
Then, I remembered buying a keyring waterproof aluminum pill container, and guess what? It was the perfect couple to carry the connector always with me!
By being able to have this little connector with me, I don't have to worry what type of cable I am trying to use with my Lightning Apple devices, I can just use any generic Micro USB cable that is very common nowadays.
Here in Switzerland, the adapter costs around USD 20, and can be purchased almost anywhere they sell Apple accessories. Below you can see some pictures on how it looks and you can check on AliExpress the diverse models of keyring pills holders that you can buy to carry the adapter with you, most of them with free shipping :).


text:
namespace cdc_ft {

namespace {
// Helper function that tries to parse data as any of the protos written to the
// store and returns its text proto representation.
//
// In order to disambiguate the proto auto-detection logic, you can temporarily
// assign globally unique field numbers to all fields in manifest.proto.
std::string ToTextProto(const ContentIdProto& content_id, const void* data,
                        size_t size) {
  std::string text_proto;
  std::string proto_name = "(unknown proto format)";

  ManifestProto manifest_pb;
  AssetListProto asset_list_pb;
  ChunkListProto chunk_list_pb;
  int isize = static_cast<int>(size);

  ManifestPrinter printer;

  if (size > 0) {
    if (manifest_pb.ParseFromArray(data, isize) &&
        !manifest_pb.GetReflection()
             ->GetUnknownFields(manifest_pb)
             .field_count()) {
      printer.PrintToString(manifest_pb, &text_proto);
      proto_name = manifest_pb.GetTypeName();
    } else if (asset_list_pb.ParseFromArray(data, isize) &&
               !asset_list_pb.GetReflection()
                    ->GetUnknownFields(asset_list_pb)
                    .field_count()) {
      printer.PrintToString(asset_list_pb, &text_proto);
      proto_name = asset_list_pb.GetTypeName();
    } else if (chunk_list_pb.ParseFromArray(data, isize) &&
               !chunk_list_pb.GetReflection()
                    ->GetUnknownFields(chunk_list_pb)
                    .field_count()) {
      printer.PrintToString(chunk_list_pb, &text_proto);
      proto_name = chunk_list_pb.GetTypeName();
    }
  }
  return absl::StrFormat("# %s => %s (size: %d)\n%s",
                         ContentId::ToHexString(content_id), proto_name, isize,
                         text_proto);
}
}  // namespace

// Prints an AssetInfo object.
std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& os,
                         const ManifestTestBase::AssetInfoForTest& ai) {
  os << "{.path = \"" << ai.info.path
     << "\", .type = " << AssetProto::Type_Name(ai.info.type)
     << ", .mtime = " << ai.info.mtime << ", .size = " << ai.info.size
     << ", .in_progress = " << (ai.in_progress ? "true" : "false") << "}";
  return os;
}

ManifestTestBase::ManifestTestBase(std::string base_dir)
    : ::testing::Test(), base_dir_(base_dir) {}

std::vector<ManifestTestBase::AssetInfoForTest>
ManifestTestBase::GetAllManifestAssets(ContentIdProto actual_manifest_id) {
  ContentIdProto expected_manifest_id;
  EXPECT_OK(data_store_.GetProto(manifest_store_id_, &expected_manifest_id));
  EXPECT_EQ(ContentId::ToHexString(expected_manifest_id),
            ContentId::ToHexString(actual_manifest_id))
      << DumpDataStoreProtos();

  ManifestIterator manifest_iter(&data_store_);
  EXPECT_OK(manifest_iter.Open(expected_manifest_id));

  std::vector<AssetInfoForTest> assets;
  const AssetProto* entry;
  while ((entry = manifest_iter.NextEntry()) != nullptr) {
    AssetInfoForTest ai;
    ai.info.path = path::JoinUnix(manifest_iter.RelativePath(), entry->name());
    ai.info.type = entry->type();
    ai.info.mtime = entry->mtime_seconds();
    ai.info.size = entry->file_size();
    ai.in_progress = entry->in_progress();
    assets.push_back(std::move(ai));
  }

  EXPECT_OK(manifest_iter.Status());
  return assets;
}

ManifestTestBase::AssetInfoForTest ManifestTestBase::MakeAssetInfo(
    const std::string& rel_path) {
  std::string full_path = path::Join(cfg_.src_dir, rel_path);
  path::Stats stats;
  EXPECT_OK(path::GetStats(full_path, &stats));
  // Don't use the stats.modified_time as this returns timestamps in the
  // machine's local time, whereas GetFileTime() returns UTC time.
  time_t mtime;
  EXPECT_OK(path::GetFileTime(full_path, &mtime));

  AssetInfoForTest ai;
  ai.info.path = rel_path;
  ai.info.type =
      stats.mode & path::MODE_IFDIR ? AssetProto::DIRECTORY : AssetProto::FILE;
  ai.info.mtime = static_cast<int64_t>(mtime);
  ai.info.size = ai.info.type == AssetProto::DIRECTORY ? 0 : stats.size;
  return ai;
}

std::vector<ManifestTestBase::AssetInfoForTest>
ManifestTestBase::MakeAssetInfos(std::initializer_list<std::string> rel_paths) {
  std::vector<AssetInfoForTest> ais;
  for (const std::string& rel_path : rel_paths) {
    ais.push_back(MakeAssetInfo(rel_path));
  }
  return ais;
}

ManifestUpdater::OperationList* ManifestTestBase::MakeOps(
    Operator op, std::initializer_list<std::string> rel_paths) {
  ops_.clear();
  ops_.reserve(rel_paths.size());
  for (const auto& rel_path : rel_paths) {
    ops_.emplace_back(op, MakeAssetInfo(rel_path).info);
  }
  return &ops_;
}

ManifestUpdater::OperationList* ManifestTestBase::MakeDeleteOps(
    std::initializer_list<std::string> rel_paths) {
  return MakeOps(Operator::kDelete, rel_paths);
}

ManifestUpdater::OperationList* ManifestTestBase::MakeUpdateOps(
    std::initializer_list<std::string> rel_paths) {
  return MakeOps(Operator::kUpdate, rel_paths);
}

void ManifestTestBase::ExpectAssetInfosEqual(std::vector<AssetInfoForTest> a,
                                             std::vector<AssetInfoForTest> b,
                                             bool equal) {
  std::sort(a.begin(), a.end());
  std::sort(b.begin(), b.end());
  if (equal) {
    EXPECT_EQ(a, b);
  } else {
    EXPECT_NE(a, b);
  }
}

void ManifestTestBase::ExpectManifestEquals(
    std::initializer_list<std::string> rel_paths,
    const ContentIdProto& actual_manifest_id) {
  std::vector<AssetInfoForTest> actual_ais =
      GetAllManifestAssets(actual_manifest_id);
  std::vector<AssetInfoForTest> expected_ais = MakeAssetInfos(rel_paths);
  ExpectAssetInfosEqual(actual_ais, expected_ais);
}

bool ManifestTestBase::InProgress(const ContentIdProto& manifest_id,
                                  const char* path) {
  // Special case: the root directory is not returned by the manifest iterator.
  if (absl::string_view(path) == "") {
    ManifestProto manifest;
    EXPECT_OK(data_store_.GetProto(manifest_id, &manifest));
    return manifest.root_dir().in_progress();
  }

  ManifestIterator manifest_iter(&data_store_);
  EXPECT_OK(manifest_iter.Open(manifest_id));
  if (!manifest_iter.Status().ok()) return false;

  const AssetProto* entry;
  while ((entry = manifest_iter.NextEntry()) != nullptr) {
    if (path == path::JoinUnix(manifest_iter.RelativePath(), entry->name()))
      return entry->in_progress();
  }

  EXPECT_TRUE(false) << "'" << path << "' not found in manifest";
  return false;
}

void ManifestTestBase::ValidateChunkLookup(const std::string& rel_path,
                                           bool expect_contained) {
  uint64_t offset = 0;
  auto handler = [&offset, &rel_path, file_chunks = &file_chunks_,
                  expect_contained](const void* data, size_t size) {
    ContentIdProto id = ContentId::FromArray(data, size);

    std::string lookup_path;
    uint64_t lookup_offset = 0;
    uint32_t lookup_size = 0;
    EXPECT_EQ(
        file_chunks->Lookup(id, &lookup_path, &lookup_offset, &lookup_size),
        expect_contained);
    if (expect_contained) {
      EXPECT_EQ(lookup_path, rel_path);
      EXPECT_EQ(lookup_offset, offset);
      EXPECT_EQ(lookup_size, size);
    }

    offset += size;
  };
  fastcdc::Config cdc_cfg(cfg_.min_chunk_size, cfg_.avg_chunk_size,
                          cfg_.max_chunk_size);
  fastcdc::Chunker chunker(cdc_cfg, handler);

  Buffer b;
  EXPECT_OK(path::ReadFile(path::Join(cfg_.src_dir, rel_path), &b));
  chunker.Process(reinterpret_cast<uint8_t*>(b.data()), b.size());
  chunker.Finalize();
}

std::string ManifestTestBase::DumpDataStoreProtos() const {
  std::string s;
  for (const auto& [content_id, chunk] : data_store_.Chunks()) {
    s += ToTextProto(content_id, chunk.data(), chunk.size());
  }
  return s;
}

}  // namespace cdc_ft

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


September 22, 2010; Source: The Oklahoman | This vituperative anti-nonprofit op-ed by Walter Williams deserves circulation and commentary. Williams is the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. and a board member of both the Reason Foundation and Hoover Institution. He is on the advisory boards of Cato Institute, Landmark Legal Foundation, and Heritage Foundation, and an occasional substitute host for Rush Limbaugh's radio show.


text:
Youth Charity that helps change lives. Prince's Trust provide practical and financial support, develop key work place skills such as confidence and motivation. 10 to 30 year olds struggling at school, in care, long term unemployed or in trouble with the law . Project currently running at Harwich vibe.
The Prince's Trust is a youth charity that helps change young lives.
We give practical and financial support, developing key workplace skills such as confidence and motivation. We work with 13 to 30-year-olds who have struggled at school, have been in care, are long-term unemployed or have been in trouble with the law.
We have helped more than 700,000 young people since 1976 and support 100 more each working day. More than three in four young people we helped last year moved into work, education or training.
Around one in five young people in the UK are not in work, education or training. Youth unemployment costs the UK economy £10 million a day in lost productivity, while youth crime costs £1 billion every year.
The Prince's Trust is an approachable and diverse organisation which values and respects people's different backgrounds, characteristics, ideas and beliefs. It is responsive to the needs of young people, staff, volunteers, delivery partners and all stakeholders.
Find out more about the Prince's Trust at our website: www.princes-trust.org.uk


Although the Ghacks article doesn't mention it specifically, have you put the script in C:\WINDOWS\System32\GroupPolicy\Machine\Scripts\Shutdown ? The other thing you can try according to this thread is disable faststartup ?
By the way, why does Task Scheduler not have an option to run at shutdown???
In the end, I put the script in the startup folder for the local standard account and that worked.
Not exactly because I would like to understand why using GPE did not run the script or why the other options also did not work.
In any event, really appreciate the help.
Update: I found the solution, at least on my laptop with the current configurations.
Adding the script to Group Policy >> Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Scripts > Shutdown does not work, as reported above.
However, adding to Group Policy >> User Configuration > Windows Settings > Scripts > Logoff works exactly as I wanted.
OK, so I just tried this using the empty recycle bin from the Tenforums tutorial section. But first, I added a simple "ping -n 5 -w 0.5 127.0.0.1" command to the batch file to make the script window last longer after I edited Group Policy to show the script as it it runs by enabling it at (computer configuration -> adminstrative templates -> system -> scripts). The error message indicated that running scripts on this machine is not allowed (probably because the batch command is invoking powershell to execute the empty recycle bin command). This could be overcome, by allowing scripts to run, but I didn't venture into that territory due to any possible security issues in future. I don't know if this is the definitive answer as to why the bat file won't run in shutdown scripts.
So, if it works under User Configuration as posted above then presumably it has something to do with privileges (as you discovered) and as I noticed in a roundabout kind of way.
Appreciate that you looked into it further.
Are there any potential security issues I need to be concerned about with the way I set it up now?
I personally don't think so unless you have changed the default settings ( which I don't think you have ) and enabled scripts to run system wide without restriction.
Last edited by das10; 6 Days Ago at 17:33.


Set-Up/Breakdown: Artists will need to drop off their art at None, , , during the expo set up hours of 8:00am-11:00am, Sunday, Oct. 20. Breakdown will begin at 4:00pm on the same day. All art must be picked up by 4:30 pm.