text:
Reason Staff | From the January 1984 issue
Twists and Turns Along Britain's Private Route
GREAT BRITAIN—One of the most important positive developments in Great Britain is a genuine debate about the welfare state. Even the BBC used its flagship current-affairs program, Panorama, to analyze the future of government spending and taxation given present statutory commitments to entitlements, as they are called in the United States.
In one sense, the Tories are being very brave in attacking the sanctity of the welfare state. They have, for example, actually lopped off administrators from the National Health Service. In another sense, the party's commitments are a load of talk and not much go. Lord Carrington, the former foreign minister, came out and suggested that perhaps it is time for government to reduce its welfare functions. The thought was absorbed, sagely accepted as perhaps an inevitability, and nothing has happened since.
The Tories have pinned their flag to lower taxes but haven't been able to actually do much to cut spending. There is, however, a genuine review of spending options going on inside the civil service. One of the main targets is local governments. Already there's a planned statute to limit the taxes they can impose. Although the act has no provision for reducing the functions of local governments, it would at least put a ceiling on local tax increases.
The trend toward privatization continues. Proceeds from denationalized state-owned industries and real estate are forecast to bring in about $12 billion in the next three to four years, up from $3 billion brought in during the first Thatcher term. Slated for privatization soon are 51 percent of British Telecom, the telecommunications monopoly; the British Airports Authority; the Royal Ordnance factories; and British Airways.
There is much discussion of selling government-owned real estate. Michael Osborne, an analyst with a London stock brokerage, estimates that real estate sales alone could bring in some $405 billion—enough to finance the government's deficit through the year 2010.
Meanwhile, the Economist has been urging that the Tories "have the courage of their radical-right convictions" when it comes to privatization. A British Airports Authority memorandum recently argued for selling its seven airports as a single unit, because this would preserve crosssubsidization of unprofitable airports by the profitable ones. But "crosssubsidization is exactly what recompetitioning in Britain should not tolerate," argued the Economist.
Likewise, the magazine warned against merely selling shares in government-owned enterprises. "A British Gas or British Telecom with half its shares held by the public, will merely be a partly state-owned public monopoly.…Britain would be reinventing the sort of public utility concept that Americans have been trying to bury since 1940." For the benefit of consumers, urged the Economist, state monopolies should be broken up and barriers to entry into a market, such as telecommunications, removed.
Similarly, local governments should not keep barriers to entry in place when they privatize garbage collection and hospital laundry service by awarding exclusive franchises, thus installing a private monopoly in place of a government one. "It should be made as easy for households to pick their own rubbish-collector as it is to pick their milkman," the magazine said.
So the political sea-change is not free of problems, but it's become an established option in the British mind to go the private route on many things.
—Eben Wilson
Capitalist By Any Other Name…
HUNGARY—Issuance of corporate bonds, proposals for stock markets, political elections with competing candidates, and widespread small-business enterpreneurship are not terribly unusual—except that they're cropping up in Hungary.
After coordinating the Soviet invasion that crushed the popular Hungarian uprising in 1956, Yuri Andropov, the wily Soviet ambassador to Budapest at the time, engineered the installation of Janos Kadar as Communist party chief. It was an inspired choice. Kadar was and still is absolutely loyal to Moscow, but he is also a little more temperate than other Eastern European dictators.
Under Kadar, there have been no more large-scale revolts, and Hungary has remained a steadfast member of the Warsaw Pact. But from Moscow's standpoint, there is a price for this stability—a series of Hungarian deviations from Communist orthodoxy.
A recent Los Angeles Times article reviewed some of the capitalist-like reforms firmly in place or under serious discussion in Hungary. For instance, an estimated 300,000 Hungarians are in business for themselves or in partnership with friends. Some 50 enterprises are being run, on an experimental basis, by "boards of directors" made up mainly of employees. Under study are several proposals for what amounts to a stock market. A proposed constitutional tribunal would permit some institutions to challenge government decisions. And in the next parliamentary and local elections, the Communist Party will run (typically, by decree) at least two candidates for every office.
As an example of the special economic atmosphere in Hungary, the Times described what happened when the Vineyards Agricultural Cooperative in rural Nagyrede recently ran short of cash for expansion and modernization. It couldn't get government money because of an austerity program, and bank loans would require 14 percent interest—so the cooperative issued what Westerners call bonds. About 500 townspeople and members of the cooperative bought $230,000 worth of the bonds for a promise of 9 percent interest and full repayment by the end of 1988.
In the face of all the evidence to the contrary, Hungary's leaders go out of their way to declare the nation's continuing allegiance to socialism. "The Hungarian national economy is socialist," Kadar declaimed in a radio address last spring. "The methods applied in economic life promote the building of socialism and serve its interests. The party as well as our allies should have a clear picture of this."
Kadar and his underlings are in fact on a tightrope. There has been grumbling over the reforms from more-orthodox Communists in Eastern Europe. Moreover, Hungary has serious economic problems, including a foreign debt per capita that even exceeds Poland's.
Yet according to the Times, the Hungarian Communist leadership doesn't see any alternative to the path they've turned down. They've progressed to a point where, as party economist Ferenc Havasi said in an interview, a return to the old centralized system "is as inconceivable as going back to the Stone Age."
Radio-Freeing Europe
FRANCE—The French government recently authorized the use of the FM radio band for broadcast by nongovernment stations, which breaks with the longtime policy of a state radio (as well as TV) monopoly. About 800 newly authorized radio stations will broadcast in this spectrum. Though the stations are prohibited from airing commercials and are under some public-interest restrictions, they are free to fashion their own fare.
By authorizing the new stations, France effectively obviated a problem that has been a headache to many European governments set on monopolization of the air waves—so-called pirate stations, or illicit broadcasters. The number of pirate stations varies from country to country—largely depending on how strongly the government monopoly is enforced. In Holland, for example, there are an estimated 10,000 pirate stations, while in Britain, where the government is cracking down hard on pirates, there are perhaps 45 of the illicit broadcasters.
In the Republic of Ireland, where some 70 or so pirate stations operate, the government has taken a course between France's liberal policy and Britain's get-tough stance: it has provided for the licensing of 30 nongovernment stations, but licenses are limited to five-year periods. And though the stations will be required to help fund certain public-interest activities in the communities where they operate, and more-lucrative stations will be required to subsidize poorer ones, the "free" stations will be allowed to sell commercial air time.
This article originally appeared in print under the headline "Global Trends".
NEXT: Further & More


The keywords in this article are value, investment, life and most importantly, God. As the Lord teaches my heart, I intend to teach everyone on how to add value or maximize God's huge investments on their lives.
For instance, the ultimate purpose of an average business is to make profit by satisfying the need of the customers. From that purpose, they begin on investment process, which could begin with registration or incorporation of the business (name); purchasing (or renting) of properties such as land or building; then, to the acquisition of requisite production equipment or machineries; and the employment of hands and minds to drive the business towards its purpose. If I may ask, "is an average business established for the sake of its staff or even its customers?" Probably not! The point is this; the entire creation process was the necessary investment for the life His soul yearns to see on the earth.
Today, the world population has grown from the one (1) person at Genesis 1-2, to over seven (7) billion persons on the earth; however, not one of this enormous statistic (numbers) is living without prior investment of God on his or her living. Frankly, an iPhone S5 mobile device may be ignorant of the investment that brought it out into the market; however, its ignorance does not in any way reduce or cancel the reality of the huge investment of Apple to its production.
Usually, what consumers see and enjoy is not the investment, but the product; hence, quick and easy denial of investment efforts is possible. It usually said in my "village" that the river that forgets (denies) its source will soon dry up.
Since ignorance is not a good excuse in life; it is therefore important for us to both know and appreciate the tremendous divine investment on us as individuals and as a people. Africa is perhaps the less developed and the most impoverished continent in the world; but do you also know that Africa is the most "endowed" continent in the world? What a contradiction!
49:20). May we never waste away in Jesus name!
Luke chapter 19 verse 11 to 26 provides a clear picture of this whole article. If we may consider a verse from the Scripture for the sake of space, it will surely help. "…Why then did you not put my money (investment) in the bank (some projects), that at my coming I might have collected it with interest (value)? (Luke 19:23). Actually, no one celebrates wastefulness, mediocrity or folly; not God!
God has invested His grace (strength), peace, love, provision (riches), guidance (wisdom), glory (awesome presence), blessing (endowment) and honour on each one of us. But how many of us are deploying them for His will? How many are engaging their workplaces, families, organizations, schools, marriages and communities with their invested resources?
Let us examine the word invest again. Invest is a compound word of in-vest. To vest is to give somebody the legal right (authority) or power to do something. Therefore, God's investment on your life is the summary of the authority and power of God in you. Adding value to God's investment on your life is therefore, putting the authority and power of God in you to great use for the glory and praise of the name of the LORD (the Owner of all things and people).
Can you sing sonorously? If yes, sing for His praise among men! Can you design and build with great dexterity? If yes do it for His glory on the earth. Can you serve? If yes, do it diligently and gloriously as onto the Lord! Can you preach and teach the word of God as inspired? If yes, do it for His glory! Can you write prolifically? If yes, do it for His honour and praise!
In short, do all things within the authority and power of God in your life for His glory and praise on the earth!


text:
Christ Pratt's Anti-Gay Church; Ryan Murphy's Instagram Announcement; The Met Opera's Gay Conductor; Google Pray Away the Gay App;
Christ Pratt's Anti-Gay Church
This was odd to read. Chris Pratt belongs to one of those anti-gay churches with a history of promoting gay conversion therapy.
The church originated in Australia, and it's branched out to places like New York City. Oh, and according to this article there's also a history of child molestation.
Here's a link to the rest.
Ryan Murphy's Huge Instagram Announcement
Whenever I see headlines like this I always think clickbait.
But this really is a big announcement. Murphy just revealed more details about his upcoming Netflix shows. And they sound fantastic.
Here's the link. I think it will be interesting to binge watch them. I don't think I've ever binge watched any of Murphy's projects, and I'm looking forward to it.
The Met Opera's Gay Conductor
Here's a great article about the new music director of the Metropolitan Opera, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and his partner, Pierre Tourville. It also gets into how conducting, in general, still remains a straight white male profession.
In classical music and opera, even New York, the city that gave rise to the modern gay rights movement with the Stonewall riots 50 years ago this June, has been dominated since then by two conductors: Leonard Bernstein and James Levine, who both kept sexual relationships with men hidden.
It's a very good read, and you can check it out, here. I think it's important to point out these facts as much as possible, especially when they are highly significant.
Google 'Pray Away the Gay' App
Apparently, Google is getting backlash over an app that allegedly convinces gay people into conversion therapy.
From what I gather, the christian group, Living Hope Ministries, that created the app is making all kinds of false claims about what it's like to be gay.
And LGBT organization called Truth Wins Out is lobbying Google to take the app down. They're calling it a "hate app."
You can check that one out, here.
Fresh Release
Sleepless In San Francisco
Reader Reviews:
I read a lot of Ryan's books, but really loved this one. The main character reminded me of someone… read it and see.
A PG Rated Gay Romance
Here's the Amazon link
In Paperback or E-book, Amazon
Blissfully Yours
Ian McKellen Speaks At National Student Pride; Iraq Bulldozes Building Where IS Killed Gays; Gay Purge In Chechnya Gets Worse
The Gay Porn Threesome Filmed On London Tube; University Employee Allegedly Films Guy In Bathroom Pleasuring Himself; Karen Pence Works For Homophobic School Now
#3PopularThingsIHate Beaches, sand, and doing nothing. 20 minutes ago
#BestLieYouEverTold to my realtor: I can't wait to work with you again. You're so honest. 21 minutes ago
RT @tahitismith: Boys just wanna have fun....in case you hadn't noticed, we had a blast making this picture. Happy 32nd Birthday Robocop! h… 30 minutes ago
RT @emwilsonwriter: Today we shaved my head. We made it a whole big family thing since the chemo was making it all fall out anyways. I've a… 43 minutes ago
Sometimes you make it up as you go along... https://t.co/82UVgOVoqE 48 minutes ago

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Bond villany
April 11 2012 5:00 AM
• It's getting no coverage as our media are still obsessed with the carcasses of the Moriarty and Mahon Tribunals, but today AIB will pay a senior unsecured bond of €1.25bn; that's €1,250,000,000 in rounder numbers, or €250,000,000 more than the €1.25bn Anglo bond that so exercised the nation back on
https://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/bond-villany-26841643.html
Just as we own Anglo, lock, stock and stinking barrel, so we own AIB, and so it is that every cent of that €1.5bn is our money.
Do we thus also owe that money, is that also our debt? Is it hell -- were we ever asked if we wanted to sink our money into that rotting bank? Is that an investment you would have chosen to make? I certainly wouldn't -- those bondholders should be made to pay for their own folly.
Bear in mind also that that bond 'matures' this Wednesday, which means that over the five years of its term the 'coupon' or interest has all already been paid.
Know also that in the past six weeks AIB has already paid more than €2bn in three other separate big bonds -- again, all our money. We recapitalised AIB to the tune of billions, we'll have to go again within a couple of years.
Does anyone wonder why our banks have no money to lend? Anyone wonder why AIB has had to change the terms of its free banking lately?
Look at the €55bn in bond payments by our remaining five banks for the four years 2012 to 2015 -- an average of nearly €14bn a year -- add in the looming mortgage crisis and the shortfall the banks are facing there, and tell me what it all comes to.
This is the banking system we saved?
And that's not to even mention the promissory notes of €3.1bn a year.
Diarmuid O'Flynn
Charleville, Co Cork
Letters to the Editor: 'Retired civil servants getting a very raw deal on pensions'
Letters to the Editor While we see manifestos for the major parties being produced and expounded, as TDs and senators go door to door on their hustings, let me remind them of a few home truths.
Letters to the Editor: 'Lay Catholics deserve to help choose their new archbishop'
Letters to the Editor Sarah Carey (Irish Independent, January 18) paints an interesting picture of the Catholic Church worldwide and in Ireland. 2020 is likely to be a momentous year for the Church in Dublin and the...
Letters to the Editor: 'Thank God for immigrants'
Letters to the Editor Sir - May I just say thank God for immigrants.
Letters to the Editor: 'Retired civil servants getting a very raw deal on pensions' Letters
Letters to the Editor: 'Lay Catholics deserve to help choose their new archbishop' Letters
Letters to the Editor: 'Thank God for immigrants' Letters
Letters to the Editor: 'We cannot let nationalism make us prisoners of our history and turn... Letters
Letters to the Editor: 'Downing got it spot on about Taoiseach passing the buck' Letters
Billy Keane: 'Dad was right when he made me promise never to go into politics - it's the dirtiest game of them all'
Brendan O'Connor: My nightmare home in the sun
Yvonne Hogan: 'Society imposes a time limit on how long a woman can publicly grieve a miscarriage'
Frank Coughlan: 'An election will always get my vote'
Iranians are 'scared' of what else the year has in store amid the sorrow and anger
The miracle of Magheracloone, Wexford's dual duel, and a spot of bother in Castlebar


Page 12, 11 February 1882 — VIVISECTION AND AN/ESTHETICS.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR:1 Stn,—In the Cornhill Magazine for February, Mr. Edmund Gurney, in "An Epilogue on Vivisection," pursues a line of argument with which, excepting in the last two pages, I am almost in complete harmony. In these two pages, how- ever, he passes from the consideration of the moral arguments for or against Vivisection into a criticism of certain technical opinions. Although unnamed, I am there very distinctly re- ferred to as being responsible " for a widely diffused impression that even in this country anaesthetics are seldom or imperfectly administered," and the writer takes no trouble to conceal a con- temptuous incredulity as to the worth of my opinions. He is certainly at liberty to set against my statements the opinion of Professors Ferrier, Lister, Pye Smith, and Brunton, but if he has read those statements in the form in which they have been diffused throughout the country, through the medium of the Spectator, he must have noticed that my views regarding anaesthetics were literally borne out by quotations from such authorities as Professors Claude Bernard and Schiff, who on that question are worth fifty of the experts he refers to. Passing, however, from the general to the particular, he calls attention to a special experiment, where my evidence regarding anaesthetics was directly contradicted by Dr. Lauder Brunton, and in a foot-note he asks his readers to compare answers 5,777-8 with 3,454-7. This gives me an opportunity I have long wished for to prove the truth of what I stated from Dr. Brunton's own evidence.
Briefly described, I reply to Mr. Huxley (3,457) that, during the well-known experiment on the secretion and circulation "in. the sub-maxillary gland, a very long and painful operation, it is impossible almost to give any narcotic in that case, because it would interfere with the course of the experiment." The same examiner afterwards asks Dr. Brunton (5,778): " Can you keep the dog under chloroform during the whole of that experi- ment ? A.—Perfectly well."
book' I have given instructions to do it under chloroform, but by doing it under chloroform, there are several points you can- not show. The first time I tried to demonstrate the action of the chorda tympani under opium, I failed completely in the first part. I wished to show that the irritation of the lingual nerve caused reflexly a secretion of saliva. I utterly failed. It did not occur to me that by giving the opium I paralysed the reflex." Mr. Gurney will now see that my statement has been fully substantiated, instead of contradicted, by Dr. Brunton's evidence.
Further, does not the evidence I have quoted upon the only experiment to which Mr. Gurney calls attention, give rather an ugly corroboration to my denunciations of the mere pretence of %giving anaesthetics which forms his general charge against me? Here we have a long experiment of a very painful character, which in the " Handbook " is described as being done under chloroform, but regarding which, when under examination by a very friendly examiner, the author (with commendable honesty 'throughout, I admit), voluntarily states that it cannot be done under chloroform or opium, or, indeed, under any anaesthetic which paralyses the reflex.
Let the public bear in mind the very numerous experiments where stimulation of sensory nerves to obtain reflex action is re- ported as being done under morphia and chloroform, and the lesson that Mr. Gurney has elicited will not have been given in vain.
I object to only one point in the above statement, lest by not noticing it I may be supposed to acquiesce in it. Dr. Brunton, on reflection, will remember that the experiment cannot be satisfactorily performed under wourali (curare), in consequence of the dual and almost apparently antagonistic action of that drug, first, on the secretion of the gland itself ; second, in paralysing the chorda tympani, a motor nerve, but the dilato- motor and secretor nerve of the gland.
haps I may be allowed to say a few words with reference to the other portion of his critical remarks upon the boiling and baking experiments, of which so much has been made, he says, while he suggests that there has been misrepresentation throughout as to their true nature. I acknowledge that it is with some little impatience that I follow his arguments, which, from the terms used, are supposed to be scientific, but which are as false as the conclusions to which they have led. He begins his argument by seeming to lay down the following as a law :—" The pain of burning, for instance, known by all to be excruciating, is so through its destructive effect on the sur- face tissues of the body." It is nothing of the sort. Burning is painful in consequence of the effect of the high temperature upon the cutaneous nerves, the destruction of "surface tissues " being merely at times an accidental, but by no means a neces- sary accompaniment. He may easily convince himself of this by putting his finger in a candle-flame for a few moments, or by picking up a piece of hot iron at from 3000 to 400° Fahr. He will quickly drop it, after feeling the full agony of burning ; but in either case, although there may be a slight hardening of the outer layers of the epidermic cells, there will be no destruction of " surface tissues." What now becomes of the rest of the arguments and conclusion drawn from so false a premiss ?
Holding the frog in your hand is about as painful probably as any experiment you would perform, to the cold-blooded animals, "—(N.B. I quote, but seldom share Mr. Lister's scien- tific opinions),—" it must be very painful." He then speaks of the experiment referred to as a relatively painful operation.
of death was not exceptionally painful," in proof of which he states that " the stages of death were faintness and exhaustion, passing on to coma, and, finally, some convulsive movements. Now, Mr. Gurney, being a layman, may be excused, when mis- guided, perhaps, by some friendly vivisector, he comes to the incredible conclusion that death by baking is not exceptionally painful ; but when he insinuates that misrepresentation has been used in regard to certain specific experiments, he ought to be the last to seek to support an utterly false conclusion by a garbled and inaccurate account of symptoms. At the very least, he was bound to take the opinion or description of the experimenter who performed the experiments, to whom full reference was given. As he has failed to do so, I shall supply the quotation in ques- tion from Claude Bernard, in " La Chaleur Animale," Paris, 1876, page 356 :—" When the animal feels the toxic effects of the heat, it presents a series of symptoms which are constant and characteristic, At first, it is somewhat agitated ; soon respiration and circulation become accelerated ; the animal gasps, it pants, at last it falls into convulsions, and with a scream (poussant un cri) , it generally dies suddenly."
Surely Mr. Gurney does not mean to quibble over the terms " boiling alive " and " baking alive." As far as the experiments are concerned, where the animals were placed till they died in a little oven over a fire (of which a woodcut, reproduced by photography, of the original, in loc. cit., page 347, generally accompanies the textual descriptions), no other term could pos- sibly be applied than " baking alive." As to " boiling alive," a more correct term might be advisable, if .one could be procured, for exposure to every separate degree of heat in the water.
Simmering or stewing might, perhaps, be more applicable to the particular case of the frog, which he cites, but it would not lessen the pain of the procedure. " Boiling alive," therefore, expresses, I think, fairly well, death by immersion in very hot water of various temperatures. If Mr. Gurney will only steer clear of scientific questions, and adhere to the strong good- sense and reasoning which mark the rest of his writing, he will be doing good service to animals and science, and earn the gratitude of your obedient servant, GEORGE Houeeri, M.B.


text:
Q: Verifying non-key column dependencies and transitive dependencies I'm in the process of designing my first database and I'm trying to follow the normalization rules up to 3NF. I am using the following definitions for normalization:

*

*1NF: No repeating groups and a primary key is identified.

*2NF: Partial key dependencies are removed. All non-key columns are fully dependent on the primary key.

*3NF: Transitive dependencies and non-key dependencies are removed.

The table is for storing information about pet food. Here is a basic example of the table before any normalization:
╔════════════╦═════════╦═════════════╦════════════╦═══════════╦═══════════════╦═══════╗
║ Brand      ║ Flavor  ║ Animal Type ║ Breed Size ║ Age Group ║ Ingredients   ║ Price ║
╠════════════╬═════════╬═════════════╬════════════╬═══════════╬═══════════════╬═══════╣
║ Purina     ║ Chicken ║ Dog         ║ Small      ║ Adult     ║ Chicken, Salt ║ 18.99 ║
╠════════════╬═════════╬═════════════╬════════════╬═══════════╬═══════════════╬═══════╣
║ BlueWilder ║ Chicken ║ Dog         ║ Small      ║ Adult     ║ Chicken, Salt ║ 18.99 ║
╚════════════╩═════════╩═════════════╩════════════╩═══════════╩═══════════════╩═══════╝

Following the 1NF definition above, I added a primary key column. In this case, the only issue was in the Ingredients column containing multiple entries per record:
╔═════════╦════════════╦═════════╦═════════════╦════════════╦═══════════╦═════════════╦═══════╗
║ Food ID ║ Brand      ║ Flavor  ║ Animal Type ║ Breed Size ║ Age Group ║ Ingredients ║ Price ║
╠═════════╬════════════╬═════════╬═════════════╬════════════╬═══════════╬═════════════╬═══════╣
║ 1       ║ Purina     ║ Chicken ║ Dog         ║ Small      ║ Adult     ║ Chicken     ║ 18.99 ║
╠═════════╬════════════╬═════════╬═════════════╬════════════╬═══════════╬═════════════╬═══════╣
║ 1       ║ Purina     ║ Chicken ║ Dog         ║ Small      ║ Adult     ║ Salt        ║ 18.99 ║
╠═════════╬════════════╬═════════╬═════════════╬════════════╬═══════════╬═════════════╬═══════╣
║ 2       ║ BlueWilder ║ Chicken ║ Dog         ║ Small      ║ Adult     ║ Chicken     ║ 18.99 ║
╠═════════╬════════════╬═════════╬═════════════╬════════════╬═══════════╬═════════════╬═══════╣
║ 2       ║ BlueWilder ║ Chicken ║ Dog         ║ Small      ║ Adult     ║ Salt        ║ 18.99 ║
╚═════════╩════════════╩═════════╩═════════════╩════════════╩═══════════╩═════════════╩═══════╝

There is a repeating group now because of the Ingredients column. To fix this, I created two separate tables; An ingredients table, and an associative table that connects the ingredients table and food table together:
╔═══════════════╦════════════╗
║ Ingredient ID ║ Ingredient ║
╠═══════════════╬════════════╣
║ 1             ║ Chicken    ║
╠═══════════════╬════════════╣
║ 2             ║ Salt       ║
╚═══════════════╩════════════╝

╔═════════╦═══════════════╗
║ Food ID ║ Ingredient ID ║
╠═════════╬═══════════════╣
║ 1       ║ 1             ║
╠═════════╬═══════════════╣
║ 1       ║ 2             ║
╠═════════╬═══════════════╣
║ 2       ║ 1             ║
╠═════════╬═══════════════╣
║ 2       ║ 2             ║
╚═════════╩═══════════════╝

Now, I can remove the Ingredients column from the food table:
╔═════════╦════════════╦═════════╦═════════════╦════════════╦═══════════╦═══════╗
║ Food ID ║ Brand      ║ Flavor  ║ Animal Type ║ Breed Size ║ Age Group ║ Price ║
╠═════════╬════════════╬═════════╬═════════════╬════════════╬═══════════╬═══════╣
║ 1       ║ Purina     ║ Chicken ║ Dog         ║ Small      ║ Adult     ║ 18.99 ║
╠═════════╬════════════╬═════════╬═════════════╬════════════╬═══════════╬═══════╣
║ 2       ║ BlueWilder ║ Chicken ║ Dog         ║ Small      ║ Adult     ║ 18.99 ║
╚═════════╩════════════╩═════════╩═════════════╩════════════╩═══════════╩═══════╝

At this point, I am unsure of how to proceed.
My line of thinking is this: If any of the non-primary key columns change its value, the Food ID must be different. For example, the brand, flavor, breed size, age group, ingredients, and price can all be the same. But if the animal type is a dog, and then changes to a cat, it must be a different record. This applies to all the non-primary key columns. Following this thinking, all the non-primary key columns ARE fully dependent on the primary key, and there are no transitive dependencies.
Is my line of thinking correct? Is 2NF and 3NF, by the definitions I listed above, already satisfied?

A: To save on screen space I'll rename attributes:

*

*Brand: BRD

*Flavor: FLA

*Animal: ANM

*Breed size: SIZ

*Age group: AGP

*Ingredient: ING

*Price: PRI
Method 1
Normalization, as in textbooks.
Step 1.1
Due to repeating groups in ingredients, the value in the table is not a relation, hence the table does not represent a relational variable, hence it is not in 1NF. The solution is to make sure that the ingredient column (ING) has exactly one ingredient per row-- as you have done. However, no new attributes are added (no new ID). Now we have (in 1NF):
R {BRD, FLA, ANM, SIZ, AGP, ING, PRI}
The whole heading is the key.
Step 1.2
From FDs:

*

*{BRD, FLA} -> {ANM}

*{BRD, FLA} -> {SIZ}

*{BRD, FLA} -> {AGP}

*{BRD, FLA} -> {PRI}
by applying union rule for FDs and Heath's theorem:
 R1 {BRD, FLA, ANM, SIZ, AGP, PRI}
KEY {BRD, FLA}

 R2 {BRD, FLA, ING}
KEY {BRD, FLA, ING}

Done. That's it, if I got the FDs correctly.
Both are in BCNF, with confidence I would say that R1 is in 5NF, R2 in 6NF.
Method 2

Database design is predicate design.

Not a formal normalization method as found in most textbooks, but a design method which results in tables being in high NF (5NF, 6NF).
In the first step, the problem (business domain) is verbalized using simple predicates and associated constraints. The problem can be then reasoned about in natural language using logic.
A simple predicate can not be decomposed without losing information, its matching relvar is in 6NF.
In the second step, these simple predicates (and matching relvars) can be combined, making sure not to introduce redundancy and possibility of logical errors, namely contradiction. Once done, relvars (tables) are expected to be in 5NF.
Step 2.1
Describing the problem using simple predicates and matching 6NF relvars. Not verbalizing constraints (it gets long-winded), just stating them.
-- Brand BRD exists.
--
brand {BRD}
   PK {BRD}

-- Flavor FLA exists.
--
flavor {FLA}
    PK {FLA}

-- Animal type ANM exists.
--
animal {ANM}
    PK {ANM}

-- Breed size SIZ exists.
--
bsize {SIZ}
   PK {SIZ}

-- Age group AGP exists.
--
age {AGP}
 PK {AGP}

-- Ingredient ING exists.
--
ingredient {ING}
        PK {ING}

-- Pet food with flavor FLA made by brand BRD
-- is for animal type ANM.
--
food {BRD, FLA, ANM}
  PK {BRD, FLA}

 FK1 {BRD} REFERENCES brand  {BRD}
 FK2 {FLA} REFERENCES flavor {FLA}
 FK3 {ANM} REFERENCES animal {ANM}

-- Pet food with flavor FLA made by brand BRD
-- is recommended for breed size SIZ.
--
food_bsize {BRD, FLA, SIZ}
        PK {BRD, FLA}

       FK1 {BRD, FLA} REFERENCES
      food {BRD, FLA}

       FK2 {SIZ} REFERENCES bsize {SIZ}

-- Pet food with flavor FLA made by brand BRD
-- is recommended for breed age group AGP.
--
food_age {BRD, FLA, AGP}
      PK {BRD, FLA}

       FK1 {BRD, FLA} REFERENCES
      food {BRD, FLA}

       FK2 {AGP} REFERENCES age {AGP}

-- Pet food with flavor FLA made by brand BRD
-- is priced at PRI Euros per unit.
--
price {BRD, FLA, PRI}
   PK {BRD, FLA}

   FK {BRD, FLA} REFERENCES
 food {BRD, FLA}

-- Pet food with flavor FLA made by brand BRD
-- contains ingredient ING.
--
recipe {BRD, FLA, ING}
    PK {BRD, FLA, ING}

   FK1 {BRD, FLA} REFERENCES
  food {BRD, FLA}

   FK2 {ING} REFERENCES ingredient {ING}

Step 2.2
Just by looking at the keys, we can see that food, food_bsize, food_age, and price tables can be combined.
-- Pet food with flavor FLA made by brand BRD
-- is for animal type ANM, recommended for
-- breed size SIZ, breed age group AGP; priced
-- at PRI Euros per unit.
--
food_ {BRD, FLA, ANM, SIZ, AGP, PRI}
   PK {BRD, FLA}

 FK1 {BRD} REFERENCES brand  {BRD}
 FK2 {FLA} REFERENCES flavor {FLA}
 FK3 {ANM} REFERENCES animal {ANM}
 FK4 {SIZ} REFERENCES bsize  {SIZ}
 FK5 {AGP} REFERENCES age    {AGP}

If we decide not to keep the first six tables defining domains, then the final result is as in the first method:
food_ {BRD, FLA, ANM, SIZ, AGP, PRI}
   PK {BRD, FLA}

recipe {BRD, FLA, ING}
    PK {BRD, FLA, ING}

    FK {BRD, FLA} REFERENCES food_
       {BRD, FLA}

However, in a real-world project, you will likely need brand, flavor, animal, bsize, and age tables to constrain domains. There is no rule in normalization stating that you should have them.
Also, not all attributes may be known at the sime time, so it is not likely that you'll combine all of food, food_bsize, food_age, and price tables into food_. This will depend on the business process and optionality of attributes.
Adding IDs
Adding surrogate keys (IDs) has nothing to do with normalization. You may need to add them for other reasons, take a look at this example.

Note:
All attributes (columns) NOT NULL

KEY = PK or AK

PK = Primary Key
AK = Alternate Key   (Unique)
SK = Proper Superkey (Unique)
FK = Foreign Key

I always use the second method for design. Have never seen the first one used outside of a formal DB course of some kind; and people asking for help on SO.
For some reason, beyond my understanding, method 1 is taught in DB courses under topic "DB design" before method 2. Most schools do not teach method 2 at all. Go figure.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
La stagione CBA 1986-87 fu la 41ª della Continental Basketball Association. Parteciparono 12 squadre divise in due gironi.

Rispetto alla stagione precedente i Baltimore Lightning, i Bay State Bombardiers, i Detroit Spirits, i Florida Stingers, i Kansas City Sizzlers e i Pensacola Tornados si trasferirono rispettivamente a Rockford, Pensacola, Savannah, Charleston, Topeka e Jacksonville, cambiando nome in Rockford Lightning, Pensacola Tornados, Savannah Spirits, Charleston Gunners, Topeka Sizzlers e Jacksonville Jets. I Jacksonville Jets si trasferirono nuovamente durante la stagione a Biloxi, divendando i Mississippi Jets. I Tampa Bay Thrillers si trasferirono a Rapid City prima dei play-off, diventando i Rapid City Thrillers. Gli Evansville Thunder e i Maine Windjammers fallirono.

Squadre partecipanti

 /

 /

Classifiche

Eastern Division

Western Division

Play-off

Semifinali di conference

Finali di conference

Finale CBA

Tabellone

Vincitore

Statistiche

Premi CBA
 CBA Most Valuable Player: Joe Binion, Topeka Sizzlers
 CBA Coach of the Year: Bill Musselman, Rapid City Thrillers
 CBA Newcomer of the Year: Eddie Johnson, Rapid City Thrillers
 CBA Rookie of the Year: Ron Rowan, Topeka Sizzlers
 CBA Executive of the Year: Bernie Glannon, Topeka Sizzlers
 CBA Playoff MVP: Clinton Wheeler, Rapid City Thrillers
All-CBA First Team
Joe Binion, Topeka Sizzlers
Rick Lamb, Pensacola Tornados
Claude Gregory, La Crosse Catbirds
Eddie Johnson, Rapid City Thrillers
Tico Brown, Savannah Spirits
All-CBA Second Team
Don Collins, Rapid City Thrillers
Bill Martin, Cincinnati Slammers
Brad Wright, Wyoming Wildcatters
Carlos Clark, La Crosse Catbirds
Kenny Natt, Albany Patroons
CBA All-Defensive First Team
Clinton Wheeler, Rapid City Thrillers
Eric Laird, Pensacola Tornados
Jerome Henderson, Pensacola Tornados
Derrick Rowland, Albany Patroons
Curtis Kitchen, Albany Patroons
CBA All-Defensive Second Team
Carlos Clark, La Crosse Catbirds
Kelvin Upshaw, Mississippi Jets
Tony Brown, Wisconsin Flyers
Bill Martin, Cincinnati Slammers
Ron Spivey, Rapid City Thrillers

Bibliografia
 1991-92 Official CBA Guide & Register, Greg Anderson, 1991

Collegamenti esterni

Stagioni CBA
Pallacanestro nel 1986
Pallacanestro nel 1987

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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text:
Kindred expands home health offering with acquisition
Kindred Healthcare, Inc., announced last week that it has acquired Professional HealthCare, LLC, a provider of home health, hospice, private nursing services and durable medical equipment, for $51 million in cash.
Professional HealthCare operates 27 locations in northern California, Arizona, Nevada and Utah that generate annualized revenues of $53 million, according to Kindred, which already operates 21 nursing and rehabilitation centers in Professional's service areas.
"We continue to seek opportunities to expand our continuum of post-acute care services in our key cluster markets in response to the growing interest for integrated care," Kindred President and CEO Paul Diaz said in a statement. "Professional further expands our growing home health and hospice business and provides substantial overlap with our existing operations in several of our cluster markets."
Kindred's Peoplefirst HomeCare and Hospice currently provides home health and hospice services in northern and southern California as well as Colorado, Indiana, Massachusetts and Ohio.
How to Best Monitor Resident Satisfaction at Your Senior Care Facility
Leveraging Technology and Workflow Automation to Prevent Staff Burnout
The Top 5 Unexpected Benefits of Digital Entry Management
Taking the Resident Experience to the Next Level
The True Cost of Post-Acute Care Labor
Technology Trends in Senior Care Communities – VIDEO AD DEMO PAGE
What to Look for When Choosing a Staffing Agency for Your Senior Care Facility
Designing Resident Safety Plans for Senior Care Facilities: Best Practices
The Future to Evaluating Brain Health Could Lie in Virtual Reality
Topics: Articles


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text:
The Price of Freedom: A Reading of Ghada al-Samman's Beirut '75
"Beirut has ruined me, that's all!"
"That's not true," he replied, "You women all accuse Beirut of ruining you when the truth of the matter is that the seeds of corruption were already deep inside you. All Beirut did was to give them a place to thrive and become visible. It's given them a climate where they can grow."
"She wondered to herself…if they had allowed my body to experience wholesome, sound relationships in Damascus – would I have lost my way to this extent?"
A sense of alienation, pessimism, and ultimate nihilism, which stems from al-Samman's existential viewpoint, envelops the main characters in Beirut '75. The protagonists (Yasmeena, Farah, Ta'aan, Abu'l-Malla, and Abu Mustafa) feel trapped, alone, and disconnected from each other and from society. Each character's personal struggle sheds light on some negative aspect of Lebanese society as seen by al-Samaan in 1975. Each character is exploited in some way, either sexually, politically or economically. Although these underlying evils of Lebanese society may have existed, al-Samman only shows a unilateral view colored by her own perception of reality. She fails to offer a multidimensional and more realistic view of the society at that time. In addition, she fails to successfully convey the depth of existential crisis that each of her characters endures, consequently resulting in characters that remain shallow and who do not convince the reader that their tragic demise is warranted.
The first chapter of the novel repeatedly foreshadows the characters' impending doom; nevertheless, the reader is still left with a sense of bewilderment at such an astonishing and violent end to an otherwise ordinary set of characters. Did they really merit such a catastrophic conclusion of events? Several reviews have been very critical of such a sensational conclusion, and some critics, as well as many readers, have been shocked and dismayed. The author loves to admit, though, that she herself was puzzled with this conclusion as she tries to justify it to the public:
During the writing of this novel, its characters were simply leading themselves to their tragic deaths. I was constantly trying to stop them from doing this, but I was unable to. Although I created them on paper, these are live characters, and I do not force them to behave according to the critics' desires or even my own wishes. It was inevitable that I let them meet their death in the pond of violence in which they swim, the pond that is full of land mines and which is called Beirut… the recent events in Beirut proved the clarity (of my vision )…hence, the violence … the explosion…
According to al-Samman, her characters were doomed because they were trapped in a "pond of violence," otherwise known as Beirut. Instead of finding hope and redemption there, they each become entangled in the socio-political issues of Beirut in 1975. From al-Samman's political and existential view, Beirut is viewed as a "fallen city," and consequently, not only its citizens but anyone who enters it is doomed to fail. For al-Samman, Beirut is Dante's hell, a place for lost souls with no hope of salvation.
Throughout the novel, the characters seem pathetic in their limited grasp of reality and in their inability to alter their catastrophic destiny. They seek a childlike and immediate fix to their problems. They do not grow, mature or ripen with experience. Rather, they succumb to their unyielding desires and destructive instincts. Their mad search for an immediate solution to their poverty, coupled with their uncontrollable passion for money and fame, prove to be a sure formula for disaster. But of course, they all blame Beirut!
Take Yasmeena, for example. Coming from a humble origin, she has been a Syrian school teacher in a nun's convent for the past ten years, and she journeys to Beirut only to escape her miserable life and an oppressive society. For her, Beirut is more a fantasy than a reality. It is Paris, Hollywood or Manhattan. She has already formulated her own simplistic version of how Beirut is and has a rather ideal perspective even on the way love relationships in Beirut should be. A poet at heart and on paper, she entertains a beautiful dream of publishing her poems, but she fails to consider that becoming a poet comes with a dear price and a serious lifetime commitment. She cannot wait to arrive and pluck the fruit of fame and wealth that she imagines awaits her at the gate of the city of dreams. Yasmeena, like Farah, comes prepared to conquer Beirut, to "take it by storm." She assumes that the possibilities are endless and she is ready to do whatever it takes to overcome her humble origin and forget her poverty. With such determination, what could possibly stand in her way? How can she possibly fail? Although she has a lot to give, she is, nevertheless, naive, and lacks intellectual maturity, self pride and a sense of the historical reality that prevailed in the Arab world at the time. She is a failed Romantic and by no means a true representative of the Arab woman of her generation. As it turns out, the only thing that she is immediately ready to offer is her body under the pretense of love and marriage. She manages to silence her brother's voice and buy his pride with a monthly fine that she agrees to pay him to supplement his meager income. She falls victim to the same old tradition that she tries to escape and superficially deal with.
How did Yasmeena end up dead and mutilated at the hands of her brother? Was this the author's intent from the beginning? The author explains:
I had decided, for example, that…Yasmeena…would become a prostitute…While writing the story, Yasmeena rebelled and decided to choose a life of poverty and confront society. She had something in her real character that made her take this path. She emerged out of the paper, stood over my lines and screamed in my face … rebelling against my wrongful attempt to alter her private destiny which she can only chart.
Yasmeena remains naive, wrapped up in her own bodily pleasures trying to secure a life of comfort and wealth under the pretense of love and marriage to Nimr whom she had met only three months before and under unknown circumstances. She naively, or cunningly, believes that pretending to be Nimr's mistress in bed, on a remote location on his yacht in the Mediterranean, will secure her a life of wealth and luxury and protect her against a background of poverty and monotonous employment. She even allows herself to believe, that after one hot night with Nimr, she can overhaul the prevailing social system in Lebanon by sweet talking Nimr into convincing his father to list the equality and freedoms of women among his priorities when he runs for parliamentary election. Her virtuous self awakening at the end comes only as a result of her being rejected by Nimr. And her tragic end comes when she no longer can pay to silence her brother's alarming sound of "honor" that was suddenly awakened when his pocket runs empty of Nimr's money.
Both Yasmeena and Nimr are guilty of using each other for their own self-serving purposes. In addition, Yasmeena, like Farah, is not a true representative of the thousands of Syrian workers who traveled to Lebanon in the sixties and early seventies seeking better job opportunities and honorably earning their living with sweat and labor. Had Yasmeena arrived in Beirut and shared a humble room with her brother, found an honorable job as a school teacher, continued to write poetry and pursued her dream of publishing a book, her destiny may have been quite different. Had she met Nimr under different circumstances, perhaps as a hardworking Arab woman who was trying to improve her lot and with it, the status of women in her society, we would have certainly identified with her and been extremely sympathetic to her tragedy. Instead, it is very difficult to sympathize with her plight the way she is introduced and from what the author reveals about her past and future aspirations. From the taxi that transported this average girl to Beirut, Yasmeena mysteriously jumps to an expensive yacht where she immediately plunges into a life of luxury and wealth. She is already fulfilling her dream and willingly offers her love to Nimr. She will initially do anything that will preclude her return to poverty and the suffocating environment in which she grew up.
It is important to point out, as Samira Aghacy does, that in the works of many Lebanese women authors writing around the same period, the protagonists who journeyed to Beirut experienced the city as a liberating force from their "…traditional community that is closely aligned with a rural mentality." They see "the city and the village in ontological opposition between repression and freedom, backwardness and progress, and past and present." Unlike Yasmeena and Farah, who become totally alienated, depressed and mentally disturbed, those protagonists saw the "nurturing city as a symbol of well-being, independence, and freedom from shackles." However, al-Samman's two main characters fail to immerse themselves in the bounty of opportunities that Beirut had to offer. Although Beirut afforded them the appropriate escape from the tyranny of the past symbolized by their parents, stifling jobs and closed-minded communities, nevertheless, they were incapable of standing on their own in order to realize their potential. Instead of listening to their inner voice, they remained totally dependent on outside forces to secure the futures that they had romantically envisioned. Because they were motivated by the wrong reason, mainly personal "glory," and were driven by selfish dreams of wealth and fame, they ignored the call of their conscience to return to their villages or to get a job and make it on their own. They did not want to simply survive; they wanted to quickly become rich and famous. Yasmeena sought deliverance through Nimr, who is himself a slave to tradition, and Farah sold his soul to the devil, replacing his dominating father image with that of Nishan in total submission and "obedience." Instead of rejecting the authoritative figures that they had left behind, both Yasmeena and Farah simply replace them with a more corrupt and tyrannical symbol, thus failing to "define for themselves a new identity" and become part of a larger cause or community. Although in her published interviews, al-Samman clearly argues that sexual freedom is inseparable from economic, social and political freedom, her characters, Yasmeena and Farah, do not strive to obtain the rest of their rights in order to become really free. Their struggle for identity and independence should have been waged on many fronts instead of being confined primarily to "the theme of sexuality, of the privilege of orgasm and self gratification." Based on her personal and existential reading of Beirut's climate at the time, al-Samman presents us with "a world view that fits [her] preferred self-interpretation." This results in characters who actively choose to use their bodies as a means of asserting their freedom instead of opting "for an effective public role and demand social and political rights." In the vast city, they actually capitalize on the liberating element of "anonymity" as an avenue for "unrestricted wandering, sexual freedom, and the pursuit of sensual gratification." Both Yasmeena and Farah want to be free and equal with the Beiruties. What they fail to consider is that through "work" and self- reliance rather than "sex," they could have achieved "personal growth and social development… [in this] existential city."
On a higher allegorical level, Yasmeena's obsession with sexuality, with Nimr's body and the discovery of her own appetite for sex and the pleasures of intercourse makes us wonder whether the author meant her to be a prototype of the deprived Arab woman throughout the ages. Suddenly, this new phoenix-like image, this modern Sheherazade, Yasmeena, comes forward to release this tension and serve as a spokeswoman for all her Arab sisters. Yasmeena declares:
I love it [sex]. I became addicted to it. I longed for it. For twenty seven years… I was forbidden to enjoy sex …in my blood dwells the desires of all Arab women for the last thousand years…Away from Nimr… I run the risk of sliding deeper into insanity… My hunger for his body is more than a thousand years old.
Compare this with al-Samman's response to the question, "Who is Ghada al-Samman?" Al-Samman says: "I am an Arab woman from the desert. I am two thousand years old. They have attempted to bury me alive in the desert, but failed. They have killed me many times, and I would always rise from my ashes to fly… And write." Although al-Samman denies that Yasmeena in some ways represents her, there are striking similarities between the two. Both Yasmeena and al-Samman are viewed as "fallen women." Yasmeena becomes an outcast as a result of exercising her sexual freedom. Al-Samman becomes exiled for promoting a sexual revolution. Both are Arab women who become victims of a double-standard tradition that denies women their sexual freedom, while granting men theirs. Yasmeena's and al-Samaan's sexual liberation comes at a very high price. In addition, in "Chapter One" of Beirut '75, Yasmeena's taxi ride into Beirut is almost identical to al-Samman's recollection of her own first journey into Beirut in 1964. Al-Samman writes about herself:
I ride my car and depart from my quiet nest.. in Damascus, to Beirut, in order to chase my dream of freedom… Like a person goes towards his destiny leaving everything behind him and without noticing that he has just taken a decisive decision in his life…I carried my eternal dream of freedom…and I spread my secret wings that long to soar across the coastal horizon… Everything that is "I" in me, was drawn like a compass… towards Beirut, the freedom, Beirut, the dream… I shiver with love towards the unknown…as if it were yesterday…
The overlapping of autobiography and fiction continues as the story of Yasmeena and Farah unfolds and their feelings towards both Damascus and Beirut are revealed from the moment they ride the taxi until they arrive in Beirut, exposing further similarities with the author's sentiments, fears, anticipation and hopes. It is not coincidental that both the author and her characters arrive in Beirut on September 14th, the eve of the Feast of the Cross. The manner of description through which the author blends fiction and fact is unmistakable if one compares the opening chapter in Beirut '75 and al-Samman's details in an interview given on July 28,1983 about her arrival to Beirut.
As she tells us about her feelings while she drives her car through the winding roads from Damascus to Beirut, we find it difficult to distinguish her voice from that of Yasmeena and Farah. She tells about her fear and panic as she hears the echoes of explosions of fireworks celebrating the Feast of the Cross across the hills of the Lebanese villages and sees the bonfires blazing on the hills and mountain tops. She is truly afraid as she is reminded of the consecutive series of military coups d'etats that she endured in Syria and wondered in horror, "Does the curse of violence follow me wherever I go? Did the dream of freedom end even before it began, crushed like an ear of grain under the boots of a soldier?" She talks about how she had a flat tire that almost cost her her life on those winding, narrow and high mountainous roads leading to Beirut. Interestingly, the taxi that Yasmeena and Farah were in also had a flat tire.
There is actually more of al-Samman in Yasmeena's character than al-Samman is willing to admit. For both, Yasmeena and al-Samman, Beirut was their destiny, where they were determined to be free, independent, famous and successful. Beirut was the genie at the beach, the land of endless opportunities that they both loved and yearned for. Al-Samman goes on to boast that even before Beirut had become a love lyric on every lover's lips and a topic of poetry, songs and international news, "Beirut was the title of my earliest books and even later ones… we had fallen in love with each other." Furthermore, both Yasmeena and al-Samman had been high school teachers in Syria, yet they both chose to abandon that profession since they found it stifling and unsuitable to their nature. Both were convinced that Beirut would give them the "opportunity to publish [their] poems in her newspapers." Both were obsessed with the image of flying. Yasmeena says, "My heart feels like a bird hungry to fly." Both loved music and were in a perpetual state of love. For Yasmeena says, "Music had always evoked within her a hidden store of mysterious emotions. She imagined herself to be a lover, not in love with anyone in particular, but in a perpetual state of amourous bliss, with a constant readiness to love, to suffer torment." Both Yasmeena and al-Samman desired a life of luxury. They both had a sense of adventure, and both decided to intentionally never look back. Al-Samman threw the flat tire away in a gesture to forget everything about her past. Yasmeena, likewise, vows she will not look back at Damascus anymore, saying, "Adieu, Damascus, adieu!"
In spite of this, it is Mustafa, the fisherman's son, who al-Samman admits represents her the most. According to the author, only Mustafa was able to achieve victory over his destiny by not searching for an individual solution and by not joining the group that was the reason for his misery. Instead, he committed to a cause, she says, to a collective effort in pursuit of justice, bread and happiness. Mustafa remains the only character with a vision and hope for salvation. He is able through his personal insight and intellect to bridge the vast gap between a Romantic quest and an existential destiny. He seems to have emerged with an imaginative power that allows him to alter his fate and that of his fellowmen to harvest a better future. However, it is rather ironic that all along, Mustafa did not even consider joining his "comrades" until after that fateful night of extreme sexual frustration, repeated masturbation and shameful sexual intercourse between his parents in their small, crowded room where Mustafa is perpetually a forced witness to a rather humiliating and dehumanizing experience. We are left wondering about the genuine intentions and ambitions of this "intellectual" character/hero who overnight is transformed into a rebel and armed "with the will for struggle, which is alone capable of changing the world."
The reader is also left to wonder what kind of novel this is. Is it meant to be a psychological study, an erotic experience, a sociopolitical commentary, a historical novel, a suspense story or simply a fictitious journey? It certainly possesses all these elements without explicitly declaring one of them to be its major theme. However, I argue that Beirut '75 is an existential novel that tries to divorce itself from the basic tenets of its own identity by adopting additional characteristics that color it but fail to deliver the protagonists to salvation. The tragic flaw of the characters is that they remain trapped between two worlds. They are primarily Romantic beings who set out on an existential quest that can only lead to disaster. From the taxi that carried them to Beirut, they embark on a quixotic journey, and each carries within himself his own seeds of destruction. They share the ride and the sense of calamity, but - with the exception of Mustafa - they remain alone and each a "stranger" to his fellow man and to humanity at large. While they are infused with the existential elements of despair, alienation and failure, they all lack two basic ingredients of Romanticism: hope and imagination. Hope can negate despair and alienation, while imagination can help turn failure into success. The Romantic imagination can redeem "fallen nature," presented here as Beirut, which cannot help itself. Imagination can redeem man, who can do it on his own, but who needs the impetus of an example. Neither one of these remaining characters is equipped to serve as an example or redeemer. Unfortunately, these particular characters are not endowed with such power; hence, the aridity of their vision and their suicidal fate. Even Mustafa's daring attempt to change the course of his destiny and, consequently, the destiny of others, remains suspect yet hopeful because the novel does not forecast or confirm the outcome of his new political stand.
Amid all this, Beirut remains silent and unable to defend itself against numerous accusations, some true and some false. Beirut is portrayed as a cruel, heartless, inhospitable and damp place, stripped of all of its positive qualities. We never hear in the novel that Beirut is the cultural capital of the Middle East and its intellectual and literary center. In this novel, Beirut's psychological and spiritual climate rather parallels the surrealistic and existential climate that permeates Camus' The Stranger. The Beiruties remain voiceless, faceless, weak, marginal, and are described as being mostly corrupt and unpatriotic with anti-Arab sentiments. They are even ridiculed for conversing in French, which is ironically, the first language that the author herself learned even before learning Arabic. It is clear that al-Samman wanted to depict them as a distorted version of Eliot's "Hollow Men" who inhabit a "Waste Land," and not an elegant and hospitable city like Beirut. The manner of representation of the main characters to symbolize a whole society, and through it, a whole country, remains lacking. Moreover, the only character who was indeed, like Beirut, a "victim of circumstances" beyond his control, was Ta'aan. All of the other characters had the potential of changing the course of their destiny. They all had a choice to make and they made their choices, except Mustafa, based on greed, lust, pride, selfishness, self-glorification or inherent weaknesses and ignorance. These are all sins, and the characters, as human representations, should be held accountable for their choices.
Man as a thinking being can help make his own destiny, and effect a change in the circumstances that affect his life. The author herself has taught us this by her own example. Having a dream and selecting the right path to attain this dream can be two different things. We should accept responsibility for our decisions instead of blaming the "other." In this novel, the reader is forced to look at Beirut through the eyes of a cast of characters mostly foreigners: Yasmeena, her brother, Farah, Nishan, and even Abu'l-Malla, all inflicted with a strong sense of estrangement and a deep rooted desire to achieve fame and wealth at any cost even if it meant signing a pact with the devil and selling their souls. Some, like Nishan, have made a choice, good or bad, lived with it, accepted the consequences, paid the price, turned to an evil dictator and pervert, but without turning against humanity at large and without attaching the blame on friend and country. Others, like Yasmeena and Farah, gifted in many ways, plunder their gifts and capitalize on "body and voice" with an extreme sense of naivety and greed, to achieve wealth and fame. As for their basic humanity and emotional depth, they are certainly bankrupt. On the other hand, concerning their nationalistic commitment, political awareness, intellectual maturity and the ultimate socio-political causes in which they had a chance to get involved, and perhaps make a difference, these characters, other than Mustafa, show no genuine concern other than shallow lip service. These are "frustrated" characters "who attempt to escape the boredom of a too-sheltered existence by launching into experiences on the fringe of social acceptability… who have chosen madness, sexual deviation, or conscious martyrdom in order to escape the stifling embrace of tradition…" They have a very narrow horizon and remain too self-absorbed in their own personal state of affairs and individual destiny, unable to embrace a more altruistic outlook.
The scene of the Israeli air raids over Beirut is a truly alarming one repeated twice while Yasmeena and Nimr make love on the yacht and while Farah roams aimlessly in Hamra Street in Beirut. According to al-Samman, only an animal, the monkey, feels the shame of the enemy airplanes allowed to fly over an Arab capital, while Yasmeena and Farah become troubled and reminisce about such times when they were visited by these evils and witnessed destruction and fear. Nimr and the inhabitants of Hamra go about their business as if nothing had happened. The author makes it clear that they had grown accustomed to such "visits," and she criticizes them for doing nothing. While that may be the case, what she, however, fails to point out, and which is much more significant, is that the reaction from the rest of the Arab capitals was also mute and indifferent.
In Beirut '75, al-Samman pinpoints many of the evils that plagued Lebanese society which supposedly led to the civil war. We certainly agree with al-Samman that Lebanon's social and political system embodied injustices and preferential treatments, but we also concur with Awwad's observation when she writes: "Clearly, however, al-Samman's personal feelings and emotions interfere with her intellectual grasp of important Arab issues, thus causing her to propound generalizations of dubious value and create a set of fairly nondescript characters."
Al-Samman's list of reasons for the war looks more like a Communist manifesto than a realistic representation of the complex causes of the war. What happened in Lebanon was not exclusively an internal civil strife between the rich and the poor, the Moslems and the Christians, in as much as it was, in reality, the wars of the foreigners and the Arabs fought on Lebanese soil. The author certainly knows this. Moreover, since al-Samman is primarily, even in her novels, a journalist, who tried to justify the causes of the Lebanese war to the press, it is befitting to quote from Ghassan Tueini, one of the most prominent journalists in the Middle East today. In a recent speech that he delivered in the country of Dubai, on October 7, 2003, Ghassan Tueini said:
Part of Lebanon's anger is because the wars of the Arabs with Israel, as well the wars of the Arabs with the Arabs, while they ceased at the boarders of other countries, they still continue to be fought on its land. These wars were actually carried forward from its borders to its heartland and transformed it into an experimental playground (for death) and a battlefield for political liquidations. Lebanon has become the homeland of all revolutions and counter revolutions and the testing ground for certain political regimes and for its idle armies, the likes of which you know only too well. Lebanon has also become the substitute home for those rulers seeking to establish on its land false glories that they certainly do not enjoy in their own countries where the constitution… and moral values, have been taken hostage by militarism and hereditary republics… and you wonder, after all this, why my country Lebanon, is inhabited with anxiety and why its… body bleeds with what the wars have left behind, why its mind is perplexed and why it oscillates between its deep disappointment and its dreams of peace. Yet, in spite of all this, Lebanon remains and continues to be, the platform of freedom for all the Arab countries where in most cases, people continue to be hostages and victims of their own military regimes.
What Lebanon lacked was a strong central government, a military regime that ruled with an iron fist. This was obviously, but luckily, neither the destiny of Lebanon nor the will of the Lebanese people. Thus, in the absence of a strong army and a dominating political party, Lebanon remained weak, unable to defend itself, yet miraculously enduring. Ghada al-Samman's continuous involvement in writing about the war in Lebanon and scrutinizing its causes and effects, in analyzing it and making judgments about the Lebanese society, can only confirm Ilham Shoukry's observation that "The writings of the Syrian authors can only mean, in one way or another, that the Lebanese war is, after all, a Syrian affair." There is no Arab literature, in general, that primarily focused on the Lebanese war, hence, "al-Samman, a Syrian writer, appears absolutely exceptional regarding this point." No one can deny the underlying class struggle in Lebanon prior to 1975, but one must also remind all the critics who wrote about Beirut '75 and claimed it a "prophecy" that heralded the Lebanese civil war, and, supposedly, addressed all the evils and the causes of that bloody war, that this was after all a "regional war" having the root of its causes in the Arab - Israeli struggle and the massive and overwhelming military presence of the PLO in Lebanon that certainly tipped the balance of power and helped create a hostile environment not conducive to a peaceful coexistence. Even al-Samman herself admits, "The Lebanese war, has no doubt, affected every artist and writer, Lebanese and Arab…since the Lebanese war has Arab roots and causes, it no doubt, has touched the conscience of every creative Arab mind…our Lebanese war is an Arab war that belongs to us all."
Although on more than one occasion, al-Samman clearly states that she does not belong to a particular political party nor does she advocate a certain regime, yet it is obvious that she supports Arab nationalism and wants Lebanon, for example, to be a wholesome and indivisible part of a greater Arab nation from the Gulf to the Ocean. The author adopts a clear political stand and emphatically states, using the plural pronoun, "We," wanting us to understand beyond any doubt, that she speaks for an obvious political ideology. Al-Samman says:
We do not wish for Beirut to reclaim its previous position. We reject that everything returns to the way it was. We have offered tens of thousands of victims so that Beirut does not regain its previous status, but instead for her to have a future status with new foundations… We want to make out of Beirut a real center for Arab enlightenment… In the creative sense not only in the commercial sense …We aim to play an Arabic role that goes beyond the role of serving as an excellent hotel… Our ambition is to create a new vision…"
It becomes evident that al-Samman's "political stance… is one that calls for the unity of the Arab world through the awakening of a pan-Arab nationalism. She believes that the cause of Lebanese unity is inseparable from the creation of a unified Arab world." This passionate political view, in spite of its glorious consequences, should it materialize, has certainly narrowed the author's ability to come to terms with some of the underlying causes for the war in Beirut. Lebanon is, above all, an Arab country "which has been especially imbued with the spirit of modernity" and its contributions to the Arab cause and the advancement of the Arabic language, literature and thought are pioneering and unparalleled. Although she repeatedly praises the climate of freedom in Lebanon in comparison with each and every other Arab country, yet she seems to deliberately neglect the cause of this very free air that "she breathes" and goes on to reject Lebanon's western complexions:
… I am also against Westernizing Lebanon, against partitioning it, and against the continuity of its decayed… political system, its unjust social class system, against the authority of the minority, whose interest is associated with imperialism, over the welfare of the majority of the laboring people… And against covering the just struggle of the Lebanese masses… with the masks of religious sectarianism and against the isolationist and suspect calls that confirm that Lebanon descends from a Phoenician mother and an American sailor from the sixth Fleet who passed on the shores of Byblos.
Lebanon's relationship with the sea is rather unique. It is really the ingenuity of its people that made the sea a vital extension to its borders. Perhaps the reason for Lebanon's constant staring westward towards the Mediterranean, instead of only looking eastward, is emotional rather than political. Let us remember that Lebanon is the only Arab motherland that has more children living across the ocean than those residing within its borders.
Although the novel explores many of the underlying ills of Lebanese society, it does not offer any plausible solutions. It focuses on portraying the dark, pessimistic and existential side of society rather than attempting to also balance the picture by shedding a positive light on the other side of Beirut: the city of education, art, tourism, music and poetry. Because of such intentional deficiencies, the novel remains a one sided representation without the benefit of presenting a multidimensional tableau that captures life in all its vitality, diversity as well as shortcomings, in a hospitable city that never closed its doors in the face of any visitor, Arab or otherwise.
Through her political stance, Ghada al-Samaan's identity crisis and existential viewpoint surface. She is clearly conflicted, yet she serves as an example of a Romantic character who has found a way out of her own personal "nightmare" and existential quest. If there is one character in Beirut '75 who offers any real hope, it is Ghada al-Samman herself. Her autobiography proves that she was able to rise above her personal circumstances and write courageously. She chose to stay in Beirut and reach out to her fellow man and woman versus falling into suicidal despair. Her daring novel and lifestyle remain an example of hope for those who have none. Ghada al-Samaan will always be a lover of Beirut, and Beirut will always love her. On many occasions, al-Samman has proven to be more Lebanese than many of the Beiruties themselves. At moments of ecstasy and serious contemplation she writes:
I will not leave Beirut… I am now racing with death, and because of this I try to write, I write as if I will die tomorrow…Beirut is the … dream of the Arab writer wherever he was… a dream stabbed with daggers drawn under various names and nationalities, just like Julius Caesar, it died … and the Arab writer cries for her more than any other Arab citizen because it was the city of the free word in the midst of an Arab world whose love diminishes daily … In Beirut the word roamed freely without a guillotine … Beirut was always the home for artists and writers for the cursed and the exiled… It will remain a symbol for freedom…a dream that I chase but will never desert… I will not forget that she embraced me when every one else rejected me… I bear in my heart the loyalty and the dream."


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Rep: Must track homeless offenders
By Dan Atkinson |
PUBLISHED: January 28, 2017 at 12:00 a.m. | UPDATED: November 17, 2018 at 12:00 a.m.
State officials aren't enforcing a "very vague" law that requires homeless sex offenders to wear GPS devices, but a state lawmaker is looking to put more teeth into the statute so cops can track down predators without fixed addresses — like those living on Boston Common.
"The statute is unclear, it's very vague, we're looking at how to amend that section and make it so it's enforced, and so everyone knows how to enforce it and does what they need to do," said state Rep. Shaunna O'Connell, R-Taunton.
"It's a risk to communities to have sex offenders with no verifiable address and no way to check up an address," O'Connell said.
The Herald reported yesterday that more than 200 Boston sex offenders are on the loose after failing to register with the state, and police are concerned that some are registered as homeless in Boston while living elsewhere. State law allows homeless offenders to list areas like Boston Common and South Station as residences, and 50 of them in Boston have what O'Connell calls "unverifiable addresses."
O'Connell, who has successfully crusaded for welfare reform in the past, said homeless sex offenders should be addressed through a 2010 law that states, "A homeless sex offender shall wear a global positioning system device, or any comparable device, administered by the commissioner of probation."
But a Probation department spokeswoman said that law didn't give enough detail for the department to enforce it.
"The statute lacks certain specificity as to how homeless sex offenders are to be identified for GPS, by whom, for how long, and under what conditions, for instance what occurs if there are violations, etc.," said spokeswoman Coria Holland, who said her department can only administer GPS devices after a court order.
"If a judge orders GPS monitoring of an individual," Holland said, "then Probation will execute the court's order."
But the lack of specificity is no excuse for the Probation department not to enforce the GPS statute, according to attorney Wendy Murphy, who specializes in sexual violence cases.
"It's hard to believe that a public official looking at a statute that not only allows but mandates that dangerous sex offenders wear GPS, that they see something vague about that statute and are doing nothing instead," Murphy said, adding that offenders could sue the state if they thought the law was unjust.
"If the Legislature gives them that authority," she said, "they should just do it."
Holland said the department does not keep data on homeless sex offenders with GPS devices because those figures change frequently as offenders gain and lose housing. And while all offenders on parole and probation are required by state law to have GPS monitoring, not every offender is on probation, meaning the state Sex Offender Registry Board is the only way to track them.
O'Connell said she wants to rework the law to give local police departments — who register sexual predators on a yearly basis and homeless offenders on a monthly basis — the power to order homeless ones without addresses to wear GPS until they find housing.
Harvey Silverglate, an attorney and civil rights expert, said he thought that plan would be constitutionally sound.
"If the state has a right to keep track of you and being homeless makes it hard if not impossible to keep track of you," Silverglate said, "then it seems like GPS is the next least intrusive imposition."
Dan Atkinson
'Date rape drug' incidents in Massachusetts: Legislator files bill to protect victims
Robbins: Being bold in uncertain times


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#Vale#Iron Ore#streaming#Chinese investment#commodity pri#Vale
Vale to enter a 30-year period of sale?
Iron ore leadersVale is contemplating raising up to $10billion from the sale of 3 percent of its future iron ore output to Chinese companies, sources ha...
Dale Benton
|Aug 8| 2 min read
Iron ore leaders Vale is contemplating raising up to $10billion from the sale of 3 percent of its future iron ore output to Chinese companies, sources have told Reuters.
As part of the sale, it is believed that Vale would receive streaming finance from the Chinese companies.
A final decision on the deal has not been reached yet, with the sources claiming that the company will sell part of its future iron ore output over a 30-year period.
Streaming is an agreement between a funder and a mining company to purchase all or part of its metals production at a low, fixed price. The agreement allows mining companies to raise capital during the current difficult climate.
Reuters reports that Vale has yet to comment on the story.


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text:
by Sandip Roy
It was the insects that got to her first. Sylvia Sellers-García says family legend has it that even as a baby in Central America, the bugs made quite an impact on her. "They are very different from insects here," says Sellers-García, a Ph.D. candidate in Latin American history at Berkeley. "They are un-ignorable." She remembers the skin-crawling horror of coming home after dark when the light had been left on. That scene finds its way into her debut novel set in Guatemala, When the Ground Turns in Its Sleep:
It carpeted the ceiling around the bulb so thickly that I could make out no single insect; they formed an undulating mass of legs, wings, and glittering eyes that emitted a dull murmur.
Sellers-García draws on her personal experiences for more than insects in her novel. Some of the characters come out of oral histories she collected there over the summer of 1999. For years, Guatemala was where Sellers-García went on family vacations. It was the place where her American father went as a college student and where he met her mother. She knew about the country's troubled history, but as she grew older, she realized her own family was caught up in it. Her mother's brother was part of the Jacobo Arbenz government overthrown in a 1954 CIA-backed coup that triggered almost four decades of armed conflict. Her uncle went into exile and then returned, only to be killed in 1972. "My mother didn't mince words about his politics," says Sellers-García. "He was a Communist. But she idealized him as well."
This tangled skein of family loyalties and political strife is at the core of her novel as well. When her narrator, Nítido Amín, returns to the rural town of Río Roto from America to look for his roots after his father's death, he is mistaken for the new priest. As the townspeople come to confession, bearing long lists of dead loved ones, he begins to comprehend how the war lives on, often in silence, in towns where everyone had been implicated on one side or the other. As Amín uncovers his own family's role he realizes that in Guatemala, memory is a minefield. "One of the costs of armed conflict is the way it looms," says Sellers-García. "In places where things cannot be named, it becomes everything un-nameable."
But speaking out, as she found out, is itself problematic. Much of the testimony at UN-led truth commissions had come from oral histories. "I realized that the people collecting—and I use that word deliberately—the oral histories were changing the nature of oral history," says Sellers-García. "People were directing their oral history to a foreign, academic audience. It's not that it wasn't true, but it was becoming finessed."
So she focused on those who didn't see themselves "as appropriate sources," perhaps because they had only witnessed the horrors second-hand or were not "subaltern voices." One of them was a priest who told her the people in his town never admitted to their role in massacres but instead repeatedly confessed illnesses to him. Another source was a doctor. Sellers-García says he was one of the funniest people she had met; his sense of humor was his way of dealing with everything he had seen. But his laughter failed him the day he told her how the people in his town used to be terrified of an unused well. He couldn't understand why until he discovered that a military officer had used it as a repository for the head of someone he had killed. "When he visited the town he would pull the head out and play soccer with it in the town center," explains Sellers-García.
In her novel no one plays soccer with decapitated heads, but the silence of horrors past hangs thickly over Río Roto. Sellers-García, a Marshall Scholar, remembers how she would be in tears in the library at Oxford just reading about Guatemala. She realized that writing a thesis was not enough. "I didn't want to just do something that would be read by my three professors," she says. "I wanted to create something with emotional weight. This is not an activist book. But it's a way to pass the word on, to name things."
Beauty and the Pest
New research supports old-fashioned pest management. If the California vineyards are looking more vibrant than usual, it might be due to blossoming new research by Berkeley agroecologists. For more than three years, they've been working with grape growers in Napa, San Joaquin, and Fresno counties to plant flowers that attract pest-eating insects, as part of research […]
A Bug's Life: Surviving Disease in the Colonies
Professor Neil Tsutsui talks hygiene, personal sacrifice, and other lessons humans can learn from eusocial insects.
For Love of Roaches: Confessions from an Entomophile
I live with my boyfriend, Chris, in a rent controlled, one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco. It's cozy, old, and definitely not big enough to fit both my extensive rock/bone/shell collection and his growing assemblage of street art—but overall, it feels clean. Or at least it did. Until about a year ago, when we found our […]


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The question is a broad one, to say the least. Although not a philosophical question, when sitting down to really think about the next steps in internet communication, the answers are vast. Perhaps the future of the internet will be the ability to access high-speed bandwidth in rural communities. Maybe it will be the ability to have immediate, reliable communications after natural disasters take place. It could involve being able to video conference one another from the middle of the ocean, or from the very peak of a mountaintop. One thing is for certain, however; there is a company—Airborne Wireless Network (ABWN)—whose technology is leading the way to making a better reality when it comes to internet communication.
Airborne Wireless Network is a "quilt" made up of original ideas, tremendous skill, and the tenacious and hard-working individuals who are needed to bring it all to fruition. This is the company that will introduce a Wholesale Carrier Network by utilizing commercial aircraft as "mini-satellites," thus creating a virtual airborne worldwide web.
Think of what this will mean for the future of the internet. ABWN's once mega-idea is on schedule to become a true "Superhighway," turning wireless data-connectivity on its head, so to speak. Being the first and only true airborne broadband pipeline, there is nothing that can't be accomplished when ABWN achieves its primary goal.
Rural areas will be able to "link" with others without problems. When a natural disaster strikes and people have to have a way to connect, this is the network that will provide first responders across the globe with higher quality services. Emergency and disaster deployable systems and Defense communications will improve and operate faster because of the higher bandwidth and quality signals. There will be easier access closer to the service areas in need, and it would be supplied at a lower cost to under-served markets: lower cost, but better performance. This is literally a system that will change the face of business, security, and industry in the coming years.
Being a meshed network, one where all nodes are connected via multiple links, ABWN's "Superhighway" in the skies will not suffer from the single points of failure that cell-tower and satellite systems succumb to. With ABWN's system, if a link happens to be interrupted, the signal will be redirected to the next participating aircraft, ship, or earth-station in the chain. Not only that but as new and more efficient data-transmission technologies are created, adding to or upgrading this system will be simple.
By providing live streaming to monitor the health of systems on planes, locomotives, ships, and more, the Wi-Fi quality of service will be heightened, which will even allow for a better passenger experience. Not to mention, the onboard hardware can support aircraft and bring far more safety to the skies. The "roadblocks" that currently stand in the way of our constant need to improve business, industry, and defense will finally be broken down.
So…what does the future of the internet hold? The answer becomes quite simple. Airborne Wireless Network is the future, and their mission – connectivity for all – is exactly what the future will bring.


As it did with virtually every other sporting event scheduled in the Carolinas, Hurricane Florence wreaked havoc on the FEI World Equestrian Games last weekend.
Two events in the prestigious competition had to be canceled because of wet weather and soggy grounds at Tryon International Equestrian Center near Asheville.
Sunday's Helgstrand Dressage Freestyle was originally moved to Monday morning, but because conditions had not improved enough to ensure the safety of the horses and riders, the decision was made not to hold the event. With no other scheduling options before the horses are scheduled to leave Tryon, the competition will not be made up.
The cancellation does not affect the Olympic qualification process, which was completed Thursday with the U.S., Germany, Great Britain, Sweden, Netherlands and Spain all earning trips to Tokyo in 2020.
The Freestyle wasn't the only event that fell victim to the elements.
On Wednesday, the Endurance race was also scrapped after a controversial false start that saw several teams misdirected in the wrong direction. The event was halted at the first gate and was to be restarted at that point later in the day.
Of the six events that were contested during the first week of the 13-day international event, held every four years at the halfway mark of the Olympic cycle, the U.S. leads the medal count with five. Germany and Great Britain, however, lead the field with two gold medals each.
The Americans' only gold medal to this point came in Reining, with the team of Casey Deary on Heavy Duty Chex, Cade McCutcheon on Custom Made Gun, Daniel L. Huss on Ms. Dreamy and Jordan Larson on ARC Gunnabeabigstar amassed 681 points to easily outdistance Belgium and Germany for the title.
The 18-year-old McCutcheon, on his grandfather's horse, led the way as the U.S. won the event for the third straight Equestrian games.
Huss earned silver and McCutcheon bronze in the individual Reining competition. The U.S. also won silver in the Dressage Grand Prix team competition.
The World Equestrian Games will continue through Sunday. Information about scheduling and tickets can be found on the event's official website at Tryon2018.com.
Tryon is only the second North American venue to hold the major international championship event, joining the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, which hosted in 2010. Other previous hosts include Stockholm (1990), The Hague, Netherlands (1994), Rome (1998), Jerez de la Frontera, Spain (2002), Aachen, Germany (2006), and Normandy, France (2014).


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Q: Add & Delete an appointment / calendar entry via .ics in Outlook Calendar PART 1
I am working on an .ics file which generates an event/appointment in Outlook:
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
BEGIN:VEVENT
STATUS:TENTATIVE
.....
..........
DESCRIPTION:Absence Request
SEQUENCE:0
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

The user gets the email with the .ics file attached.
When opened, the user gets the following details:
Screenshot of the ics file
Question:
How to disable the .ics so it does not allow to make multiple entries when the exact appointment (date) does exist?
PART 2
Is it also possible to delete an entry from the Outlook Calendar via the .ics file? I have tried with the following code but it does not work:
BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
BEGIN:VEVENT
METHOD:CANCEL
STATUS:CANCELLED
.....
..........
DESCRIPTION:Absence Request
SEQUENCE:1
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

The cancel meeting button responds but does not actually remove the entry from the Calendar. Yes, the user can go manually and delete it from the calendar - which works fine but thought there may be an option to do via the .ics file.
I also read about the UID having to match the event but this is where I am also lacking of expertise of how to pull it from there.
Any ideas or suggestions ?

A: Bucki, This is the difference between importing events and subscribing to a calendar (even one with one event only).
When people click on an actual ics file, calendar apps will 'import' the event/s.  I think these days some have the smarts to check the UID and not duplicate but many do not.  It depends on the app how well they attempt to detect a duplicate.  Strictly speaking one is just importing the data into one's own event in a calendar which one can then edit as one pleases.
If an ics URL is sent (not the actual file) most apps will 'subscribe' to the URL. IE:  they will create a separate calendar in the individuals calendar app.  The app will check for updates on that ics url regularly.  In that case the UID and SEQUENCE can be used to indicate a later update.  These are not editable by the user.