text:
package org.myrobotlab.service;

import java.io.BufferedWriter;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.Serializable;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.Calendar;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.SimpleTimeZone;

import org.jivesoftware.smack.SmackException.NotConnectedException;
import org.jivesoftware.smack.XMPPException;
import org.myrobotlab.codec.CodecUtils;
import org.myrobotlab.framework.Message;
// import org.myrobotlab.framework.Message;
import org.myrobotlab.framework.Service;
import org.myrobotlab.io.FileIO;
import org.myrobotlab.io.FindFile;
import org.myrobotlab.logging.Level;
import org.myrobotlab.logging.LoggerFactory;
import org.myrobotlab.logging.Logging;
import org.myrobotlab.logging.LoggingFactory;
import org.myrobotlab.programab.Response;
import org.myrobotlab.service.Xmpp.XmppMsg;
import org.slf4j.Logger;

// FIXME - use Peers !
public class Shoutbox extends Service {

  private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
  public final static Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(Shoutbox.class);

  public static class DefaultNameProvider implements NameProvider {
    @Override
    public String getName(String token) {
      return token;
    }
  }

  public interface NameProvider {
    String getName(String token);
  }

  /**
   * POJO Shout is the most common message structure being sent from client to
   * WSServer and from WSServer broadcasted to clients - therefore instead of a
   * seperate system message we will have system data components of the shout -
   * these are to display server data on the clients
   */
  public static class Shout implements Serializable {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
    public String from;
    public String type;
    public String msg;
    public String color;
    public String ip; // TODO change to key
    public String clientId;

    public String time;

  }

  static final public String TYPE_SYSTEM = "TYPE_SYSTEM";
  static final public String TYPE_USER = "TYPE_USER";
  static final public String ORGIN_XMPP = "ORGIN_XMPP";
  static final public String ORGIN_WEB = "ORGIN_WEB";

  transient static NameProvider nameProvider = new DefaultNameProvider();

  /*
   * Core to managing the connections are the keys The keys for websockets are
   * defined as remoteIp:remotePort - unfortunately these are null on disconnect
   * so a seperate lookup needs to be utilized The keys for xmpp "buddies" are
   * simply their jabber ids
   *
   * A Connection's UserId is a "user friendly" identification of the user using
   * that connection
   *
   */

  static public String makeKey(String ws) {
    return String.format("%s:%s", ws, ws);
  }

  transient ProgramAB chatbot;

  transient Xmpp xmpp;
  transient ArrayList<String> xmppRelays = new ArrayList<String>();
  transient ArrayList<String> chatbotNames = new ArrayList<String>();

  transient HashMap<String, String> aliases = new HashMap<String, String>();
  int imageDefaultHeight = 200;

  int imageDefaultWidth = 200;

  // FIXME - the amount of methods you DONT want exposed will be dwarfed by
  // the number you do - So, Security
  // will need to wildcard or list a filter of excludes

  // FIXME - standard interfaces for all GATEWAY SERVICES - onMsg()
  // addListener()
  // FIXME - Ma. Vo. name link on shoutbox
  // FIXME - decoding or encoing on specific GATEWAY Interface - e.g. ws or
  // xmpp
  // FIXME - login, Security, Authentication & Authorization done through the
  // Security service - restrictions only at Gateway
  // FIXME - impersonate mr.turing ?

  // FIXME make userShout userShoutAll systemShout systemShoutAll

  // TODO - system commands - refresh / clear / reload / history /
  // resize-format / stats / show times / set my color
  // FIXME - define client & server - system and user commands
  // TODO - number of sessions / authenticated / guests - query deeper on each
  // user - stats - geo-location
  // FIXME - permissions - erase my chat - moderate others
  // scrollable - non scrollable - set wrap - menu display - Angular.js /
  // jquery
  // levels of authorization / admin
  // hover over - display - time other (user) info
  // TODO - auto resize images
  // TODO - add modify or delete own shout
  // TODO - days alive ! - stats (poll thread - only pushes on changes)
  // TODO - force logout command
  // FIXME - color options

  // transient Connections conns = new Connections();

  int maxShoutsInMemory = 200;

  ArrayList<Shout> shouts = new ArrayList<Shout>();

  HashMap<String, Object> clients = new HashMap<String, Object>();
  int msgCount;

  transient FileWriter fw = null;

  transient BufferedWriter bw = null;

  transient protected SimpleDateFormat tsFormatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMddHHmmssSSS");

  transient protected Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance(new SimpleTimeZone(0, "GMT"));

  int maxArchiveRecordCount = 50;

  public Shoutbox(String n, String id) {
    super(n, id);
    chatbotNames.add("@mrt");
    chatbotNames.add("@mr.turing");
    chatbotNames.add("@mrturing");
  }

  public String addXMPPRelay(String user) {
    xmppRelays.add(user);
    // xmpp.sendMessage("now shoutbox relay", user); FIXME
    return user;
  }

  public void archive(Shout shout) {

    try {
      File dir = new File(getName());
      // archive chats
      if (!dir.exists()) {
        dir.mkdir();
      }

      if (fw == null) {
        String filename = String.format("%s/shouts.%s.js", getName(), tsFormatter.format(new Date()));
        File archive = new File(filename);

        fw = new FileWriter(archive.getAbsoluteFile());
        bw = new BufferedWriter(fw);

        String d = String.format("%s", CodecUtils.toJson(shout));
        bw.write(d);
        return;
      }

      String d = String.format(",%s", CodecUtils.toJson(shout));
      bw.write(d);
      bw.flush();

      if (msgCount % maxArchiveRecordCount == 0) {
        close(bw);
        fw = null;
        bw = null;
      }

    } catch (Exception e) {
      Logging.logError(e);
    }
  }

  private void chatWithChatbot(String foundName, Shout shout) throws IOException {
    // clean found name - we don't want to send @mrt etc to Alice 2.0
    String msg = shout.msg.replace(foundName, "");
    chatbot.getResponse(shout.from, msg);
  }

  // WTFU - publishShout does not use this .. why??
  public Shout createShout(String type, String msg) {
    Shout shout = new Shout();
    shout.type = type;
    shout.msg = msg;
    return shout;
  }

  public String findChatBotName(String msg) {
    for (String name : chatbotNames) {
      if (msg.contains(name)) {
        return name;
      }
    }
    return null;
  }

  public void getXMPPRelays() {
    Shout shout = createShout(TYPE_USER, Arrays.toString(xmppRelays.toArray()));
    shout.from = "mr.turing";
    invoke("publishShout", shout);
  }

  /**
   * archiving restores last json file back into newly started shoutbox
   */
  public void loadShouts() {
    try {
      File latest = null;
      if (!new File(getName()).exists()) {
        log.info("{} does not exist - will not load previous shouts", getName());
        return;
      }
      // restore the last file back into memory
      List<File> files = FindFile.find(getName(), "shouts.*.js", false, false);

      for (int i = 0; i < files.size(); ++i) {
        File f = files.get(i);
        if (latest == null) {
          latest = f;
        }
        if (f.lastModified() > latest.lastModified()) {
          latest = f;
        }
      }

      if (latest == null) {
        log.info("no files found to restore");
        return;
      }

      info("loading latest file %s", latest);

      String json = String.format("[%s]", FileIO.toString(latest.getAbsoluteFile()));

      Shout[] saved = CodecUtils.fromJson(json, Shout[].class);

      for (int i = 0; i < saved.length; ++i) {
        shouts.add(saved[i]);
      }

    } catch (Exception e) {
      Logging.logError(e);
    }
  }

  public void setNickName(String nickname) {
    // WebGui web
    log.info("setNickName {}", nickname);
  }

  public void mimicTuring(String msg) {
    Shout shout = createShout(TYPE_USER, msg);
    shout.from = "mr.turing";
    invoke("publishShout", shout);
  }

  // FIXME - refactor ---(all msgs from non websockets e.g. chatbot | xmpp |
  // other --to--> websockets
  // FIXME - onChatBotResponse
  // onProgramAB response - onChatBotResponse ???
  public Response onResponse(Response response) {
    log.info("chatbot shouting");

    // String r = resizeImage(response.msg);
    String r = response.msg;

    // conns.addConnection("mr.turing", "mr.turing");

    Shout shout = createShout(TYPE_USER, r);
    shout.from = "mr.turing";
    invoke("publishShout", shout);
    return response;
  }

  // FIXME FIXME FIXME - not normalized with publishShout(WebSocket) :PPPP
  // FIXME - must fill in your name - "Greg Perry" somewhere..
  public void onXMPPMsg(XmppMsg xmppMsg) {
    log.info("Xmpp - {} {}", xmppMsg.from, xmppMsg.msg);

    // not exactly the same model as onConnect - so we try to add each time
    String user = "me";// FIXME
    // xmpp.getEntry(xmppMsg.msg.getFrom()).getName();
    // conns.addConnection(xmppMsg.msg.getFrom(), user);

    Shout shout = createShout(TYPE_USER, xmppMsg.msg);
    shout.from = user;

    invoke("publishShout", shout);
  }

  /*
   * shout of minimal complexity
   *
   */
  public void shout(String msg) {
    // an optimized shout - there is client id & auth stuff which should be
    // supplied at the service level
    // a client should simply shout('my text') and all the other parts be
    // filled in on overloaded methods
    shout("test", msg);
  }

  /*
   * max complexity shout
   *
   */
  public void shout(String clientId, String msg) {
    Shout shout = createShout(TYPE_USER, msg);
    shout.clientId = clientId;
    shout.from = clientId; // ????
    invoke("publishShout", shout);
  }

  // EXCHANGE need "session-key" to do a - connection/session-key for user
  // FIXME NOT NORMALIZED with onXMPPMsg() !!!!
  // public void publishShout(WSMsg wsmsg) { is Message necessary here?
  public Shout publishShout(Shout shout) throws NotConnectedException, XMPPException, IOException {
    log.info("publishShout {} {}", shout.from, shout.msg);

    String foundName = findChatBotName(shout.msg);
    if (foundName != null) {
      chatWithChatbot(foundName, shout);
    }

    shouts.add(shout);
    // Message out = createMessage("shoutclient", "publishShout",
    // CodecUtils.toJson(shout));
    // TODO: what do we do with the result of this method?
    Message.createMessage(getName(), "shoutclient", "publishShout", CodecUtils.toJson(shout));
    // webgui.sendToAll(out);

    if (xmpp != null && !TYPE_SYSTEM.equals(shout.type)) {
      for (int i = 0; i < xmppRelays.size(); ++i) {
        String relayName = xmppRelays.get(i);
        String jabberID = null;// FIXME xmpp.getJabberID(relayName);
        // don't echo to self
        // if (!key.startsWith(jabberID)) { filter took out mrt and
        // other activity !
        log.info("sending from {} {} to xmpp client - relayName [{}] jabberID [{}] shout.msg [{}]", Thread.currentThread().getId(), shout.from, relayName, jabberID, shout.msg);
        xmpp.sendMessage(String.format("%s: %s", shout.from, shout.msg), jabberID);
        // }
      }
    }

    archive(shout);

    return shout;
  }

  public void quickStart(String xmpp, String password) throws Exception {
    startXMPP(xmpp, password);
    startChatBot();

    addXMPPRelay("Keith McGerald");
    aliases.put("Keith McGerald", "kmcgerald");
    // addXMPPRelay("Orbous Mundus");
    // addXMPPRelay("Alessandro Didonna");
    // addXMPPRelay("Dwayne Williams");
    // addXMPPRelay("Aatur Mehta");
    addXMPPRelay("Greg Perry");
    aliases.put("Greg Perry", "GroG");

    addTask(30 * 60 * 1000, "savePredicates");
  }

  public String removeXMPPRelay(String user) {
    xmppRelays.remove(user);
    // conns.remove(xmpp.getJabberID(user));
    return user;
  }

  // TODO: when this gets used we could add it back in
  // private String resizeImage(String shout) {
  // int x = shout.indexOf("<img");
  // if (x > 0) {
  // int space = shout.indexOf(" ", x);
  // int endTag = shout.indexOf(">", x);
  // int insert = (space < endTag) ? space : endTag;
  // String r = String.format("%s width=%d height=%d %s", shout.substring(0,
  // insert), imageDefaultWidth, imageDefaultHeight, shout.substring(insert));
  // log.info(String.format("=========== RESIZE ============ %s", r));
  // }
  //
  // return shout;
  // }

  public void savePredicates() {
    try {
      log.info("saving Predicates");
      if (chatbot != null) {
        chatbot.savePredicates();
      }
    } catch (Exception e) {
      Logging.logError(e);
    }
  }

  // --------- Xmpp END ------------

  // String lastShoutMsg = null;

  public void sendTo(String type, String key, Object data) {
    Shout shout = createShout(TYPE_SYSTEM, CodecUtils.toJson(data));
    String msgString = CodecUtils.toJson(shout);
    // TODO: do something with the "sendTo" message?
    // Message sendTo = createMessage("shoutclient", "publishShout", msgString);
    Message.createMessage(getName(), "shoutclient", "publishShout", msgString);

  }

  public void setNameProvider(NameProvider nameProvider2) {
    nameProvider = nameProvider2;
  }

  public NameProvider setNameProvider(String classname) throws ClassNotFoundException, InstantiationException, IllegalAccessException {
    Class<?> theClass = Class.forName(classname);
    nameProvider = (NameProvider) theClass.newInstance();
    return nameProvider;
  }

  // TO PEER OR NOT TO PEER THAT IS THE QUESTION...
  public void startChatBot() throws IOException {
    if (chatbot != null) {
      error("chatbot already started");
      return;
    }
    chatbot = (ProgramAB) Runtime.start("chatbot", "ProgramAB");
    chatbot.startSession("ProgramAB", "alice2");
    chatbot.addResponseListener(this);
  }

  @Override
  public void startService() {
    super.startService();

    try {
      // TODO FIGURE THIS OUT :P OATH ?
      String provider = "org.myrobotlab.client.DrupalNameProvider";
      log.info("attempting to set name provider - {}", provider);
      setNameProvider(provider);
    } catch (Exception e) {
      error(e);
    }

    loadShouts();
  }

  // ---- outbound ---->

  /*
   *
   *
   * CONCEPTS systemBroadcast - system needs to send to all system message list
   * - system sends to a list of users system message channel -
   *
   * channel - a group of recievers & senders
   *
   * Authenticaiton & Authorization - OATH query to Drupal?
   *
   * DATA timezone - set time zode - use UTC for all server data
   *
   * // system related public int connectionCount; public int userCount; public
   * int guestCount; public int msgCount;
   *
   * getVersion
   */

  // --------- Xmpp BEGIN ------------
  public void startXMPP(String user, String password) throws Exception {
    if (xmpp == null) {
      xmpp = (Xmpp) Runtime.start("xmpp", "Xmpp");
    }

    xmpp.connect("myrobotlab.org", 5222, user, password);
    xmpp.addXmppMsgListener(this);

  }

  public static void main(String args[]) {
    LoggingFactory.init(Level.INFO);

    try {
      Shoutbox shoutbox = (Shoutbox) Runtime.start("shoutbox", "Shoutbox");
      Shout shout = new Shout();
      shout.from = "Fred";
      shout.msg = "Hello I'm Fred";

      shoutbox.shouts.add(shout);

      shout = new Shout();
      shout.from = "George";
      shout.msg = "Hi I'm George";
      shoutbox.shouts.add(shout);

      shoutbox.createShout(TYPE_SYSTEM, "this is a test shout");
      shoutbox.createShout(TYPE_SYSTEM, "this is another test shout");
      shoutbox.createShout(TYPE_SYSTEM, "more test shouting");

      Runtime.start("webgui", "WebGui");

    } catch (Exception e) {
      Logging.logError(e);
    }

  }

}


text:
United States Nuclear Industry Council
The Leading Global Nuclear Energy Business Consortium
Clean Energy Leadership
NIC At A Glance
NIC News Archives
ClearPath, USNIC Applaud House Energy Advancing HA-LEU, NRC Modernization Bills
WASHINGTON, JULY 12, 2018 -- ClearPath Action and the U.S. Nuclear Industry Council (USNIC) applaud House Energy and Commerce Committee approval of two bills that would spur deployment of advanced nuclear technologies.
That includes a bipartisan bill led by Reps. Bill Flores (R-Texas) and Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.) to direct DOE to establish a program supporting availability of high assay low enriched uranium (HA-LEU) via public-private partnerships to address regulatory and market challenges.
ClearPath Action advisor and former NRC Commissioner Jeffrey Merrifield co-authored a recent white paper sponsored by ClearPath and USNIC that urged lawmakers, policymakers and the NRC to take prompt steps to ensure adequate supply of HA-LEU or risk continued progress in deploying the next generation of U.S. nuclear power.
Merrifield and URENCO USA President Melissa Mann testified in support of the House Committee measure on behalf of ClearPath and USNIC at a May 22 hearing.
"We welcome the House Energy and Commerce Committee's timely action on facilitating the deployment of promising advanced nuclear technologies and concrete support for the availability of high-assay low enriched uranium for these reactors, USNIC President and CEO David Blee said.
The House Energy panel also approved the bipartisan NUKE Act (H.R. 1320) from Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) and Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) that is a commonsense step to making further improvements at rightsizing NRC's workforce and budget. It does this by establishing reasonable deadlines for major applications and other efforts to streamline licensing, and authorizes studies to reconsider outdated regulations of the Atomic Energy Act.
"Both of these bills address critical lapses in the ability of the U.S. to stay on pace with China and Russia in the potentially trillion-dollar global advanced nuclear energy market," ClearPath Executive Director Rich Powell said.
Darren Goode
ClearPath Action
goode@clearpathaction.org
About ClearPath Action
Founded by businessman Jay Faison, ClearPath Action's mission is to accelerate conservative clean energy solutions. To advance the mission, ClearPath Action develops cutting-edge policy and messaging and works with policymakers and industry.
About USNIC
USNIC is the leading U.S. business consortium for new nuclear and the promotion of the American supply chain globally. These views represent the specific views of the co-authors and the consensus of the Council but do not necessarily represent the specific views of individual USNIC members.
July 12 Full House E&C Committee Markup of H.R. 6140 and H.R. 1320
June 20 ClearPath-USNIC Joint Letter on HA-LEU
June 21 House Energy Subcommittee Markup on H.R. 6140 and H.R. 1320
May 22 House Energy Subcommittee Hearing Link
1317 F Street, NW

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
You are at:Home»Latest»Brendan's three deals, Morgan's homecoming and a homesick rumour
Brendan's three deals, Morgan's homecoming and a homesick rumour
By Editor	 13 September, 2018 No Comments
BRENDAN RODGERS revealed today that Celtic are closing in on announcing three contract extensions for Celtic stars Scott Brown, Leigh Griffiths and James Forrest.
"We are pretty close on Leigh. He clearly wants to be here, we want him to be here, so that will be good news. We think that is not too far away," Brendan said on his Number 9. Moving on to his inspirational skipper, the Celtic manager had this news.
"Scott has made it clear he wants to be here and I am sure there will be a deal done pretty soon on that. He is quite relaxed about it. He knows what we think of him here at the club, so, hopefully, that will be done," he said, before moving on to the Celtic right winger, Forrest.
"James and his people will be speaking with the club and likewise a player we would love to extend here because he has been absolutely brilliant in my time."
Is it only us that's heard that home-sickness can result in a much sooner than expected move 'home'?
Meanwhile on the other side of the Erskine Bridge, Lewis Morgan will return 'home' to St Mirren on Friday evening as part of the Celtic squad on the hunt for three points and a few goals that could take the champions to the top of the league ahead of Hearts' trip to Fir Park on Saturday.
The winger has been injured recently but is close to being ready to challenge for a place in the Celtic squad.
"I feel fit now that I'm back so hopefully by the time the St Mirren game comes along I can play a part," Morgan said. "I'm approaching 100 per cent now and it felt good to play a bounce game behind closed doors last week.
"I have fond memories of being at St Mirren. I had ups and downs during my time there but the last season I was there was great. I know they've gone through a turbulent start to the season, so I'm sure they'll be looking for a reaction as well. It'll be weird going back but it's something I'm looking forward to," the ex-Saint stated.
Morgan is hopeful that he will get a warm reception from both sets of supporters of Friday.
"It would be nice to get a good a reception. I think for the most part the fans took to me. I'm sure, as is the case anywhere, that there are people who think I should have done things differently, but I'd imagine I'll get a good reception but it's not something I'm going to worry about."
Morgan, who was speaking to The Celtic View, also said a word or two in praise of his former boss Jack Ross who is now manager at Sunderland.
"I was happy for my old gaffer, Jack Ross, in that he got his well-deserved moved. Sunderland's a massive club and I'm sure he'll get things going in the right direction there. I loved my time playing under him and I'm sure the boys at St Mirren were hoping he'd stay but you can't stand in his way. He's being doing well down there and it's good to see.
"The squad's completely changed since I was there. I enjoy playing against any opponent really. There's still the same core of boys there who will know me well and will know how I like to play so that'll be a good challenge if I do get some minutes under my belt."
"The last manager came in and changed quite a lot. I suppose that's fair enough as different managers have different philosophies, but it didn't seem to work out for them. They're going to be looking for a reaction now so they'll be taking that up a notch, and when you play a club like Celtic opponents find another level.
"They have a great support and it is a great club. Hopefully they do well this year but you have to produce things on the pitch to get the fans behind you. That's something the boys at St Mirren will try to do in order to get that good backing they had last year."
A sing song in the crush… pic.twitter.com/ycgSA21ZuY
— The Celtic Star Magazine (@CelticStarMag) September 13, 2018
Please follow us on twitter.
Previous ArticleSFA Rule Book Crisis: 'You never know who the referees are or what their allegiances might be,' Celtic goalie
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text:
Q: how to create plotly histogram with two columns I have dataframe like this
df = pd.DataFrame({'_3321131460': ['col1', 'col1', 'col2'], '_3952604542': ['col1', 'col2', 'col2']})
df

So want to create graph like this

one graph but x are two columns and legent have two columns data
And y is count But know how to do that
So one columns histogram, another columns histogram in one graph
But have same legend

A: You can transform your df with melt in order to have the column names in their own column:
import pandas as pd
import plotly.express as px

df = pd.DataFrame({'_3321131460': ['col1', 'col1', 'col2'], '_3952604542': ['col1', 'col2', 'col2']})
df_t = df.melt()

This will have the following form (feel free to rename the columns to get fitting labels on your final plot):
      variable value
0  _3321131460  col1
1  _3321131460  col1
2  _3321131460  col2
3  _3952604542  col1
4  _3952604542  col2
5  _3952604542  col2

Then use px.bar:
fig = px.bar(df_t, x='variable', color='value', barmode="group")
fig.show()

Output:

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
The Hobbit Chapter 6 Short Summary
Directed by Peter Jackson. With Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom. Gandalf and Aragorn lead the World of Men against Sauron's army to draw his gaze from Frodo and Sam as they approach Mount Doom with the One Ring.
A summary of Symbols in J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. Learn exactly what happened in this chapter, scene, or section of The Hobbit and what it means. Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans.
Classic Literature. Revisit the classic novels you read (or didn't read) in school with reviews, analysis, and study guides of the most acclaimed and beloved books from around the world.
The Hobbit quiz that tests what you know. Perfect prep for The Hobbit quizzes and tests you might have in school.
The information given to media, and covered widely from Entertainment Weekly to the Associated press to The Hollywood Reporter, uses "Lord of the Rings" seven times in six paragraphs. ends with THE.
But even in this task Grant, in 1866, regarded his former rival as falling short. but the 6-foot-2-inch Longstreet had to wait until 1998 to receive a smaller-scale statue hidden in the woods that.
(I'm almost tempted to start again at a chapter a week.) So this isn't a standard speculative summary where I summarize your clever thoughts, this is all me. Kvothe has had six cloaks in the. of.
Tumblr is a place to express yourself, discover yourself, and bond over the stuff you love. It's where your interests connect you with your people.
Bilbo Baggins is the hero in The Hobbit, a high fantasy novel by J.R.R. Tolkien. He is a hobbit, one of the diminutive, pacifistic residents of the Shire. Although Bilbo Baggins loves his home, he.
Meet Leo. Leo is an eight-month-old chocolate lab puppy. Lab is short for Labrador retriever, which is a kind of dog breed.Being a chocolate lab means that he's a beautiful brown color, kind of.
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit was first published in 1937. The high fantasy novel tells the story of Bilbo Baggins, a hobbit, and his adventures with the wizard Gandalf and a band of dwarves as they.
6.00am: Good morning. It's Hélène Mulholland kicking off the morning as the results continue to roll in. Here's Andrew Sparrow's summary. The 2010 general election has resulted in a hung parliament.
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text:
Israelis Claim Secret Agreement With US
Americans insist no deal made on settlement growth
By Glenn Kessler
The Washington Post 24 April 2008
In-depth Report: PALESTINE
A letter that President Bush personally delivered to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon four years ago has emerged as a significant obstacle to the president's efforts to forge a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians during his last year in office.
Ehud Olmert, the current Israeli prime minister, said this week that Bush's letter gave the Jewish state permission to expand the West Bank settlements that it hopes to retain in a final peace deal, even though Bush's peace plan officially calls for a freeze of Israeli settlements across Palestinian territories on the West Bank. In an interview this week, Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weissglas, said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed this understanding in a secret agreement reached between Israel and the United States in the spring of 2005, just before Israel withdrew from Gaza.
U.S. officials say no such agreement exists, and in recent months Rice has publicly criticized even settlement expansion on the outskirts of Jerusalem, which Israel does not officially count as settlements. But as peace negotiations have stepped up in recent months, so has the pace of settlement construction, infuriating Palestinian officials, and Washington has taken no punitive action against Israel for its settlement efforts.
Israeli officials say they have clear guidance from Bush administration officials to continue building settlements, as long as it meets carefully negotiated criteria, even though those understandings appear to contradict U.S. policy.
Many experts say new settlement construction undermines the political standing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas – who is to meet with Bush today at the White House – and adds to Palestinian cynicism about the peace process. Palestinians view the settlements as an Israeli effort to claim Palestinian lands, and in a meeting yesterday with Rice, Abbas said settlement construction was "one of the greatest obstacles" to a peace deal.
U.S. and Israeli officials privately argue that Israel has greatly restricted settlement growth outside the settlements it hopes to retain in a peace deal with the Palestinians, and Olmert has said Israel has stopped building new settlements and confiscating Palestinian lands.
Housing starts – not counting the Jerusalem settlements – have declined 33 percent since 2003, according to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics. But officials say it is politically damaging for Olmert to admit that, so instead he publicly emphasizes that he is adding to the settlements, which now house about 450,000 Israelis.
"It was clear from day one to Abbas, Rice and Bush that construction would continue in population concentrations – the areas mentioned in Bush's 2004 letter," Olmert declared in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, published Sunday. "I say this again today: Beitar Illit will be built, Gush Etzion will be built; there will be construction in Pisgat Ze'ev and in the Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem," referring to new settlement expansion plans. "It's clear that these areas will remain under Israeli control in any future settlement."
In a key sentence in Bush's 2004 letter, the president stated, "In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949."
In a companion letter to "reconfirm" U.S.-Israeli understandings, Weissglas wrote Rice that restrictions on the growth of settlements would be made "within the agreed principles of settlement activities," which would include "a better definition of the construction line of settlements" on the West Bank. A joint U.S.-Israeli team would "jointly define the construction line of each of the settlements."
Weissglas said that the letter built upon a prior understanding between then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, which would allow Israel to build up settlements within existing construction lines. But Powell denied that. "I never agreed to it," he said in an e-mail.
Daniel Kurtzer, then the U.S. ambassador to Israel, said he argued at the time against accepting the Weissglas letter. "I thought it was a really bad idea," he said. "It would legitimize the settlements, and it gave them a blank check." In the end, Kurtzer said the White House never followed up with the plan to define construction lines. "Washington lost interest in it when it became clear it would not be easy to do," he said.
National security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, at a news briefing in January, suggested that Bush's 2004 letter was aimed at helping Sharon win domestic approval for the Gaza withdrawal. "The president obviously still stands by that letter of April of 2004, but you need to look at it, obviously, in the context of which it was issued," he said.
Weissglas said that in 2005, when Sharon was poised to remove settlers from Gaza, the Bush administration made a secret agreement – not disclosed to the Palestinians – that Israel could add homes in settlements it expected to keep, as long as the construction was dictated by market demand, not subsidies. He said the agreement was necessary because Sharon needed the support of municipal leaders in the main West Bank settlements. The settlement leaders, he said, focused on the "inner contradiction" of Bush's letter, mainly that it made no sense to have a settlement freeze in places that Bush said would become part of Israel.
Weissglas said he then negotiated a "verbal understanding" with deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams that would permit new construction in those key settlements; Rice and Sharon then approved the Weissglas-Abrams deal. "I do not recall that we had any kind of written formulation," Weissglas said.
"There is no understanding," said White House National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
Indeed, as settlement starts soared after the Middle East peace conference in Annapolis in November, Rice said "the United States doesn't make a distinction" among settlement locations.
Powell said that in 2004, he did not anticipate that Bush's letter would be perceived as a green light by Israel for adding to the settlements. "I consistently spoke against settlement growth, but as you know all I could do is talk against it," Powell said. "There would be no consequences and there still aren't."
The original source of this article is The Washington Post
Copyright © Glenn Kessler, The Washington Post, 2008
Articles by: Glenn Kessler


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Rating Agencies Finally Get The NRUC Wake Up Call
When Zero Hedge first discussed the plethora of problems at National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corporation (aka NRUC) over 4 months ago, two things happened very quickly: the company's CDS blew up from 100 bps to over 250 bps overnight, and the company promptly issued a derogatory press release ridiculing everyone and everything associated with Zero Hedge (they were the first but certainly not the last). Immediately thereafter, liked under the advice of counsel, NRUC promptly retracted the press release but not before The Business Insider managed to keep a record for posterity. Among the amusing points NRUC's PR touched upon were the following:
On March 8, an anonymous blogger who goes by the alias Tyler Durden (the same name as Brad Pitt's psychopathic character in the movie "Fight Club") wrote an unflattering opinion of CFC securities in his blog "Zero Hedge." The blog, which circulated across the Internet, complained that CFC's credit default swaps (CDS) were trading too tightly to U.S. Treasuries, a sign of strength. [TD: Looks like the analysis the "circulated across the Internet" hit on a nerve or two, as investors were focused not so much on certain psychopathic characters but rather on the fundamental risk I had exposed, and the company's CDS exploded by 150% in a matter of minutes.]
"The blogger repeats the same old allegations made a few years ago, which are every bit as flawed today as they were then," said Mike O'Brien, CFC vice president of Corporate Communications. "We do not believe the blogger's report reflects an understanding of our financial condition or our results of operations, cashflow, ability to service our debt obligations or the strength of our loan portfolio."
As the Company's CDS has flatlined at a level well over double where it was before Zero Hedge analyzed NRUC, I am not so sure just how flawed my allegations may have been. I will not recap my initial thesis here: interested readers can read the full analysis here (and follow up reports here, here, here and here) and decide for themselves just how ridiculously cheap the company's CDS is, even in a case when the US backstops every single asset in the history of utility cooperatives.
What is notable is that whereas no self-respecting PR department should care about Zero Hedge's deranged ramblings (not so sure about CDS traders), and only a real rating agency like Egan-Jones has NRUC rated objectively (single B), one of the "Big 3" woke up on Friday in an action that could pose substantial challenges to NRUC's PR department. Fitch, which rates NRUC's MTNs at A and its Sub Notes at A-, came out with a report in which it noted it was putting NRUC on Rating Watch Negative: basically a guarantee it will downgrade the company in a matter of weeks (Don't look for the report on the website's "ratings" section; somehow only the laudatory reports make it on NRUC's home page).
Here are the main issues that Fitch notes it is concerned about:
National Rural's funding profile has migrated towards a higher reliance on secured funding, thereby reducing the available collateral supporting unsecured creditors.
National Rural's leverage ratios remain elevated relative to historical measures.
National Rural has a sizable ($1.2 billion) amount of debt maturing in August 2009.
Interestingly, these mirror almost verbatim the main concerns Zero Hedge expressed in March with regard to the company's ongoing viability: i) Insufficient allowance for Bad Loans, ii) Growing debt/equity ratio, and iii) Liquidity Crunch/$5.7 billion in Near-Term debt maturities .
And while NRUC immediately issued a retort to Fitch in which it did its best to spin all three points in a somewhat positive light, at this point it is conceivably far too late to change the impending downgrade. And as everyone knows, rating agencies do everything in groups, meaning the company must now hold its breath for comparable downgrade reviews by Moody's and S&P.
Now who cares about ratings: we all know the rating agencies are a joke, right? The problem is the avalanche of events that would ensue if even a Fitch were to give the company a several notch downgrade (best case study is AIG, whose collateral calls upon the RA downgrade almost destroyed the world). I paraphrase from my initial report:
Downgrade Triggers
This is where the NRUC story becomes eerily reminiscent of AIG's. The company is in many ways held hostage by its current rating under both Moody's, S&P and Fitch. This is manifest in three places:
1) The company's $3 billion REDLG notes (as already mentioned) have a rating agency trigger. As page 13 of the 10-Q notes:
The $3.0 billion of notes payable to the FFB contain a rating trigger related to the Company's senior secured credit ratings from Standard & Poor's Corporation, Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings. A rating trigger event exists if the Company's senior secured debt does not have at last two of the following ratings: (i) A- or higher from Standard & Poor's Corporation, (ii) A3 or higher from Moody's Investors Service, (iii) A- or higher from Fitch Ratings and (iv) an equivalent rating from a successor rating agency to any of the above rating agencies. If the Company's senior secured credit ratings fall below the levels listed above, the mortgage notes on deposit at that time, which totaled $3,811 million at November 30, 2008, would be pledged as collateral rather than held on deposit. At November 30, 2008, National Rural's senior secured debt ratings were above the rating trigger threshold.
It becomes obvious why the Rating Agencies are instrumental to the company's longevity: a 3 notch downgrade from the current senior secured rating of A/A1/A would severely limit the company to government funded liquidity in the form of the $3 billion in REDLG notes it has on the balance sheet currently.
2) As Moody's notes on page 11 of its report, NRUC has $9.2 billion notional amount in interest rate exchange agreements, which has rating triggers, this time based on the company's senior unsecured credit rating from Moody's or S&P:
"If NRUC's rating for senior unsecured debt from either agency falls below the level specified in the agreement, the counterparty may, but is not obligated to, terminate the agreement. Upon termination, both parties would be required to make all payments that might be due to the other party. If NRUC's senior unsecured rating from Moody's or S&P declines to Baa1 or BBB+, respectively, the counterparty may terminate agreements with a total notional amount of $1.919 bllion. If NRUC's senior unsecured rating from Moody's or S&P falls below Baa1 or BBB+, respectively, the counterparty may terminate the agreement on the remaining total notional amount of $7.314 billion."
The prospect of having to terminate $9 billion in swap would likely have reverberations across both of NRUC's income and cash flow statements.
3) Lastly, the increasing reliance the company has on government funding in the form of CPFF borrowing, makes it critical that the company does not lose A-1/P-1/F-1 rating which is the cutoff for CPFF eligibility. As noted NRUC currently has over $1 billion in CPFF borrowings (a number that could grow by an additional $2.9 billion soon, see below) which it would have to find alternative ways to finance if two or more of the rating agencies turn hostile on the company.
So while NRUC is welcome to take pot shots at Zero Hedge, it may consider actually fixing its business, in which one would need a microscope to make a conclusive determination (and even then the answer would be quite surprising) of whether the cost of capital is lower than the return on capital. The fact that Fitch is finally waking up to this simple fact should be sufficiently alarming to the executives in the Herndon, Virginia headquarters. The rating agencies have recently embarked on an expiation campaign (well, S&P... Moody's not so much) and the race to the bottom downgrade could be one which leaves NRUC a in smoldering heap of electric and telephone poles (at four digit % LTVs no less) all the while its balance sheet records 37 cents in bad loans allowances.
Disclosure: no positions in any NRUC securities currently or in the past. Sphere: Related Content
Labels: NRUC
Disclosure: no positions in any NRUC securities currently or in the past.
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'Queer': Daniel Craig Joins Luca Guadagnino's Next Feature!!
Actor Daniel Craig is set to star in a new film based on William S. Burrough's 1985 novel, Queer. Luca Guadagnino, the mind behind Bones and All, will head the project. Based on Burrough's novella Queer, which was originally written between 1951 and 1953 but not published until several decades later in 1985, Craig will likely play the story's protagonist, William Lee.
Details about who will join Craig in the film are scarce, with rumors being fueled that the director currently has his eyes set on one of the Outer Banks stars to play the character of Allerton. Further details for the project, such as production crew and distribution rights, also remain a mystery at this point, with Guadagnino, who was nominated for an Oscar for his directorial work on Call Me By Your Name, currently in the process of raising financing for the movie.
Prior to Guadagnino's new project, other adaptations of Burrough's novel have been attempted. In 2011, Steve Buscemi was set to direct an adaptation of the novel, with Oren Moverman on board as writer. Despite a script reading with Stanley Tucci and Ben Foster at the Sarasota Film Festival, the film was put on the back burner. An earlier adaptation of the novel saw an Erling World opera, Queer, premiere in the United States in 2001.
Queer is a short novel centered around William Lee, telling the story of his life in Mexico City. Representing Burrough's own life, the novella focuses on the awkward and self-conscious Lee's experience surviving on part-time jobs and GI Bill benefits. Whilst interacting with American ex-pat college students and bar owners, Lee pursues a young man by the name of Allerton. The character of Allerton is believed to have been based on a discharged Navy serviceman and friend of Burrough's, whom he met in Mexico City. Queer is said to be a quasi-sequel to his earlier novel, Junkie.
Both Craig and Guadagnino have other projects currently in the works. Craig, who is eager to distance himself from his role as James Bond in several of the Bond films, will return to screens on December 23 as Benoit Blanc in Rian Johnson's Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. In addition, the actor also recently appeared in a Taika Waititi-directed advertisement for Belvedere Vodka. Guadagnino, on the other hand, has recently wrapped up his latest film, Challengers, starring Zendaya. He currently has the romantic horror film Bones and All in theaters, which tells the story of two cannibal lovers (Taylor Russell as Maren Yearly and Timothée Chalamet as Lee) travelling across the country. According to Deadline, he also is currently working on an Audrey Hepburn biopic. Whilst Rooney Mara is attached to the Apple project, a scribe is still needed.
No date has been set for Queer's release yet.
Tags: #DanielCraig, #Queer
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You look at this and see: wheat. I look at it and see: POISON! Image attributed to User:Bluemoose via Wikimedia Commons.
I love having an epiphany, especially when it comes to writing. I love when research pulls my plot into a new direction or adds a dimension that I hadn't thought of before. But I've actually wrote about those epiphanies many times on my blog. So instead, I'm going to write about one of my most important epiphanies which also directly affects my writing; gluten.
So I'm going along doing the mom thing, when a friend of mine suggests a smoothie recipe. I go out and stock up on wheat germ, wheat bran, flax seed, frozen blueberries and yogurt. The first couple of weeks are like… POW! I was like a minivan with a turbo setting. That smoothie gave me so much energy, I didn't get hungry till 2pm.
This was not the epiphany.
Then I felt miserable. Nausea, vomiting, cramping, extreme fatigue, etc. As if that wasn't enough, my brain couldn't seem to connect to my writing hand. I couldn't remember things that had happened five minutes before.
This was obviously not the epiphany.
For a month, my GI "specialist" ran all kinds of tests trying to figure out my physical symptoms while I started seeing a psychologist for my mental symptoms. I was down to eating oatmeal and chicken noodle soup all day, everyday because I thought, at the time, that those were supposed to be the most gentle to the stomach. Then the specialist suggested that my problems were from Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
The pamphlet told me to look for my trigger foods. I was thinking "trigger foods" meant peanuts, strawberries, or chocolate. Then finally, another friend mentioned Celiac Disease. Wait…what? My grandma has that. She can't eat wheat.
There are over 200 symptoms of Celiac Disease, including everything from fibromyalgia to ADHD. If you would like more information please go to www.celiac.com.
"Father Time Overcome by Love, Hope, and Beauty" by Simon Vouet. I'm no art expert, but it seems we can still appreciate the push for love, hope, and beauty, though I'd have thought that Time might have given in by now.
Last week, I talked about how sad it was that my students had a stubborn bigoted view of the world. This week, I want to discuss the effects of such views. Not only had they completely lost the meaning of two fantastic essays, but lousy attitudes such as theirs continue to put a black eye on a beautiful region of our country that they supposedly love.
I think we all know the other side to the South that is like it's evil twin.
Now, I'm certainly not indicating that all Southerners with these habits have bigoted views, but some do. I remember one of the kids who didn't "get" the Canada essay because of being considered a "Yankee" by the author. Otherwise, he was actually a very respectful kid. He was always dressed like a ranch hand and while he wasn't an exceptional student, he completed his work, was never rude to me, or caused a disruption in class.
Last week, I saw this charming Cheerios commercial and heard about the controversy over it. I wonder how that student would have viewed it?
Would he not have even considered the premise of the scene – that is, a little girl who loves her daddy so much that she want's to make sure that his heart is healthy? Given that he failed to see the humor in the Canada essay, I'm disheartened to say that he probably would not.
If there is love in a family, why should the color of the skin matter? People have all sorts of views on this commercial, for what I would think to be strange reasons. And that's okay. Anyone is entitled to their opinions.
But when the beauty of love is overlooked because people are offended… that really doesn't sit right with me.
I know I have views that some people would find offensive. I may find other's views offensive. I must admit that my gut reaction to people who disliked the commercial for racial reasons was, "They must bleed a different color…ugly." But then, to forget completely that we are all human and have our own beauties about us, I certainly hope I never fall into that trap. If I ever am, I beg of you, using an open mind, call me out on it. I will listen.
What did you think of the commercial? Can you see it's charm, or do you see skin color? Are you appalled that some of us are still stuck in the 50's?
Well, Kristen Lamb has done it again! She manages to post blogs that are exactly what I need to be reading at precisely the right time. The last one addressed the enemy of the art – a failure to focus. While I usually have trouble with this because of my busy little boys both under the age of 5, I have a double whammy lately because of my trouble with gluten.
For those who are not familiar with gluten, it is not to be confused with glucose and is anything made from wheat, barley, or rye. I tend to be more sensitive than some other people I know and the dust from Cheerios can make me sick for a month followed by 2 more weeks of insomnia. People with gluten intolerance or Celiac Disease have varying symptoms (there are over 200 known). My personal symptoms are terrible cramping, profound exhaustion, constipation, nausea, vomiting, anxiety, depression, and lack of focus.
This lack of focus brings me to the purpose of this post.
I've been able to avoid gluten for the last 4 months, but last Friday night, something in my kitchen "got me." I usually give up writing for the most part while I'm "glutened" because it is so difficult. I feel as though there is cotton stuffed in my head. Sometimes I'll be writing along and I have to make a conscious effort to stop my pen because my thoughts have completely strayed from what I'm doing.
Kristen has made me remember that any writing is better than none at all. So I'll try something different this time. I usually spend about 30 minutes in the morning playing my 2 computer games, because it's the only quiet time I get all day. However when I'm glutened, mornings are when my symptoms are at their lowest so I will take this time to write something, anything, instead.
My WIP is top priority. If I can't focus enough to do my WIP, I'll do a blog post. If I can't seem to do that, then I'll practice my free-association writing instead. To keep myself accountable, I'll post my progress either in my following posts, or in the reply section of whatever my last post was.
I will apologize here for sloppiness and errors in my blog posts, especially in the next month. I try very much to catch them at all, but it's harder when I'm under the influence of gluten.
Do you have any real hindrances that keep you from achieving goals? How do you push through them?


text:
The Liberal Pulpit
from Community Unitarian Universalist Congregation, White Plains, NY
UU Reading
"Hey Boss, You Don't Want Your Employees to Meditate"
When I saw the headline of the recent New York Times Op-Ed -- "Hey Boss, You Don't Want Your Employees to Meditate" -- I thought: Oh, good. This will counter the criticism that meditation and mindfulness in the workplace are tools for corporations to improve productivity while avoiding correcting the injustices that produce workplace stress.
Let's look at the criticism and how the study by Kathleen Vohs and Andrew Hafenbrack, who wrote the Op-Ed, addresses it.
First, the American workplace is often stressful. Ronald Purser and Edwin Ng cite a Stanford-Harvard study that identified the stressors:
"A meta-analysis of 228 studies showed that...major workplace stressors were associated with a lack of health insurance, threats of constant layoffs and job insecurity, lack of discretion and autonomy in decision-making, long work hours, low organizational justice, and unrealistic job demands...Stress is shaped by a complex set of interacting power relations, networks of interests, and explanatory narratives."[2]
Corporations care about this stress because it reduces productivity. Rather than address the problems by pushing for universal health insurance, by lowering job demands and shortening work hours, and by providing job security, worker autonomy, and organizational justice, some corporations have introduced mindfulness programs. Kristen Ghodsee worries that these
"employer-sponored mindfulness programs obscure the insanity of our American work culture." [1]
Purser and Ng suggest that mindfulness is being used to promote quietism. Mindfulness, perhaps,
"merely amounts to employee pacification and a form of passive nihilism." [2]
In an earlier piece, Ronald Purser and David Loy wrote that mindfulness training:
"has become a trendy method for subduing employee unrest, promoting a tacit acceptance of the status quo, and as an instrumental tool for keeping attention focused on institutional goals." [3]
Training in peace and acceptance might lead employees "to spiral into complacency and subjugation" [4]. Practices that encourage altruism may also make people easier to exploit. Corporate mindfulness may be the latest version of workplace "cow psychology" -- so called because contented and docile cows give more milk. Ghodsee concludes:
"There is something insidious about corporations and universities promoting mindfulness among their employees, particularly those who might otherwise fight for necessary institutional change." [1]
But wait. If acceptance of reality demotivates people from agitating for institutional change, would it not equally well demotivate them from pursuit of the company's productivity goals? Docile cows might give more milk, but companies want workers who are motivated and energized, not merely docile.
Actually, two points. One, my experience suggests that meditation and mindfulness don't demotivate activism. Two, meditation and mindfulness apparently do demotivate the pursuit of productivity goals for their own sake.
The first point doesn't have much evidence for or against it. I've found that meditation facilitates increased interest in the well-being of all beings, and that this strengthens rather than weakens interest in working for institutional change. But this, as the empirically-minded will note, is anecdotal. We don't yet have careful studies on whether either (a) nonactivists who begin a meditation practice are more likely to become social activists, or (b) activists who begin a meditation practice become more effective, more energetic, or less susceptible to burn-out in their activism.
The second point, thanks to Vohs and Hafenbrack, has a supporting study. Meditation apparently does function, in some contexts, to reduce worker motivation to pursue their company's productivity goals. Vohs and Hafenbrack write:
"Among those who had meditated, motivation levels were lower on average. Those people didn't feel as much like working on the assignments, nor did they want to spend as much time or effort to complete them. Meditation was correlated with reduced thoughts about the future and greater feelings of calm and serenity — states seemingly not conducive to wanting to tackle a work project." [5]
Actual performance, however, was unaffected. Meditation brings both increased focus and decreased motivation, Vohs and Hafenbrack conclude, and these two effects seem to cancel each other out, leaving overall performance neither improved nor worsened.
This "decreased motivation" was for particular tasks. The tasks used in the study "were similar to everyday workplace jobs: editing business memos, entering text into a computer and so on" [5]. That is, these were tasks that had no evident connection to making the world better. They are tasks that would normally be motivated only by the prospect of extrinsic, self-centered, material reward.
Along with "focused, nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment," which, as Hafenbrack and Vohs say, characterize a state of mindfulness [6], meditation also facilitates an increased sense of connection to other beings, and thus increased compassion. It makes sense that a wider, deeper sense of connection, and of the interconnection of all things, would shift motivation away away from tasks with only a material or egocentric reward. Instead, motivation would tend to shift toward concern for others and tasks that support life. Jeremy Hunter writes:
"If people pay attention to their mind, body, and emotions, they begin to approach the world with more openness and inquisitiveness. Quite often that touches off deeper values, such as concern for others and the world at large. A decade ago, Mirabai Bush, founding director of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, introduced a mindfulness program at Monsanto, a company that had been widely criticized for perpetuating shortsighted and damaging agricultural practices. At a corporate retreat, a top scientist approached her after a session and said, 'I realized that we're creating products that kill life. We should be creating products that support life.' It's a long journey from a personal insight like that to large-scale change, but at least we can say that mindfulness was starting to serve as a disruptive technology within the company." [7]
We have yet to see American business culture make any notable shift toward compassion. But there is at least reason for seeing a connection between meditation and increased interest in compassion. An increase in workers who are more focused while also less interested in material rewards is a social good -- though not useful for the narrow productivity interests of corporate bosses.
Your boss might not want you to meditate -- though, since performance stays the same, your boss probably doesn't care. The rest of us who share this planet with you would love for you to cultivate compassion, acceptance, and focus.
[1] Kristen Ghodsee (Bowdoin College, Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies), "The Dangers of McMindfulness," ChronicleVitae, 2016 Apr 5.
[2] Ronald Purser, PhD (San Francisco State University, Professor of Management) and Edwin Ng, PhD (cultural theorist based in Melbourne, Australia; writes on Buddhism and mindfulness for the Australian Broadcasting Corp.'s Religion & Ethics blog), "Corporate Mindfulness is Bullsh*t: Zen or no Zen, You're Working Harder and Being Paid Less," Salon, 2015 Sep 27.
[3] Ronald Purser and David Loy (Zen teacher), "Beyond McMindfulness," Huffington Post, 2013 Aug 31.
[4] Norman A.S. Farb (University of Toronto Missauga, Department of Psychology), "From Retreat Center to Clinic to Boardroom? Perils and Promises of the Modern Mindfulness Movement," Religions, 2014.
[5] Kathleen Vohs (University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management, Professor of Marketing) and Andrew Hafenbrack (Católica-Lisbon School of Business and Economics, Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior), "Hey Boss, You Don't Want Your Employees to Meditate," New York Times, 2018 Jun 14.
[6] Andrew Hafenbrack and Kathleen Vohs, "Mindfulness Meditation Impairs Task Motivation but Not Performance," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2018 Jul.
[7] Jeremy Hunter (Claremont Graduate University, Drucker School of Management, Executive Mind Leadership Institute, Director and Professor of Practice), "Is Mindfulness Good for Business?" Mindful, 2013 Apr.
By Rev. Meredith Garmon at August 13, 2018
Labels: Reflection
ALove August 17, 2018 at 9:58 PM
This is a tremendously thoughtful and nuanced article.
In the Pulpit
Rev. Meredith Garmon
Minister, Community Unitarian Universalist Congregation
468 Rosedale Ave
cucwp.org
What Is Liberal Religion?
What Religion is About
Unitarian Universalists believe . . . that your religion isn't about what you believe. So what is religion about?
1. Religion is about the way you live: the ethics and values that guide your life.
2. Religion is about community: the people with whom you choose to join in faith community, and the rituals, songs, and stories that affirm and strengthen community connection.
3. Religion is about experience: the moments of transcendence, awe, mystery, wonder, beauty, interconnection and oneness.
A faith congregation, liberal or conservative, aims to bring these three very different things together in such a way that each one reinforces the other two.
The Five Smooth Stones of Liberalism
What, then, makes religion liberal? James Luther Adams (1901-1996) identified these "five smooth stones":
1. Openness to New Truth. "Religious liberalism depends first on the principle that revelation is continuous. Meaning has not been finally captured. Nothing is complete, and thus nothing is exempt from criticism." Our religious tradition is a living tradition because we are always learning.
2. Freedom. "All relations between persons ought ideally to rest on mutual, free consent and not on coercion." We freely choose congregational relationship and spiritual practice. We deny infallibility and resist hierarchical authority.
3. Justice. We are morally obligated to direct our "effort toward the establishment of a just and loving community. It is this which makes the role of the prophet central and indispensable in liberalism."
4. Institution Building. Religious liberals "deny the immaculate conception of virtue and affirm the necessity of social incarnation....Justice is an exercise of just and lawful institutional power." Institution building involves the messiness of claiming our power amid conflicting perspectives and needs, rather than the purity of ahistorical, decontextualized ideals.
5. Hope. "The resources (divine and human) that are available for the achievement of meaningful change justify an attitude of ultimate optimism."
(For Adams's full text, see HERE. For Liberal Faith, see HERE.)
Series Titles
A Hanukkah for Letting Go of Opinions (3)
A Natural and Religious History of Compassion (5)
Acceptance and Resistance (3)
All You Need Is Love (3)
Animal Advocacy (3)
AntiBarbies (4)
Attain the Good You Will Not Attain (3)
Beatnik Celebration (4)
Behind the Kitchen Door (4)
Beltane (1)
Bless the World (3)
Blessed Affliction (4)
BLM & UU (3)
Borders/Boundaries (2)
Boxes Too Small (4)
Broken Open (4)
Brueggemann (1)
Church! Huh! What Is It Good For? (3)
Congregation-Based Community Organizing (1)
Corruption of Our Democracy (3)
Cultural Diversity (3)
Daring Democracy (3)
Democracy and the Meaning of Life (4)
Desertless Life (3)
Desiring Music (3)
Direct Experience of Transcending Mystery and Wonder (3)
Diremption Redemption (4)
Discovering America (3)
Easter and Transformation (2)
Ecospiritual (13)
embodiment (3)
Environmental Racism (5)
Evil & Sociopathy (4)
Evil and Hope (2)
Expanding the Circle (4)
Faith Like a Chalice (4)
Father Earth (5)
Feminist Theology (4)
Ferlinghetti (3)
Fire of Commitment (2)
Flower Communion (1)
Foolishness and Salvation (3)
Friends Along the Path (4)
God the Adjective (3)
God the Verb (3)
Going Into Labor (3)
Gratitude and Its Expression (4)
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Spirituality (9)
Instead of Guilt (4)
Intercultural Sensitivity (5)
Interdependent Web of Covenant (3)
Jesus Zombies and the Half-Way House of Reason (3)
Job and Transcendence (3)
Just Mercy (4)
Let Go . . . Or Not (3)
Liberal Entitlement (4)
Living Your Faith (3)
Love and Desire (3)
Making Friends with Death (4)
Mary Oliver (1)
Meadow For Metaphor (5)
Mercy Sakes! (3)
Mercy v. Justice (4)
Mindfulness Fad (3)
ministry & metanoia (5)
Mission: Possible (5)
Myth of Scarcity (5)
Newsletter Column (13)
Nikki Giovanni (3)
Nonviolent Social Change (3)
On Being a UU Buddhist (3)
On the Road (4)
One Hundred Years from Now (3)
Poetry Celebration (14)
Radical Hospitality (8)
Reclaiming Prophetic Witness (4)
Reduce Waste (3)
Respond to Whose Love? (4)
sermon (1)
Service to Transform (5)
Shadow's Gift (1)
Spirit of Truth (4)
spiritual bypass (2)
Spiritual Practice (4)
Spirituality of Evolution (3)
Thanksgiving Truth (1)
The American Idea (3)
The Arc of the Moral Universe (3)
The Blues (3)
The Fourth P (1)
The Future Will Judge Us (3)
The Gift to be Simple (3)
The Half-Won Blessing (5)
The Meaning of Membership (4)
The Paradox of Generosity (3)
The Prophetic (2)
The Spiritual Practice of Generosity (4)
The Third Reconstruction (3)
Theology of Money (3)
There Is No God and She Is Always with You (3)
There's Something About Mary (3)
Things Get Difficult (1)
Timshel: Thou Mayest (3)
Truth Who Needs It (3)
Truth? (3)
Unitarian Identity (1)
UU Buddhism (3)
Vocation: Who Are You? (5)
War Peace and Remembering (2)
Welcome to Liberal Religion (4)
Welcome to Resistance (3)
What Do We Do Now Dr King? (3)
What Is Blessing? (2)
What Is Liberal Religion? (5)
What Other People Think (3)
Who Are These People? (3)
Who's In Charge Here? (4)
Why Is There Awe (6)
Why Not Evil? (4)
Wonder of Wonders (3)
Yay! Death! (3)
Poetry Celebration: Nikki Giovanni, part 3
If You Want Truth, Build Trust
When Truth Stopped Mattering
Hooray for Cognitive Bias!
"Hey Boss, You Don't Want Your Employees to Medita...
Practices for Paying Attention to Money
Theology of Money, part 3 First, budget. If at your house, there is a precise monthly budget, and you keep track of every dollar spent and ...
Poems, Prayers, and Mary Oliver
For LoraKim, who rose with Mary for a year , and then more than a year, and then ever afterward, and shows me every day that my work is lo...
Dukkha and The Blues
The Blues, part 1 Life is dukkha , said the Buddha. Dukkha is often translated as suffering or dissatisfaction. The word dukkha comes from...
Falling in Love? Or Standing in Love?
Love and Desire, part 2 Too much aloneness destroys a person. At the other end, not enough aloneness can dissolve us. This happens when the...
True Spirituality and Bypassing Spirituality
The Spiritual Bypass, part 2 True Spirituality Robert Augustus Masters' book, Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us ...
Climate Strike! Act 5
Act 5 Thrilling Conclusion One of Mary Oliver's best known and best loved poems is "The Summer Day." Who made the world? Who made the sw...
A "Faith" for Everyone
Faiths are different. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Daosim, Confucianism, Sikhism, Jainism, animism and ...
Most Intimate
Mystery, part 3 If the use of koans in Zen training seems rather silly, well, yeah, it is. There are many paths to learn authenticity, ...
Realities of White Privilege
White Supremacy, part 3 The tacit assumptions of White Supremacy show up in many subtle ways. When we make hiring decisions based on which ...
God is Not One
On Friday a couple days ago, one of our congregation's members posted on the Facebook "CUUC Forum" a helpful bit of information ( HERE ). He...
(c) 2018 by Meredith Garmon. Theme images by sololos. Powered by Blogger.


text:
Everybody must get stoned...
By Harvey Wallbanger, November 25, 2010 in Channel Zero
Harvey Wallbanger 402
This just topped my list of worst ways to die.
"Stonings can reportedly take anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours." FUCK THAT SHIT!
KILZ FILLZ 2,919
FUCKING METAL.
Schnitzel 1,112
yuck!
Brickos 714
She probably deserved it...
metronome 271
Those wacky Iranians.
They should just behead you like the Saudi's do!
Ape Shit 138
JUST THE TIP 226
fuck being the poor bastard that has to throw heavy stones for two hours straight. hopefully they work in shifts to kill the stubborn ppl that dont wanna die quickly.
famecrazy 457
acer910 126
hahahah even their executions are sexist
HellBusRide 10
damn thats rugged.Could u even fuckin imagine that shit...Thats gotta be one of the worst ways to go:(
ZANZABAR 11
In other news, Islamic convicts find themselves between a rock & a hard place...
Spitfire15 585
"..if convicted by a confession, can go free if they manage to wiggle free during the execution"
Imagine to fuck some bitch, be SENTENCED TO DEATH, then wiggle free DURING YOUR EXECUTION, and be let free.
Ignition 60
stoner witch
hold your breath and lose consciousness first? i guess?
earl broclo ESQ 944
No. Getting anally raped to death by The Barenaked Ladies while they sing "If I had a Million Dollars," is the worst way you can possibly die.
unless you're into anal raps...and the barenaked ladies
If someone likes The Barenaked Ladies --They deserve to die.
i would have to agree. let's stone the barenaked ladies!!!
..romero.. 210
Scaphism, also known as the boats, was an ancient Persian method of execution designed to inflict torturous death. The name comes from the Greek word skaphe, meaning "scooped (or hollowed) out".
The naked person was firmly fastened within a face-to-face pair of narrow rowing boats (or a hollowed-out tree trunk), with the head, hands and feet protruding. The condemned was forced to ingest milk and honey to the point of developing severe diarrhea, and more honey would be rubbed on his body to attract insects to the exposed appendages. He or she would then be left to float on a stagnant pond or be exposed to the sun. The defenseless individual's feces accumulated within the container, attracting more insects, which would eat and breed within his or her exposed and increasingly gangrenous flesh. The feeding would be repeated each day in some cases to prolong the torture, so that dehydration or starvation did not provide him or her with the release of death. Death, when it eventually occurred, was probably due to a combination of dehydration, starvation and septic shock. Delirium would typically set in after a few days.
In other recorded versions, the insects did not eat the person; biting and stinging insects such as wasps, which were attracted by honey on the body, acted as the torture.
Death by scaphism was painful, humiliating and protracted. Plutarch writes in his biography of Artaxerxes that Mithridates, sentenced to die in this manner for killing Cyrus the Younger, survived 17 days before dying.[1]
[edit] Similar practices
A barrel pillory, or Spanish mantle, torture method is quite similar. A barrel is fitted over the entire body, with the head sticking out from a hole in the top. The person is kept locked in the barrel, forcing him to kneel in his own filth.
Simpler installations to the same end have been reported among Native American tribes, such as immobilizing the condemned, smearing him, and leaving him to voracious ants. Dehydration would set in within a few days. Richard Krousher writes that honey should be rubbed with especial care in the mouth, eyes, ears, genitals, anus and between the toes.
In early historic times in Siberia, a condemned prisoner would be tied naked to a tree and left to slowly die through starvation and blood loss from mosquitoes, horseflies and other insects.
Richard Sair refers to one case in modern China in which a man was allegedly chained up outside where the mosquitoes bit him.[2]
The book Papillon describes how a particularly brutal guard was captured, tied down over a nest of fire ants and left to be eaten alive
nam sayin though? most brutal way to go imo...persians and iranians are some fucked up ass people
Realism 836
How would we know whether to bury them to their waists or necks though?
abcs 384
yea... last time i was stoned i wriggled free... good thing too.
autoteller 293
He who is without sin cast the first rock, and i shall smoketh it
~KRYLON2~ 599
this guy would be the worst way to die.


text:
Мгела́дзе Нугзар Владимирович — грузинский политический и общественный деятель, профессор, доктор исторических наук. Бывший депутат Парламента Грузии . Один из лидеров оппозиционной «Республиканской партии Грузии». Автор более 70-ти книг и научных трудов.

Биография
Родился 29-го апреля 1958 года в городе Батуми. В 1979 году окончил филологический факультет Батумского Государственного Университета имени Шота Руставели. В 1983 году окончил аспирантуру Института Этнографии, Археологии и Истории при Академии Наук ГССР (впоследствии — Институт Этнографии, Археологии и Истории имени Иване Джавахишвили). В 1988 году окончил докторантуру Института Этнографии, Археологии и Истории при Академии Наук ГССР, а также докторантуру Института Антропологии и Этнографии Академии Наук СССР (впоследствии — Института Антропологии и Этнографии РАН). С 1979 по 1993 год — лаборант, младший научный сотрудник, старший научный сотрудник, ведущий научный сотрудник Батумского Научно-Исследовательского Института при Академии Наук ГССР (впоследствии — Батумский Научно-Исследовательский Институт имени Бердзенишвили). С 1992 по 2004 год — научный сотрудник Батумского Государственного Университета имени Шота Руставели. С 2001 по 2003 год — заведующий отделом научной информации Батумского Научно-Исследовательского Института имени Бердзенишвили. С 2004 по 2005 год — научный сотрудник Тбилисского Государственного Университета имени Иване Джавахишвили .

В 2004 году — один из лидеров общественного движения «Чвени Ачара» («Наша Аджария»), выступавшей за свержение в АР Аджария режима Абашидзе, Аслан Ибрагимович. С 2004 по 2005 год — депутат Парламента Грузии от избирательного блока «Национальное Движение — Демократы» (лидер — Саакашвили, Михаил Николозович). С 2005 по 2006 год — ректор Батумского Государственного Университета имени Шота Руставели . С 2006 года в оппозиции к президенту Михаилу Саакашвили. Член оппозиционной «Республиканской Партии Грузии».

Персоналии по алфавиту
Родившиеся в Батуми
Родившиеся в 1958 году
Родившиеся 29 апреля
Публицисты по алфавиту
Публицисты СССР
Публицисты Грузии
Историки Грузии
Выпускники вузов Грузии
Ректоры вузов Грузии
Википедия:Биографии современников
Депутаты Парламента Грузии
Доктора исторических наук

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Nicole Baker (or Cole as she prefers to be called), a South Carolina college student, finds out over Christmas dinner that she really isn't a Baker. Nor is the rest of her family. Grandpa springs it on them that they are really descendants of a Scottish man named Minary.
Sometime later Cole finds herself in Glentree, Scotland to do family research, and stumbles across the town legend of the Lady of MacLaoch. A curse placed on all of the MacLaoch Chieftains for all time by Lady MacLaoch on her deathbed after having witnessed her clan brutally murder her love, a Minory.
Cole then runs in to the 34th Chieftain, Rowan MacLaoch. A man haunted by nightmares of his past. But when Cole comes to town. Things start to heat up between Cole and Rowan, and they both find themselves manifesting physical symptoms of butterflies in their stomachs and somehow feeling each other's feelings. And soon, begin having dreams of each other, with each other.
Could Cole be the one to break the curse? It is said that a Minory would be the one to break the curse, and while Cole believes that it can't be the same because of the letter difference in the name (Minory and Minary, the town and Rowan set out to prove to her otherwise.
Now if they can just deal with Eryka, a woman who has spent ten years trying to become Mrs. MacLaoch' and his cousin and uncle who both want the title of Chieftain, maybe the curse will be lifted.
This was a very enjoyable read and kept me entranced the whole way through. I most definitely wanted to see Cole and Rowan get together and wanted to slap Eryka.
There are some wonderful side characters in this, from the dressmaker who make sure that Cole has a dress to make Rowan pant, to the MacDonagh brothers, Angus and Bernie, the lovable, laughable old men who run the tour boat and may be something a bit more.
This is definitely one for the keeper pile ladies (and gentlemen too, if they prefer)! I know I'll be reading it again!


text:
New Seminar: Thermodynamic structure of the subtropical troposphere in North Atlantic Ocean
On 6 September 2017 at 13:00, PhD Student Judit Carribllo (Sistemas de Datos) imparted the seminar entitled "Thermodynamic structure of the subtropical troposphere in North Atlantic Ocean" at the Izaña Atmospheric Research Center's Offices in Santa Cruz de Tenerife. This talk was a previous training for the PhD work report, defended successfully on 12th of September. The study leaded in this work deals on the analysis and characterization of the stability of the low troposphere, along the east of the subtropical North Atlantic Ocean using radiosonde data from more than 30 years of Canary (Tenerife), Madeira (Madeira) and Azores (Terceira) archipelagos. The most relevant characteristic is the strong stability observed in the low troposphere, where the temperature inversion are found simultaneously and in levels close to 900 and 800 hPa in a significant percent of the analysed soundings. This work demonstrate that the double structure found is associated to the top of the marine boundary layer (MBL) and with the trade wind inversion (TWI) respectively. The top of the MBL coincide with the base of the first temperature inversion (≈900 hPa), where a sharp change in the parameters related to the water vapour content is observed. A second temperature inversion is found around 800 hPa and it is characterised by a strong wind shear above of this inversion layer, related to the TWI. This vertical structure is considerably altered by Saharan mineral dust intrusions, that origins a reinforcement of the TWI. In this cases, also, appears another stable layer, influenced by the presence of aerosols.
Click here to go to the section Seminars of the CIAI's website, where there is available more information (abstract, presentation in pdf, and/or link to a published study) about this and other past seminars (sometimes also about the next programmed seminar).
PhD Defence of Carmen Guirado Fuentes: "Characterization of the total column aerosol properties in the subtropical region"
Project AMISOC: Campaign in Tenerife for detecting and monitoring the vertical distribution of minor constituents. Impact of Saharan mineral dust on their concentrations.
One week access to Izana Subtropical Access Facility (ISAF) in the framework of ACTRIS-2 project


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What do you remember from Home EC??
I saw this question posted on Facebook. Yep, I have a story about it!!
My class only had about a half dozen stoves in the Home Ec room. So we were set up to be the second group to actually cook. We turned in our grocery list. We had settled on apple fritters.
The first group in the class had been flawless in their production of tasty foods. The teacher said that was a sign that the whole class would do well. OK, YES she said that but really?!? Is there any greater jinx to a class? When my cooking partner and I had peeled and chopped the apple it was a little late in the class so next we had to dump the ingredients in and mix quickly. I know you all know what happened next but PLEASE let me catch up. The pan was on the stove and the thermometer wasn't rising very fast. Remember the apple peeling? It took A LOT longer than the teacher allowed. So in an effort to speed it up I turned the burner up and up, did I mention? UP the teacher came by several time and tutted when she got to our "kitchen". About the third or fourth time around the oil was actually ready. I don't think the teacher had taken more than a step or two down the line when we had put our "dough" into the hot grease. Anybody know what happens when you put cold dough into HOT grease? Let me fill in your education on that point. It splatters and spits grease all over the place. On the burner that had been turned up past the point of safety. We had a small fire going. Small hardly worth mentioning… at least that is what we told the principal.
Thank goodness the teacher wasn't that far away. She dumped some flour on the burner and we were sent to the principal. I tried to explain the fact that we were so far behind that we needed to catch up. Poor guy tried to keep a straight face. Our punishment? We had to clean the flour and ALL of the kitchens. He said he would let our next class know we would be late. Well, MY next class was LUNCH!!! I really liked lunch!! If you know me you know I STILL like lunch and dinner and FOOD!!! Well, we cleaned all of the kitchens and left ours to last. The flour had put out the fire but it burned into an almost cement like mess. We scrubbed and scrubbed finally the flour was cleaned up. We hadn't done the best job of cleaning up our kitchen but the teacher said we could go. Just as we got to the door the bell rang. We had spent MY entire lunch period cleaning. I could have screamed!!
So no lunch for me. I still hate cleaning… AND no I never learned how to cook!!


Glad you ckecked out my blog(: Have been reading a couple of your posts and all I can say is, looking forward to more! You're an amazing writer love!
Thank you so much! That's very kind. 🙂 I hope you like my posts to come.


where I want to lay out how to actually implement a control.
The last homework you have to simulate stuff.
You've been working on how to simulate kinematic differential equations.
Now, you're adding the kinetic differential equations.
the translate, altitude, and rate.
Six states, not six degrees of freedom.
Rotational motion, but we have to add control.
So, any simulation, let's start this out.
We're gonna have, yeah why not, we'll do it in green.
It's not St. Patrick's Day, but I'm sure the Irish are happy. OK.
and I'm gonna be explicit, omega_B/N.
I know I get confused, even out all these years. Which sigma is this?
So here, I'm just gonna say these are the states.
This is our typical sigma we've had before.
gonna be the 1/4 B of sigma_B/N, right?
if you add disturbances to it, right?
Those are the differential equations you have to integrate.
There are six of them now that you have to deal with.
So let's see how we gonna simulate this in our set-up.
you have to say: what are my initial conditions?
Which should be pretty straightforward.
your initial rate relative to inertial.
So good. Then we start a time loop.
I'm just gonna do a first order integration.
it's a few extra steps.
It's easy to implement. It's just more stuff to write.
an input what is the control torque that you're applying to it.
or just one of these functions.
and then all the other terms.
Right? So I need my altitude relative to the reference.
I need my attitude rate relative to the reference before I can compute the control.
So you're gonna have to find the control.
To find the control, we have to find the reference.
and you need the angular accelerations relative to N, right?
especially in the project two, you're defining a frame.
You can maybe numerically differentiate it to get these rates.
Maybe differentiate it twice with enough histories and you get the feedfor-.
Now in the project, you don't need feedforward acceleration.
It's just a PD control without feedforward. So that would do.
you need to know your orbit rates, your orbit accelerations.
This is what feeds forward into the control.
what is my reference state?
Right. Where should I be pointing in some way?
then you compute the control, right?
and I'm doing interval feedback.
whatever control variable you have."
all you do is change one line and say "Hey, no, use this control.
Use this function. Use this function."
The reference generation is the same.
The equations of motion are the same.
This gives it a nice modular architecture.
then we can compute. Ugh, I can't write today.
they're called the first derivative just K_1, I believe.
Right. So I need to compute this.
this, but also my control.
So here you compute this one with the current control -- states.
let's say your dynamics model included time-dependent atmospheric drag, you know.
You may have to throw in a time variable so it knows how to resolve that and so forth.
but if want to make it general, you do this.
So good. If we do this though, this integrates it.
If you do Runge-Kutta... Let's to Runge-Kutta.
So then you do K_2 is equal to this F function again.
the control as we're doing a Runge-Kutta time step.
Because really, your control gets implemented digitally at a discrete frequency.
but your control only gets updated at one hertz.
only every thousand time step updates the u control.
Right? So then, you're really holding your control piecewise constant.
you're still holding your control piecewise constant within it.
to get this, it needs these states.
you'd have a whole routine that computes.
and this doesn't happen at the subcontrol intervals.
That only gets updated once, right?
So that's why this is just hold your control u constant. That's all you have to do.
and, then you do your rest of the dynamics like normal.
So you do this, K_2, K_4.
you know, they go in here, if you're doing a Runge-Kutta.
If you're doing an Euler, it's just one of the steps.
So it's kind of easy, alright.
And then you do that. And then that's it.
then shadow, right, then switch to the other set.
That should be happening outside of this integration.
still basically the same integrator.
you probably already implemented this logic somewhere to switch the MRPs to the set.
if you've had nice code, it's gonna be really simple.
you don't even need this part.
and then integrate forward and apply that.
You just have to make sure your equations of motion include that u.
you can throw it in as well.
So it becomes really, really easy now at this stage to implement that kind of a control.
that gives you the tracking errors.
and repeat. And that's it.
a numerical simulation of a dynamic system with a feedback control applied.
otherwise that would happen here somewhere.


Important reports on GEM's work in the fight against Corporatization.
EXCERPT: Last night at Shellbank, Brooklyn Dreams came off as looking pathetic as they search through south Brooklyn for the right sweet spot. Asked to define what they offer that public schools don't, the only thing they could come up with is "smaller class sizes". Duhhh!
EXCERPT: "But in recent months, the black community seems to be rising up. The old community control struggles of the 60's seem to be re-emerging where black activists are asking the same questions about dictatorial control of the schools as the white activists. The heavy hand of the Moskowitz invasion of Harlem schools has not helped BloomKlein. . . .
EXCERPT: CAPE's statement: ""The Bloomberg administration's long-term goal is to cut the number of public schools in half and double the number of charter schools." This claim was recently made in a Helen Zelon article quoting long time administrators and DOE officials. It is a claim that is quite disturbing and has motivated a group of educators and parents to organize for the protection and preservation of public schools and public education.


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Kelly and his wife had just celebrated their 18th wedding anniversary in June, when Kelly suffered a stroke while traveling for business. He was a hard worker, had a great love for the outdoors, and enjoyed time spent on Sunday mornings with his friends and two boys talking about their hunting stories. He enjoyed any time that he could spend hunting deer and turkey, and he had the biggest smile on his face (and tear in his eye) when his boys would have a successful hunt. He was very excited to turkey hunt and always said it was the thrill of "calling one in." He loved his morning rides to see any wildlife he could find, spending time with his friends and family on the lake, and 4-wheeling up to the woods with his boys.