text:
Will Santa bring CMS demographic data?
About once a week someone asks if they've missed the story on Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools demographics, poverty levels and school-by-school enrollment.
Nope. I haven't written that story because CMS hasn't produced those numbers, even though the school year is more than one-quarter over.
As they've explained and I've reported, the delay is tied to the ongoing problems with PowerSchool, a new data system the state rolled out this school year. But really -- we still can't get enrollment and demographic numbers that were tallied in September and poverty numbers from October?
McCully
Just before the Thanksgiving break I badgered Scott McCully, the CMS administrator in charge of that data: Are you saying CMS doesn't yet know how many students are in each school?
McCully said that CMS does indeed track enrollment on a daily basis. Those numbers are used for teacher allotments and other decisions.
What CMS doesn't have is the ability to generate the Principals Monthly Report, at least not at all schools. Despite weekly requests and multiple "patches," some schools still can't make that system work, McCully said. And until they can all generate those reports, CMS can't produce a districtwide report on the enrollment and racial composition at each school. The poverty report, which is based on eligibility for federal lunch subsidies, uses enrollment numbers from the Principals Monthly Report to do the calculations, he said.
"We're all a little frustrated," added Tahira Stalberte from the public information staff.
It's not the most burning issue in public education, but the delayed details do compound a serious challenge: At a time when families are facing more choices than ever, it's unusually difficult to get good data about schools. Test scores that normally come out during the summer were deferred to November, and changes in the testing system pose new questions about what the numbers mean. School-by-school data reports from CMS and the state may not be out by the time the 2014-15 application season starts in January.
Meanwhile, the PowerSchool problems are starting to seem like more than start-up glitches. I checked the ongoing list of "known issues" the day before Thanksgiving, and while I don't understand most of the techspeak, it looks daunting. I put in a request for an update from the Department of Public Instruction on Nov. 19 and haven't yet gotten a response from Chief Financial Officer Philip Price.
Here's hoping a new month brings some new answers. McCully wasn't willing to make any predictions, though. "I think I've said 'next week' for the last two months," he said.
Labels: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, CMS, PowerSchool, school demographics, school poverty, Scott McCully
How long until Wiley complains about FRL fraud?
How long until someone listens?
We are at the mercy of the state. DPI brought us PowerSchool and all the adjustments that DPI required for fed reporting. This has caused issues with the basics and now we are feeling the results. I hope Scott gets what he needs soon.
Shamash said...
Maybe they could ask someone in South Carolina to help them.
I'm pretty sure most of their schools use PowerSchool and have for a while.
Here's Wiley Coyote's Yearly Christmas Prognostication regarding enrollment, poverty and FRL:
It's the same as last year, which was CMS hasn't a clue as to which children are in poverty and qualify for the NSLP.
Mr. McCully, if you don't have numbers, how can you run your business? How do you know which kids qualify for lunch subsidies and those who don't?
This proves without a doubt how pathetically inept CMS is....
Obamacare 2.0.
Typical operational procedures within CMS. They either have the data or they dont. If they dont then all their data is flawed. Great way to build trust with no data to support. Santa cannot fix a untrusted group ! Keith W. Hurley
You and I both know they have the numbers.
Question: Who feeds the data TO PowerSchool from the districts?
Question: Okay, so you can't generate reports from principals through the system, WHAT DO YOU DO?
GENERATE THE REPORT MANUALLY!! Again, someone has to have the numbers to input!!!
And voters approved another $300 million in bonds for these yahoos.
Perhaps CMS should practice BYOT....
The decision to go with PowerSchool was not a state decision; Pearson purchased the existing state system and shut it down, forcing the state to purchase a different system. The state did decide to try to save money by phasing in PowerSchool over one year rather than two, which was probably a mistake. But as with so much of education these days, the private search for profit is intimately connected with many of the decisions that lead to problems for our school systems and high bills for taxpayers.
Wiley, as far as I know there has been no problem processing the FRL applications, so each school does know which kids get aid.
On your later comment, you're basically saying what I said last week when I started hounding for the numbers: If you've got them, it shouldn't be an insurmountable task to produce them. But this admin is adamant about only releasing state-vetted data, presumably to avoid a situation like the 2011 "on track to graduate" numbers (which were a CMS-only creation) that turned out to be bogus.
All they ("the decision makers") had to do, though, was ask South Carolina how long it took them to implement PowerSchool and plan accordingly.
Unless they think they're smarter than everyone else, they should look at what others before them have done.
That's the whole point in not being on the bleeding edge of technology.
Learn from others mistakes and efforts.
There is never a problem "processing" school lunch forms because no one is checking them.
In my yearly (actually ongoing) prognostication, I have to point out the fact CMS has no clue as to who truly qualifies for NSLP, which is comical in a way because here we are discussing overall enrollment, poverty, testing and demographic data that we're supposed to put faith in, but not in the NSLP numbers because the USDA gives them a pass.
It's about time the state start vetting the NSLP numbers as they do other data.
Wiley, Certainly they have the data and Mr. McCully should never disclose if they dont. (in true CMS fashion) CMS should know about every child in every room at every school. I dont think for a moment that they dont. Once again their trust takes a big HIT which is no surprise to many. Keith W. Hurley
What's to be gained by hiding the numbers? The bond vote is over. So, why hide? Is the embarrassment of misstating numbers greater than begin hounded by Ann? Is it really hubris? Or is there some deadline coming up which is beneficial for them to drag their feet? Maybe even bigger issues with Pearson and Powerschool? Maybe Pearson is like hey you know if you kind of forget about these problems for a while we'll give you a discount on the maintenance contract.
Looking at Pearson's Performance by business docs textbook sales down double digits, Powerschool and Schoolnet up. Where's the revenue stream? Powerschool and Schoolnet. Enormous pressure there to deliver numbers and good press.
The state of South Carolina implemented PowerSchool over three years! NC is trying it in one year. Strike One.
The state of North Carolina requires customizations that go far beyond the version of PowerSchool that the state of SC requires. Strike Two.
This is where we stand right now. CMS is still in the batter's box but they are standing on the edge with reports and data that won't talk back and forth. Hence the lack of data for Scott!
Pearson states that Powerschool was implemented for over 1 million SC students. Odd, SC shows just 700,000 or so students.
Looking at the powerschool implementation for NC. Double the statewide student population, 2 school districts twice as large as the nearest SC district. Comparison to SC is not the best choice.
Then looking at the number of reboots and reports of slowness without resolution comments says Pearson does not know what is causing the problem.
http://www.dpi.state.nc.us/homebase/issues/status?category=LEA%20Outage%20Reporting&&archive=No
For what its worth said...
Maybe we should just believe in the Easter Bunny instead of Santa Claus!
Since political correctness must be followed in public education, all references to the Easter Bunny and Santa must be stricken from the conversation.
If data is to be brought by an entity, it will come from the Happy Human.
Yes, and NC says, "We can implement the system for two times as many students in one third the time."
Big DUH!
Comparison to SC for some idea of how much longer it might take to implement the same system in NC just might have been a good idea, though.
It just makes them look that much dumber for rushing through this.
NC DPI is following in the pathetic footsteps of CMeS:
Ann, follow the money and find answers. Do you have any other job to do at the C.O. ?
Just another joke in how CMS and NC spend millions on technology and wasted tests. Millions spent on programs and testing that is at best skewed data. More millions spent on how to measure the perfomance of teachers without any pay increase.
WHEN WILL THIS MADNESS END ?
Isn't Pearson the same company that will be making even more "Moo"-la out the wazzo after convincing our state to switch from the Praxis series to the Massachusetts MTEL for NC teacher licensure? Pearson designed the latest new and improved testing marvel that's been successful in a state with one of the highest number of citizens with college degrees and one of the highest teacher salaries in the country, correct? Higher Massachusetts standards to teach in North Carolina - ranked 48th in teacher pay? Not that I'm against higher teaching standards but did I miss something?
B.A., UMass/Amherst
States with the highest level of educational attainment.
# 1 - Washington D.C.
# 2 - Massachusetts
Average teacher salary:
Massachusetts - $70,752
North Carolina - $46,605
So, you mean to tell me that Pearson's MTEL is going to miraculously cure the "deplorable" state of teaching in NC?
A school system can't tally up numbers but they are the ones that are educating children? REALLY??? This is absurd!
On the bright side: I'll take late accurate numbers versus historically fanciful McCully Squad "projected" numbers any day.
Mass. is one of 15 states in the U.S. that is now moving away from Common Core.
NC is a follower state in regards to education. When will they stop groveling at the feet of the Feds and ashew their money?
All MOrrison and the BofE care about is that race to the top $.
Dangle a few federal $$$ in front of educrats and watch the show begin!!!
Thats all CMS is, A SHOW
Smoke and mirrors and rearange the chairs as they waste millions of more state and federal dollars.
Open some area centers for district schools at CMS showing how much CMS wants to change to make the public happy... oh wait they did that and then closed them all.
Uh... let's ask for more money... oh wait CMS did that already
Blame something like a computer glitch in a time when thousands could go up and write a query to produce these reports.
In fact CMS let us know if you want some of us to come and do that for you.
You said you had access to the info. Are your people just incapable of doing a small task, like getting it reporting, with out a prepackaged out of the box software program handed to them.
So NC purchased the entire package from Pearson, including project management services and now it's the NC fault the project has problems? Pearson came in estimated the changes, said sure we can do that in that amount of time for that money just sign here. Then delivered NC unstable, unscalable product.
Yet, no drama, no hearings, no compelling Pearson to testify as to why the product they delivered is unable to scale for NC. To why they forced NC off of the old software when as we can see the results of the new software shows they had not done scalability and stability testing. Only the sound of crickets from the NC legislature.
So why is it in the best interest of the NC legislature so quick and vocal on other educational topics to remain silent on this?
http://www.ncwise.org/Documents/power_school_project/PowerSchool_Kickoff_Presentation_10-16-2012.pdf
Considering that Massachusetts is (and has been) the highest performing state in education (according to all those tests), they probably should keep doing what they're doing as long as their kids keep performing above the others.
However, they have been slipping a bit lately, so are on the watch to change what they're doing, which is smart.
If their kids can pass the same tests, and leave HS ready for college and/or work, then who cares what "standard" they followed to get there?
As for the rest of the laggards, I suspect Common Core is a step up for their standards and accountability for reaching certain goals.
We really do have a lot of people in our society who know nearly nothing after receiving their HS diploma and that is sad.
My wife recently encountered a stereotypical cashier who couldn't give change for $2.03 from a $5 when her cash register was on the blink.
That's NOT rocket science (or Rigid Geometry).
I'm still not sure exactly what (aside from the testing) gets the goat of all the Common Core opponents. Some of it sounds like crackpot conspiracy stuff.
I read the summary article in todays paper and checked a few of the supposed problems (like "Rigid Geometry") and don't see a BIG PROBLEM with THAT.
For critics of Common Core, educational folly
http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/12/02/4514150/critics-of-common-core-see-educational.html
I suspect the opposition is mostly political and not educational, but, I'll keep looking.
Of course, with the typical bungling from our federal government lately, I can see why people would be skeptical.
IT is a lot like Education, in that the policy makers and decision makers usually don't have any real experience in the subject.
But don't the "decision makers" share some blame for swallowing the tall tale they were sold by Pearson?
Why would anyone believe what a software vendor told them without doing some investigation, benchmarking, or SOME vetting?
A reality check is always a good idea when someone claims to deliver something twice as complex (as a somewhat similar implementation in a nearby state) in half the time.
That's poor management and deserves at least partial blame for the failure.
But this is just probably another example of how government in general often fails to deliver.
and there's the problem the failure of pearson and powerschool is a ready made, bow wrapped narrative for this nc legislature.
we are left with:
1) nc isn't culpable. thus it doesn't fit the private good, government bad narrative
2) there is financial interest in the legislature to ensure Pearson looks good.
3) the nc ga common core committee will use the powerschool problems to bolster fails and by proxy do will common core. also see #1
Maybe Satan will bring us that CMS demongraphic data.
Shamash,
The Obama administration has the lowest level of private sector experience since Teddy Roosevelt.
The debacle we are living today with Obamacare is a perfect example of how ineptness, idiocy and narcissism can destroy any simple idea, including public education.
My scariest Obama quote:
"Did you know aluminum is not magnetic? I learned something today."
So, yeah, I know what you mean.
I'd prefer a president who was smarter than a fifth grader in science.
I suspect that even Dubya knew that aluminum wasn't magnetic.
But, he wasn't elected based on his practical knowledge as we all know.
Same's true for most politicians.
Give him some credit, afterall, he's visited 57 of the 60 states....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EpGH02DtIws
On Massachusetts vs. The World...
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/12/03/14pisa.h33.html
The latest PISA results show:
'Room for Improvement'
In Massachusetts, about one in five students were "top performers" in math, scoring at levels 5 and 6 (on a scale with six levels of performance). The same proportion scored below level 2, or the "baseline proficiency" level. By comparison, more than half of Shanghai 15-year-olds scored at the top two levels in math and just 4 percent scored at the bottom level.
"One of the things that concerns me is the gap between our top and bottom performers," said Mr. Chester of Massachusetts. "While our aggregate results are very strong, there's much room for improvement in bringing up our scores in the bottom."
So the rising tide in Massachusetts still hasn't done much for all the boats.
I suspect it's the "usual suspects" who are at the bottom.
And for those who shout "poverty" as their excuse, there's always Korea to explain.
We definitely need something. If not new standards, then at least a new attitude towards education.
Also, CMS has still not given out security badges to all of the schools--- it has now been over 3 months... Of course these badges are a complete and utter waste of money because they serve no security purpose whatsoever and the money could be spent to help the students/teacher in their educational pursuit instead.
What's real message of urban district scores?
No NC winners in district Race to the Top
Teachers cite techbook challenges
Academic growth formula: Not secret, just complex
CMS watching the clock, making its list
N.C. 25 percent law: Headaches, costs and question...
CMS introduces Grade 13
How will CMS magnets screen students?
CMS: Much teacher turnover is out of our hands
McCray and Morgan make a popular team
Education advocates get ready for Raleigh in 2014


text:
Les statues-menhirs de Rouvières sont deux statues-menhirs appartenant au groupe rouergat découvertes dans le hameau de Rouvières à Nages, dans le département du Tarn en France.

Statue n°1
Elle a été découverte dans une ferme où elle servait de montant de fenêtre dans une bergerie. Il s'agit du fragment inférieur d'une statue plus grande. Il mesure  de hauteur sur  de largeur et  d'épaisseur. Le bloc de granite a été retaillé pour les besoins de la construction, les seules gravures visibles correspondent aux pieds.

Statue n°2
Elle a été découverte en réemploi dans un mur de soutènement. Il s'agit du fragment supérieur d'une statue plus grande, la partie inférieure a disparu. Il mesure  de hauteur sur  d'épaisseur. La statue d'origine devait mesurer entre  et  de hauteur. La pierre, en granite, a été arrondie sur son sommet et sur son épaisseur. Le décor d'origine a été effacé lors de sa réutilisation mais l'amorce du bras gauche et d'un baudrier sont perceptibles. La statue comporte au centre une cupule de  de diamètre sur  de profondeur et quatre autres cupules plus petites sont également visibles. Dans sa partie basse, la statue est traversée sur toute sa largeur par une profonde rainure ( de large sur  de profondeur) dessinant un léger arc de cercle orienté vers le haut.

Notes et références

Annexes

Bibliographie

Articles connexes
 Sites mégalithiques du Tarn
 Liste des statues-menhirs de France

Liens externes

 Statue-menhir n°1 (construit par photogrammétrie)
 Statue-menhir n°2 (construit par photogrammétrie)

Rouvières
Site mégalithique dans le Tarn

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


(a) Is cloning guests useful for you or not?  Often or infrequently?
day across our global infrastructure.
plans over the next few months.
(c) Do you have a homebrew method to clone guests?  What does it do?
SPECVirt analysis for example, we have to remove/reapply personality.
re-initialization, beyond the typical sysprep or OS level changes.
best, only a starting point for what is needed to abstract personality.
have personality logic staged for implementation on first boot.
OS and application level is key for us.
strategic sense for the KVM platform in general.
[mailto:virt-tools-list-bounces redhat com] On Behalf Of Richard W.M.
changes to the libvirt XML (eg. giving it a new MAC address).
sysprepping that an administrator might want; also see below.
RHEV.  It's best to read Microsoft's online documentation at .
timezone, root password, netconfig, keyboard, authentication).
without needing to install any software inside the virtual machine.


text:
Canadian organizations welcome G7 commitment on girls' education, and call for funding to back ambition
A leading coalition of Canadian education organizations, the Canadian International Education Policy Working Group (CIEPWG), welcomes the newly announced G7 Declaration, Girls Education: The Heart of COVID-19 Recovery and Unlocking Agenda 2030.
May 6, 2021 | Press Releases | Canada, Education
Fireside Conversation on Refugee Education
Canada is a global trailblazer in feminist international assistance, on girls' education in conflict-affected contexts, and in providing durable solutions for refugees. This has been demonstrated time again by commitments such as the Feminist International Assistance Policy, the Charlevoix Declaration, and the Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program. Recently, Canada once again demonstrated its commitment through…
February 12, 2021 | Events, News | Durable Solutions for Refugees, Education
Our 2019 – 2020 Annual Report
Our 2019 – 2020 year was filled with momentum, milestones, and new beginnings. Our Annual Report shares the results of select initiatives that have moved us closer toward our vision of a better world for all young people. These results are snapshots, localized expressions of our ambition for global systems change. They are examples of…
February 5, 2021 | News | Annual Report, Education
International Development Week – Open Letter from Canada's Volunteer Cooperation Programs
Together stronger From February 7th to 13th, we invite Canadians to celebrate International Development Week – a unique tradition that highlights Canada's commitment to sustainable development around the globe. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected our lives in significant ways. We have all been impacted by the closure of schools and businesses, job losses, and the…
February 5, 2021 | News | COVID-19, Education, Global, Volunteering for Development
One year in: How the WUSC network is fulfilling the pledges we made at the 2019 Global Refugee Forum
It has been a little over a year since we participated in the first-ever Global Refugee Forum (GRF), hosted by the UNHCR in Geneva. The Forum was an opportunity to demonstrate international responsibility-sharing, one of the key principles contained in the Compact on Refugees (GCR). During the event, various international actors, such as States, organizations,…
February 4, 2021 | Success Stories | Durable Solutions for Refugees, Education, Global
WUSC elected Co-Chair of newly established Global Task Force on Education Pathways for Refugee Protection
In 2019, there were 26 million refugees around the world, 65% of whom are under the age of 25. Education pathways, such as our Student Refugee Program, offer a unique avenue for displaced youth to build a brighter future for themselves and their families. Today, only a tiny fraction of the world's post-secondary education institutions…
January 6, 2021 | News | Durable Solutions for Refugees, Education, Global, SRP
How we are working with partners to prevent gender-based violence (GBV) during the COVID-19 pandemic
Around the world, nearly 1 in 3 women are affected by gender-based violence (GBV) in their lifetime. While men, women, girls, and boys all experience GBV to varying degrees, women and girls are often disproportionately affected. GBV includes, but is not restricted to sexual, emotional, and psychological violence, early and forced marriage, domestic violence, female…
December 10, 2020 | News | COVID-19, Durable Solutions for Refugees, Economic Opportunities, Education, Empowerment, Jordan, KEEP, Kenya, WE LEAD, Webinar
Webinar: Using a gender lens to address COVID-19 response in refugee settings
COVID-19 has become an unprecedented global crisis. The pandemic and its associated economic crisis have exposed deep structural inequalities around the world, with disproportionate effects on women and girls. This webinar, organized by Women's Empowerment in Development (WED) Lab at McGill in partnership with the Institute for the Study of International Development, explores current issues around COVID-19…
October 26, 2020 | News | Durable Solutions for Refugees, Education, KEEP, Kenya, Webinar
"Do not underestimate girls' education." Community reflections from our recent radio programming in Kenya.
The COVID-19 pandemic confirmed what we already knew – girls' education is most at risk during emergency and crisis situations. Many girls, particularly those in refugee camps and their surrounding host communities, may never return to school. That's why we quickly adapted our conditional cash transfers (CTs) approach and our radio programming in Kenya to keep girls'…
October 9, 2020 | News | Durable Solutions for Refugees, Education, KEEP, Kenya
Students in Canada vote "Yes!" to refugee resettlement
How successful referendums across Canadian campuses are creating opportunities for young refugees to access post-secondary education
August 27, 2020 | News, Success Stories | COVID-19, Durable Solutions for Refugees, Education, Student Refugee Program

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Our style of karate was developed by Dr. Tsuyoshi Chitose, a native of Okinawa who refined traditional fighting and training techniques to create an effective martial art which is based upon anatomy and physiology. This makes it less stressful on the joints of the students, enabling us to train and to enjoy karate for our entire lifetime!
Dr Chitose became one of the pioneers of Japanese karate instruction and his traditions are being continued here in Canada by his student ( our Saiko Shihan ) Shane Y. Higashi 9th dan.
Chito Ryu promotes strong flexible bodies, disciplined minds and lifelong friendships among its practitioners.
Techniques of Chito Ryu Karate-do include punches, kicks, strikes, blocks, evasions, throws, chokes, joint locks and traditional weapons training.
There is something here for everyone from six to ninety-six!
Contact us or stop by to say 'hello' and try a class! You are always welcome.
O-sensei Dr. Chitose practicing in his 70's.


text:
The Reluctant Fundamentalist DVD and Blu-ray release date was set for August 27, 2013.
Rating: 3.3/5 (18 users) *New - please help rate it
Genre(s): Thriller
Shabana Azmi
Martin Donovan
Nelsan Ellis
Meesha Shafi
Mira Nair
The thrilling story of a young Muslim man caught up in the bitter hostilities and heart-breaking divisions between the West and Islam following the tragedy of the September 11th attacks. Chengez, our protagonist, is enjoying the successful life as a Wall Street investor in New York on that faithful September day when he is suddenly forced to confront his Muslim identity, his admiration for his traditional homeland and loyalty to his newly adopted country. Searching for some meaning to this identity crisis, Chengez makes a mysterious journey to Pakistan where he makes contact with a shadowy group. What is our protagonist planning once he returns to America?
Release Date August 27, 2013
The Matrix Revolutions


text:
Q: How disable box-shadows and borders in video.js Player When I click play button, subttitles button or fullscreen button, That shows a blue border or blue box-shadow, so every video.js player have that, i want to disable that i have try like this but is not working!
.video-js .vjs-volume-panel .vjs-volume-control.vjs-slider-active.vjs-volume-vertical .vjs-volume-bar,
    .video-js .vjs-`big-play-button`,
    .vjs-flat-skin .vjs-fullscreen-control,
    .vjs-flat-skin .vjs-subtitles-button,
    .video-js.vjs-default-skin.vjs-paused .vjs-big-play-button {
      border: none !important;
      box-shadow: none !important;
    }

so this code i think is not corect, so i need an other CSS code to disable all those blue borders, or box-shadows?

A: Try removing the comma from the selector and back-ticks from "big-play-button"
.video-js .vjs-volume-panel .vjs-volume-control.vjs-slider-active.vjs-volume-vertical .vjs-volume-bar,
.video-js .vjs-big-play-button,
.vjs-flat-skin .vjs-fullscreen-control,
.vjs-flat-skin .vjs-subtitles-button,
.video-js.vjs-default-skin.vjs-paused .vjs-big-play-button { /*Remove comma from end*/
 border: none !important;
  box-shadow: none !important;
  }

Here is the demo: http://jsfiddle.net/lotusgodkk/0a5u3ew4/834/
Here is the original video: http://jsfiddle.net/bababalcksheep/0a5u3ew4/2/

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Director: Luis Tinoco Pineda
Spain, 2017, 15min
Crew: Producers: Luis Tinoco Pineda - Screenwriters: Luis Tinoco Pineda
Email: info selectedfilms.com
Debbie is rude with her own family. But after a dramatic car accident, she starts to regret about the way she behaved with them. Unexpectedly, Debbie's story connects with Arsys's, an experienced military and space fighter pilot who tries to survive a huge space battle which takes place on other time...another galaxy....another universe.
Luis Tinoco Pineda, Scriptwriter and director of CARONTE, started with 3D animation and visual effects more than twenty years ago. Luis have supervised the visual effects of more than twenty feature films and worked on more than fifty titles for cinema and TV. Some of them are remarkable Hollywood productions such as INTERSTELLAR by Christopher Nolan (Best Visual Effects Oscar Award winner film) or HERCULES by Brett Ratner. Nominated in 2009 for his 3D animation shortfilm MALACARA at the Goya Awards and Gaudí Awards as director and writer of the project.


text:
Q: Prove an equation using the law of total expectation
Question: Given a fair coin, there are $4$ possible outcomes if we toss the coins twice, they are $HH, HT, TH, TT.$
  If we obtained one of $HH,HT,TH,$ then we stop tossing. If we obtained $TT,$ we continue tossing.
  Find the expected number of tosses to stop tossing the fair coin.

Answer: Let $N$ be the number of tosses required to stop tossing. Then we have
$$E[N] = \frac{3}{4}\times 2 + \frac{1}{4}(2 + E[N]).$$
Solving the equation above leads to
$$E[N] = \frac{8}{3}.$$
I understand that $$E[N] = \frac{3}{4}\times 2 + \frac{1}{4}(2 + E[N])$$ is due to the law of total expectation. But I would like to prove the equation above using the law.
But to no avail.
Any help is appreciated.

A: $p(2m+2) = \left( \frac{1}{4} \right)^m \frac{3}{4}$, for $m \geq 0$.
So $\operatorname{E}(N) = \sum_{i=0}^{\infty} (2i+2) \left( \frac{1}{4} \right)^m \frac{3}{4}$
Now, see that  $\left( \operatorname{E}(N) - 2 \left( \frac{3}{4} \right) \right) \times 4 = \operatorname{E}(N) + \operatorname{E}(2)$.
Your distribution is geometric, so you are just solving for the expected value of a geometric random variable.


text:
Housing and Community LPD misogyny
Post author By Amanda Gailey
An assistant city attorney has been charged with criminal trespass for allegedly entering this rental house and terrifying its occupants in May of 2021. The case against him is now in jeopardy after the controversial firing of two LPD officers who investigated the case.
What follows is an explanation of how the Lincoln Police Department ousts police officers who challenge the power structure within the department. We look at the consequences of a pair of firings to one case in particular, a misdemeanor charge against an Assistant City Attorney, which is scheduled for a hearing on Friday, March 11. As it currently stands, two police officers instrumental to the case have been fired, a family fleeing domestic violence was evicted and terrorized, and the Assistant City Attorney will likely see the charge dropped.
I. A Tool Meant to Protect the Public Against Dishonest Police Officers is Used to Fire Whistleblowers
According to sources close to the Lincoln Police Department, LPD uses a troubling tactic to remove cops it no longer wants on the force, including some of the recent whistleblowers.
Prosecutors' offices and police departments around the country maintain something called a Brady/Giglio list. Brady and Giglio are shorthand names for two Supreme Court cases that led to the creation of these lists. Brady v. Maryland (1963) found that the government has a duty to provide potentially exculpatory evidence to the defense. Did someone else confess to the crime you are accused of? The prosecutor has to inform your lawyer. In United States v. Giglio (1972), the Court decided that this exculpatory evidence includes information that calls into question a witness's credibility. Did the prosecutor promise zero jail time to your accomplice in exchange for his testimony? They have to tell your lawyer that, too.
These two decisions require the prosecution to inform the defense if the state knows a police officer involved in a case has questionable credibility–for example, because they stole from the evidence locker or have a history of racist violence or even simply that they were found to have lied to a supervisor. To be clear here, cops are absolutely allowed to lie to regular folks. But lying to an officer up the chain of command can constitute a transgression so serious that it can be used to impeach his or her credibility on the stand. Consequently, if a cop is found to have lied to a superior, he or she may receive a "Brady/Giglio letter," which, as one source put it, is "career death." If you can't be used as a witness at trial, you are useless as a cop.
In some places, Brady/Giglio matters must be reviewed by an independent panel before a cop is officially added to the list. But not at LPD. At LPD, Brady/Giglio is handled internally, which, according to some officers, has resulted in Brady/Giglio letters being wielded as weapons in a toxic workplace.
The scenario described to Seeing Red Nebraska goes something like this: a cop gets on the bad side of someone with power in the Department. The cop is then subjected to extra scrutiny and questioned about random and sometimes inappropriate things until something that can be construed as a "lie" emerges. The "lie" is sometimes an innocent miscommunication, sometimes a hasty answer to an uncomfortable personal question–for one example within LPD, a supervisor asking a female inferior officer about her dating life–or sometimes entirely fabricated.
At that point, the officer knows that someone in the chain of command is sitting on an accusation of lying that can be weaponized at any minute. The targeted officer feels anxious, powerless, and at the mercy of a toxic workplace. When the lie is officially made into a complaint, a disciplinary investigation ensues, which often leads to the firing, suspension, or resignation of the targeted employee, whose reputation is then tarnished.
In short, toxic supervisors elicit "lies" out of their staff, or just fabricate them, in order to hold the threat of firing and disgrace over their heads, then finally file a complaint about the "lie" when they want to be rid of the cop.
Brady/Giglio has been implicated in at least five recent firings or other disciplinary actions at LPD: Sara Khalil, Luke Bonkiewicz, Angela Sands, Erin Spilker, and Laura Oliphant.
This is bad enough as a workplace fairness issue. But the public should be concerned about Brady/Giglio abuse if for no other reason than that it is toying with victims. Imagine you are the victim of domestic violence or sexual assault and LPD is playing Brady/Giglio games with the officer who responded to your crime. Poof, one of the cornerstone witnesses in your case disappears because a toxic supervisor at LPD wanted to get rid of a "troublemaker."
Let's take a look at how two of the Brady/Giglio letters involved with recent LPD firings are impacting one case.
II. A Family is Terrified
In 2021, Ana (all names of victims have been changed) and her two children were crashing at their friend Rob's place after fleeing domestic violence. Rob was out of town. On the evening of Friday, May 21, Ana was asleep in one of the rooms of the tiny rental next to her daughter, when she was awakened by her daughter's phone. Paul, her teenage son, had been asleep in a different bedroom in the house, but was now on the FaceTime screen physically struggling with an intruder and crying out for help. Ana called 911, and the intruder left the house.
When Officer Laura Oliphant arrived, she learned that the boy had awakened to a strange man on his bed. The man allegedly was agitated about something and tried to take the phone from the frightened boy. The family–who were people of color already displaced from one home–were reportedly terrified and had no idea who the man was or if he would return.
Oliphant's investigation led her to a suspect, Assistant City Attorney Rick Tast, who was an associate of the landlord of the house, a Lincoln Fire Department employee named Jeremy Hosek. Both Hosek and Tast own a number of rental properties in Lincoln (including one Tast rents to Dale Bolinger, a sex offender who tried to behead, cook, and eat a 14-year-old girl).
From Richard Tast's LinkedIn profile.
In an interview with Seeing Red Nebraska, Tast admitted he entered the home that evening, but claims he did so in his role as a private lawyer on behalf of his client, Hosek. He said that he did not believe the house to be occupied (which, for what it's worth, we think is true, because the tenant, "Rob," had relocated to another state).
Oliphant's investigation took a long time, in part, it seems, due to concerns about blowback from criminally citing the Assistant City Attorney. Nonetheless, in July–almost two months after the incident–Oliphant and her supervising officer, Angela Sands, who had helped Oliphant with the investigation, cited Tast for a single count of misdemeanor criminal trespass.
For a single misdemeanor charge, the case was a big deal. In July, all of Lancaster County's judges recused themselves from the case and a special visiting judge was appointed. A special prosecutor from the state Attorney General's office was appointed to prosecute the case.
III. How Two LPD Officers Received Brady Letters
The case against Tast plodded along. In the fall, Sands filed a complaint with the Department, saying that Tast had verbally berated her while she was directing traffic downtown on a football game day. She viewed this as a possible attempt at witness intimidation. (Tast told Seeing Red Nebraska that he does not recall this incident.)
Then, in late October, an LPD employee who is described as having a fierce personal grudge against Laura Oliphant left the force. On the way out, the employee filed a complaint against Oliphant with Internal Affairs.
The complaint claimed Oliphant had lied about how she mishandled a piece of evidence collected at the scene of a robbery at Gateway Mall earlier that year.
Here is what is not in dispute: while patting down a suspect at the scene, Oliphant had found a bullet and put it in her pocket to be able to continue searching the suspect. She then forgot about the bullet and left it in her pants, failing to tag it as evidence. Because the "chain of custody" was broken, the bullet was not usable as evidence. That much everyone agrees upon, and Oliphant was written up for the mistake by her supervisor, Angela Sands.
The "lie" the other officer reported to IA in October involved what happened to the pants with the bullet in the pocket. Oliphant had said she left the pants in a locker at work, but the complainant claimed she had actually taken them home and washed them, then lied about leaving them in the locker. According to a source familiar with the complaint and LPD policy, there was no evidence that Oliphant had lied or taken the pants home, and there would have been no reason to lie because the offense and consequence–a write-up for accidentally mishandling a piece of evidence–would have been the same either way. But because it was an alleged lie, an IA investigation began.
In December 2021, Internal Affairs concluded their investigation and found no evidence that anyone had lied in regard to the bullet. They found no evidence that Oliphant had taken it home. But according to a source, Chief Ewins announced that she was overriding IA's conclusion, and what's more, she was tacking on a conclusion that Angela Sands had colluded in the lie with Laura Oliphant–which seems to have never even been alleged previously–resulting in both women being becoming "Brady/Giglio."
In January of this year, the special prosecutor gave Tast's lawyer the Brady/Giglio documents for Sands and Oliphant, two indispensable witnesses in the case against Tast.
And at the end of February, Tast's lawyer filed to have the case taken away from the Nebraska Attorney General's office because an employee there (unaffiliated with the case) had once dated Sands and because Sands and Oliphant "have a documented history of collusion and falsification of official records." In other words, let's trash the progress on this increasingly expensive and time-consuming misdemeanor case and start all over again with a new prosecutor from somewhere else. Or would it just be easier to drop the charge?
Thus, Brady/Giglio is currently being used to discredit two key witnesses in a case against an Assistant City Attorney who is alleged to have entered a friend's rental and terrified a family of color who was fleeing domestic violence.
Brady/Giglio letters are supposed to be a tool to keep corrupt cops from unjustly locking up defendants. In this case, it appears that they were used to get rid of two cops who had become inconvenient to people in power but had done nothing corrupt. Angela Sands, who had complained numerous times about conditions at LPD, was inconvenient to multiple people in the Department.
As a source said, "This whole cops investigating cops thing just doesn't work for any kind of scenario."
It appears that the criminal case against an Assistant City Attorney, who had connections throughout City government and LPD in particular, will be very difficult to make now that these women have been fired.
We don't know why Tast entered the house on May 21. We can only see what has followed: a family fleeing domestic violence was traumatized. The landlord–who bought the house in 1996 for $20,000 and was collecting $750 a month on it 25 years later–evicted them. Two women police officers who had been held in high regard have lost their jobs under accusations about their character. The person who walked in the back door of the house is now likely to have the misdemeanor charge dropped.
Note: the details of the case presented here come from court records and interviews. These matters have not been adjudicated in court. The case is still active, and the next hearing is March 11.
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How can different deinterlacing algo make shots look more like movie or like video?
I've noticed that many scenes in Vidocq look very cheap, like a cheap TV series. Wikipedia article on Vidocq says:
As the final PAL DVD release shows, the film was shot 25i (interlaced), and only special effects shots were deinterlaced by means of smart field blending (imitating a progressive-type amount of motion blur due to a different shutter speed of progressive modes) during post-production, as the special effects crew obviously was in demand of progressive frames which are easier to process for special effects, before for the final release all normal shots were deinterlaced by means of simple line interpolation instead. The result are video-like appearance of motions in normal shots, and distinctive film-like motions for all effect shots due to the different amount of motion blur resulting from the different deinterlacing methods.
I've read How to get the Cinematic look and why movie video is different from other videos (sports, news, or other), but they don't discuss motion blur.
Why different deinterlacing algorithms make such a difference? Is it really just the sharpness of video picture vs blurred picture for a movie or, in fact, Vidocq has just been filmed cheaply with poor lighting, for example?
video video-quality
horshhorsh
The complete answer to your question, which definitely includes motion blur, but also more than motion blur, is found in this article in The Accidental Scientist. To summarize:
The human vision system has at least two major components that work together in a counter-intuitive way. Persistence of Vision makes it possible for a sequence of images playing at only 16 frames per second to create the illusion of motion. It is not a super high-quality illusion of motion, but the eye sees it as actual motion, not a sequence of images being flashed in rapid succession. Ocular microtremor is a phenomenon that explains why the acuity of the eye is more than 4 times the Rayleigh limit. And its oscillation frequency ranges from 70-105 Hz, and it averages around 84 Hz. A playback frequency 16fps or faster, but 42 fps or less means that the eye both perceives motion and can super-sample the image. Frame rates that are greater than 1/2 the microtremor rate (which for some mean 35 fps-70 fps and for others 53 fps-105 fps), the eye does not get to super-sample the image, and thus feeds the brain an image that fools persistence of vision, but doesn't satisfy the ocular microtremor system. Once the frame rate exceeds the frequency of the microtremor system (120 fps easily does this), the eye sees that as "actual reality". The article argues that the "uncanny valley", between 35fps and 105fps, is why 48 fps movies are not perceived to be 2x better than 24 fps movies, but actually worse.
Where motion blur comes in is that it softens the edges of objects in motion, letting the brain, not the eye, fill in the details. Evidence suggests that the standard formula that shutter speed should be 1/2 of the frame rate (1/48th of a second for 24 fps playback) provides the ideal balance between the brain-based system and the eye-based system to work together.
When a shutter is open for 1/2 the frame rate, it's called a 180 degree shutter (in part because that's how it was created mechanically back in the day). One can shoot with a more open shutter (up to 360 degrees) and one can shoot with a more constrained shutter (144 degrees, 120, 90, 60, 45, etc). Different shutter angles create very different looks in part because it plays with the balance between these two visual systems. The D-Day invasion footage from "Saving Private Ryan" was shot with a narrow shutter angle specifically to set the eye on edge.
All this to say--shutter angle and motion blur are very much a part of the perception of "smoothness" or "sharpness" of the motion. Interlacing is an artifact that mostly just messes things up in the progressive video world in which we now live. The small details on how people get around interlacing artifacts has little to do with understanding the "Cinematic look". The Cinematic look is really based on the deeper principles of shutter angle, frame rate, and of course lighting, lensing, atmospherics, etc. Interlacing either degrades things a lot, or not too much, and while it's strange that somebody would choose two different approaches to interlacing artifacts in a single production, that's less to do with explaining anything deep about the Cinematic look and perhaps more about the discipline (or lack thereof) of the production team.
Michael TiemannMichael Tiemann
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SACPR
2020 Spring Conference
AACVPR
Join SACPR
Jana Webb Memorial Award
On September 22, 2012, AACVPR and SACPR lost one of its longtime members, Jana Webb, to brain cancer. Jana was a dedicated cardiac and pulmonary rehab professional and will be missed by many.
In the late 1990s Jana started her career as an exercise physiologist at Forrest General Hospital in Mississippi with the Employee Wellness and Phase III Cardiopulmonary Rehab programs. Her patients lovingly called her "Sarge." When Linda Hall came to work with their program, she told Bonnie Sanderson that she had found "a star" that made things happen, no matter what obstacles came up. It was Jana's ability to live life fully with positive energy that was her ultimate star power.
Jana completed her master's degree in Exercise Science at the University of Southern Mississippi and worked in Wellness/Fitness in Madison then cardiopulmonary rehab at River Region in Vicksburg. She traveled back and forth from Madison to Vicksburg so she could work "where her heart was." Not long after, she had her first seizure, which began her tumor/cancer battle. But she never gave up. She had brain surgery that left her partially paralyzed and never let on that she had a disability. She just kept looking ahead, being positive and making plans to stay involved in the profession. Even when her husband took a job in New York so that she could focus on getting better and wouldn't have to work, she still wanted to be doing something that made a difference. She took a job helping with the exercise part of Breast Cancer research at the University of Rochester Medical Center.
Over the past year, her mobility declined, but she still kept working. She was planning to come to AACVPR that year in Orlando, but the tumor wasn't responding to medicine anymore, and unfortunately she wasn't able to attend. Jana served a term as President of SACPR and as the Mississippi State Rep on the Board for many years. She was a passionate advocate for Cardiac and Pulmonary Rehab patients and traveled to Washington DC for DOTH several times. Jana was also active on AACVPR committees and achieved Fellow status in 2007.
Her leadership, quick wit, and passion for her chosen field and patients will not be forgotten. As her husband Brad stated, "She's probably leading aerobics in Heaven." But for most of us, it was her friendship that we will miss the most. Rest in peace, Jana.
Contributed by: Kathe Briggs, MS, CES, FAACVPR, East Alabama Medical Center
"Jana was a mainstay at SACPR & AACVPR annual meetings and her smile, laugh and fun-loving nature will be missed by all of us. Her professional accomplishments are too many to list, but suffice it to say, to me, she was the "eternal" Mississippi rep on the SACPR board and a steady link to our National organization." - Kathe Briggs.
As a tribute to Jana and her dedication to the organization, the decision was made to rename the outstanding service scholarship in her honor. The criteria for this scholarship is "remarkable leadership skills and a commitment to our organization and its members".
The recipient of the scholarship will receive one FREE registration to the AACVPR conference.
- Nominate Recipient -
© COPYRIGHT 2020. SOUTHERN ASSOCIATION OF CARDIOVASCULAR AND PULMONARY REHABILITATION. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.


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How connected is your hospital's restroom? IoT-enabled products make staff and patient-care areas smarter and safer
by Eileen McMorrow
Remember when we did not stop when leaving our homes to think much about personal wellness? We did not consider how many germs we might encounter in a typical day when heading to work, campus, a healthcare experience or workplace, or a restaurant to dine with friends? Thinking about wellness while feeling vulnerable is part of our shared human experience as we endeavor to get back together to achieve our goals and have some fun. In response to the new reality, employers and managers of public facilities have a more nuanced appreciation of customer expectations, too.
Both hospitals and patients are focused on protecting themselves from the variants of Covid-19, even if they are vaccinated. At the same time, hospitals, healthcare facilities, and teaching institutions are eager to have people return to their purpose-built environments. Expectations are high that restrooms will be kept cleaner and checked regularly among people returning to public environments.
The Smart Restroom ECOPOWER Faucet and Flush Valves are IoT-enabled so plumbing functions operate independently of their IoT capability. That is, if Internet service is lost, WIFI communication is disrupted between a TOTO IoT-enabled plumbing product and the IoT monitoring system, or an IoT hardware issue occurs, the TOTO smart-sensor flush valves, faucets, and soap dispensers continue to function properly as high-performance plumbing products with no loss or disruption in functionality.
Prepared to improve the sanitary conditions and meet higher expectations for consistent restroom cleanliness throughout North America is TOTO, the world's largest plumbing manufacturer. This past November, TOTO launched a variety of Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled products for smart, fully connected public restrooms.
The key to performance is its ECOPOWER Technology embedded in smart-sensor products designed to connect with IoT tech systems. TOTO IoT-enabled products deliver reliable, customizable, and secure monitoring and analysis of connected restroom fixtures to a dashboard that facility managers and their custodial staff monitor via phone, tablet, or computer.
The power of ECOPOWER
A Smart Restroom vignette demonstrates the IoT-enabled, smart-sensor products by TOTO communicate wirelessly with GP Pro's KOLO Smart Monitoring System or potentially with a company's building automation or facility management system via the KOLO System's cloud data sharing or its application programming interface (API).
ECOPOWER, TOTO's proven smart-sensor hydropower technology, creates its own electricity. Every time water flows, it spins a small internal turbine. As a result, there's no need for hard-wiring to a building's electrical system or for routine disposable battery replacement. Moreover, there is no minimum daily usage requirement.
"ECOPOWER products keep working if there's a power failure. Our smart-sensor faucets and flush valves keep functioning even when a building goes down as their hydropower turbines continue to spin and store energy in the device for future use. Further, if the building's internet service goes out, too, they continue to collect data on their usage to be transmitted when the internet connection is restored. In these ways, TOTO's IoT-Enabled ECOPOWER system ensures continuity," says Bill Strang, president of Corporate Strategy, eCommerce & Customer Experience at TOTO. "Our smart-sensor faucet and flush valve hydropower technology make this possible." For example, in a hospital, the flush valves must work at all times – whether or not there's a power failure. TOTO ECOPOWER flush valves continue to operate without interruption no matter the building's power status because they are not reliant on external power – hard-wired or battery. They generate their own. "The micro-turbine spins and stores energy in the device which is then used to operate the valve for the next visitor," adds Strang, explaining the differences in aesthetics, quality, durability, and cleanability of the TOTO IoT-enabled products.
"ECOPOWER has been around for some time and originally was seen as expensive, but facilities managers liked that it ran and ran and continued to be in service, reducing the cost ownership," Strang explains. "The self-cleaning piston design and microturbine are useful for high-demand facilities and locations. For example, there's no need for the maintenance crew to focus on flushing problems with IoT-enabled ECOPOWER flush valves in airports, grocery stores, or arenas. Further, if there are ten stalls in a row and one stall is consistently not being used, it indicates that maybe it needs service—IoT-enabled flush valves can tell the staff a lot from their engagement or lack of engagement."
IoT-Enabled ECOPOWER Faucets generate their own energy, continuing to operate without interruption if a building loses electricity. If the Internet goes out, the faucets continue to collect data on their usage to be transmitted when the connection is restored.
The evolution of TOTO's Microturbine technology product occurred when IoT emerged," explains Strang. For maintenance providers, "every toilet is talking to you on your phone," he says with a bemused chuckle. He notes further the way mobile phones have transformed how we work and live and how chip manufacturing allows for more information to be delivered across smaller platforms.
The technology continues to evolve in the marketplace, and TOTO had the vision to apply an IoT connection to toilets, urinals, faucets, and soap dispensers. Specifiers can find it in IoT-Enabled ECOPOWER Smart-Sensor Flush Valves for Toilets, IoT-Enabled ECOPOWER Smart-Sensor Flush Valves for Urinals, IoT-Enabled ECOPOWER Smart-Sensor Faucets, and IoT-Enabled Auto Soap Smart-Sensor Dispensers.
(See Hygiene at work and on-campus meets its match with TOUCHLESS Faucets & Soap Dispensers from TOTO).
"The reputation that TOTO has, allowed business, airport, and university managers to consider taking a chance on the new IoT technology. Now they can look across the entire campus (via their dashboard) and see the real-time status of every single device in every bathroom in an in-depth display. TOTO's IoT-enabled products allow you to address the challenge of knowing that everything is in service, and it helps custodial staff manage their time and ability to clean or maintain a stall or whole bathroom," details Strang. Overall, the custodial staff can be out in the facility doing other work rather than being stuck in the restroom, continually checking the fixtures' status and stall cleanliness. It is far more efficient for a maintenance worker to get a phone ping that pinpoints a location needing service.
Dashboard data and IoT technology to the rescue
Once a facility's flush valve's motion-sensor eye sees a person come into a stall, the data is registered. It may sound unsettling; however, if a person was feeling unwell upon entering a stall and the sensor "eye" never sees them leave, it can be set to send a ping to a maintenance worker's phone, which is also detected on the facility manager's dashboard. What happens? Well, if no one left the stall, it could be a problem with the user (loss of consciousness or other health-related issue) and that can trigger a welfare check that benefits an unwell person. If not, it also could mean the "eye" needs to be checked. Ping in; ping out.
"We at TOTO realize that Apple's Steve Jobs did not think the tech he was inventing would be used this way, but here we are controlling the flushing of toilets, running of faucets, and dispensing of soap, and realizing tremendous value for facilities and their managers," Strang declares. "IoT is an enabling technology that brings solutions to you."
As the Covid-19 variants continue, building owners are trying to provide more attractive facilities to retain leaseholders. As people return to work, collaborative spaces are not being used as much, but settings that permit social distancing and provide air exchanges, UV light, HEPA filtration, and spaced-out bathroom stalls and sinks are in favor.
The IoT-enabled ECOPOWER Flush Valves for Toilets feature a self-adjusting smart-sensor that does not require manual calibration, providing fast and easy installation. Their six-second detection time prevents ghost flushing. Extremely water-efficient, they are available at 1.0 gpf or 1.28 gpf, offer a manual flush override feature, and are equipped with a self- cleaning piston valve with a 360-degree filter screen.
While tenants may not own the building, they are seeking restroom upgrades as part of the tenant improvement package. Higher-end smart commercial restrooms with IoT-enabled fixtures send a message to a company's employees or the guests of a business. Current restroom planning, as TOTO has learned, is calling for the mechanicals to accommodate a bigger footprint and to mitigate aerosol spread opportunities. HVAC can be localized to individual stalls with air intake behind the toilet, allowing air to leave the system right away from each stall. Retrofits include a chase behind the toilet to put in ductwork to take the air out below the toilet user. "All of this in an effort to convey to users that it is safe to come back to the space you will be in for eight to ten hours a day," says Strang. "Companies are keeping spaces cleaner and letting the employees know space design is being improved for users."
The IoT-Enabled ECOPOWER Flush Valves for Urinals by TOTO feature a self-adjusting smart-sensor that does not require manual calibration, providing fast and easy installation.


Here is a slightly different piece, for me, a commissioned horse and rider portrait that grew into a western scene kind of image. The reference supplied featured horse and trainer, along with a couple other riders, working some steers at a training facility down in Florida. I loved the scene but felt the background could be approved upon and we decided to swap it for a scene more typical of a west of the great divide landscape, for the background.
Back in my days as an illustrator, it was commonplace to combine a variety of sources to create a single image, and so this piece was a bit like old times.
Commissions are sort of a cross between my earlier career as a commercial artist, and my current, creating fine art paintings. I enjoy both and find the similarities far out way the differences between the two.
I look forward to taking on more interesting and challenging commissions in the future; whether they focused on a person, animal, home or particular landscape, or even all of the above!


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That VideoGame Blog
Weaving morality into game mechanics with Papers, Please
Nick Christophi
Not too long ago, I downloaded and played through the beta version of Papers, Please, a game created by Lucas Pope. For those you have not played it yet, or even heard about it, Papers, Please is set in 1982 in the fictional communist state of Arstotzka. You take on the role of an immigration inspector who is tasked with deciding exactly who can and cannot enter the country, after the end of a 6-year war with its neighbor Kolechia.
The game is very addictive and a lot of fun. As each potential entrant into the country approaches your desk, you have to make sure they have all the required travel documents, inspect them to make sure they are all valid (by turning to you handy rule book), and finally accept or deny them entry into the country by stamping a large ACCEPTED or DENIED mark on their passport and handing it back.
After stamping the first few passports, you enter a trance-like state where inspecting the documents of the next entrant is almost entirely an instinctual process. Your rule book gets more and more complex as each day passes, however, making the inspection of each entrant's documents an even more challenging and time-consuming process than it was the previous day.
The progressive difficulty of the game is counterbalanced by how satisfying and addictive the gameplay mechanics can be. To browse through documents, you have to drag and drop them yourself from the entrant's side of the desk to yours using your mouse. After inspection, you drag his/her passport underneath the stamp, and then click on the stamp itself to accept or deny the entrant into the country. It all sounds so cumbersome, but the game somehow makes dealing with these issues a challenging yet rewarding experience.
Papers, Please is also a thought-provoking game which has an interesting moral twist to it. As an immigration inspector, your character does his job first and foremost to support his family. At the end of each day, you're presented with a kind of score summary which tells you how much money you made (or lost, if you did a crappy job that day), along with a summary of the health condition of your family members. You're paid money for each person you allow into the country, but penalized if you're careless and let someone who has invalid or missing documents through the borders. In my play-through of the beta version of the game, supporting my family felt like as Sisyphean task. I just couldn't let enough of the right people into the country to make sure I had enough money at the end of the day to get my family some medicine and keep them warm. By the end of my run, which lasted just over an in-game week, most of my family was dead.
To complicate things even more, every once in a while, you will come across someone who is desperately begging you to let them into the country so they can avoid facing a firing squad back home, or someone whose documents check out yet turns suicide-bomber not more than 10 seconds after crossing the border. In "Experiencing the Banality of Evil in 'Papers, Please'", Scott Juster mentions how moments like these in Papers, Please are meant to reinforce the idea that, in real life, and often in the most tragic circumstances, immoral acts are committed when morality falls to the whims of bureaucracy. The rule which denies one person entry into Arstotzka and grants me money to feed my family, is the same rule which sends that person to the death squad back home.
In addition to its overt messages concerning morality within a bureaucratic setting, I think that Papers, Please addresses moral issues in a very unique way. In doing so, it expresses an important idea regarding how and why we confront moral problems and attempt to resolve them in our everyday lives.
To be clear, Papers, Please doesn't really have a plot. The game does have a back-story and setting which explain exactly what it is you will be doing throughout the game, and establishes exactly why you are doing what you are doing. Don't get me wrong here, I don't think that the back-story and chosen setting of Papers, Please are completely arbitrary and interchangeable, because they are definitely meaningful. In one significant respect, they provide the player with a morally-grounded purpose behind inspecting people's passports. They primarily act, however, as a way of window-dressing the game's raw gameplay mechanics.
Prior to the start of each day, you are shown newspaper clippings which, when taken all together, do tell a kind of overarching story. All of these references, however, foreshadow some kind of change to either the rule book you will use while inspecting people's passports the next day, or to some other aspect of the game world which will have some kind of impact upon how you will be doing your job the next day.
These references therefore act as a kind narrative of the progressive complexity of the game's mechanics, rather than the development of particular characters or the sequential occurrence of events that stand in some kind of meaningful relation to one another.
Papers, Please's emphasis on game mechanics also reveals some interesting things about how it addresses moral issues.
In plot-driven morality-based games, such as Heavy Rain, Telltale's The Walking Dead, or Mass Effect, the mechanics are there, for the most part, to let the player resolve the game's moral dilemmas, through his/her engagement with them. They do not play an essential role in allowing the player to understand why a particular situation in the game is morally problematic in the first place. If and when they do, it's usually not through the player's understanding of what the mechanics of the game actually are and what they demand of him/her, but rather through an engagement with these mechanics, which instead drives the plot of the game forward and reveals something new about the game's setting, environment, and/or characters.
Some plot-driven games, however, do weave morality into mechanics which come into play only at specific points in the game. A good example of what I'm trying to say can be found in the recurring encounters with Little Sisters in the original Bioshock.
The fact that the game lets me choose between killing the Little Sisters or freeing them, with each choice having its own repercussions and effects upon gameplay and the game world, is a crucial reason as to why these specific encounters are morally thought-provoking in the way they are. If this element of choice was not there, then these encounters would be morally relevant and thought provoking in an entirely different way.
The "No Russian" level from from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is also an interesting example to consider (although less of a story-driven game than Bioshock) because a huge part of the reason as to why that level was controversial was the fact that engaging with a core mechanic of the game, shooting anyone and anything that moves, was permissible in that level.
Similarly, these situations can be compared to those I find myself in while playing Papers, Please, as someone approaches my desk without an entry permit telling me that if I decide to send them back home they will die.
Like the encounters with the Little Sisters in Bioshock, the presence of an element of choice is what places me in a moral dilemma here. In moments like these, it's a core gameplay mechanic, the decision to accept or deny someone entry into Arstotzka, which has been called into question as a moral compass.
Whereas, in plot-driven morality-based games the possibility of choice is given to the player primarily as a reflection of an underlying sense of ambivalence he/she may feel towards how a particular moral issue should be resolved. In Papers, Please, the possibility of choice is instead the cause of that sense of ambivalence.
In addition to revealing how and why morality can be compromised within a highly bureaucratic environment, the emphasis on gameplay mechanics in Papers, Please ends up reminding us that, in real life, moral predicaments often arise as a byproduct of our engagement in a system of rules which define the particular environment we are immersed in, and dictate exactly how we can and cannot act within it.
By stripping the game of any kind of pre-determined narrative and emphasizing player involvement through gameplay alone, Pope also reminds us of the the sad reality that we often confront moral issues and attempt to resolve them because we feel a sense of obligation to do so only after our engagement in the practices which define our environment, and our recognition that they are actually the cause of these problems. The game reminds us of just how rarely we actively look for moral problems to solve which arise within a context of unfamiliar practices, or when the connection between our practices and these moral issues is not really that obvious to us.
Papers, Please is a great game, and I highly recommend you download the free beta and give the game a shot. As straightforward as it is, the game is challenging, fun, addictive, and thought-provoking. As always, feel free to share your thoughts on this game in the comment section below.
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About the author: Nick Christophi
Hailing from the tiny island of Bahrain, Nick's passion for playing video-games started at a very young age. Like many living in the third world, his first gaming experience involved a knock off... Read more...
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There are fun colorful casual posters, and then there are professional-looking posters that mean business. If you are stressing about how to go about making a scientific poster or a medical poster, worry no more. Here is a collection of the best of medical poster templates to help you create and design your own medical poster without difficulty. You may also see Cool Poster Templates. Amongst the templates that we have gathered here, there are Powerpoint medical poster templates, Word medical poster templates and Excel medical poster templates – you can choose whichever is required for your use. The title is written in a bold print to instantly let the people know about the topic, and the subtitle gives some additional information about the topic. You simply have to replace the mock-text of the boxes in the templates with your words. You may also see Music Poster Templates.
The Think Bigger Medical Poster Template are well designed in order to attract viewers to spread awareness regarding various medical information. This latex poster templates comes with Adobe Illustrator and has image of high resolution.
The Washing Hands Medical Poster Template is best suited for flyers, blogs and health related websites. This templates shows a little animated girl with a notion to stop spreading of germs and infections. It can be used efficiently for medical campaigns.
The Insurance Medical Poster Template is included with useful Al files with multiple column layers, EPS files as well as TXT help file. The photo purchase links are included in the help file which helps the users to get them easily and fast.
The Dental Medical Poster Template is undoubtedly one of the best designed template for dental care templates as well as for professional dentists. This template illustrates a high resolution image of a tooth with a sparkling illusion.
The Health Medical Poster Template is an entirely layered PSD file which can be easily edited with the help of Adobe Photoshop CS+ software. It has a resolution of 300dpi and is print ready. It is available in three colour variations.
The Medical Logo Poster Template is well crafted for any kind of medical flyers, posters, blogs and websites. This template has a resolution of 300 dpi which makes the template of high quality and all texts can be edited easily.
The Science Medical Poster Template is a sophisticated looking design which any hospital or nursing home can take advantage of by using it in their websites. This template comes with PSD files and a TXT file for assistance.
The Dentist Medical Poster Template comes with 2 layered PSD files and 300dpi resolution images. This templates comes with minimal designs, luxurious fonts, 0.25in bleeds, stylish and sleek layout and so on. It is a fully editable Photoshop CS PSD file.
The Medical Magazine Poster Template is best designed for flyers, brochures, magazine cover and posters. This medical poster templates free downloaded comes with PSD files and a help or TXT file which makes it easy for the users to incorporate this template into their projects.
The Medicare Medical Poster Template comes with Adobe Indesign compatibility and 1xIDML file for Indesign. This template has an A5 size and is absolutely print ready in nature. Free fonts are utilised in logo and also infographic elements.
The Awsome Medical Poster Template is well suited for websites that are concerned with medical aid and information. This template does not have stock images and can be utilised only after accessing the download link.
The Smile Medical Poster Template is a design well crafted for flyers, posters, magazines which are related to health, fitness and medical centres. This template is incorporated with four variable layouts with professional touch and is easy to edit.
The Amazing Medical Poster Template is one of the best choice for health care posters, vector brochures and flyers. This research poster templates free comes with 300dpi resolution and is absolutely print ready in CMYK colour mode.
The Medical Business Poster Template comes handy for all medical advertisements, disease awareness brochures and so on. This template is in A5 size with 3mm bleed and InDesign CS5.5 format. This poster templates for word can be adapted for other industries too.
These poster design templates are designed to grab the attention of passers-by, since the main purpose of medical poster presentation is to circulate the basic information about your event or research paper without making it look like a thesis paper! To make it more eye-catching, you can add a suitable image in the poster. Simply download these medical scientific poster templates, edit them according to your preferences and print them out. There are also some premium paid templates available for your use.
25+ Poster Design Tutorials – Free Online Tutorial Collection!