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Retrospective: The Adventures of Indiana Jones Role-Playing Game
The history of TSR between 1982 and 1984 is a strange and fascinating one. It's simultaneously when Dungeons & Dragons is at the height of its popularity (and profitability) and when TSR seems to have had no idea how to build on that success. Instead, TSR adopted multiple strategies, such as attempting to turn D&D into a brand name with which to sell non-gaming products to re-imagining the game into something more story-driven and, it was assumed, more accessible to potential customers unfamiliar with either pulp fantasy or its wargames roots. Another strategy was one that's still employed to this day, even by the current producers of D&D: license a hot property – or a not-so-hot one – and hope it'll result in expanded sales.
TSR's history with licensed properties is decidedly mixed. For example, Jeff Grubb's Marvel Superheroes is rightly considered an unqualified success, both as a near-perfect RPG design and as an example of the potential value of the right licensed property. On the other hand, the 2001: A Space Odyssey module for Star Frontiers is a classic example of "what were they thinking?" licensing, only slightly more intelligible than Dungeons & Dragons-branded sunglasses. TSR's AD&D Conan modules and Conan Role-Playing Game are, I think, an example of a middle case, namely a good idea poorly – or at least insufficiently well – executed. Throughout the early to mid-80s, TSR was clearly throwing lots of spaghetti against the wall to see what stuck; the results were, more often than not, a mess.
An infamous case in point is 1984's The Adventures of Indiana Jones Role-Playing Game. Designed by David Cook, the game was, like so many others at the time, a boxed set consisting of a 64-page rulebook, a map of the 1930s world, a referee's screen, a collection of player handouts, and cardboard cut-outs to represent characters, buildings, and vehicles, plus dice. Taken purely on these terms, The Adventures of Indiana Jones is a nice package and I can imagine that it would have seemed quite attractive purely on this basis. Of course, the main reason anyone bought the game – myself included – is because the pulp-inspired action-adventure world of Indiana Jones was very appealing. I have little doubt that every gamer who saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in the summer of 1981 (or even The Temple of Doom three years later) thought, "This would make a great roleplaying campaign."
So, unlike, say, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which still baffles me to this day, I don't wonder why TSR grabbed this license as soon as it was feasible for them to do so. The world of Indiana Jones is definitely the stuff from which a game RPG could be made. Alas, The Adventures of Indiana Jones was not that RPG – and it's not because of its game mechanics. Mechanically, the game was fine, if nothing special. Like many games at the time, Indiana Jones uses another variation on the color-coded results chart that Marvel Super Heroes employed to such great success. There are even small moments of brilliance in its particular take on the chart, with exceptionally good and bad results being called Lucky and Bad Breaks respectively and each having unique effects, depending on the attribute being checked.
The game's real problem, the one that utterly cripples it is its lack of character creation rules. Instead, there are a total of seven pre-generated characters from which players can choose: Indiana Jones, Marion Ravenwood, Sallah, Willie Scott, Short Round, Jock Lindsey (the pilot from the beginning of Raiders), and Wu Han (Indy's ally at the start of Temple of Doom, who dies). Now, I can understand including these characters as examples and even encouraging people to use them, but not including any rules for creating your own characters? That's a bizarre design choice, especially since the movies themselves imply that the world of Indiana Jones is much bigger than him and his immediate circle, filled with lots of other heroic and dastardly people trekking across the world in pursuit of valuable ancient artifacts. (There are also no experience rules; characters earn "player points" that enable them to reduce the severity of damage – that's it)
It's such a pity, because, as I've said several times now, there's a great deal of potential in the pulpy 1930s the movies presented. Further, the game itself is a decent introductory RPG that provides not only lots of fun little components but also a few interesting little sub-systems like the Chase Flow Chart intended to aid the referee in conjuring up the action of the movies. There's nothing revolutionary here, to be sure, and no one should think otherwise. This is not a forgotten gem of a roleplaying game, unfairly maligned despite its virtues. Rather, The Adventures of Indiana Jones is a textbook example of a missed opportunity – a nigh-perfect setting/world that could have, with a bit more imagination, have been a fun and successful RPG. Alas.
(And before anyone brings it up in the comments, no, TSR did not try to trademark the word "Nazi." TSR and this game can legitimately be criticized for many things; this is not one of them and I wish this particular urban legend would go away for good.)
Labels: conan, david cook, grubb, marvel, retrospective, tsr
Nameless Jedi November 18, 2020 at 5:54 AM
According to David Cook it was not a design choice, but rather a limitation imposed on them by Lucasfilm licensing. Grogtalk interviewed him and he revealed it around the 3 hour 37 minute mark here: https://youtu.be/Sem4sPyqNDw
That said, and playing devil's advocate, without Indy, you aren't really playing Indiana Jones, but just a pulp adventure game, so wouldn't need the hassle of a license anyhow.
James Maliszewski November 18, 2020 at 5:58 AM
I suspected that might be the reason, but it's very odd, since, just a few years later, the Star Wars RPG published by West End had no such restrictions.
pixledriven November 18, 2020 at 11:53 AM
Considering the success of WEG Star Wars, it's tempting to chalk that up to "lesson learned".
Clearly. Whatever missteps WEG made later on, they at least understood immediately that what people wanted out of a Star Wars RPG was the ability to play in the same world as Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, not to play Luke Skywalker or Han Solo.
Reverance Pavane November 19, 2020 at 3:57 AM
I do wish this is something that Marvel had learned. They were very unhappy that TSR included rules for creating your own superheroes in their system, rather than just providing the ones Marvel had provided.
So their next two attempts at an RPG did not contain any method of generating a character (explicitly stated in the case of the MSHRP licence).
Rick November 18, 2020 at 12:09 PM
This design kind of makes it more like a board game, than a complete RPG, right?
Somewhat. The rules do tend to make use of measurements that are tied to the included play maps rather than emphasizing "real world" ones. That certainly gives certain elements a boardgame-y feel compared to, say, D&D or even Gangbusters.
This recent "Boardgame Explosion" has really push boundaries. No complaints, but man, there are a lot of games these days that I steal from, not just ideas, but PROPS.
Ever tried Betrayal at house on the hill? kinda roleplayey. Arkham Horror is just CoC with no GM. And all those WOTC D&D boardgames. kind of a tier between Dungeons and dragons and Monopoly ;)
game wise, good time to be alive.
I have played Betrayal at House on the Hill and rather enjoyed it. Right before the world blew up, my wife and daughter bought me a D&D-flavored version of it, set in the Forgotten Realms and I've never had the chance to play it. Might be a while before I get the opportunity to see if it's any good.
Rick November 18, 2020 at 1:44 PM
I had no idea that existed. that sounds awesome!
Kevin Mac November 18, 2020 at 1:26 PM
Steve Jackson once said "all board games are role playing games," and I take that approach. Btw Betrayal at House is next on my list to get, but been obsessing on Dead of Winter lately.
I can see kids trying to get a game of Indy Jones going, but it fizzles because everybody wants to play Indy.
There were great pulp rpgs around back in the day, but I had so many pulp elements in my Cthulhu campaigns (cue groans from purists) that the itch got scratched. My sessions seemed to take place more in speakeasys and nightclubs than basements and woods.
James Maliszewski November 18, 2020 at 1:31 PM
My CoC games were similar actually. I played a lot of Gangbusters back in the day, so there was a bit of overlap between the two in terms of locations and scenarios.
I think a pulp rpg a girlfriend gifted me as a teen was called "Daredevils."
By FGU?
That sounds familiar. It was around 1983.
tegeus November 18, 2020 at 4:30 PM
There was an expansion that added the rules called the Judges Survival Pack that had rules to create your own player characters. I always meant to give it a try but never got around to it after purchasing them.
That's interesting. I never saw it myself, so I'm glad to hear that this issue was eventually addressed.
Thomas Denmark November 21, 2020 at 5:03 AM
The Judges Survival Pack is essential to turning IJRPG into a genuine RPG with brief, but well done character creation rules. A case of too little too late I suppose. I still have a fondness for this game despite how maligned it is.
Nicolas Dessaux November 18, 2020 at 5:30 PM
My friend and neighbour had a copy of IJ RPG when we were 13, but I don't remember playing it, unfortunately. Maybe he still owns it.
My friends and I played IJ a lot. We actually used the rules to run a setting set in a show called Tales of the Gold Monkey set in around the same time period. We didn't care that there were no character creation rules; the system was dead simple to comprehend and we had no problems creating our own characters. We were around 12 at the time, so we really never cared about things like rules.


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What Are Pricing Tactics a New Gym Could Use?
By Gregory Hamel
Differential Pricing Strategy
What Is a 501(c)(7) Corporation?
Participating Provider Agreement
Facebook Group Size Limit
How to Research Actual PPO & HMO Group Health Insurance Plans
Convincing consumers to try a new product or service is one of the biggest challenges small businesses face. Marketing can be especially difficult for membership or subscription-based companies like gyms because consumers may be wary of committing to a recurring fee. New health clubs and other membership-oriented companies can use a variety of pricing tactics to help build a base of customers.
Some people simply will not spend money on a gym membership unless they can try it out first. Every person has a unique set of workout needs, and offering free trials, such as a free membership that lasts a week or a month, can give potential customers the opportunity to see if a facility suits their needs. The free trial period gives the owners a chance to make a good impression and convince the customer to continue with a full membership.
Introductory Rates
Offering low introductory rates is another tactic new gyms can use to attract new customers. For example, a gym could offer 20 percent off for the first six months after signing up for a new membership. An introductory period can give customers time to get used to a certain routine and see the results of their membership before paying full price.
Discounts for Family and Friends
Families and friends often go to the gym together, which can make gym membership a group decision. Family memberships that offer reduced prices off the rate for each additional family member who signs up can help convince families to choose one gym over another. Gyms also can run "refer a friend" programs, in which current members get a discount on membership dues if they bring in a friend who signs up for a membership. Both tactics can improve loyalty and ultimately lead to better membership numbers.
Membership Plan Options
Offering several different membership plans with different features and costs gives customers more options and can attract certain customers who would not join otherwise. For example, a gym could offer a less costly limited membership that entitles members to a certain number of workouts per month or limits gym access to non-prime-time hours. Similarly, a gym could provide more expensive plans to people who want access to special facilities and classes such as pools, personal training and yoga.
Harvard Business School: Use the Psychology of Pricing to Keep Customers Returning
NetMBA: Pricing Strategies
Gregory Hamel has been a writer since September 2008 and has also authored three novels. He has a Bachelor of Arts in economics from St. Olaf College. Hamel maintains a blog focused on massive open online courses and computer programming.
Marketing Ideas for a Health Club
How to Make Money From a Privately Owned Indoor Skatepark
How to Run a Personal Trainer Business
Health Insurance Options for Self Employed With Pre-existing Conditions
How to Turn Off SSL Certificates on Firefox
The Best Ways for a Private Club or Bar to Make Money
How to Remove the Passcode on an iPhone
How to Sell Fitness Memberships
What Are the Three Different Types of Price Discrimination?
1 Marketing Ideas for a Health Club
2 How to Make Money From a Privately Owned Indoor Skatepark
3 How to Run a Personal Trainer Business
4 Health Insurance Options for Self Employed With Pre-existing Conditions

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Rangers: John Lundstram took his chance against Lyon
by George McGibbon	share
3 minute read	 9/12/2021 | 08:33pm
With Giovanni van Bronckhorst's Glasgow Rangers side heading into Thursday evening's Europe League clash with Lyon knowing that they could not improve on their second-placed standing in Group A, many had dismissed the fixture as a dead rubber.
However, for a number of Gers' peripheral first-team players who were handed a start at the Groupama Stadium, the match was very much an opportunity to impress their new manager, something which many of them grasped with both hands.
Indeed, the likes of Scott Wright, Jon McLaughlin and John Lundstram all highly impressed in the fixture, however, it was the latter of this trio whose performance will have caught Van Bronckhorst's eye the most in the 1-1 draw with the Ligue 1 side.
Do you think Lundstram should start against Hearts?
88% duels won
While Lundstram has somewhat struggled to hold down a starting place in the Rangers side since his summer move from Sheffield United, the 27-year-old central midfielder's display against Lyon will have undoubtedly given Van Bronckhorst some food for thought ahead of Gers' upcoming Premiership clash against third-placed Hearts this weekend.
Indeed, over his 90 minutes on the pitch, the £6.3m-rated man enjoyed 78 touches of the ball, completed 56 passes – one of which was key – found his man with seven of his nine attempted long balls and successfully completed his one dribble.
The player, who Chris Wilder dubbed an "exemplary" professional, also made a whopping four tackles, one interception and won seven of his eight attempted duels – a success rate of 88%.
How well do you know Morelos? First... who did he score his 100th goal against?
These returns saw the £22k-per-week midfielder earn a SofaScore match rating of 7.5, with only Lyon's Rayan Cherki receiving a higher score than the former England U20 international on the night.
As such, while a number of Gers' players impressed after being handed a start by Dutch manager, with both Ryan Kent and Kemar Roofe also turning in admirable displays, it was undoubtedly Lundstram who shone the brightest against Lyon, with the midfielder's display surely increasing his chances of starting once again at Tynecastle this weekend.
In other news: Wilson may repeat his huge 2017 "mistake" by signing £15m flop, Rangers fans will fume
Article title: Rangers: John Lundstram took his chance against Lyon


Some people in your group do not want to ride a motorbike; that is no problem because we have a range of cars available for you to choose from, to seat from 4-50 people.
For mountainous roads, we have 4-wheel drive cars for rent, eg Toyota Inova 7 seats, Toyota Prado 7 seats, Ford Everest 7 seats and Mitsubishi Pronto 7 seats.
For the easy road and big group, we have Ford & Mercedes 6 seats, Toyota Hiace 15 seats, and Aerospace 45-50 seats.


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Category Archives: mystery
Storm Track, by Margaret Maron
Although I like mysteries and I like to read a series in order, I avoided Maron's Judge Deborah Knott books at first. Mostly this was because of their being set in North Carolina, a place familiar to me but paling in comparison to other mysteries set in Yorkshire, Quebec, Venice, etc. However, the idea of a woman judge as the main character intrigued me, so I dove in. As this is the seventh in the series, you can tell that I'm enjoying them.
In this book, a series of hurricanes are bearing down on Colleton County, far enough inland that they don't usually suffer much damage. Deborah's ruling in a divorce case comes back to haunt her when a woman's body is found at the Orchid Motel, clad in black lace underwear. Lynn Bullock, wife of an up-and-coming attorney was known for having many affairs, so suspicion focuses on her former (and current?) lovers. Among the suspects are Deborah's own cousin.
As the threat of Hurricane Fran increases, various liaisons come to light for Deborah. Remarkably, they are treated without judgment, but rather a sympathy for all parties. Suspense ratchets up along with the storm. Then the killer strikes again.
One of the things I like about these books is the equal real estate given to African-American characters. Unlike so many books that depict only white characters, Maron's stories matter-of-factly present the diversity found in real life. And as in reality, while there are friendships and collegial relationships between the races, there are also tensions and distrust.
Another thing I like about this series is Deborah's family. Her father, the patriarch of the family, was notorious as a bootlegger and political insider, grows in complexity with each book in the series. She is the youngest, with twelve older brothers and half-brothers, some old enough that their children are her contemporaries.
Independent and strong-willed, Deborah occasionally chafes at their casual assumption of care for her—turning up with a kerosene lantern for her, as if she hadn't laid in her own supplies, for example. Yet, they are there with a tractor when needed, or hosting a family get-together. I love when they turn up, each so different yet a comfortable and enduring presence.
An exciting mystery that plumbs the secrets of a small town, this book really shines in its sensitive depiction of relationships—between friends or lovers, between races, between parents and children. Plus it has an outstanding description of living through a hurricane. I'm thrilled that there are many more books in this series for me to explore.
Have you read any of Maron's books? Which is your favorite?
Posted in fiction, mystery
Tagged family, hurricane, North Carolina
April 29, 2019 by barbara
The Mapping of Love and Death, by Jacqueline Winspear
Like many readers, I enjoy books that are part of a series. The initial plunge into the story is easy because the main characters are familiar, as is the world of the story. Winspear's series featuring Maisie Dobbs starts in 1929 when Maisie sets up in business as an inquiry agent in London.
I find her a a delightful person to spend time with: calm, resourceful, full of common sense. She, like most of her generation, bears wounds from the Great War even ten years after the Armistice, at the start of the series. Her physical scars from the bombing of the medical station in France where she served as a nurse have healed. But her beloved Simon, a doctor who was more seriously injured in the same bombing, remains alive in a nursing home but brain-dead.
The other effects of the trauma she endured in France are heightened by the evidence of the war's damage around her: the veterans who litter the streets, maimed in mind or body or both, often unable to find work; the women left without prospect of marriage after the decimation of a generation of men; the economic hardship and social uncertainty of a nation still measuring the cost of what's more a cessation than a victory.
She also occupies a peculiar spot in England's class structure, which at the time is still rigid if beginning to fray. Born to working class, she was placed in domestic service at 13, not uncommon at the time. However, once her employer Lady Rowan discovered Maisie's yearning for education, she began supporting the girl's education, roping in Maurice Blanche, a family friend who eventually trained her as a detective. Equally at home downstairs and upstairs, Maisie went on to enter Girton College, before leaving to enlist as a nurse.
In this outing, the seventh in the series, Maisie is hired by a wealthy couple from Boston whose son was killed in the war. His remains have just been found, a farmer having accidentally uncovered the bunker where Michael's unit died under bombardment. Letters that he had on him, safely wrapped against the elements, indicate that he'd been having an affair with a nurse, and Michael's parents are eager to find her to learn anything more about their son.
Taking on the task, Maisie must navigate the past, calling forth echoes of her own ordeals, as well as the present, with all of its dangers. Someone does not want her to succeed. She and her assistant Billy Beale are kept busy tracing out the various tentacles of the investigation while dealing with their own personal challenges.
The challenge for the writer of a series is that each book must show development of the main characters while at the same time ensure it can stand alone. There must be enough information from past books so the new reader is not lost, but little enough that the dedicated reader is not bored.
Winspear is adept at working in nuggets of explanation just when they are needed. I'm also becoming more appreciative of the character arc of Maisie across the series, as well as that of other characters, such as Billy Beale and his family, Lady Rowan and her family, Maurice Blanche, Maisie's contacts at the police, and her one close friend Priscilla Partridge.
I started reading the series when it first came out, but lost track of it for awhile. Now I've started at the beginning and am reading straight through: a writer's worst nightmare! Reading them in quick succession instead of waiting a year or more between them should make me quick to spot inconsistencies and be bored by duplicated information.
Instead, I have to marvel at the author's artistry. I find Maisie's development as a person even more fascinating than the cases she's investigating—though there's no lack of suspense and puzzles there. The real puzzle lies in us, the way each of us navigates our lives. This book, like the others in the series, demonstrates deep psychological insight combined with thorough research into the time period.
I admit it was my fascination with the Great War that first led me to these books, and they continue to add color to my own studies. But it is Maisie Dobbs who keeps me coming back.
Is there a series of books that you've particularly enjoyed?
Tagged mapmaking, WWI
March 18, 2019 by barbara
The Lying Game, by Ruth Ware
More a suspense novel than a mystery, this 2017 novel from Ruth Ware starts with a body turning up by a tidal estuary on the south coast of England. The next day Isa Wilde, living in North London with her husband and six-month-old daughter, receives a text saying simply "I need you."
To her husband's baffled dismay, Isa immediately packs up her baby and leaves for the village of Saltern, where 17 years earlier she had briefly attended a boarding school. There she'd become tight friends with Kate, Thea and Fatima, getting up to all kinds of mischief, sneaking cigarettes and alcohol, slipping out at night.
They also played what they called the lying game. The game had many rules, including points for how persuaded the unfortunate recipient was by their lies. That summer the four of them formed a bond strong enough to bring them back all these years later.
Kate, who sent the text, still lives in Saltern, in a ramshackle building called the Tide Mill on the other side of the Reach—the local name for the estuary—from the school. Her father Ambrose had been the art teacher at the school, enabling Kate to board there. His relaxed bohemian ways left the girls free to escape school regularly to make their way across the Reach to the Mill where they let loose as only 15-year-old girls can, swimming and drinking and exploring.
And confronting something that not only could blow the four apart from each other, such that they had not seen each other for 17 years, but was so explosive a secret that fear of it had haunted them all that time.
The book is more psychological suspense than the runaway train of a thriller. I appreciated the insight into the characters, all of whom we encounter through Isa's eyes. I was fascinated by the changes in the young women. Fatima has become a doctor and begun practicing her faith, disconcerting the others with her hijab and refusal of alcohol. Kate has become an artist like her father, but barely making enough to hold body and soul together. Thea's intensity and tendency to anorexia have only increased, while Isa has settled happily into marriage, motherhood, and a civil service job. They all have a lot to lose.
As a writer, I appreciated Ware's sure-footed ability to take the reader in and out of the past without ever leaving us floundering, wondering what time period we were in. Good transitions and textual clues ensured that we always knew which time period we were in.
I also was impressed by her use of setting. The details we encounter through Isa's eyes not only create vivid images of the places themselves but also add to the atmosphere and underline themes throughout the book. For example, at one point Isa is describing Saltern village and mentions the fishing nets hung on many of the cottages, presumably to add to the village's appeal as a tourist destination. However the drooping, grey webs of netting make her wonder how anyone could bear to live enclosed by them.
Another example is the Mill itself. Remembered as a lost paradise, it has decayed through years of neglect to the point where it is not only falling apart, but is actually sinking into the sand. It has gotten so bad that during some high tides the electricity shorts out and the footbridge over the millstream to the land beyond is flooded.
Too much? Readers' tastes vary, but I enjoyed how Ware could take clichés such as a house built on sand, being caught in a spider's web, or crossing a treacherous bog and make them work, creating an intense atmosphere and increasing the suspense. The twists and turns of the story make the plot exciting, but more importantly reveal new layers of all of the characters, large and small.
What novel of psychological suspense have you read lately that you'd recommend?
Posted in fiction, mystery, suspense, Uncategorized
February 25, 2019 by barbara
Borderlines, by Archer Mayor
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know I like mysteries. Their literary quality is often outstanding, and I always love a good puzzle. This second book in Archer Mayor's series featuring Joe Gunther hits every mark, making it one of the best police procedurals I've read.
Gunther, a policeman in Brattleboro, Vermont, has been seconded to the State's Attorney at the opposite end of the state. Vermont's Northeast Kingdom is an isolated, rural area far from the state's scenic mountains and tourist destinations, and depressed economically, even in 1990 when this novel came out.
He's familiar with the area, having spent childhood summers here with his aunt and uncle. He's looking forward to time with his now-widowed Uncle Buster, whose benevolent support he could use as he wrestles with questions regarding both work and love.
In the gripping opening scene, Gunther's journey is interrupted by an illegal shot, but he is quickly reminded that his authority as a law enforcement officer is limited in the Northeast Kingdom, which is "populated by people who had chosen to put their independence and wariness of the rest of the world above the hardships of living here."
The pace doesn't let up, as Gunther arrives in Gannet, the small village of his childhood summers. Ramshackle and rundown, the town allowed half of its building to be bought up by an intentional community, seen by some as a cult. Tensions between the Order and the town have grown, only to explode when a couple from Massachusetts arrives to rescue their daughter. The tension is nicely modulated, with plenty of scenes of Gunther sitting on a step with a childhood friend, walking with his uncle, or phoning his girlfriend to vary the suspense before building to a satisfying climax.
What's best here is Gunther himself. With this character Mayor finds just the right balance of thought and action. Gunther's quiet, unassuming voice sets him apart from sometimes brash or bragging detectives. Though there's not a lot of soul-searching, he's quick to acknowledge his own mistakes. We're given all we need to perceive his sorrow at the way the village and its people have deteriorated. The loss of his childhood refuge provides shading to Julie's story, the young woman whose parents have come to steal her from the cult.
There is one twist that seemed to come almost out of nowhere. Mystery writers have the daunting task of planting enough clues to significant plot twists so that readers think Oh, of course! Why didn't I see that? while not so many that we guess it too soon. Mayor did an excellent job of preparing for all the plot twists here, save one, noticeable only because of the superb plotting everywhere else.
In talking about the elements in fiction, plot and character are the stars. Increasingly, though, I find myself drawn to novels in which the setting is richly evoked and becomes almost another character. Mayor does that here, brilliantly. The environment he evokes helps us anticipate and understand the people in this story, all brought to life, no matter how small their role. It also charges the mood of the story.
When I was younger, the Kingdom had been much as the name implies – a magical other world, removed from the mainstream and endowed with a specialness in the minds of those who knew of it. Its topography, both rugged and cursive, could reject and embrace, kill and nurture. It was a place where land and weather ruled, where the beauty came less from the majestic mountain views found further south, and more from the perpetual surprises that lurked behind the low, ever-present hills. Even at its harshest, the Kingdom was seductive, as when its omnipotent sky darkened with boiling blue-black clouds, low slung and pregnant with threat.
Its people, like those of Gannet, clung to this mercurial terrain mostly out of choice . . . They were independent, self-supporting, proud, and generally uninterested in what was happening outside of their boundaries . . . But, obviously, the fabric of the Kingdom had begun to strain and yield.
Even now, several decades after publication, this book is a valuable resource if you want to understand the crumbling lives of the rural poor. Mayor's insight into his fellow Vermonters is demonstrated on every page. As death investigator for Vermont's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, and formerly a detective and volunteer firefighter, Mayor brings the authority of real-world experience to this spellbinding tale.
Have you read one of Archer Mayor's books? What did you think of it? Do you have a favorite?
Posted in mystery
Tagged police procedural, poverty, rural, Vermont
October 29, 2018 by barbara
Sunburn, by Laura Lippman
Pauline leaves her family at the beach and returns to their rented apartment to pack her bag. Inspired by Anne Tyler's Ladder of Years, she has decided to simply walk away from her life.
Though Tyler's book isn't named, I knew immediately which one was meant. Who could forget Delia on Bethany Beach, walking away from her family, carrying only a straw tote decorated with a large flower? For all of us overburdened mothers with our unrealised dreams—often undefined even to ourselves—it was as though Tyler had revealed our most secret fantasy. Can you really do that? we wondered.
Lippman takes that fantasy and spirals deeper and deeper into it. What would make a woman leave her husband and three-year-old daughter?
Pauline doesn't get very far. She hitches a ride to Washington D.C. with an elderly man whose wandering hands force her to abandon him in Belleville, a small Delaware town, only an hour away from where she started.
She decides to stay. Introducing herself as Polly, she persuades the owner of a bar/cafe to hire her as a second part-time waitress/bartender. What she doesn't know is that the man sitting at the bar with her that first night is a private investigator hired to find her.
Adam wasn't hired by her husband, who is only that night realising she is gone, but by a shady lawyer whose connection to her in unclear.
Much is unclear, to Pauline/Polly and Adam, and to us. Lippman seduces us, revealing bits of information while spinning out new webs of suspicion. We try to decide which of the stories these characters tell are true and which are lies, even as the characters themselves do the same.
It's like a game of three-dimensional chess. There's what Adam knows and doesn't know, what Pauline knows he knows, and what she doesn't know he knows. Same with Pauline: what she knows and doesn't know, what Adam knows and doesn't know she knows. And then there's the reader. For all our insight into both characters, there's plenty we know we don't know, not to mention what we don't know we don't know.
It all unfolds naturally, the twists and turns easy to follow. The puzzle is embedded in an engrossing story: a love story, a change-your-life story, a mysterious-death story. Adam, Pauline, and the other characters make their moves based on their limited understanding of the others' knowledge and motivations, just as we all do.
I especially liked Lippman's reimagining of the classic noir femme fatale. She pries open the stereotype and takes us on an unexpectedly deep dive into Pauline, her history, her motives, her dreams and weaknesses.
I was also captivated by Lippman's setting this noir tale in the tiny fictional town of Belleville in rural Delaware in the 1990s. True, there are forays into Baltimore and Wilmington, but the confines of a small town add intriguing nuances to the atmosphere. There is suspense for sure, but the book isn't a thrill ride. It's a measured unfolding over the course of one summer of a multi-layered story.
What did you do on your summer vacation?
Tagged Delaware, femme fatale, noir
September 3, 2018 by barbara
The Forgotten Garden, by Kate Morton
It being the end of summer, I went in search of a real vacation read. Not that I was going away, but I did have a week off from grandchild babysitting duties. I wasn't looking for a beach read; most of my vacations end up in a cabin in the woods or a footpath in the Cotswolds. Instead I wanted to immerse myself in a big, fat, multi-generational novel, preferably set in the UK.
I found it in The Forgotten Garden. As the story opens, it is 1913 and a small girl is hiding on a ship on the Thames, as instructed by "the lady". The ship casts off from its London dock to cries of "Bon voyage", and the girl leaves her hiding place to follow a group of children. Later, a fall on the ship has damages her memory, so she no longer remembers her name or any other details of her former life.
She fetches up in Brisbane, Australia, where she is adopted by the harbormaster and his wife. As an adult Nell tries to discover how she came to be left alone on the boat and why a book of fairy tales was packed in her small suitcase. After Nell's death her granddaughter Cassandra takes up the search, following Nell's footsteps to Blackhurst Manor on the coast of Cornwall, ancestral home of the Mountrachet family.
I'd previously read and enjoyed Morton's The Lake House, impressed by how well she moved back and forth in time without losing me—and I'm a notoriously easily confused reader.
Here Morton doubles down by using, not just multiple time periods but also multiple narrative points of view (POVs). Multiple POVs have proliferated lately, having the cachet of seeming modern. Many writers have tried their hand at using them. Most fail.
At least in my opinion—remember I'm easily confused. Sometimes it seems to me a lazy way of writing. It is a challenge to bring out all of a story's incidents and information if you are confined to only one character's perceptions. I think some authors try to get around that by moving from one character's head to another, instead of finding more creative solutions.
That's not what's happening here. I should have been lost a hundred times over as we move between Nell, Cassandra, Rose Mountrachet, and Eliza, the author of the fairy tales. We jump around in time between 1900 when Eliza was a child, 1907, 1913, 1930, 1975-1976, and 2005 when Cassandra flies from Australia to England. We have letters and scrapbooks and journals. We even have some of the fairy tales.
And it all works. It's not just that Morton labels each chapter with place and date. It's not just that we have different characters associated with the different time frames to help ground us. Nor is it just that she pays attention to transitions, so for example at the end of one chapter Cassandra in 2005 is examining a legal document, while the next chapter starts in 1975 with Nell checking her passport and tickets.
It's that Morton has carefully constructed her story so that whatever the date and POV, the line of the story continues. Thus, just as Nell in 1975 begins to learn about Eliza's early life and that she is the author of the fairy tales, we go to 1900 where Eliza is watching the busy life of London's streets through a chink in the bricks and making up stories about the people she sees. If I was unsurprised by the ending, I was at least not disappointed.
It's always interesting to me as a writer to go back, after my gloriously immersive first read, and see how the author has handled releasing information. It's a tricky balance. You want the reader on the edge of their chairs, but not so frustrated that they throw the book across the room. So you have to reveal information fairly regularly while also holding some back. One good mantra is: every time you answer a question in the reader's mind, create a new one.
All of the characters, even minor ones, are well-drawn and memorable. The settings—ship, slums, estate, cottages, gardens—are gorgeously done. The letters and other ephemera add to the verisimilitude of the story and give us other voices. To my surprise, the fairy tales also work well, adding emotional depth to the story as the seeds planted by their images flower. In fact, the language throughout is particularly lovely: poetic without being distractingly so. There are some really gorgeous turns of phrase here, some haunting images.
All in all, Morton's book is a perfect vacation read.
What did you read on your summer vacation?
Tagged Australia, Cornwall, historical fiction
Ordinary Grace, by William Kent Krueger
I've long been a fan of Krueger's Cork O'Connor mysteries. Like many such series today, they are graceful and profound enough to qualify as literary fiction. This stand-alone novel, too, while a mystery, is so much more than that.
Frank Drum tells us about the summer of 1961 when he was 16. A bit of a scamp, he is in that liminal space between childhood and adulthood, when we move from innocence to a more complicated knowledge.
He's often thrown together with his younger brother Jake, partly because he feels he must protect Jake who has a stammer. They are also somewhat isolated from other youngster their age because their father is the Methodist minister in the small town of New Bremen, Minnesota, and they both firmly believe in their father's religion. Their older sister Ariel is a musical prodigy headed to Juilliard the following year.
As the summer begins, Frank and his family are struggling to come to terms with a death that has been ruled an accident but may be something more terrifying. Frank and Jake, exploring the sand flats where they are forbidden to go, encounter a squatter and notice he has a key piece of evidence in that death. Thus we are unsettled right from the beginning, aware of peril, but unsure whom to trust.
Although told from the distance of forty years, we get a strong sense of what it's like to be 13. Frank pushes his boundaries, struggles with bullies, and fears the tensions within his family. His mother, once a promising musician herself, is a native of New Bremen who thought she was escaping by marrying a lawyer-to-be, only to be thrust back into her stifling hometown as a preacher's wife. Adding to her discontent is her rejection of any kind of religion.
With the summer's events, Frank must also grapple with issues of prejudice and race. He must find his own way through the religious quagmire of bad things happening to good people. And, like many teens, he must suffer those moments of recognising you've made a terrible mistake and those when you must make a difficult choice.
Part of the pleasure of reading this story is the delicate balance between these coming-of-age struggles and the dangerous tensions that bubble up as more deaths ensue. Another part is the subtle way the past threads through these events, exposing unexpected strains and traumas. These stories from before the story add depth and resonance.
Yet another remarkable aspect is the way not only the characters change over the course of the story, but also the way relationships between the characters transform.
Most of all, for me, after several novels in the last few years with vague or disappointing endings, the conclusion here is deeply satisfying. All the pieces come together. We have gone on a journey with these people, a journey that has left me with a full heart.
What novel have you read recently that engaged you emotionally from start to finish?
November 12, 2017 by barbara
Hard Truth, by Nevada Barr
I've enjoyed the Anna Pigeon mysteries by Nevada Barr ever since they first came out. Anna is a park ranger, and each book takes place in a different national park. Barr herself worked in national parks during the summer, so she brings experience to her stories.
I know she also does extensive research for each book. One of her books, Blind Descent, is based on an actual incident in Lechuguilla, one in which my brother was involved. He was shocked by how accurate her details were, not just of the cave itself, but caving technology, and the kinds of people who would be on such expeditions (though there were no murderers on his descent!).
I heard her speak once, and loved her description of how she learned to write mysteries. Her first book was surprisingly accomplished. It deservedly won both the Agatha and Anthony awards for best first mystery. Barr said she learned by taking a few favorite mysteries and taking them apart. She studied them for months trying to understand what worked and what didn't. I think this is a great way to learn how to write! After all, it wasn't that long ago that there weren't MFAs in creative writing.
Hard Truth is the 13th book in the series and finds Anna working in as District Ranger in Rocky Mountain National Park. When she arrives, she finds a team that has been traumatized by a six-week search for three missing girls. They come camping with a group of young people under the guidance of their pastor. The girls have never been found, and the active search called off.
Oddly, the parents did not participate in the search. Instead, they prayed. Part of what I would call a cult, their home is a compound run by a large bully of a man whom everyone is afraid of. Anna hears that the sect has broken off from the Mormons, finding them too worldly and liberal.
A parallel story gives us a young woman, Heath Jarrod, who has come camping with her aunt. They are staying in the "handicamp" because Heath is confined to a wheelchair since a climbing accident, leaving her bitter and angry.
Barr mixes up these characters in events so suspenseful that a long car ride passed in a flash. I like Barr's writing, her detail about the life of a park ranger, and her descriptions of the parks. This book, sadly, had less about the park and more about the evil on the loose.
One of my friends told me she stopped reading Barr's books because she finds them too violent. I've thought about her comment while I'm working my way through them again; I find it interesting to read a series consecutively sometimes. I have to say, this book is particularly gruesome. In fact, the last few have been quite violent near the end, but this one verges on being a horror story. I'm almost afraid to read the next. My friend might be right.
What mystery series have you enjoyed?
Tagged Rocky Mountain National Park
August 7, 2017 by barbara
The Nutting Girl, by Fred DeVecca
Alvin Toffler famously predicted in 1970's Future Shock that coming generations would have many jobs in their lifetimes. Frank Raven can testify to that. A former monk, policeman, and private eye, these days he walks his dog, records bird songs, and runs a low-key movie theater in Shelburne Falls, a small town in Massachusetts, near the Vermont border.
His peace is disturbed by the arrival of a Hollywood film director and his crew, scouting locations for a new film featuring the mega-star Juliana Norcross. When the reckless Juliana goes missing, the film's director Nick Mooney hires Raven to find her, which he does rather quickly, and then to protect her—primarily from herself. Then Juliana really disappears.
This debut mystery has a lot to recommend it. DeVecca takes these seemingly stock characters—a disillusioned, middle-aged detective; an arrogant, young director; and a wild, self-destructive actress—and brings them to life as unique individuals. He does this by bringing out emotions and aspects of them, contradictory and compelling. For example, Juliana instantaneously bonds with the Sarah, the teen-aged daughter of Raven's new friend. Their friendship and mutual trust develops throughout the story.
Raven himself, in addition to listening to the birdsongs he's recorded, is a morris dancer. Morris is a traditional performance dance from England whose popularity took off in the U.S. in last quarter of the 20th century when the handful of morris teams swelled to over a hundred. For me it was love at first sight that summer afternoon in 1975. I was taken by the simple elegance of the dance, the strength and grace it required. I went on to dance and perform morris for almost 40 years before retiring. (Full disclosure: I am slightly acquainted with the author through the morris community and have walked the streets of Shelburne Falls).
Morris dancers are mostly enthusiastic amateurs, for whom dancing is but one part of their lives. DeVecca's description of Raven's team practicing and then dancing the sun up on May Day adds distinctive color to the life of the town, as do his descriptions of the town itself, its famous Bridge of Flowers, and the Deerfield River.
After Juliana disappears and is given up for dead, Raven and Sarah continue to search for her and try to understand what happened on her last day. There are clues for the reader to untangle and ever-higher stakes to drive the story. As an editor, I would have made a few recommendations designed to tighten it up, but this is a very good first entry in what I hope will be a series of books about Raven and Shelburne Falls.
Have you read a mystery set in a place familiar to you? Did that make it more interesting?
July 10, 2017 by barbara
Deep South, by Nevada Barr
Looking to change up her life, Ranger Anna Pigeon accepts a promotion that takes her away from her beloved Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado to the Natchez Trace Parkway in Mississippi. Driving deep into the tangled darkness, Anna finds her car sliding off the road. Then she learns that the directions she'd been following, provided by one of the rangers who will be working for her, had sent her down a little-used road that led nowhere. Is it a prank? Or something more ominous?
Anna struggles to adjust to her new role as chief in a culture where women are not expected to hold positions of authority. At the same time, the culture calls for men—even teenaged boys—to be respectful towards women. Anna stumbles across a group of Civil War re-enactors, a good introduction to Faulkner's home state, the man who famously said "The past is never dead. It's not even past." Then she stumbles upon a particularly gruesome murder and it is up to her to solve it.
I've long been a fan of Barr's series, that takes Pigeon to national parks around the country. I'd read this book a dozen years ago, but have been rereading—or rather listening to—the whole series. I've been on the road a lot the last few months, and these books make the miles fly by. It also seemed appropriate to reread these books starting last year, which was the 100th birthday of the U.S. National Park Service.
I remember hearing Barr speak, I think in 1998. She said that when she decided to write a mystery, she took a handful of her favorite mysteries and spent a long time studying and deconstructing them. Her process obviously worked well, because her first Anna Pigeon mystery, Track of the Cat, was a bestseller as have been the rest in the series.
As I've mentioned before, writers often debate about process. Is it better to plot out your story before starting to write or just start writing (known as "pantsing", as in writing by the seat of your pants)? The answer is yes. Whatever works for you. And writers sometimes find that their process changes with each new writing project.
Another debate centers around training. Is it better to start by getting an MFA in creative writing or study the many craft books available? Or is it better to follow Barr's path of reading intensively as a writer, studying books that have worked? Again, there are many paths to your goal. I don't have an MFA, but I've taken a few workshops. I've learned a great deal from writing craft books as well as from reading as a writer (the original concept for this blog).
Perhaps most valuable of all has been engaging in critique groups. This involves not just reading a variety of work and having to think critically about it, but also hearing how other people think and react to the same work.
A friend recently said that she'd stopped reading Barr's mysteries because they got too violent. I see what she means. As I'm proceeding through the series, it is not the violence of the murder, which is expected, but the violence Anna Pigeon encounters that strikes me.
Still, I love the descriptions of the parks, the complex characters both new and repeated, and Anna herself with all her doubts and strengths. She continues to hold my interest. And Barr does suspense well, so well that I find myself at the end of a roadtrip that seems to have taken no time at all.
Which national park–in the U.S. or another country–is your favorite?
Posted in fiction, mystery, suspense
Tagged Natchez Trace, national parks


For the month of January it seemed as though Glentoran had given up all hope.
Four straight losses in the league were bad enough but they also relinquished their grip on the Irish Cup, losing 4-1 at home to a slick Glenavon side.
Last night goes some way to exact revenge as the East Belfast side won 3-1 against Glenavon.
Curtis Allen's brilliant brace and a late goal from youngster Jonathan Smith was enough to see off what was a very poor performance from Gary Hamilton's side.
Allen saw the win as a stepping stone for the rest of the season.
He said: "We had been poor over the last month - some of our performances were embarrassing.
"We want to get something out of the season, there are still points to play for and still routes to get into Europe."
With the Europa League now offering a playoff route for teams who finish in the top six, finishing in the top half dozen has never been more important.
Despite a good win for Glentoran, it really was a tired performance from the Lurgan Blues.
It's a damaging defeat and puts a real dent in their chances of securing a top-two finish and automatic qualification for Europe.
After a real slug fest at Seaview on Friday, Gary Hamilton's side looked off the pace from the start.
Former Glentoran striker Hamilton said: "Glentoran deserved it. They worked harder and wanted it more than us.
Glentoran can all but secure a top six finish in their next game as they host 8th-placed Ballymena at The Oval on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Glenavon will look to get back on track as they host the mid-Ulster derby against Portadown.
This Blog was published by Simon McIntyre on Tuesday, 16 February. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily represent the views of NI Football Daily.


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text:
\section{Introduction}

Accurate knowledge of the properties of the stationary states of
glue in the presence of the simplest of color sources, that of a static
quark and antiquark separated by some distance $r$, is an
important stepping stone on the way to understanding confinement.
It is generally believed that at large $r$, the linearly-growing
ground-state energy of the glue is the manifestation of the confining
flux whose fluctuations can be described in terms of an effective
string theory.  The lowest-lying excitations are then
the Goldstone modes associated with spontaneously-broken transverse
translational symmetry.  Expectations are less clear for small $r$.

Even the simplest property, the energy spectrum, of the stationary
states of glue interacting with a static quark-antiquark pair is not
accurately known.  The main goal of this work is to remedy this.  Here,
we present, for the first time, a comprehensive determination of the
low-lying spectrum of gluonic excitations in the presence of a static
quark-antiquark pair.  In this initial study, the effects of light
quark-antiquark pair creation are ignored.  A few of the energy levels for
$r$ less than 1 fm have been studied before\cite{previous}.  Our results
for these quantities have significantly improved precision, and we
have extended the range in $r$ to 4 fm.  Most of the energy levels
presented here have never been studied before.  Some of our results
were previously reported\cite{earlier}.

The determination of the energies of glue in the presence of a static
quark-antiquark pair is also the first step in the Born-Oppenheimer
treatment of conventional and hybrid heavy-quark mesons\cite{hasenfratz}.
The validity of the Born-Oppenheimer expansion depends, in part, on the
smallness of retardation effects.  In order to quantify such effects
for the first time,  mass splittings
for various conventional and hybrid heavy-quark mesons obtained from the
leading Born-Oppenheimer approximation are compared to those determined
in simulations in which the heavy quark propagates according to a
spin-independent nonrelativistic action.

\section{Computation of the glue energies}

We adopt the standard notation from the physics of diatomic molecules
and use $\Lambda$ to denote the magnitude of the eigenvalue of the projection
$\vec{J_g}\!\cdot\hat{\bf r}$ of the total angular momentum $\vec{J_g}$
of the gluons onto the molecular axis $\hat{\bf r}$. The capital Greek
letters $\Sigma, \Pi, \Delta, \Phi, \dots$ are used to indicate states
with $\Lambda=0,1,2,3,\dots$, respectively.  The combined operations of
charge conjugation and spatial inversion about the midpoint between the
quark and the antiquark is also a symmetry and its eigenvalue is denoted by
$\eta_{CP}$.  States with $\eta_{CP}=1 (-1)$ are denoted
by the subscripts $g$ ($u$).  There is an additional label for the
$\Sigma$ states; $\Sigma$ states which
are even (odd) under a reflection in a plane containing the molecular
axis are denoted by a superscript $+$ $(-)$.  Hence, the low-lying
levels are labelled $\Sigma_g^+$, $\Sigma_g^-$, $\Sigma_u^+$, $\Sigma_u^-$,
$\Pi_g$, $\Pi_u$, $\Delta_g$, $\Delta_u$, and so on.  For convenience,
we use $\Gamma$ to denote these labels in general.

\begin{table}[t]
\setlength{\tabcolsep}{1mm}
\caption[tabone]{Simulation parameters, including the coupling $\beta$,
  input aspect ratio $\xi$, lattice size, and the spatial link
  smearing parameters $\zeta$ and $n_{\zeta}$.  The approximate lattice
  spacings $a_s$, calculated assuming $r_0^{-1}=410$ MeV, are also given.
  \label{table:simparams}}
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{@{\hspace{0mm}}cccccc@{\hspace{0mm}}} \hline
 Run & $a_s$ (fm) & $\beta$ & $\xi$  & Lattice & $(\zeta, n_{\zeta})$
   \\ \hline\hline
A & 0.29 & 2.1 & 8 & $(10^2\!\times\!20)\times\!80$ & (0.07, 12)\\
  &      &     &   &                                & (0.10, 12)\\
  &      &     &   &                                & (0.15, 12)\\ \hline
B & 0.29 & 2.1 & 8 & $(10^2\!\times\!20)\times\!80$ & (0.10, 12)\\ \hline
C & 0.29 & 2.1 & 8 & $14^3\!\times\!56$             & (0.15,  6)\\
  &      &     &   &                                & (0.10, 12)\\ \hline
D & 0.27 & 2.2 & 5 & $12^3\!\times\!48$             & (0.10,  4)\\
  &      &     &   &                                & (0.20,  4)\\
  &      &     &   &                                & (0.30,  4)\\ \hline
E & 0.22 & 2.4 & 5 & $14^3\!\times\!56$             & (0.10,  8)\\
  &      &     &   &                                & (0.15,  8)\\
  &      &     &   &                                & (0.25,  8)\\
  &      &     &   &                                & (0.30,  8)\\ \hline
F & 0.19 & 2.5 & 5 & $(10^2\!\times\!25)\times\!60$ & (0.10, 12)\\
  &      &     &   &                                & (0.18, 12)\\
  &      &     &   &                                & (0.26, 12)\\ \hline
G & 0.19 & 2.6 & 3 & $10^3\!\times\!30$             & (0.15,  8)\\
  &      &     &   &                                & (0.30,  8)\\ \hline
H & 0.12 & 3.0 & 3 & $15^3\!\times\!45$             & (0.15, 24)\\
  &      &     &   &                                & (0.22, 24)\\ \hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\end{table}

The glue energies $E_\Gamma(\vec{r})$ were extracted from Monte Carlo
estimates of generalized Wilson loops.  Recall that the well-known
static potential $E_{\Sigma_g^+}(r)$ can be obtained from the large-$t$
behaviour $\exp[-tE_{\Sigma_g^+}(r)]$ of the Wilson loop for a rectangle
of spatial length $r$ and temporal extent $t$.  In order to determine the
lowest energy in the $\Gamma$ sector, each of the two spatial segments of the
$r\times t$ rectangular Wilson loop must be replaced by a {\em sum} of
spatial paths, all sharing the same starting and terminating sites,
which transforms as $\Gamma$ under all symmetry operations.  The easiest
way to do this is to start with a single path ${\cal P}_\alpha$, such as
a staple, and apply the $\Gamma$ projection operator which is a weighted
sum over all symmetry operations; this yields a single gluon operator in
the $\Gamma$ channel.  Different gluon operators correspond to different
starting paths ${\cal P}_\alpha$.  Using several (typically 3 to 22)
different such operators then produces a matrix of Wilson loop correlators
$W_\Gamma^{ij}(r,t)$.

Monte Carlo estimates of the $W_\Gamma^{ij}(r,t)$ matrices were obtained
in eight simulations performed on a DEC
AlphaStation 500/333 using an improved gauge-field
action\cite{peardon}.  The couplings $\beta$, input aspect ratios $\xi$,
and lattice sizes for each simulation are listed in
Table~\ref{table:simparams}.  Our use of anisotropic lattices in which
the temporal lattice spacing $a_t$ was much smaller than the spatial
spacing $a_s$ was crucial for resolving the glue spectrum, particularly
for large $r$.  The couplings in the action depend not only on the QCD
coupling $\beta$, but also on two others parameters: the mean temporal
link $u_t$ and the mean spatial link $u_s$.  Following Ref.~\cite{peardon},
we set $u_t=1$ and obtain $u_s$ from the spatial plaquette.  We use
$a_s/a_t=\xi$, the input or bare anisotropy, in all of our calculations,
accepting the small radiative corrections to the anisotropy as finite
lattice spacing errors which vanish in the continuum limit.

To hasten the onset of asymptotic behaviour, iteratively-smeared spatial
links\cite{peardon} were used in the generalized Wilson loops.
A single-link procedure was used in which each spatial link variable
$U_j(x)$ on the lattice is mapped into itself plus a sum of its four
neighbouring (spatial) staples multiplied by a weighting factor $\zeta$.
The resulting matrix is then projected back into SU(3).  This mapping
is then applied recursively $n_{\zeta}$ times, forming new smeared links
out of the previously-obtained smeared links.  The $(\zeta,n_{\zeta})$
smearing schemes used in the simulations are given in
Table~\ref{table:simparams}.  Separate measurements
were taken for each smearing; cross correlations were not determined.
The temporal segments in the Wilson loops were constructed from
thermally-averaged links, whenever possible, to reduce statistical noise.

Results for several values of the lattice spacing
were obtained.  Our coarsest lattice ($a_s\sim 0.29$ fm) was used in runs
A, B, and C in order to probe very large quark-antiquark separations.
A large aspect ratio ($\xi=8$)
was needed in order to adequately resolve the correlation functions.
In run A, only on-axis measurements were made.  Run B was done to
reduce uncertainties for the large $r/a_s\geq 9$ measurements.
To verify the restoration of rotational symmetry and to rule out problems
associated with the roughening transition, off-axis
$(r,r,r)/\sqrt{3}$ measurements were made in run C.  Agreement of energies
obtained using different quark-antiquark orientations on the lattice also
helped identify the continuum $\Lambda$ value corresponding to each level
(there are only discrete symmetries on the lattice).  Runs D, E, F, and G
provided results for different lattice spacings $a_s\sim 0.27,0.22,0.19$,
and $0.19$ fm, respectively.  Only on-axis measurements were made in these
runs.  Runs F and G correspond to the same spatial lattice spacing $a_s$,
but have very different temporal spacings $a_t$.  This provided us with
a measure of the $a_t^2$ errors in our results (our action has
$O(a_t^2,a_s^4)$ errors).  Such information is important for carrying
out the $a_s\!\rightarrow\! 0$ extrapolations.  Run H provided fine-grained
($a_s\sim 0.12$ fm) measurements to assist the continuum-limit
extrapolations of the $\Sigma_g^+$ and $\Pi_u$ potentials and
was useful for verifying the negligible size of quantum corrections to
the lattice anisotropy.  To check the anisotropy, the potentials were
measured for the quark-antiquark axis taken along the very fine-grained
direction and one of the coarser axes was used as the direction of
evolution for the system.  This run was also important for resolving a
slight discrepancy between our $\Pi_u$ results and those\cite{previous,bali}
obtained using the simple Wilson action at $\beta=6.0$.

The matrices $W_\Gamma^{ij}(r,t)$ were reduced in the data fitting phase
to single correlators and $2\times 2$ correlation matrices using the
variational method.  The lowest-lying glue energies were then extracted
from these reduced correlators by fitting a single exponential and a sum
of two exponentials, the expected asymptotic forms, in various ranges
$t_{\rm min}$ to $t_{\rm max}$ of the source-sink separation.  The
two-exponential fits were used to check for consistency with the
single-exponential fits, and in cases of favourable statistics, to extract
the first-excited state energy in a given channel.

Three additional runs on small lattices were done to verify that
finite-volume errors in our results were negligible.  We confirmed the
smallness of the $a_s/a_t$ renormalization for two values of the QCD
coupling by extracting the ground state potential from Wilson
loops in different orientations.  The hadronic scale parameter
$r_0\approx 0.5$ fm
was used to determine the lattice spacing\cite{peardon}. The additive
ultraviolet-divergent self-energies of the static sources were
removed by expressing all of our results with respect to
$\Sigma_g^+(r_0)$.  Finite-lattice spacing errors were removed
by extrapolating our simulation results for
$r_0[E_\Gamma(r)-E_{\Sigma_g^+}(r_0)]$ to the
continuum limit.  These extrapolations were carried out by fitting all
of our simulation results to an ansatz
$F_{\rm cont}(r) + a_s^4\ F_{\rm latt}(r)$: a ratio of a polynomial
of degree $p+1$ over a polynomial of degree $p$, where $p=1$ or $2$,
was found to work well for the continuum limit form $F_{\rm cont}(r)$,
and $F_{\rm latt}(r)$ was chosen empirically to be a sum of three terms
$1/\sqrt{r}$, $1/r$, and $1/r^2$.  All fits yielded $\chi^2/{\rm dof}$
near unity.  Continuum $\Lambda$ values were easily identified in all
cases but one: we were unable to distinguish between a $\Pi_u^\prime$
and $\Phi_u$ interpretation for the on-axis $E_u^\prime$ level.

\section{Results}

\begin{figure*}[t]
\begin{center}
\leavevmode
\epsfxsize=2.9in\epsfbox[78 224 542 678]{results1.ps}
\epsfxsize=2.9in\epsfbox[78 224 542 678]{results2.ps}
\end{center}
\caption[figresone]{Continuum-limit extrapolations (with
  uncertainties as indicated) for
  $r_0 [E_\Gamma(r)-E_{\Sigma_g^+}(r_0)]$ against $r/(2r_0)$ for
  various $\Gamma$.  The dashed lines indicate the locations of
  the $m\pi/r$ gaps above the $\Sigma_g^+$ curve for $m=1$, 2, 3, and 4.
  The dotted curves are the naive Nambu-Goto energies in four-dimensions.
  Note that we cannot rule out a $\Phi_u$ interpretation for the
  curve labelled $\Pi_u^\prime$.
  }
\label{fig:res}
\end{figure*}

Our continuum-limit extrapolations are shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:res}.
The ground state $\Sigma_g^+$ is the familiar static-quark potential.
A linearly-rising behaviour dominates the $\Sigma_g^+$ potential once
$r$ exceeds about 0.5 fm and we find no deviations from the linear form
up to 4 fm.  The lowest-lying excitation is the $\Pi_u$.  There is
definite evidence of a band structure at large $r$: the $\Sigma_g^{+\prime}$,
$\Pi_g$, and $\Delta_g$ form the first band above the $\Pi_u$;
the $\Sigma_u^+$, $\Sigma_u^-$, $\Pi_u^\prime/\Phi_u$, and $\Delta_u$
form another band.  The $\Sigma_g^-$ is the highest level at large $r$.
This band structure breaks down as $r$ decreases below 2 fm. In particular,
two levels, the $\Sigma_g^-$ and $\Sigma_u^-$, drop far below their
large-$r$ partners as $r$ becomes small.  Note that for $r$ above 0.5 fm,
all of the excitations shown are stable with respect to glueball decay.
As $r$ decreases below 0.5 fm, the excited levels eventually become
unstable as their gaps above the ground state $\Sigma_g^+$ exceed the
mass of the lightest glueball.

A feature of any low-energy description of a fluctuating
flux tube is the presence of Goldstone excitations associated with the
spontaneously-broken transverse translational symmetry.  These transverse
modes have energy separations above the ground state given by multiples of
$\pi/r$ (for fixed ends).  The level orderings and approximate degeneracies
of the gluon energies at large $r$ match, without exception, those expected
of the Goldstone modes.  However, the precise $m\pi/r$ gap behaviour is not
observed, as shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:resC}.  The energy differences
$r_0 [E_\Gamma(r)-E_{\Sigma_g^+}(r)]$ for $\Gamma=\Pi_u$, $\Pi_g$,
$\Sigma_u^-$, and $\Sigma_g^-$ are shown in this figure, along with
their expected Goldstone mode behaviours, indicated by the dashed curves.
For separations less than 2 fm, one sees from Fig.~\ref{fig:res}
that the gluon energies lie well below the Goldstone
energies and the Goldstone degeneracies are no longer observed.  The two
$\Sigma^-$ states are in violent disagreement with expectations from
a fluctuating string.  Note also that our results clearly disagree
with the energies of a Nambu-Goto string naively (ignoring quantization
difficulties) determined in four continuous space-time dimensions.

\begin{figure}[t]
\begin{center}
\leavevmode
\epsfxsize=2.8in\epsfbox[78 224 542 678]{results3.ps}
\end{center}
\caption[figresthree]{Plot of the energy differences
  $r_0 [E_\Gamma(r)-E_{\Sigma_g^+}(r)]$ against $r/(2r_0)$ for
  $\Gamma=\Pi_u$, $\Pi_g$, $\Sigma_u^-$, and $\Sigma_g^-$.  Results
  from all of the simulations are shown; the different symbols correspond
  to the different $\Gamma$ channels.   The pairs of solid curves
  indicate the continuum-limit extrapolations.  The dashed lines show
  the locations of the $m\pi/r$ excitation gaps for $m=1$, 2, 3, and 4.
  }
\label{fig:resC}
\end{figure}

These results are rather surprising and cast serious doubts
on the validity of treating glue in terms of a fluctuating string
for quark-antiquark separations less than 2 fm.  Note that such a
conclusion does not contradict the fact that the $\Sigma_g^+(r)$ energy
rises linearly for $r$ as small as 0.5 fm.  A linearly-rising term is not
necessarily indicative of a string: for example, the adiabatic bag model
predicts a linearly-rising ground state much before the onset of
string-like behaviour, even in the spherical approximation\cite{hasenfratz}.
For $r$ greater than 2 fm, there are some tantalizing signatures of
Goldstone mode formation, yet significant disagreements still remain.
To what degree these discrepancies can be explained in terms of
a distortion of the Goldstone mode spectrum arising from the spatial
fixation of the quark and antiquark sources (clamping effect)
is currently under investigation.  This clamping effect can be confirmed
by comparing our results with the excitation spectrum of a closed flux in
a periodic box in which this effect is absent.  We also plan to study
the $SU(2)$ gluon excitation spectrum in order to ascertain how much of
the spectrum is independent of the gauge group.  Note that it is very unlikely
that the transverse extents of our lattices are causing the discrepancies
with the Goldstone spectrum\cite{michaelB}.  Results for all $r$ up
to 4 fm were insensitive to changes in the transverse size from 0.9
to 3 fm.  As an added check, we also calculated the wave functions for
the first five Fourier modes of the naive Nambu-Goto string; we found
that for $r\sim 4$ fm, the widths of these wave functions did not
appreciably exceed 1 fm.

\section{Hybrid quarkonium}

Another reason for studying the energies of glue in the presence
of a quark-antiquark pair is the likelihood that these energies
will provide insight into the nature of hybrid mesons.  The study of
hybrid mesons comprised of heavy quarks is the natural starting point
in the quest for such an understanding.  A great advantage in studying
heavy hybrid quarkonium is that such systems can be studied not only
by direct numerical simulation, but also using the Born-Oppenheimer expansion.
In this approach, the hybrid meson is treated analogous to a diatomic
molecule:  the slow heavy quarks correspond to the nuclei and the fast
gluon field corresponds to the electrons\cite{hasenfratz}.  The first
step in the Born-Oppenheimer treatment is to determine the energy levels
of the glue (and light quark-antiquark pairs) as a function of the
heavy quark-antiquark separation, treating the heavy quark and antiquark
simply as spatially-fixed color sources.  Each such energy level defines
an adiabatic potential.  The quark motion is then restored by solving
the nonrelativistic Schr\"odinger equation using these potentials.
Conventional quarkonia arise from the lowest-lying potential; hybrid
quarkonium states emerge from the excited potentials.

\begin{figure}[t]
\begin{center}
\leavevmode
\epsfxsize=2.8in\epsfbox[38 224 542 678]{T1mp.ps}
\end{center}
\caption[figeffmass]{Effective mass plots for the two lowest-lying
  mesons in the exotic $T_1^{-+}$ channel.  Mass estimates from
  fitting the $2\times 2$ correlator matrix elements using their
  expected asymptotic forms are shown.
  The heavy quark propagates according to a spin-independent
  nonrelativistic action.
  }
\label{fig:effmass}
\end{figure}

Once the gluon energies are determined, the Born-Oppenheimer approach
yields the entire leading-order spectrum very easily, in contrast to
direct simulations.  However, the validity of the Born-Oppenheimer
approach relies on the smallness of retardation effects.  One way
of quantifying retardation effects is to compare mass splittings
as determined from the leading Born-Oppenheimer approximation with
those determined from simulations.  A Monte Carlo study with $\beta=3.0$,
$\xi=3$ using a leading-order (but lattice-spacing corrected)
nonrelativistic action for the heavy quark was performed.  The
effective masses for the two lowest-lying mesons in the exotic
$1^{-+}$ channel are shown in Fig.~\ref{fig:effmass}.  The comparison
of mass splittings (for several quark-spin--restored states relative to
the $\Upsilon$) are shown in Table~\ref{table:retard}.  All results
are expressed in terms of the inverse hadronic scale $r_0^{-1}$.  In the
NRQCD simulations, the bare quark mass was taken to be $a_sM_b=2.56$.
The so-called kinetic mass of the $\Upsilon$ was then determined from
its low-momentum dispersion relation.  Half of this mass was used
for the quark mass in the leading Born-Oppenheimer calculation. This
ensured that the $\Upsilon$ kinetic masses were identical in both
calculations.  Assuming that the simulation results do not suffer
significantly from lattice artifacts, one sees that retardation affects
the spin-averaged mass splittings by less than 10\%, validating the
Born-Oppenheimer expansion.

\begin{table}[t]
\setlength{\tabcolsep}{1mm}
\caption[tabone]{Comparison of meson mass splittings as determined from
  the leading Born-Oppenheimer approximation (LBO) and nonrelativistic
  simulations (NRQCD).  The splittings are all taken relative to the
  mass of the $\Upsilon$ and are in terms of $r_0^{-1}$.  The orbital
  angular momentum $L$ and glue energy $\Gamma$ assignments in the LBO
  for each level are indicated, along with the radial quantum number $n$.
  The size of the differences are listed as percentages
  of the simulation results.
  \label{table:retard}}
\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{ccclr@{\hspace{2.5ex}}} \hline
  & $nL_\Gamma$ & NRQCD & \hspace{1ex} LBO
  & \multicolumn{1}{r}{Difference}  \\ \hline\hline
$\chi_b$          & $1P_{\Sigma_g^+}$ & 0.96(1) & 0.872(5)  &  9(1)\% \\
$\Upsilon^\prime$ & $2S_{\Sigma_g^+}$ & 1.30(1) & 1.224(3)  &  6(1)\% \\
$1^{-+}$          & $1P_{\Pi_u}$      & 3.29(5) & 3.166(3)  &  4(2)\% \\
$1^{\prime-+}$    & $2P_{\Pi_u}$      & 4.20(7) & 3.772(2)  & 10(2)\% \\
$0^{+-}$          & $1P_{\Pi_u}$      & 3.51(8) & 3.166(3)  & 10(2)\% \\
$0^{\ast++}$      & $1S_{\Sigma_u^-}$ & 3.56(8) & 3.807(12) &  7(2)\% \\ \hline
\end{tabular}
\end{center}
\end{table}

\section{Conclusion}

The spectrum of gluon excitations in the presence of a static
quark-antiquark pair was comprehensively surveyed for separations
$r$ ranging from 0.1 to 4 fm.  Our results raised serious doubts
on the validity of treating glue in terms of a fluctuating string
for $r$ less than 2 fm.  For $r$ between 2 and 4 fm, some tantalizing
signatures of Goldstone mode formation were observed, but
discrepancies still remain.  We are currently studying the role
of the spatial fixation or clamping of the quark and antiquark sources
in distorting the Goldstone mode spectrum.
Future studies of the excitation spectrum of the periodically-closed
flux are planned.  Lastly, retardation effects in quarkonium were found
to be sufficiently small to validate the Born-Oppenheimer expansion.
This work was supported by the U.S.~DOE, Grant No.\ DE-FG03-97ER40546.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


Co-produced with John Rhys-Garcia and Shelley Dodson, CHASM will screen in the Fantastic Voyages category in Mirror Mountain Film Fest.
CHASM showing at FilmQuest and Sci-On! fests.
FilmQuest June 17-25th at the Jordan Commons Megaplex Theatres in Sandy, Utah.
Got the exciting email from the coordinator that CHASM won the Jury Award for Animation at the 2015 Kansas International Film Festival.
I was lucky enough to go (with my wife and much of the Benjamin family) to one of the screenings. There were some pretty great animations in the fest and I'm happy to have just been screened among them let alone receive this honor.
Was lucky enough to get to be there for Chasm's screening. The Benjamin family was (mostly) all there as well – great to see with people who'll laugh at my stupid jokes!
Both Drifting and Oh, Those Kittens will be screening at Festival SPASM in Quebec.
Also – I'm stunned and humbled to announce that Chasm; Familiar; and Oh, Those Kittens! will all be screening in the Kansas International Film Festival in Overland Park, Kansas!
Chasm was selected to screen at Chicago International Film Festival!
Newly finished and just starting to make its rounds, collaborative sci-fi animation CHASM will be playing at the Sci-Fi London Film Festival in May.


£350 – The amount of money that a parent could save per child through claiming free school meals.
The high cost of raising a young family means that everyone could do with some help. If you are on benefits or unemployed you may be able to claim free school meals for your child.
Free school meals save you time and money and provide reassurance that your children are eating a healthy, balanced lunch every day.
At Elfed High School we also provide extra help with equipment and look out to support in any way we can.
Parents living in Wales do not have to pay for their childrens' school lunches if they receive certain benefits. We are aware that some children who attend Elfed High School are eligible for free school meals but don't know it.
If you think your family could qualify, please download the application form or pick up a copy from the school office.
Please call Mrs L Owen on 01244 550217 for more advice.


Electricity consumption around the world appears to be declining, according to a recent report by the Sustainable Energy Association of Australia (SEA).
Falls in electricity consumption globally over the last few years can be largely attributed to improving energy efficiency, and is the result of successful regulation and programs on energy efficiency by governments leading action on reducing emissions to combat global warming.
"A media report in Perth has suggested that falling electricity consumption since 2010 is a consequence of rising electricity prices, but this is only part of the story," says SEA chief adviser, Professor Ray Wills.
"The decline in electricity consumption is primarily attributable to increasing energy efficiency in appliances, with the latest Energy Star appliances using much less energy than their predecessors. Combine this with people being more conscious of their power consumption, and supported by more and more households adding solar panels to offset their power bills, and the fall in electricity consumption by households is logical and will continue."
Western Australian Energy Minister, Peter Collier, recently stated that the uptake of solar power had contributed to the decline in domestic electricity consumption.
"Improvements in energy efficiency can be seen in other areas on consumption too. For example, in the US demand for oil is close to a 15-year low, not just as a result of economic weakness, but also through increased energy efficiency in the US vehicle fleet," continues Professor Wills.
SEA welcomes Western Australian Government plans to launch a campaign in July aimed at helping households to become more energy efficient. This campaign had been called for by SEA for many years.
The SEA is concerned that the rate of change in the electricity market around Australia - and now witnessed in Western Australia - is not informing plans for large infrastructure spend.
"Decisions on increasing levels of public investment in electricity infrastructure are being driven by assumptions that increasing consumption patterns requires more investment to keep pace with demand, assumptions that are clearly flawed based on data from around Australia and around the world," says Professor Wills.
"Add the boon of people being able to generate their own electricity at home with roof-top solar at a price the is cheaper than the electricity they buy from the retailer, and could ultimately reduce domestic consumption of electricity from the grid by up to 50 per cent."
"Future planning and investment decisions by governments must prepare Australia for the transformative arrival of renewable energy generation – one that requires a different electricity grid, a smarter electricity network."
The Australian PV Association recently reported that a total of 837MW of PV were installed in Australia in 2011, more than twice the capacity added in 2010; total installed capacity in Australia is now 1.4GW.


I run regular classes as well as monthly workshops in my floral studio. The regular classes are on a Tuesday evening 7pm - 9pm, please fing me if you are interested in this class. Alternatively I run monthly classes on a Thursday afternoon where we make seasonal bouquets or arrangements. If any of the dates are not convenient for you, you can always contact me to arrange a private class on a day and time to suit you, minimum 4 people.


text:
Q: Facebook Graph Event query no address I just read this:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/v2.3/event
and it seems as if there is no data about the location of an event. Only a "Page" Attribute which in turn has a contact_address value. Now my question is: What about those events that don't belong to a place? They have addresses too in FB but there seems to be no way to get this data from the FB graph API. Or did I miss something? Does anybody know a workaround to get hold of this data?
We wanna analyze a bunch of events and put them all on a map. but that won't work if we cannot get the address for the event..

A: Since V2.3 of the Graph API, the location/place information is more consistent. You can read more about that here:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/apps/changelog#v2_3_changes:

Consistent Place Data - Content objects tagged with a place now share a consistent place data structure which contains the ID, name
  the location of the place. This includes Events, Photos, Videos,
  Statuses and Albums. As a result, the venue and location fields have
  been removed from the Event node. Developers should access the place
  field instead.

This means indeed that only Event that use a Page as a location have a location. You should follow the 'Place' field, which gives you an Page.
If you have access to version V2.2 of the API, you can still use the 'location' field instead. That will return you the address as defined on the Event.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


This scene takes place in Ephesus, the Greek city famous for its temple of Diana. A rich and generous nobleman, Lord Cerimon, is introduced. From his conversation with two shipwreck survivors, it is clear that he has studied medicine, and is known for his charity and ability to care for the sick.
Two servants carrying a sealed chest enter his house. They tell Cerimon the chest has been tossed ashore by the stormy sea. To their astonishment, the chest contains the body of Thaisa, along with bags of spices and jewels. A scroll signed by Pericles reveals her identity. It begs the finder to bury her properly and accept the valuables as payment. Almost immediately, Cerimon suspects she may be alive. With his healing arts, he is able to revive her.
This scene of Thaisa's revival draws out the theme of fickle fortune and the unexpected twists in a person's life. It also paves the way for a happy ending. The play belongs to the group of tragi- comedies of Shakespeare's last phase. In all of them, there are dramatic coincidences, which take the action close to tragedy but are then reversed. The death of Thaisa and her recovery is one such event.
The resurrection of Thaisa is incredible, and of course stretches the bonds of realism. However, in romances anything is possible. Pericles, being a dramatic romance, is perfectly entitled to the use of such fantastic occurrences.


text:
Royal College of Art Sets Out Five Year Strategic Growth Plan
The Royal College of Art (RCA), which has consistently topped the tables as 'best art school in the world' has launched GenerationRCA, an ambitious five-year campaign/programme
100 Pioneering Women Depicted In First Women UK Exhibition At RCA
Portraits of 100 pioneering women of the 21st century are highlighted in a remarkable new exhibition which has taken ten years to compile. The Royal College of Art will host the show this summer (20 July – 22 August).
London Degree Shows 2018 Guide
Like Spring inevitably turns into Summer, once again the art school degree show season is upon us. The exhibitions are usually the entry-level stage for emerging artists and have had a good track record for launching new talent. It is also one of the best ways to keep abreast of current and future trends in contemporary arts.
Art News/News
Tomas Saraceno Unveils New Open-source Project For RCA Kensington Gore
A new project initiated by internationally acclaimed artist Tomás Saraceno will be installed in London as part of The Exhibition Road Cultural Group. Aerocene will be its first public commission, launched with the Aerocene Campus, taking place at the Royal College of Art on Saturday 26 November.
RCA Curating Contemporary Art: Graduate Exhibitions Announced
Graduating students on the Curating Contemporary Art MA programme present their final exhibitions at the Royal College of Art Galleries. In contrast to previous years, the students have chosen to present four independent exhibitions. Collectively they involve artists, theatre designers, and writers from the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australasia, and are engaged in themes of […]
Farnborough Wind Tunnel Sound And Light Art Programme Announced
A six week artistic programme of sound and light installations for its inaugural exhibition at The Wind Tunnel Project, which runs from 9 June – 20 July 2014 has been announced at Farnborough, Hampshire. This runs concurrently with a diverse educational programme to engage the local community and schools. Through site specific installations by a […]
Ian Dury: Royal College Graduate Honoured With Retrospective Exhibition
Jemima Dury, the daughter of the late, great musician/songwriter and visual artist, has spent the last two years putting together a collection of her Dad's art work in order to hold the first ever Ian Dury retrospective. When Dury formed his band Kilburn and the High Roads in 1971 he retired from painting and pursued […]
Royal College Of Art Graduate Photography Exhibition 2013
This year's Photography Graduates at the RCA have put together a surprisingly subdued collection of imagery. Not that the RCA was ever shouty, but in previous years the work in the final show always projected insolent confidence, entitlement even, yet in this batch there seems to be a need manifested to look inside the medium, […]
BECKY BEASLEY Spring Rain A New Exhibition At Spike Island
British artist Becky Beasley explores relationships between photography and objects, the body and interiority in a way that is highly subjective and yet developed through deep immersion in the thoughts and methods of other artists and writers. Literature is particularly generative for the artist, providing her own work with a place to start from and […]


text:
Q: How to connect a W25Q64 3.3 SPI Flash to a 5V Arduino Mega? I need memory to read from, for my project. I first intended to use an SD card, but I now found out a W25Q64/128 SPI Flash is more practical, since I don't need to write data.
However, this W25QXX Flash works with 3.3V SPI and the Arduino Mega has a 5V SPI.
By searching around, I find many solutions, but two that work which are quite different:

*

*Using a voltage divider, which has the advantage of a simple circuit, but has problems that too less current is passed. However according to this link, in the end, someone fixed it easily by using much smaller resistor values.

*Using a buffer circuit, which has the advantage of probably being more secure, but means some quite big ICs to be added. A circuit is mentioned in this link; credits to Steve Marple.

Question: Why should I (or shouldn't I) use this SPI Flash with a 5V using small resistor divider voltages?
(It seems that if I only want to add only this single 3.3V SPI Flash on the SPI bus, I can use the voltage divider using small resistors).
UPDATE
After Marcus Müller's answer, I found the following page that gives a lot of backgrounds (his solution is indeed the one with the most advantages):
how-to-interface-a-5v-output-to-a-3-3v-input

A: Assuming you don't plan to use the chip in anything but standard SPI (not Dual- or QSPI), then all the signal pins are unidirectional!
That means that in the Arduino->Flash direction, a voltage divider that divides 5V down to 3.3V is sufficient (place it close to the receiving end, usually). This applies to the clock and the master-out, slave in (MOSI) data pin (called "Data Input" in the flash datasheet).
In the opposite direction (MISO / Data Output), there's little you can do to ensure reliable transmission but buffer. A buffer doesn't have to be large – in fact, a dual-NPN package would totally do with two resistors, and that would take single-digit square millimeters in SMD.
You might simply want to invest 33ct into something like a 74LVC1T45. That thing is maybe 1.7×1mm² in size even in its largest variant; I doubt that will be a limiting factor for your circuitry.


Save Our Bees! Join or Donate!
Join us the day after the Bridge Run at Cinebarre for this family-friendly event! View details here.
Visit our CABA site in Facebook to post ads for beekeeping equipment, share tips, photos, or ask questions.
Greetings! This is an outdated website.
Please navigate to charlestonbees.org to visit our current site just launched Sept 2018.
Charleston Area Beekeepers Association, Inc. (CABA) is a completely volunteer organization comprised of members mainly from (but not limited to) the general vicinity around Charleston, South Carolina, USA. Members are beekeepers, researchers, and people who enjoy beekeeping as a hobby or simply wish to promote bees and beekeeping to benefit our local and global economy, educate our youth, and improve our overall health and wellness. We support the South Carolina Beekeepers Association (SCBA) which hosts meetings, educational conferences, and funds beekeeping research to identify best practices for beekeeping.
To engage in responsible practices that benefit honeybees, provide community outreach and education, encourage youth involvement, and to support health and sustainability in our community and the environment of coastal South Carolina.


In 1945, newspaper publisher Arthur Kasherman was gunned down on a snowy street in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Was he a crusader for justice, or a low-life who angered the underworld once too many? Watch the video, read the stories and maybe you'll solve a 65-year-old murder mystery.
This entry was posted on Saturday, November 21st, 2009 at 6:05 pm	and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Rubbed Out is an experiment in digital history that draws on public and private archival sources to present in-depth, investigative material.


Innovation never sleeps, but the pace of San Diego business and technology news yawned a little over the Christmas and New Year holidays. Still, there were plenty of noteworthy developments to round up for the first Monday of 2009. Oh, and by the way, Happy New Year!The end of December brought news from faraway China that the world's largest telecom market is starting a long-delayed upgrade to 3G, or third-generation, wireless technologies. That could be good news for San Diego's Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM), which said it signed a licensing agreement with China's largest cell phone maker, Beijing Tianyu Communications Equipment Co.
Was anyone surprised when Dow Jones VentureSource announced that liquidity events for venture-backed companies fell to their lowest level in five years in 2008? The data shows that only seven venture-backed companies in the entire country completed IPOs, raising a total of $551 million. San Diego's CardioNet, which raised $54 million in March, was the region's sole IPO of the year. And for all of Southern California, the data show only 27 buyouts, generating a total of $919 million.
San Diego venture capitalist Kevin Kinsella became "The Big Man in Town," and left the rest of us feeling like a "Rag Doll," after becoming a major financial backer of Jersey Boys, the smash Broadway hit. Our account of how it all happened is here.
San Diego's Volcano (NASDAQ: VOLC), which makes vision systems for detecting artery blockages and other problems, says it plans to buy Axun, a privately held laser maker in the Boston area, for $21.5 million.
Calcimedica was founded in 2006 to develop small molecule drugs for the treatment of autoimminue disorders, organ transplant rejection, and other immune diseases.
Life Technologies, the Carlsbad, CA-based maker of biotech lab equipment, paid about $20 million to buy VisiGen, a Houston startup working on a new, low-cost process to sequence individual genomes.
International Stem Cell, an Oceanside life sciences company that supplies stem cells for biotech research, says it received the first $1 million in a private placement deal that's expected to yield up to $5 million over the next several months. The company says the financing is in the form of a new class of convertible preferred stock.
San Diego's Sempra Energy (NYSE: SRE) announced it has completed the company's first solar energy project, a 10-megawatt photovoltaic facility about 40 miles southeast of Las Vegas, NV.
Big drug companies are thinking a lot these days about finding new ways to innovate in the drug discovery business. Peter Pallai explained how he started San Diego-based BioBlocks as a chemistry outsourcing service for big Pharma. Meanwhile, Rodney Lappe of CovX, a San Diego biotech acquired by Pfizer, desribed the alternative approach to drug development within Pfizer's Biotherapeutics and Bioinnovation Center, of which it is now a part.
As part of a restructuring that NextWave Wireless announced earlier this year, the company said it sold a 75 percent stake in its IP Wireless subsidiary to an entity formed by certain management personnel for $1 million, and reimbursement of transaction expenses.
And Finally, TheSportsTV.com, a San Diego startup that provides a web-hosted video site for amateur athletes, recruiters, and scouts, got $20,000 in funding from the San Diego Venture Group. The startup won the group's annual "PitchFest" business plan competition.


Want to take your McKendree educational experience to the next level? Find a prestigious fellowship or scholarship that matches your academic interests and more importantly, YOU!
2. Make sure that you meet the eligibility requirements.
3. Contact Dr. Martha Patterson with your interests.
4. Print out the Scholarship Nomination Permission Form and Waiver and submit to Dr. Martha Patterson.
Note: Some of the awards (indicated by an asterisk * after them) require a McKendree University internal approval process.
To financially support a one year masters degree program at Tsinghua University in China.
To develop leaders who will enhance the connection between Britain and the U.S.
To enable students to purpose a career in Foreign Service with the U.S Department of State.
To provide support for those committed to leadership and public service in issues related to American Indian nations or to the environment.
All majors with environmental or political science emphasis.
To provide financial support to students in the study abroad program.


text:
Q: Can an random walk ARIMA model have a nonzero constant term? From what I'm reading it seems like a nonstationary ARIMA model can have a nonzero constant term. I'm not understanding how this can happen. Suppose we have an AR(1) model where $\phi_1=1$. If p is the number of autoregressive terms, the constant, C would be defined as:
$$
C=\mu \left(1-\sum_i^p\phi_i\right)
$$
Then wouldn't the constant equal zero since
$$
C=\mu(1-\phi_1)
$$
then becomes
$$
C=\mu(1-1)
$$
which equals
$$
C=0
$$

A: You can define the following process:
$$
Y_t=c+Y_{t-1}+u_t
$$
Assuming an initial condition $Y_0=0$ for simplicity, recursive substitution yields
$$
Y_t=c\cdot t+\sum_{s=1}^tu_s,
$$
a so-called random walk with drift.