Lately, happily, I've received a number of comments about my posts here that were very kind indeed. Arguably, overly kind! One or two have rendered me speechless (with gratitude and amazement!) – and if you know me at all, or my writing, you know how rare an event that is.
It got me to thinking about where my style of writing came from. Every so often, I'll write something, just a phrase or a sentence, and read it back to myself, and think, "Well, that was very…" [whichever author I had just emulated or imitated or committed thievery upon]. The advice to writers has always been, "write what you know"; similarly, you can't write in a style that isn't yours, or at least you can't write well in a style you don't know very well.
So… here's a page of navel-gazing in the guise of trying to trace my writing's ancestry, to wit: authors whom I've read extensively, or writers whose style has made enough of an impact on me to affect what rebounds back out of my brain after I've read their stuff.
First things first: I had to learn to read, and I had to learn that reading was the thing to do. Mom and Dad were steadfast in carrying out their responsibilities: teach the toddler to read. Make sure he shows up to first grade ready to go. So: gigantic poster-paper flash cards, seven inches tall by as much as three feet long, containing various fun words to read.
Next: the teachers who didn't just assign books to read, they found us fun things to read and then sent us off to find our own.
 Barbara Howe was my third- and fourth-grade teacher (she had a weirdo experimental combined third-/fourth-grade class which was about thirteen different shades of awesome), and she was the first teacher who gave me packets of pages with prompts and empty lines upon which to write creatively. I probably have those packets buried in a closet somewhere, and I probably don't want to read what at the time (at the age of 8) I thought was clever – but it was undoubtedly the moment I figured out that as cool as reading was, it weren't nothin' compared to writing my own stuff.
First major literary influence? Interestingly, a comic strip; but not surprisingly, Charles M. Schulz. I acquired curiosity about World War I while reading about Snoopy's imaginary flying-ace exploits; I got early theological training from Linus Van Pelt; and I remember very clearly reading Peppermint Patty's dressing-down of Charlie Brown, "C'mon, Chuck!" and trying to pronounce the first word "see, mon!" How much more than just a comic strip was Peanuts?
Summers at the Charles River Creative Arts Program in Dover, Massachusetts ended up cementing my love of musical activity, but they started out with a pretty firm pursuit of writing, creative and otherwise. The arts day camp's daily newspaper, "The Daily Double," featured a number of luminaries (who to the outside world probably looked like 14-year-old campers and high-school-/college-aged camp counselors) who already wrote like nobody else I knew. David Zakon introduced me to the voice of the cynic – writing with a perpetually raised eyebrow. Mark Tavares' writing voice I couldn't even classify but it was some of the most inventive forms of self-expression I'd bumped into to that point. And Julie Sade represented the voice of cool, calm, collected journalism, with a slight edge of goofy.
And possibly the most ridiculous concept ever, which the CRCAP world perpetrated twice a summer, was the production of a complete musical theater show (from auditions to curtain call) over the course of a three-and-a-half-week camp session. The shows were usually written by the camp's playwriting class, led by a writing department counselor who would thereafter polish the script. Add musical score, stir and serve. Some of the results were at best "workable"; some of them were very good considering they were the writing equivalent of short-order cooking; and a few were just plain brilliant. David Downing's script, called "Food For Thought", was a cautionary tale about nutrition choices, and if that sounds bland as tofu, you haven't seen the show. On top of which, "Food" features a musical score by Tom Megan that includes a finale so good (with wise lyrics and music that is a hybrid of Dave Brubeck, 70s soft-rock and Claude Debussy) that if you heard it on its own somewhere, you'd be shocked to know it came from a children's musical.
The other show that you never forgot, if you were involved with it, was called "The Titanic Goes Hawaiian -or- The Great American Disaster Musical." Talk about a script that swerved crazily from one topical parody to another, from one awful pun to a worse one ten seconds later. Sam Abel was the writer, able to manage wisecrack and wisdom like Joe Torre juggled the various monumental Yankees of the late 1990s. And I learned from his play "Left Out" two summers later that one can write a deadly serious play with very funny lines in it.
 Whoever it was who wrote the Marx Brothers movies. The Marx Brothers, probably. As a fourth-grader, I discovered Groucho Marx cracking wise, and it was a discovery that no one else really grasped, in the circles I ran in. So I just walked home from school, put my "Three Hours, Fifty-Nine Minutes and Fifty-Seven Seconds with the Marx Brothers" record on the turntable, and snickered.
 David Gerrold. Again, my 11-year-old nerd self bought the book that Mr. Gerrold wrote about his 1967 Star Trek episode "The Trouble With Tribbles", partly because I was (and still am) a nut for anything "behind-the-scenes". Also because that Star Trek episode was going primarily for laughs, a rare thing indeed. The wry humor contained therein kinda struck me. It also set me up for life with a propensity for writing single-sentence paragraphs for dramatic effect.
That propensity dogs me still.
Did the Earth wonder to itself, "what's this about?" / As a thunderstorm gathered and ended the drought?
 Bob Ryan, acerbic sportswriter for the Boston Globe (back when he was pushed to write better, by Globe sports page competition on the order of Peter Gammons and Leigh Montville). His columns about the Boston Celtics of the 1980s never disappointed; his "cleaning out the desk drawer of the mind" quick-hit pieces still stick with me.
 Garrison Keillor – not so much when he's spinning tales of Lake Wobegon, but more when he's quietly laying out political leanings and personal philosophies in something like his book "Homegrown Democrat". If I get going on topics like inexplicable politicians, or a lack of common sense on display (or my early writing influences), his voice informs mine.
 An undeniable influence on my writing has been the curious, humorous, theatre-of-the-absurd turns of phrase created by Douglas Adams. As a high-school freshman nerd, I discovered the radio drama version of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and knew I'd found utter perfection: science fiction that was really, really funny. And English. Adams' work has been called a cross between "Monty Python" and science fiction. I go back and forth: sometimes I agree; sometimes I think it's too easy to label English humor as strictly "Monty Python". But if some weird literary catastrophe happened and all that remained of Douglas Adams' writing was his spectacular adverbial creations ("Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see [the Babel Fish] as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God"), it would be enough.
 Molly Ivins, whose Texas drawl came through loud and clear in her political commentary. There are elements of Texan-ness that I have trouble with, but not Ms. Ivins.
 Harlan Ellison, except I can't muster up the kind of vitriol he can put into his commentaries when he gets aggrieved (righteously or otherwise); and I can't invent speculative fiction storylines anywhere near as great as his.
 Roy Blount, Jr., whose style of writing or speaking I cannot hope to emulate as I am not nearly as Southern as he is (highly recommended is his "Long Time Leaving: Dispatches from Up South").
 Bob & Ray's quiet lunacy.
 Raymond Chandler. I'd love to say I can write like he can. I can't. I've tried, and it sounds pale and paltry by comparison. I love the hard-boiled private eye detective fiction sound, but even Garrison Keillor's "Guy Noir, Private Eye" radio ad libs are better than my finely crafted fake Chandlerisms.
My previous post here, about the tumult surrounding the announcement of the UMass band's new director, has met with some very kind and thoughtful responses, both here and on the wider Web / Facebook machine. A writer is not necessarily always aiming to express thoughts so that other people can then say "that was exactly what I was thinking!" It becomes an echo chamber if one writes something and everyone else agrees and I am right and you are right and everything is quite correct.
And we have more than enough media echo chambers.
But it's nice to hear that one has summed up someone else's feelings. It may mean that perhaps one isn't stuck inside one's own head – that one can expand one's sphere of awareness, observe unexpected things and possibly, possibly adjust one's own viewpoint to account for that.
Speaking of which … let me try this one on you.
When I was a high school freshman, my high school band got a new director. As it happened, I knew who the previous director had been and I was thrilled, THRILLED that he was gone – I thought he was mean and condescending, didn't care a toot about kids or know how to connect with them, and I thought this at the clear-headed age of 14. To this day, I still think I was right. And the new guy was everything great that his predecessor wasn't. I have no idea whether every upperclassmen thought this, but we all seemed to have a good time, particularly during jazz band rehearsals.
So, gradually, as Band Alumni have had time to digest and adjust to the reality that the UMMB now has a different director than George Parks … regardless of who they thought it should be … many of their online posts are beginning to reflect that adjustment, and the re-assertion of our slogan, "The Power and Class of New England". With emphasis on the word "class". Better than unfettered ranting – which will produce nothing except ill will toward a group of people who may not all be ranting. It will be awfully important in the near term to make sure that the new director is "assimilated into the collective", to connect with him constructively and positively (before any other University players get their hooks into him!!).
Never thought I'd be playing the role of the Borg in an analogy, but here we are. This is the brave new world we live in now.
"There are … people who are now trying to play the part of the grownups in the room (admirable), posting messages online that say 'the decision has been made, and we should support the new guy' – which is true! But a lot of these messages neglect to note that band members are still struggling with the fact that Thom Hannum is not the new guy – which is no less true. The returning band members should not be merely collateral damage. … In terms of human feelings, we are not the most important player in this little subplot. I think we come off as arrogant if we think that if WE come to terms with the fact that the University didn't name Thom as UMMB director, then the issue is settled.
I recently had an online conversation with one of the members of the 2010 UMMB, who has given me the OK to talk about our conversation. Which member it was is irrelevant; this member is a human being and enjoyed being in the UMMB while it was led by George Parks and Thom Hannum. And s/he was not especially pleased that the University saw fit to select a director who was not Mr. Hannum, in part because of the role that he played in helping the UMMB survive Fall 2010.
Sadly, most hiring decisions (whether in the academic or corporate worlds) are not made by people who are paid to take these sorts of things into account. This isn't right, not by a country mile, but it's true. And, as I detailed in my previous post, in this particular case, it should have been in the forefront of the University administration's collective mind.
Some of the members of the 2010 Minuteman Marching Band may not return in 2011. I can understand. Some of the members of the 2010 Minuteman Marching Band will return. I hope that many, many do – although I recognize that, again, it's going to be a really tough job to be a UMMB member (and to be a UMMB student staff member), and not because Dr. Tim Anderson will be a great director or a terrible one. Whoever the new band director is, except for Thom Hannum, he or she isn't Thom Hannum. No one is. Which means that this would be – will be – a difficult job for anyone, in this particular context.
For my kind readers who are not connected with the marching band at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, you have homework! … in order to have a clue what I'm writing about.
First, this current event from last fall (or read these blog posts from September 2010).
Then, this, about Mr. Parks' interim successor. Or, if you prefer, this.
Then, this, about the naming of Mr. Parks' permanent successor.
With the exception of just two little tiny quotations, I've not posted online about the selection of UMass' new band director this week. If I had a dime for every time this week I've physically held my hands up over this keyboard, and then said to myself, "no. Not now, not yet", I'd be able to take my whole extended family out to dinner for a month. I wanted to "get this right", to express myself utilizing actual facts, rather than going on just knee-jerk emotion (thus avoiding opportunities for misinterpretation that no emoticon can solve). But I didn't want to betray the confidences of a few people who knew more than your average observer and were willing to share what they knew with me. About which I am more than humbled, so I endeavored to shut my yap. I didn't want to step on toes, to break news that wasn't meant to be broken. There might be more important things in this world than relationships, but I can't think of any at the moment.
As the week went on, more news broke without my help (I used to be a journalism major, but still I was OK with this), and it wasn't sweetness and light. By week's end, I was as coldly furious as I have ever been with any institution or agency or person. There are great huge open plains of wrong out there, which either I've gotten my first look at, or I've been re-introduced to, or I've discovered by putting two and two together and getting about five and a half.
So, now, here's the upshot: Thom Hannum deserved better.
I've been "the new band director" at two schools. At one school, I had no immediate successor (in fact it was my job to re-build the membership from scratch), so I didn't experience what I've called the "Mr. Hoffman did it THIS way" effect. This can be helpful – with all the work one has to do to get a music program up and running, one just doesn't have time to put out all those brushfires. So, my students and I lived in ignorant bliss, and had a great time doing good work!
At the other school, I was the successor to a gentleman who had been the band director for more than 20 years and was basically the only director anyone in the "modern era" of that band could remember.
When I reached out to the band alumni, the alumni that responded were unfailingly gracious and supportive themselves. I got to know a lot of them quite well via Homecomings, eMail exchanges, and the fact that they loved to come back and play with the pep band during winter break. For a group that can often appear extremely tradition-bound (and I say that with love and respect, I promise!!), they were willing to embrace the change… to welcome the new guy.
Not to be blunt … oops, too late … but: Holy Cross band members and band alumni were warned well ahead of time that their director of many decades was going to retire from the position; they knew he was still going to be on campus, so they could go and visit his office anytime; … and he was still alive. The separation anxiety and trauma happened over the course of a school year.
The 2010 Minuteman Marching Band went through that trauma over the course of a weekend.
And it was left to Thom Hannum (and his staff) to pick up the pieces, to help the band survive, and thrive. And he did. In spades. In ways that impressed even those of us who thought we knew Thom pretty well.
But despite the phenomenal performance in Michigan, despite the fact that the UMMB completed all its performances last fall in its usual glorious fashion, despite the vast show of support from more than 900 marching alumni at Homecoming, … I imagine that that band still feels pretty shaky.
who's the band director or a change of dinner plans.
This all has nearly nothing to do with Tim Anderson. ANYONE from outside the UMass community who had been named the new director would be dealing with the same challenges that Dr. Anderson has already faced and surely will face. The last thing we as a band community need to do is beat on the new guy before he's even set foot on campus, for heaven's sake.
I do hope Dr. Anderson (or whomever else had been selected as the new band director instead) experiences the kind of hospitable and supportive reception that I got at Holy Cross. If he does, he'll quickly grow to love the organization and the people who make it up. So, in this analogy, I suppose Tim Anderson represents the new variable in the equation and Thom Hannum represents the decades-long comfort zone.
Except for one tiny but crucial detail: Bob Principe got showered with accolades, receptions, press releases, and the like; and at this year's celebration of the 100th year of the Holy Cross Band performing on the field, he got a special award from the College.
Thom Hannum got two sentences at the bottom of a University press release about someone else.
Perhaps it's not yet time for the University to issue a separate, dedicated press release that expresses gratitude for, and extols the virtues of, Thom's 30 years of service to the University. But somehow I doubt it will be forthcoming.
The UMMB completed its 2010 season looking for all the world like a band that had not actually lost its director mid-season. They did so in large part because Thom Hannum offered leadership, inspiration and comfort to them in a very difficult moment, and because he was the one person who had the best chance to do so successfully. But the UMMB still must be a very fragile group of people.
And it doesn't look to me like the right people – the people who were charged with determining who was the right person to lead, not just any band, but this particular band – cared about that, not a bit.
Based on admittedly second- and third-hand reports that I have heard from a small number of very trusted associates this week, I remain very suspicious about the integrity of the hiring process and the motivations behind the decision not to hire Thom Hannum or Heidi Sarver (a UMass band alumna), or [and this is my own conjecture] potentially to consider anyone remotely connected with George N. Parks. Recent news of the UMass Music Department asserting a claim on the newly-constructed George N. Parks Marching Band Building, a project which was funded partly by contributions from people who were of the understanding that it was to be dedicated to the operations of the Marching Band … does nothing to dispel this impression. I suspect that the hiring process was more than tinged by a history of antagonistic relations between certain institutions and persons at the University of Massachusetts; and I am most saddened that this is even now having an impact on the most important people in this equation, in this moment: the band kids.
There are plenty of people who are now trying to play the part of the grownups in the room (admirable), posting messages online that say "the decision has been made, and we should support the new guy" – which is true! But a lot of these messages neglect to note that people are still struggling with the fact that Thom Hannum is not the new guy – which is no less true. Thom should not be merely collateral damage. The part that Thom has played in the events of this past week – and the effects of this week on Thom professionally and personally – assuredly should not be just swept under the rug or forgotten or set aside. In terms of human feelings, we are not the most important player in this little subplot. I think we come off as arrogant if we think that if WE come to terms with the fact that the University didn't name Thom as UMMB director, then the issue is settled.
If you were in Thom's shoes, would that settle the issue for you?
I understand that change happens. I understand that we don't always get what we want, or what we think would be appropriate for a given situation. I understand that someone else may consider a decision that I find mystifying… a perfectly reasonable decision. I understand that I may have to wait for awhile to discover whether life will go on and everything will be okay, or whether it won't. I understand that sometimes, protesting or moaning or writing angry letters or stamping my foot and crying "but it's no FAIR!" won't change a thing. I understand that life is not always fair.


The church quilt is done and on its way to Eagle Lake, Texas. I loved making this quilt -- the fall colors all worked so well together, even though they came from several different collections.
I don't make wine or cheese, however I believe that aging is needed. Well ..... my fabric never goes out of style, each piece ages gracefully and gets better with time. Both quilts shown today have a few pieces from new and old stashes.
My Green Monochromatic is actually 99% done, however I thought I would show the stages as it was growing. Sorta of a teaser -- not really, but since it is so simple, I thought I would stretch out the reveal and show how I design directly on the wall.
And since I just came home from work (long day!), I am now jumping over to Judy's Patchwork Times to see what other design wall are waiting to visit.
The church quilt is spectacular - beautiful work!! And I love the "teaser" of your monochromatic green!


text:
Carriera

Club
Valencia iniziò la carriera nel , ma presto si trasferì al Talleres de Córdoba, club per il quale ha giocato per gran parte della sua carriera.

Al Talleres, Valencia ottenne buoni risultati, come il 3º posto nel Campionato Metropolitano del 1980.

Nel 1986 fece una breve parentesi nel calcio ecuadoriano con l'LDU Portoviejo, ma stette solo un anno, poi tornò al Talleres per altre due stagioni.

Nel 1988 si trasferì al Guaraní Antonio Franco, l'anno successivo ando al Rosario Central e  nell 1990 andò al Wilstermann. Nel 1991 andò al San José e, nel 1993, all'età di 37 anni, si ritirò.

Nazionale
L'apice della carriera di Valencia ci fu nel 1978 con la conquista dei Mondiali di Argentina '78 con la selezione nazionale. Non giocò la finale, ma aiutò in altre partite l'Argentina a vincere la sua prima Coppa del Mondo.

Valencia fu selezionato per giocare con l'Argentina anche ai Mondiali di Spagna '82, ma i bianco-azzurri vennero eliminati al 2º girone. Si ritirò dal calcio internazionale alla fine del torneo, dopo aver rappresentato l'Argentina per 41 volte, segnando 5 gol.

Palmarès

Note

Altri progetti

Collegamenti esterni

Calciatori campioni del mondo
Calciatori della Nazionale argentina

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


The dominant systems of heteronormativity and patriarchy which support one another to devalue and subordinate femininity to masculinity, constructing the feminine as weak, irrational, in need of leadership, and ultimately a void that needs to be filled by the presence of the masculine. Heteropatriarchy functions as a tool used to maintain the settler colonial state which requires the normalized subordination of one group to another. Functionally, heteropatriarchy is a set of cultural scripts (sexual, vocational, behavioral, emotional, aesthetic, and so on) which serve to define both masculinity and femininity in narrow and limiting ways in order to maintain a sharp binary distinction between male and female, dominant and subordinate.
Smith, Andrea. "Heteropatriarchy, a Building Block of Empire." Solidarity: a Socialist, Feminist, Anti-Racist Organization. 2007.
———."Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy." CPT Training Resources.
Cherokee intellectual, feminist, anti-violence activist, theologian, Andrea Smith, takes a look at intersectionality, and at three basic myths that work to establish white male supremacy. Genocide/Colonialism; Slavery/Capitalism; Orientalism/War. This short article is an excellent, short, dense, and powerful framing of the multiple intersecting myth/lies that maintain power.


The interior of Cyprus is quite harsh. This area is known as the Troodos mountains. If you look closely at the hills what appears to be many roads is just one road. It takes a long time to travel anywhere !
A typical mountain village. Not exactly first world.


Women's Equality Day on August 26 is a special day to commemorate the anniversary of women in the U.S. winning the right to vote. Women have overcome significant obstacles in the struggle for increasing levels of freedom and equality. Even though progress has been made, many women still feel underpaid and underappreciated by their employers. Pay equity is an opportunity for organizations to recruit and retain top talent by making sure their pay scales are adequately adapted to fairly compensate women for their work.
In honor of Women's Equality Day, we're highlighting five of our past pay equity articles so you can gain insight into how to create more equitable and competitive compensation policies to keep top talent engaged and interested in working for your organization.
1. "Closing the Gender Pay Gap: Part 1 — Why It Matters for Compliance and Engagement"
America has a troubling and persistent gender pay gap; the average full-time working woman earns only 79 percent of what a man earns, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This article discusses key strategies for how finance leaders can get involved with addressing the gender pay gap and creating more equitable policies, while staying compliant with the latest employment laws and boosting employee engagement and retention.
2. "Closing the Gender Pay Gap: Part 2 — Invest in Big Data Capabilities"
Improving your organization's performance with pay equity is not just a matter of changing the culture; it often requires taking a hard look at the data with regular pay audits and pay adjustments to close the gaps along the way. This article explains more about how big data can help finance leaders uncover and resolve the pay equity challenges facing your organization.
3. "What Can Jennifer Lawrence Teach HR Leaders About Pay Equity?"
Actress Jennifer Lawrence is a well-known Hollywood star who discovered she was making less money than the male actors she co-starred alongside. This article explains how HR leaders can ensure their organizations are managing pay equity in a fair and consistent manner.
4. "Address Pay Equity at Your Organization"
Pay equity is more than just a compliance issue — it's a way for your organization to create a competitive advantage in recruiting top talent, while helping the overall economy. In fact, stats cited in this article show that if all U.S. employers could fairly address the issue of pay equity, it would unleash an additional $12 trillion into the national economy. Read this article to learn more about the steps to take to foster a culture of fairness at your organization.
5. "Equal Pay Laws: Are New Regulations a Sign of Things to Come? A Look at Massachusetts"
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed legislation to address the issue of the gender pay gap. This state-level legislation could be a harbinger of future regulations in other, bigger states — or at the federal level. This article tells you how to comply with new laws and how to keep your organization moving proactively in the right direction on fair compensation policies.
The gender pay gap is getting increased attention from the public and from regulators. Smart organizations will find ways to be proactive in structuring their compensation in a way that is fair to all. HR leaders have an obligation to pay attention to ensure fair and equitable pay for women.


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The Himalayan Times > Kathmandu > President Bhandari extends condolence on former French President's death
President Bhandari extends condolence on former French President's death
Published: December 04, 2020 9:15 pm On: Kathmandu
THT Online
KATHMANDU: President Bidya Devi Bhandari today sent a message of condolences to French President Emmanuel Macron on the passing away of former President of France Valery Giscard d'Estaing.
Conveying her deepest sympathies and condolences to the French government, the bereaved family members and the people of France, President Bhandari, in her message, has said that Nepal has lost a good friend.
Giscard d'Estaing, who championed European integration and helped modernise French society in the 1970s, died on Wednesday at the age of 94 after contracting COVID-19.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Larabanga is a village in West Gonja district, a district in north western Northern Region of Ghana. The village is known for its mud-built whitewashed Sahelian mosque, said to date from 1421. It was at the height of the trans-Saharan trade. It is reputed to be Ghana's oldest mosque and houses a copy of the Qur'an almost as old.


text:
MillerCoors sues Anheuser-Busch
Published on: Saturday, March 23, 2019
By: AP
MILWAUKEE: A fight between beer giants escalated Thursday after MillerCoors filed a lawsuit against Anheuser-Busch that accused its rival of trying to "frighten" consumers into switching to Bud Light with "misleading" Super Bowl ads.
MillerCoors said in the lawsuit filed in Wisconsin federal court that St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch has spent as much as $30 million on a "false and misleading" campaign, including $13 million in its first commercials during this year's Super Bowl. The ad showed a medieval caravan pushing a huge barrel of corn syrup to castles for MillerCoors to make Miller Lite and Coors Light. The commercial states that Bud Light isn't brewed with corn syrup.
Chicago-based MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch have the biggest U.S. market share at 24.8 per cent and 41.6 per cent, respectively, but they've been losing business in recent years to smaller independent brewers, imports, and wine and spirits, according to the Brewers Association.
Anheuser-Busch's ad drew a rebuke from the National Corn Growers Association, which thanked MillerCoors for its support. In its lawsuit, MillerCoors said it's "not ashamed of its use of corn syrup as a fermentation aid."
Corn syrup is used by several brewers during fermentation. During that process, corn syrup is broken down and consumed by yeast so none of it remains in the final product.
Bud Light is brewed with rice instead of corn syrup, but Anheuser-Busch uses corn syrup in some of its other beers, including Stella Artois Cidre and Busch Light. – AP


Yesterday Microsoft released BizTalk Services CTP to the public. This one little CTP changes everything. Honest.
It used to be very hard to build a distributed application. The pioneers in this field were Napster, Seti@Home and ICQ. To make applications like this work, you needed to have clients identify themselves and a message relay on the back end. Think of a switchboard for your applications telling user 1 how to communicate to user 2. If you wanted to build these connected systems, it would require a lot of infrastructure-a tremendous amount if you your application became popular. This has always been the barrier to entry.
As time passed and web services came on to the scene, things got easier. A lot of the hard part of the pluming was taken care of; transport was easy via HTTP and speaking the same language was easy with SOAP. As time moved on and things got easier, people started pushing Web Services to the limit and the vendors started to really support building connected systems. After nearly a decade of XML and SOAP, most developers take it for granted. Enterprises now rely on this technology.
Enter the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB). ESB is an acronym (we always need a TLA, don't we?) that is hot right now. The notion is that you have a set of shared services in an enterprise that act as a foundation for discovering, connecting and federating services. This is the natural evolution of the technology, as enterprises rely on the technology and themselves grow more federated, enterprises will standardize discovering, connecting and federating services.
Two aspects that make the idea of a "service bus" generally very attractive are that the service bus enables identity federation and connectivity federation. This idea gets far more interesting and more broadly applicable when we remove the "Enterprise" constraint from ESB it and put "Internet" into its place, thus elevating it to an "Internet Services Bus", or ISB. If we look at the most popular Internet-dependent applications outside of the browser these days, like the many Instant Messaging apps, BitTorrent, Limewire, VoIP, Orb/Slingbox, Skype, Halo, Project Gotham Racing, and others, many of them depend on one or two key services must be provided for each of them: Identity Federation (or, in absence of that, a central identity service) and some sort of message relay in order to connect up two or more application instances that each sit behind firewalls - and at the very least some stable, shared rendezvous point or directory to seed P2P connections. The question "how does [MSN] Messenger work?" has, from an high-level architecture perspective a simple answer: The Messenger "switchboard" acts as a message relay.
In order to build distributed applications (and make money!) you have to scale to support the load your users and customers will add. This forced businesses to spend a disproportionate amount of money on hardware and too much time building the plumbing software. Let's take my business Corzen for example. Corzen collects specific data from the internet via spidering (like Google.) Corzen then crunches the data: we de-dupe it, aggregate it, match it with Dun & Bradstreet and US Govt data, and then apply some statistical models. We then deliver this "crunched" data to customers on a weekly basis.
The value add is the "crunching" of the data. Where do you think 75% of my technology budget goes to? You guessed it, the spidering infrastructure. We spider 24X7 and collect between 4-10 million records each week from spidering. As you can imagine our customers want more and more sites to be spidered and more frequently. We spent a year building an amazing XML based, queue and batch based, distributed application with WCF. We can load URLs into a queue and then go to a web page where we can send that job to several spider servers via WCF. Our spider servers are low cost Virtual Private Servers on ISPs around the world running a simple spidering engine that uses reflection to dynamically compile C# code instructions and apply RegEx patterns. When Corzen was young, we manually started these engines via RDP. As we scaled, we had to build this system.
How does an Internet Service Bus change the Corzen business model and cost structure? Every few weeks we get new requests by customers to add more sites to our list of sites and we have to add spidering capacity. Since spidering is so basic, I have always wanted to have our customers spider for us (or fan out the spidering to 3rd parties for a small fee). I can then offer our customers a discount on their monthly fees based on the amount of spiders they will run for us.
This is win win win, they get more data faster, and I lower my overhead and pass that savings on to the customer. This drastically changes my focus. I spend 50% of my time managing the spidering, worrying about capacity, and expanding the spidering infrastructure. Corzen's cost structure changes as does the relationship with our customer-we become partners in the data acquisition "plumming" and Corzen can focus on the analytics-what the customers really want us to do. In other words we get out of the raw material business (spidering) and focus on the manufacturing of the product (the analytics.) Corzen was recently acquired by a company that does spidering as well, but not the analytics. This is an exciting move since we can join forces with the spidering capacity and Corzen can focus more on the analytics.
Today, the problem with having our customers do spidering (or paying you on your idle time to do some spidering for us) is simple. With over 100 customers, you try getting our WCF application to work on all of their servers through our firewall and their firewall. BizTalk services solves this problem. BizTalk services will provide a globally addressable name for Corzen's service and securely expose that service to the Internet from behind a firewall or NAT as shown here.
Use the Relay at http://connect.biztalk.net. We've shipped an SDK with a few samples showing you how you use the relay and identity services together. If you're familiar with Windows Communication Foundation, you'll find this trivial to use (by design!). Basically, your service opens at a URI on the connect.biztalk.net machines. Then a client connects to that URI and can start sending messages. We don't want to be in the way of your app, so our relay will immediately try to establish a direct connection between clients. More details on this how this all works in a later post. Here's a quick diagram that describes it at a high level.
Everyone always likes to compare the "war" between Microsoft and Google. Maybe it is Google's stock price or the popularity of its search engine or Gmail system. I look at the companies as light years apart. At its core, Google is an advertising company (highlighted by its recent acquisition of DoubleClick.) Sure Google will expose some APIs for developers, however, everything it does from Gmail to search is to gain more eyeballs for its ads.
Microsoft is a company about selling Windows. What has made Windows so popular is that Microsoft gives developers amazing tools to build applications around Windows, Office and the Internet. The strength of Microsoft is the developer community surrounding its products. You always hear about the next great thing that is going to "take Microsoft down." The only thing that will take Microsoft down is a company with a compelling platform that also provides tools for developers to create applications on that platform.
The latest thing to come to take Microsoft down is Software as a Service. Think Google Spreadsheet. Businesses will all use the Spreadsheet in the sky and store its data on Google's servers. Ditto with Gmail, why bother with Exchange?
Microsoft does have a cool differentiating factor: its hybrid approach. Microsoft is offering Software + Services. As I said in eWeek, with such a huge commitment to the OS and other installed software already, Microsoft is actually in a position to deliver software and a service on top of it.
The marketplace wants a hybrid solution and Microsoft is the only one who can deliver it in the short to medium term, giving Microsoft a competitive advantage. Everyone thought Google Docs would kill Office but in reality, Google docs are cool but Enterprises have issues today with using it offline and inside of a browser (copy and paste is strange, so is right clicking in a cell). Personally I use Google Spreadsheet to keep track of simple things but Microsoft Excel to do the more processor intensive operations. In addition, I work offline a tremendous amount as well don't trust Larry and Sergey to store my very sensitive documents.
Think of Excel as software + services. Excel can be sold and run on your computer. You can store your documents locally or up in the cloud. Processor intensive operations can utilize your local super-fast Pentium 1million Processor and your 2 GB of RAM. Collaborative efforts can be handled by the cloud. Additional services like statistical number crunching or anything that needs to be distributed can be handled by the cloud. Multiple editors and viewers, in the cloud. You get the point.
This is where BizTalk Services come in. It is an early way for developers to deliver Software plus Services.
We are so focused on technology that CEOs and Venture Capitalists are desperately trying to learn about the basics of technology-time they should be spending working through business models and looking for competitive advantages.
BizTalk services and ultimately all of the Software plus Services (including other vendors, not just Microsoft) will change the way we do business in 5-10 years. Imagine if we had to run a switchboard to run our phones in the office? So an oil company or a bank would have to develop the technical expertise to run the phones. This infrastructure is solved by the phone company (and now VoIP!) In the future, businesses will only have to focus on their core businesses and most software will run locally with services up in the cloud, drastically reducing the investment in core IT infrastructure internally. It's a brave new world out there.
Subject: While developers write code to build software every day, not often are they exposed to code that drives and interfaces hardware. This session will attempt to bridge that gap and show how .NET can be used to effectively interface several hardware devices, including an RFID reader and tags, Phidget control boards with a variety of sensors, and a servo controller. Additionally, Microsoft Robotics Studio will be introduced along with a demonstration showing how one can control some of the hardware previously listed in an environment where concurrency and performance are key.
Bill Zack will be transitioning to a new role at Microsoft. He has accepted a position as Architect Evangelist in the Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE) group at Microsoft. In his new role he will be doing a series of day-time Architecture briefings on enterprise topics in New York at Microsoft. On April 12th Bill will be doing one on Microsoft and SAP Interoperability as part of Microsoft's arcStream program. This is a series of live presentations combined with access to on-line experts from Microsoft.
If you are currently using SAP and Microsoft technology in your company but have not integrated them you should find attending this meeting very informative. If you use SAP where you work or are just interested in finding out about this subject feel free to attend. The presentation will be held at Microsoft's New York City offices. You are invited to join.
arcStream provides a constant flow of technical information as well as networking opportunities for enterprise, application, systems and aspiring architects living and working on the east coast.
For more information see http://www.arcstreameast.net/arcStreameast.
In addition Goksin Bakir will be starting as a DE in the Middle East and Africa region. While I hate Goksin for leaving me as the last of the club to be independent from Microsoft (first Malek, then Clemens!), it is a GREAT move for him and even better for the region. I can't wait to speak at even more Middle East and Africa events!


The Pickledish Patch: A Birthday Sale and Giveaway.
A Birthday Sale and Giveaway.
It's my birthday tomorrow and so I think its time for a Birthday Sale.
So all my patterns in my Etsy shop are 50% OFF…that's half price!
Pop on over to my Etsy shop and have fun saving lots of dollars.
This sale will go until Thursday the 20th May 2010. That's 3 days all up.
I said a Giveaway in the title too…so leave a comment (that's all you have to do) and on Saturday 22nd May 2010, I will draw out a name and who ever is the winner can pick any one of my patterns that are listed in the Patterns section as a prize. I might draw 2 winners for a pattern prize.
Also I made this cute bag a little while ago and this will be a prize as well to the lucky winner. It's only a little bag but cute and I might find something else to include with it.
Hope you have a fantastic birthday tomorrow Vicki filled with lots of love,family and friends and of course lots of gifties :) Barb.
Do enjoy your day, Vicki! Love your cute little bag.
Enjoy your special day. Your bag is sooooo cute.
Happy Birthday...have a lovely day.
Happy Birthday! Hope you have a great time.
Happy Birthday! I hope to win your cute bag!!
The bag is such a cutie!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, I celebrated my birthday last Tuesday, isn't May a wonderful month to be born in, everything is fresh, new and green. I love your little bag.
Happy Birthday! Hope you have a great day! Your little bag is gorgeous, how cool would that be to win!
Happy birthday Vicki. Your patterns are so lovely, please include me.
Happy Birthday Vicki and it is good of you to give a gift to others on your birthday so I hope you get spoiled at home and get some lovely gifts.
Happy birthday to you! Lovely purse, looks so sweet!
Lots of birthday wishes. I hope you have a lovely day.
Happy birthday wishes Vicki. What a cute bag, count me in your draw please.
The bag is lovely with its Suffolk Puff. After several half-hearted attempts at Suffolk Puffs, I finally got it right ... so easy, once you know how.
Happy Birthday for tomorrow and forever.
Happy Birthday Vicki and have a great day. Love the bag.
Vickie, thank you for the chance to win.
Happy Birthday!!! Hope you have many many more.
Will pop over to your store....you are one talented person.
Happy Birthday ,have a great day tomorrow .
Vicky hello!!!!!!!! happy birthday tomorrow, thanks for letting us join your gift, please Sign me!!
Happy birthday and have a great day. I just love your blog and all the things you make.
Happy Birthday! Hope you have a wonderful day!
Promise I won't sing Happy Birthday but would like to tell you that I enjoy reading your blog and all the little extra things that you put in it. Thank You!!!
Vicki I just love this new blog site colour and appearance.Have a happy,happy birthday tomorrow filled with fun,family and friends. Did I mention a glass of wine and lots of giggles.
Trust you to be so generous and GIVE away a gift for your birthday celebration.
Happy Birthday Vicki, hope your year and especially your Birthday is full of fun laughter and happiness. The bag is just beautiful. Happy days.
A very happy birthday to you!!! May it be a lovely day as the start of a very good, healthy and creative year.
I love following your blog but am not much of a writer, I'm sorry.
Happy Birthday! I've got one coming up in a couple of weeks. I hope yours is great!
Happy Birthday!! Hope you have a great birthday celebration. Thank you for such a great giveaway. The little bag is so soft and feminine. Wonderful.
Have a super great day.
I would love to win one of your patterns.
Gosh, that came around quickly, I remember your last birthday.
All the best for your birthday today! Hope you have a great day.
Hi Vicki, happy birthday to you.
I visit your blog for a long time now and I always enjoy reading it.
Happy Birthday Vicki! I hope you have as lovely a birthday tomorrow as I had yesterday! Mmmmm, I hope someone makes you Curtis Stone's white chocolate strawberry mousse on double fudge cake recipe like my daughter made for me...oh my, talk about a happy birthday!
All the best and thanks for the opportunity to win.
I hope you're having a loverly day dear Vicki, filled with everything you love best! And CAKE. Lots of CAKE. Your little purse is so darling!
Happy Birthday and I hope you have a super special day!!
Happy birthday and thanks for the opportunity.
happy birthday Vicki. Love the little bag. Great Giveaway, thanks.
The best of birthdays to you! Your little bag is adorable.
Feliz cumpleaños Vicky!!! Que pases un día genial, y, por supuesto que deseo anotarme en tu sorteo!!! Un beso grande a la distancia!
Have a wonderful day sweetie!!!
Happy birthday! The bag is so cute.
That is a really sweet bag, I need to learn how to make them.
Have a great Birthday Vicki. The little bag is darling.
Lovely little bag. I would love to win a pattern of yours! Happy Birthday!
Happy Birthday today Vicki!!!! I hope you are having a lovely day with an abundance of all good things. Love that bag! Hehehehehe.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY GREETINGS FROM THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!! Have a wonderful day!!!
It`s a wonderful little bag.
Sorry ... I'm a bit late Vicki, but I hope you had a wonderful day and were seriously spoilt by your family.
Happy Birthday!! I hope you feel very special on your day and relax and have fun. Thanks for the sale and lovely giveaway. I enjoy your blog and read regularly.
happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you!!!! Hope you had a wonderful day Vicki....May is the perfect month for birthdays....mine just squeezes in on the last day!!!
Have a wonderful birthday, or maybe you have had it already. I have been away so am still catching up on the blogs. The continuing generosity of the quilting world amazes me.
Oops I missed your big day - but I hope it was happy and you got lots of lovely presents??. Love your new look blog!
Happy birthdYou can never have enough bags of all sizes. I really think they are addictive. Sharynay Vicki.
Happy Birthday (plus 1 day). I know I am a day late. But still wanted to give you my best wishes. It is always fun to read your blog. So please go on.
Hope you had a great birthday yesterday Vicki. Love the little previews.
Belated Happy Birthday Vickie hope it was great love to be a winner have my fingers crossed!!
Happy Birthday! Best Wishes for Many More. Thanks for sharing your fun. The bag is very cute.
Have a wonderful and blessed birthday!!
May you know the joys of friends and loved ones this day.
Hope you had a wonderful birthday!
I feel sneaky putting a comment in here instead of today's post...but I thought I would tell you I saw a photo of you with a quilt you had made...sampler (odds and ends) am too lazy to go into the other room and get it......but I got a backlog of Homespun's and had I got it when it was published I would not have recognized your name.
Happy Birthday! Hope to have a chance to win one of your freebies. Love your patterns.
Happy Birthday!! I hope your day was special.
Glad to hear you had a nice day.


I am a 25-year-old mother of three little boys.
and our third son, Lincoln Mark, was born in September of 2013.
1-I hope that perhaps along the way I may be able to inspire.
my faith and my fears.
I may be able to help someone else along their own unique journey.
2-I use this blog to keep a family record.
and it was a great way to keep them informed.
It still serves as a way to document our day-to-day lives as we grow as a family.
3-Blogging helps me be more intentional in my thoughts and actions.
it helps me do more worthwhile and notable things.
and it helps me reflect more on my life and my faith.
I fully acknowledge and appreciate the divinity of Jesus Christ and His role as my Savior.
I rejoice in the plain and simple joys of life.
To learn more about each member of our family, continue reading below.
Sam and I, Kaitlyn, met shortly after he moved into my apartment complex during college. I saw him at Church and liked him from afar until one fateful night in the spring of 2008 when we shared an engaging conversation in the parking lot and he determined to ask me on a date. After a few weeks and a few dates, he left on a humanitarian aid trip to El Salvador during which time we got to know one another on a deeper, more thoughtful level through letters and e-mails. Upon his return, we officially started dating. We became engaged in the middle of a moonlit night on a mountain perch overlooking our college town in November of 2008 and we were married that December on a gorgeous snowy morning.. Sam graduated from Brigham Young University with a degree in Molecular Biology and attended graduate school in Houston, where he graduated from The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston with a PhD in Cancer Biology. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Utah/Huntsman Cancer Institute. I also graduated from Brigham Young University and pursued my life-long dream of devoting all of my time to caring for our family!
Sam loves science (obviously), studying efficiency, learning about history, roughhousing with our three little bundles of energy, and going on our weekly dates.
He also has a gift of almost never forgetting names and faces!
I love untying knots, outdoor activities, simplicity, organization, music, and creating.
I love finding the extraordinary in the ordinary--because I truly do believe life is extraordinary.
We have three little boys who fill us with complete and utter joy and continually teach us patience. Talmage, age 5, has an incredible memory and is the most social little boy I know. He strikes up a conversation with just about anyone he sees regardless of age or appearance. Wesley, age 3, loves anything to do with sports and is a great observer. He has a sweet, mellow disposition and is interested in anything Talmage is doing. Lincoln, age 1, has the squishiest little cheeks and makes us laugh every day as he learns to express himself and assert his will.


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New relationship reaffirms High 5 Games' commitment to the regulated Dutch market
New York, NY (October 27, 2021) – High 5 Games today announced a partnership with Online Casino Ground, the largest compliant casino affiliate in the newly regulated Dutch market. The partnership will see titles from High 5 Games showcased on one of the most popular affiliate portals in the Netherlands.
"As we continue to put our games in front of more eyes and expand across Europe, partnering with the Netherlands' top affiliate is the perfect fit. We look forward to a successful partnership with Online Casino Ground."
Lauren Gazneli, Director of Client Partner for High 5 Games, commented.
With the new partnership, titles from High 5 Games will be showcased in a premium spot on OnlineCasinoGround.nl. At launch, players can explore Retro Riches, Quadruple Da Vinci Diamonds, Way Out Wilds, and more. High 5 Games will also have its own developer page to showcase the company and its history, experience, games, and more.
"We are looking forward to seeing High 5 Games across the licensed operators in the Netherlands. Current operators in the Dutch market should consider a variety of games, therefore we believe High 5 Games as an early newcomer will attract many players. We are proud to highlight their games on our portal and highlight innovative gaming to our visitors."
Matej Tomic, Business Development Manager at Online Casino Ground, commented.
About High 5 Games
Founded in 1995, High 5 Games is laser-focused on making an impression through innovative casino content for the land-based, mobile, online, and social markets. With a collection of over 500 casino games, its own full casino platform, and a strong history of entertaining players all over the planet, the casino technology company is highly respected in the B2C and B2B social and online gaming worlds. High 5 Games holds licenses and game certifications in multiple jurisdictions around the world. To find out more about High 5 Games, please visit www.high5games.com or contact Sales@high5games.com.


Necklace | 43 - 46 cm | elem.: 1 mm thick | ox + gp..
Necklace | 43 - 46 cm | elem.: 1 mm thick | sl + gp..
Necklace | 43 - 46 cm | elem.: 1 mm thick | sl + ox..
Necklace | 80 cm | elem.: 1 mm thick | gp..
Necklace | 80 cm | elem.: 1 mm thick | sl + gp..
Necklace | 42 - 47 cm | elem.: 1 mm thick | gp + 1 sl / chain sl..
Earrings | elem.: 7 x 1,5 cm | brown + ox..
Earrings | elem.: 7 x 1,5 cm | gp + ox..
Earrings | elem.: 7 x 1,5 cm | sl + gp..
Earrings | elem.: 7 x 1,5 cm | sl + ox..
Earrings | elem.: 7 x 1,5 cm | sl + sl..
Earrings | elem.: 5,5 x 1,5 cm | with hook: 6,5 cm | ox + gp / hook gp..
Earrings | elem.: 5,5 x 1,5 cm | with hook: 6,5 cm | sl + gp / hook gp..
Earrings | elem.: 1,5 x 1,5 cm | with hook: 3 cm | ox / hook gp..
Earrings | elem.: 1,5 x 1,5 cm | with hook: 3 cm | sl / hook gp..
Earrings | elem.: 1,5 x 1,5 cm | with hook: 3 cm | sl / hook sl..


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text:
Q: What is the value of $2x+3y$ if $x+y=7$ and $x^2-y^2=21$? If $x+y=7$ and $x^2-y^2=21$, then what is $2x+3y$?
I solved it like this:
\begin{align}
y& =7-x \\
x^2-(7-x)^2-21&=0 \\
x^2-49+14x-x^2-21&=0 \\
14x&=70 \\
x&=5
\end{align}
Then I solved for $y$ and I got $2$. I plugged in the values of $x$ and $y$ to $2x+3y$, and I got $16$.
Is this correct?

A: Quicker way is to note that
$$
21=(x-y)(x+y)=7(x-y)
$$
so
$$
x-y=3
$$
Combined with $x+y=7$, we get that $2x=10$ i.e. $x=5$ and $y=2$.
So your answer is correct.

A: Hint: A slightly easier way.
$$x^2-y^2=(x+y)(x-y)=7(x-y)=21 \implies x-y=3$$
But your solution is correct.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Home Edu News Shortfall of 5.9 Million Nurses Worldwide: WHO
April 07, 2020 Tuesday 01:25:00 PM IST
Shortfall of 5.9 Million Nurses Worldwide: WHO
The World Health Organisation has released The State of the World's Nursing 2020 with an urgent call to increase the investment in nursing and fill the gaps in the workforce. The priority areas of investment are in nursing education, jobs and leadership to improve the health of all. Nurses account for more than half of all the world's health workers, providing vital services throughout the health system. Historically, as well as today, nurses are at the forefront of fighting epidemics and pandemics that threaten health across the globe. Around the world they are demonstrating their compassion, bravery and courage as they respond to the COVID-19 pandemic: never before has their value been more clearly demonstrated.
'Nurses are the backbone of any health system. Today, many nurses find themselves on the frontline in the battle against Covid-19,' said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director General. 'This report is a stark reminder of the unique role they play, and a wakeup call to ensure they get the support they need to keep the world healthy.'
The report, by the World Health Organization (WHO) in partnership with the International Council of Nurses (ICN) and Nursing Now, reveals that today, there are just under 28 million nurses worldwide. Between 2013 and 2018, nursing numbers increased by 4.7 million. But this still leaves a global shortfall of 5.9 million - with the greatest gaps found in countries in Africa, South East Asia and the WHO Eastern Mediterranean region as well as some parts of Latin America.
Revealingly, more than 80 per cent of the world's nurses work in countries that are home to half of the world's population. And one in every eight nurses, practices in a country other than the one where they were born or trained. Ageing also threatens the nursing workforce: one out of six of the world's nurses are expected to retire in the next 10 years.
To avert the global shortage, the report estimates that countries experiencing shortages need to increase the total number of nurse graduates by on average 8% per year, along with improved ability to be employed and retained in the health system. This would cost roughly USD 10 per capita (population) per year.
MeitY to establish a Quantum Computing...
The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) in India will establish a Quantum Computing Applications Lab in the country, in collaboration with AWS, to accelerate quantum computing-led research and development and enable new scientific discoveries. The MeitY Quantum Computing Applications Lab will provide quantum computing as a service to government ministries and departments, researchers, scientists, academia, and developers, to enable advances ...
NITI Aayog to Launch Second Edition of...
NITI Aayog will release the second edition of the India Innovation Index 2020 on 20 January in a virtual event. The index will be released by NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Dr Rajiv Kumar in the presence of NITI Aayog Member Dr. VK Saraswat and CEO Amitabh Kant. The release of the second edition of the index—the first was launched in October 2019—demonstrates the Government's continued commitment towards transforming the country into an innovation-driven economy.The India Inn...
Sports Ministry to name all upgraded s...
In an effort to honour sporting heroes of the country, the Sports Ministry has taken a decision to name all upcoming and upgraded sporting facilities of the Sports Authority of India, after renowned athletes, who have contributed to sports in India.In the first leg, the newly built air-conditioned wrestling hall and the learners swimming pool in the National Centre of Excellence (NCOE) in Lucknow, the 100-bedded hostel in NCOE Bhopal, the multipurpose hall and ...
MIT.nano's Immersion Lab opens for r...
The MIT.nano Immersion Lab, MIT's first open-access facility for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) and interacting with data, is now open and available to MIT students, faculty, researchers, and external users. The powerful set of capabilities is located on the third floor of MIT.nano in a two-story space resembling a black-box theater. The Immersion Lab contains embedded systems and individual equipment and platforms, as well as data capacity to support new modes of te...
Cambridge Foundation Year supports so...
A Foundation Year offering talented students from backgrounds of educational and social disadvantage a new route to undergraduate study has been launched by the University of Cambridge. The one-year course – aimed at an entirely new stream of applicants who have the ability to succeed at Cambridge, but have been prevented from reaching their full potential by their circumstances – will prepare students for further learning and offer them the chance to progress straight to...
ISRO to adopt 100 Atal Tinkering Labs ...
In an exciting online event today, Atal Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog and Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) announced that ISRO will be adopting 100 Atal Tinkering Labs across the country to promote education in the field of STEM, Space education, and space technology related Innovations for school students. Addressing the virtual event through a special message, NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Dr. Rajiv Kumar said, "I am extremely elated that different d...


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Canon PowerShot SX50 HS Digital Camera Review
Canon reaches the 50x mark, making few sacrifices to image quality along the way
Written and Tested by Christopher Snow
Super-zoom cameras have long been the butt of jokes here at the office, as the market continues to demand ever-longer zoom ratios, and manufacturers are forced to respond. The results are long-zoom cameras with magnification capabilities that were already silly a year ago, and have since passed full ridiculousness.
The reason why we smirk at these cameras is because when zoom ratio goes up, image quality has a tendency to take a nosedive. That's not always the case, Panasonic's FZ series is immune, and so is today's review: the PowerShot SX50 HS. This camera is far more than its 50x gimmick, it tested very well, and the shooting experience is a lot of fun.
The SX50 is available in black for $479.99.
• Canon PowerShot SX50 HS digital camera
• rechargeable battery
• wall charger
• neck strap
• lens cap strap
• lens cap
• software CD-ROM
• Getting Started manual
This is the main event, right here. The SX50's comically long lens offers a zoom magnification of 50x, by far the most super of the super-zooms on the market today. For some consumers, optical zoom is the new "megapixels," meaning it's the one specification people tend to measure a camera's worth by. Of course that's a rather unsophisticated way to judge a product, but at least the SX50 offers more than just a long lens.
For those that really can take advantage of 50x (who are these people?), you'll find the lens capable of resolving detail from clear across a football field or two, with a 35mm-equivalent focal range of 24 to 1200mm.
Another important change has been made to the lens motor, it's much more powerful than the SX40. So this camera doesn't just reach 50x, it flies down to 50x in only two or three seconds.
Sadly, geometry dictates than unless we were comfortable with a lens that protrudes three feet or so, the camera's sensor needs to be tiny. Therefore, we're stuck with a 12 megapixel CMOS that measures only 1/2.3-inch. Every other super-zoom has a similar limitation, so the complaint is minor.
The SX50's electronic viewfinder is small and not the most comfortable to squint through. The display also has a severe lag associated with it, which will make action photography a little more challenging than it should be. Color rendition is accurate though, much more so than the average EVF. Sadly the camera is not equipped with an eye-lever sensor, so you'll need to toggle the display button in order to swap between the EVF and LCD.
A sturdy rear LCD panel is probably your best bet for accurate framing. This is a fully swiveling panel that's very useful for video applications or challenging shooting angles. Viewing angle of the actual screen isn't perfect, but since the whole thing rotates, this really isn't a problem.
The built-in flash bulb is of average power, it's effective out to a maximum of 18 feet, and recycle time is also fairly typical. The pop-up arm has neither a motor nor a spring, so you'll need to actually reach up and pull back the flash to deploy it.
On the right side of the body you'll find a rubber stopper blocking standard USB and HDMI terminals, as well as a wired remote shutter port. We just love when manufacturers use standard connectors that are already compatible with cables you've got lying around in a drawer somewhere. We just wish the rubber cover was a little less flimsy.
Other than the main connectivity ports, the only one left is the hot shoe mount on top of the camera, right above the EVF. Here you can attach supplemental flash or other external accessories.
We found the SX50's image quality to be generally very strong, however this evaluation comes with a few "buts." For example, sharpness scores were outstanding... but they've been artificially enhanced by software. Likewise, color scores were just-okay... but color reproduction seemed fantastic in our sample shots. At least the noise reduction scores are indisputable... or are they?
We were initially blown away by the SX50's sharpness. After all, those super-zoom lenses don't usually offer the best resolution. But our first samples were so sharp, we decided to take an even closer look at the data. Sure enough, most of this camera's sharpness capabilities are actually just software forgeries.
Although our tests recorded resolution in excess of 2500 MTF50s (that's outstanding) in some areas, the test also recorded up to 48% overshoot and 10% undershoot enhancement in those same areas. What this means, is that in the sharpest zones, roughly half of a given edge's detail is faked by internal software, not resolved by the performance of the sensor.
When a camera uses such aggressive edge enhancement, shots look decent while zoomed out, but closer inspection reveals bright, unnatural halos around many subjects, as well as dark black lines around simple shapes and straight lines. Both of these undesirable effects are observable in the crops below. More on how we test sharpness.
One of the SX50's coolest new features is called Framing Assist, and this arrives in the form of two new buttons on the left side of the lens barrel, one for "seek" and one for "lock." Seek simply zooms back out for a moment to give the shooter a chance to reorient themselves, but lock is a stabilization feature. The idea is to use image stabilization to keep the frame locked onto a certain subject, regardless of any shake or drift on the user's part.
It does work. There is a slight "tug," which you may notice after experimenting with the feature for a short time, but mostly it just feels like swapping back and forth between "standard" and "active" stabilization which, given the convenience of the new button, isn't really a bad thing either.
The SX50 offers quite good color accuracy, and our tests revealed an uncorrected error value of 2.39, which is competitive for this price range. In the most accurate color mode, that's with "My Colors" off by the way, saturation was only slightly below the ideal at 95.5%. The most severe inaccuracies are found in flesh tones, so this is probably not an ideal camera for portraits, as it also lacks a dedicated "portrait" color mode. More on how we test color.
Jiving with what we saw in our lab results, the camera's color performance impressed us during real world shooting, especially for landscape photography. This could be due to the relative accuracy of shades like blues, reds, and greens, which is a rare distribution for cameras of this class. We're fine recommending the SX50 HS if color accuracy is your thing, though we'd caution that you have to tweak some things to get the most out of the camera.
2.39 is right along with almost every competing ultrazoom this year, and almost identical to its closest competitor, the Panasonic FZ200. We saw similar color accuracy out of last year's model, the Canon SX40.
Including the "off" setting there are nine available color modes and, as previously mentioned, if you want accurate colors leaving them off is the best option. Canon has historically shown very little consistency with regard to which color mode is the most accurate. Sometimes it's Neutral, sometimes My Colors Off, sometimes Lighter Skin Tone, sometimes Vivid Red. In the SX50's case, all modes other than Neutral are oversaturated and less accurate, with Neutral being too undersaturated to produce accurate shots.
Automatic white balance will be perfectly acceptable for the majority of shooting scenarios. Specifically we're talking about photography under daylight or fluorescents. In fact, under such conditions, we actually found the camera to be more accurate using automatic white balance than custom.
The exception to this is incandescent or "tungsten" light, which the automatic algorithm has trouble dealing with. Under those conditions, the automatic white balance will be off by about 2000 Kelvin, so you should really perform a manual white balance, which will drop that figure down to around 100 K.
Six white balance presets are available, including one for flash and two different shades of fluorescent, plus automatic and two custom settings that are relatively simple to program.
The noise reduction algorithm is aggressive, so artifacting rates are low. Total image noise averages only 0.55% at minimum ISO, and this value stays below 1.00% until ISO 1600, which is a great result. Noise then continues its straight upward climb to 1.24% at ISO 3200, which is still manageable, before topping out at 1.60% at ISO 6400. Chroma and luminance noise are evenly distributed. More on how we test noise.
Default ISO sensitivity ranges from 80 - 6400, with no reduced resolution extended options available. Out of the most competitive cameras, only Sony's HX200V is capable of ISO 12800 in full resolution.
Videos shot in low light must be done with care, because the sensor requires 20 lux of ambient illumination in order to gather a usable amount (50 IRE) of video image data. This is fairly average for a fixed lens camera, but the result lags behind Panasonic's FZ200.
Chromatic aberration is entirely absent from the center of the frame, however this ambitious lens cannot help but fall victim to a little fringing at the edges and corners. This was apparent in our sample photos at any focal length, but in the lab we only noticed distracting fringes at maximum zoom. In the crops below, notice the blue and brown halos affecting corner shots at 215mm (and 33.2mm to a lesser extent).
Make no mistake, a lens of this design is certainly going to introduce distortion. But we test in JPEG and by the time those shots are output, the camera has already fully corrected for the effect. The most we detected was less than 1.00% at the wide angle, but remember, RAW shooting will not have this advantage.
Videos do not fall victim to any trailing or frequency interference, but they're far from perfect. There's a general lack of smoothness, due in all likelihood to the maximum Full HD shooting speed of 24 frames per second. Compression artifacting is also a distraction, and shows up pretty clearly in moving and shaded areas. More on how CamcorderInfo tests motion.
Sharpness is much more impressive than motion. The tiny sensor is still able to resolve 500 lw/ph horizontally and 600 vertically under full studio illumination. More on how CamcorderInfo tests video sharpness.
Although we wish some extra effort had been committed to ergonomics, the SX50 is still easy to use for photographers of any experience level. We think Canon's menu system is the best in the industry, however some of this camera's button and dials feel cheap and toy-like.
Automatic Features
We spent most of our time in Program Auto, and we have a feeling most users will do the same. For complete beginners, or for handing your camera off to a stranger, a fully automatic "green" mode is available, which automates all shooting functions and reduces the complexity of the menu system. Using this mode, all you'll need to remember is to deploy the flash.
The rear control scheme is effective but unimaginative, Canon has stuck with a tried-and-true layout that leaves us little to complain about. We reserve special praise for the focus zone button, located directly below the video hotkey, which is helpful for changing your "FlexiZone" focus area on the go, or performing other functions. Some users may also find the shortcut button helpful, but it's situated far off on the left side of the EVF, and we rarely bothered to reach for it.
Actually our biggest complaint about the buttons and dials is their construction. Each has a shallow stroke that feels cheap and amateurish. The rear rotating dial is also set too far into the body panel, so it's both imprecise and uncomfortable to use.
We think Canon's menu systems are the best in the business, and the SX50's interface is a classic example of why. Like so many of the company's models, this camera uses both a crisscross quick menu (the "Function" menu), as well as a traditional tab-based main menu. The quick menu houses all the options you'll need to change on the fly, and the software is responsible, legible, and intuitive. In the main menu, you'll find settings that are less commonly changed, but more specific. There's even a customizable tab, which can be easily programmed to display the options most relevant to your photography needs.
The camera ships with a "Getting Started" guide that's useful for rank novices only. The rest of us will need the full length manual, an electronic version of which can be found on an included CD-ROM or on Canon's website. This document offers sufficient detail, and provided us with any missing information we needed for review.
Although the designers obviously gave some thought to this camera's shape, we wonder why they stopped short of coating the body in anything except smooth plastic. While the front hand grip protrudes far enough to help keep the camera stable, the complete lack of rubberization anywhere on the camera was an oversight last year and still hasn't been rectified.
On the rear panel, there's a concave depression intended to cup your thumb, but ours naturally came to rest well above this area. Together, all these issues make the camera feel cheaper than it is, and left us scratching our heads, just like we did for the SX40 HS.
On the top plate, the shutter release and zoom lever are adequate for this kind of camera, but again, the mode dial is slippery and feels cheap, as does the toy-ish power button.
The full-sized hardware mode dial is a little too shallow for our tastes, but it does contain all the "PASM" shooting modes, as well as a few dedicated modes like Scene and Picture Effects, as well as two programmable custom modes.
25 total shooting resolutions are available, among 5 different aspect ratios, which are 16:9, 3:2, 4:3, 1:1, and 4:5. The reason this figure seems so high is because the SX50 offers RAW encoding in each aspect ratio, not just the native aspect ratio of the sensor. We're still not convinced RAW photography is worth the effort on such a tiny sensor, but the functionality is there if you really want it. JPEG compression may be set to Fine or Superfine.
The SX50 HS is equipped with a few different continuous shooting modes, and all of them introduce different strengths and weaknesses. The default continuous mode is found in the quick menu, and can be used at full resolution, in concert with almost any other shooting setting, including RAW or maximum JPEG compression. The camera is even capable of using continuous autofocus during a sequence, a feature that's very rare in the fixed-lens realm. The trade-off here is speed, this method is relatively slow, clocking in at only 2.18 frames per second at best.
Inside the Scene mode menu, you'll find a faster option: the High-speed Burst HQ mode, which doesn't really live up to the "HQ" (high quality) name, since Superfine JPEG compression is locked. This mode is therefore ineligible for scoring, however Canon claims 13 shots per second are possible.
10 second and 2 second countdown presets are available from the self-timer menu, and a third option allows to user to fully customize both the countdown and number of exposures. This certainly makes testing a heck of a lot easier. Unfortunately, no automatic interval timer options have been included.
Aside from picture effects and scene modes, Canon hasn't exactly gone out of their way to provide extra shooting features. However we do appreciate the attention to video recording, which has been upgraded since last year and is now capable of relatively detailed control...at least, for a fixed-lens camera.
Videos are encoded in H.264, in your choice of 1080/24p, 720/30p, or 480/30p. We also had fun shooting "Super Slow Motion Movies" at 120 or 240 frames per second, however this limits resolution to 480p or 240p respectively. Find out how the performed in our video image quality test./r:link_to_content
Exposure and focus can each be set to adjust automatically on-the-fly, even while a recording is in progress. Scene modes and picture effects are generally unavailable for video recording, with the exception of Miniature Effect, which may be shot at 720p in up 6 frames per second.
Zoom control is unlocked while a recording is in progress, however the motor's speed is reduced to cut down on mechanical noise that may be picked up by the microphones.
The camera will autofocus while a recording is in progress, and this feature can by toggled on the fly by pressing the manual focus button (left on the directional) pad. This locks focus on the current distance, but there's no way to adjust focus manually during a recording, so the feature is more like focus lock than true manual.
Gain may be adjusted before recording a clip, and gain level may be displayed or reset (but not adjusted manually) while a recording is in progress. This is a rather odd limitation, but shouldn't make a difference for light-duty videography.
Inside the main menu, you'll find a sub-menu called "Movie Audio," which can be used to automate the levels of the stereo microphones or set them manually. The Wind Filter option is also found here, as is an audio level readout in decibels. Unfortunately this feature cannot be displayed while a recording is in progress.
Super-zoom cameras were already passing epic magnification levels last year, so it is with no shortage of bewildered fascination that we sit here reviewing the world's first consumer still camera to offer 50x optical zoom. To put that in perspective, were this a traditional 35mm camera, that camera's lens would need to be a ridiculous 1,200mm long.
This of course means the PowerShot SX50 HS is a spy-cam that MI6 would be proud of, but to us, that's not even the best part of the camera. What Canon has managed to do is extend their lens out to levels previously unheard of, while simultaneously avoiding the pitfalls commonly associated with long optical zoom, namely: lousy image quality. This has been achieved with a combination of good design and high quality tech, but also—unfortunately—a bit of trickery too.
Let's start with that trickery. While the SX50 produced excellent results in our sharpness test, and we've scored the camera as such, these results are straight-up fake. In order to prevent the loss of detail that seems inherent to super-zoom lenses, Canon has employed software edge enhancement, just as many manufacturers do, except they've gone way overboard. We usually tolerate about 5% oversharpening, but the SX50 can oversharpen in excess of 45%. This effect manifests as ugly white halos and dark black borders surrounding your subjects, and making them appear unnatural to the trained eye. In this way, what appears to be the SX50's best feature, is really one of its worst.
But aside from forged sharpness, the camera is otherwise impressive from top to bottom. The small sensor generally avoids producing excess image noise, or more accurately, does an effective job smoothing away noise when it does occur. Color accuracy, while only slightly above average in the lab, really impressed us in the field, realistically capturing the autumn scenery that's peaking in our part of the country right now.
Video shooting would've been better with 60p capabilities, but the Full HD clips are still sharp enough to earn strong scores from us, and decent low light sensitivity makes this camera an acceptable—but not ideal—choice for low light videography. Continuous shooting is below average at maximum resolution and quality, but we have a feeling most users will opt for the High-speed Burst HQ scene mode, which fires off 10 shots at 13 frames per second. We also like Canon's new Framing Assist features, one of which actually uses optical stabilization to help keep your subject in frame. Very cool.
So ultimately, aside from that new stabilization feature, and of course breaking the nifty-fifty zoom barrier, there's very little about the SX50 we'd consider revolutionary. Like the SX40, this is basically a consistent, high-performance superzoom, and exactly the kind of camera our scoring system rewards. This is an easy recommendation over just about every competitor on the market.


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South Park Santa Rosa CA
South Park is a residential neighborhood in Santa Rosa, California with a rich history and plenty of artistic flair. Located in south Santa Rosa, east of U.S. Highway 101, south of Bennett Valley Road, and west of the Sonoma County Fairgrounds, this community encompasses 60 blocks and is known for its old houses and murals around the area. It also has a notable past with an above average crime rate and gang activity. Let's take a closer look at what makes South Park such an interesting part of town.
The History of South Park
South Park has been around since the mid-1800s when it was founded as an independent city. In 1868, it became part of Santa Rosa after its citizens voted to be annexed into the city in order to have access to better services such as police protection and fire safety. The area originally served as a residential neighborhood for many wealthy families who built large Victorian homes in the area. However, by the 1950s, much of this wealth had dissipated and the neighborhood started to decline due to poverty and crime rates that were higher than other parts of town.
The Artistic Side of South Park
Despite its past, South Park is now home to many vibrant murals that have been painted on buildings throughout the neighborhood by local artists over the years. These murals are meant to brighten up what was once a dull area and bring life back into it through artistry. This initiative was spearheaded by local non-profits such as Healdsburg Mural Arts who believe that art can help revitalize communities like South Park through beautification efforts that promote positive images throughout the neighborhood.
A Rebounding Community
Today, South Park is on an upswing with new businesses popping up all over the place, including restaurants, bars, shops and more. The area has also become increasingly popular with investors who are looking for affordable properties in which they can renovate or flip for profit. The combination of these two factors has helped spark significant economic growth throughout the neighborhood while still preserving its unique character and charm from days gone by.
Overall, South Park is a unique part of Santa Rosa full of history and culture that makes it well worth exploring if you're ever in town! From its old Victorian homes to its vibrant mural artwork painted on buildings throughout the neighborhood—not to mention all the new businesses opening up—there's something here for everyone to enjoy! Whether you're looking for investment opportunities or just want to explore this historic part of town—South Park has something special waiting for you!
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Need a UX/UI designer to produce high fidelity prototypes to hand off to development team. All the low fidelity mockups will be provided (250 mockups, half desktop view and half mobile view). Icons will also need to be created based on our recommendations. The prototype will need to be fully responsive. Will need to sign an NDA prior to starting project. All applications but reside in the United States!


Crunchy Bunches brand sweetened oat and rice and corn breakfast cereal is enjoyed the world over by kids of all ages, and like any respectable cereal, Crunchy Bunches has a mascot. The job of a Cereal Mascot isn't always easy. For one, only the most adventurous mascots find the exotic flavors and magical shapes hidden throughout the world's far-away, secret places. On top of that, you'd be surprised how many enemies a mascot can make; sneaky creatures bent on spreading hunger and famine at the breakfast table, jealous competitors out to steal original recipes, dark ancient gods who don't want to share their marshmallows, even a few lawyers get involved!
Here we chronicle the adventures of Munchy, mascot of Crunchy Bunches, founder of the Crunch Club, inventor of Glow-In-The-Dark cereal, and all-around swell guy.