While attending residential long-term treatment they will receive valuable information and tools to help them on the road to drug addiction recovery.
By addressing these needs, women can increase their chances for long-term recovery. This is why it is vital that criminal justice clients receive drug addiction treatment to recover from their addictions. These efforts are most evident in our apprenticeship program, which features more than 1, workers who are receiving paid on-the-job instruction in 12 different construction trades.
Residential long-term treatment more than 30 days Residential long-term treatment provides individuals with drug addiction problems help in recovering. Those shady activities and others were commonplace at the home, according to records and city officials.
At the same time, the construction industry employedmore workers nationally than in May And the construction industry builds people, too, by prioritizing well-paying jobs, professional advancement and lifelong learning.
They stay at the rehab for a short period of time, often 30 days or less. Drugs and drug-using behavior are linked to crime in several ways. Some treatment methods believe that substance abuse is a disease and can never be recovered from.
That inspection was the first of more than a dozen since then at which violations of public health standards were commonplace and illegal behaviors occurred frequently, according to records detailed by the city inspections unit, Eau Claire City-County Health Department and the Eau Claire Police Department and the city attorneys office.
Residential short-term treatment 30 days or less Residential short-term treatment provide individuals with drug addiction problems help in recovering.
At the same time, the construction industry employedmore workers nationally compared to Julyaccording to BLS statistics. Our chapter — the largest of 72 ABC chapters throughout the country — is working hard to recruit and train the next generation of construction workers.
Loud, noisy late-night parties and other outbursts. The May not seasonally adjusted NSA national construction unemployment rate fell 0.
What is unique about women treatment services is the individualized treatment plan and special recreational activities that are life-enhancing and interesting to women. Drug addiction treatment for men can take place both at an inpatient or outpatient facility.
They stay at the rehab for an extended period of time, often 30 days or more. Services available include locations of halfway house treatment centers, what is involved in halfway house treatment, as well as how halfway house treatment is effective.
There are many different approaches to substance abuse treatment.
Linda Mayer was unavailable for comment for this story. In the meantime the people at that property were creating real problems for their neighbors. What is unique about men treatment services is the individualized treatment plan and special recreational activities that are life-enhancing and interesting to men.
The June not seasonally adjusted NSA national construction unemployment rate increased 0.
At the same time, the construction industry employedmore workers nationally than in June City agencies attempted to work with residents living at the home and with its owner, Linda Mayer, the mother of Michelle Mayer, seeking compliance with regulations.
Child abuse and neglect. Private health insurance Substance abuse treatment services Substance abuse treatment is where an individual who has a problem with drugs or alcohol can go and receive help.
It is a crime to use, possess, manufacture, or distribute drugs classified as illegal. In fact, he said, problems at the property seemed to grow over time. These resources can be very helpful when researching halfway house treatment program options.
Clients live at the drug rehab which is usually located in a residential setting. By addressing these needs, men can increase their chances for long-term recovery. Dog feces and garbage piled there often cause the surroundings to stink, they said, and so many people enter and leave the home quickly it is hard to track who lives there.


text:
Jeffrey Ely
2211 Campus Dr Evanston, IL 60208
©2019 by Jeffrey Ely.
Jeff Ely
About Jeffrey Ely
Jeff Ely is the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Economics at Northwestern University and an accomplished latte-artist. He is the director of the Program in Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences at Northwestern, a member of several editorial boards and co-author of the blog Cheap Talk.
Sequential Information Design
We study games of incomplete information as both the information structure and the extensive-form vary. An analyst may know the payoff-relevant data but not the players' private information, nor the extenstive-form that governs their play. Alternatively, a designer may be able to build a mechanism from these ingredients. We characterize all outcomes that can arise in an equilibrium of some extensive-form with some information structure. We do this for a range of extensive-form solution concepts.
Joint with Laura Doval
A Cake-Cutting Solution to Gerrymandering
I propose a mechanism for redistricting inspired by cake-cutting mechanisms for fair division. The majority party proposes a partition of a state into districts. The minority party can accept it or undo any partisan disadvantage caused by irregular boundaries. Thus without imposing any requirement of regularity, the mechanism ensures that to the extent that irregular districts result from the process, the minority is never harmed by them.
Moving the Goalposts
Joint with Martin Szydlowski
We study information as an incentive device in a dynamic moral hazard frame- work. An agent works on a task of uncertain difficulty, modeled as the duration of required effort. The principal knows the task difficulty and can provide informa- tion over time with the goal of inducing maximal effort. The optimal mechanism features moving goalposts: an initial disclosure makes the agent sufficiently opti- mistic that the task is easy in order to induce him to start working. If the task is indeed difficult the agent is told this only after working long enough to put the dif- ficult task within reach. Then the agent completes the difficult task even though he never would have chosen to at the outset. The value of dynamic disclosure implies that principal prefers a random threshold over any deterministic scheme. We con- sider extensions to two-player pre-emption games and bandits.
I introduce and study dynamic persuasion mechanisms. A principal privately observes the evolution of a stochastic process and sends messages over time to an agent. The agent takes actions in each period based on her beliefs about the state of the process and the principal wishes to influence the agent's action. I characterize the optimal persuasion mechanism and show how to derive it in applications. I then consider the extension to multiple agents where higher-order beliefs matter.
Suspense and Surprise
Joint with Alex Frankel and Emir Kamenica
We model demand for non-instrumental information, drawing on the idea that people derive entertainment utility from suspense and surprise. A period has more suspense if the variance of the next period's beliefs is greater. A period has more surprise if
the current belief is further from the last period's belief. Under these denitions, we analyze the optimal way to reveal information over time so as to maximize expected suspense or surprise experienced by a Bayesian audience. We apply our results to the
design of mystery novels, political primaries, casinos, game shows, auctions, and sports.
Joint with Sandeep Baliga
We study torture as a mechanism for extracting information from a suspect who may or may not be informed. We show that a standard rationale for torture generates two commitment problems. First, the principal would benefit from a commitment to torture a suspect he knows to be innocent. Second, the principal would benefit from a commitment to limit the amount of torture faced by the guilty. We analyze a dynamic model of torture in which the credibility of these threats and promises is endogenous. We show that these commit- ment problems dramatically reduce the value of torture and can even render it completely ineffective. We use our model to address ques- tions such as the effect of enhanced interrogation techniques, rights against indefinite detention, and delegation of torture to specialists.
Critical Types
Joint with Marcin Peski
How can we know in advance whether simplifying assumptions about beliefs will make a difference in the conclusions of game-theoretic models? We define critical types to be types whose rationalizable correspondence is sensitive to assumptions about arbitrarily high-order beliefs. We show that a type is critical if and only if it exhibits common belief in some non-trivial event. We use this characterization to show that all types in commonly used type spaces are critical. On the other hand, we show that regular types (types that are not critical) are generic, although perhaps inconvenient to use in applications.
My Google Scholar Page
Intermediate Micro Course
I teach undergraduate intermediate microeconomics, a 10 week course that is the second in a two-part seqeunce at Northwestern University. I have developed a unique approach to intermediate micro based originally on a course designed by my former colleague Kim-Sau Chung. The goal is to study the main themes of microeconomics from an institution- and in particular market-free approach. To illustrate what I mean, when I cover public goods, I do not start by showing the inefficiency of market provided public goods. Instead I ask what are the possibilities and limitations of any institution for providing public goods. By doing this I illustrate the basic difficulty without confounding it with the additional problems that come from market provision. I do similar things with externalities, informational asymmetries, and monopoly.
All of this is done using the tools of dominant-strategy mechanism design. This enables me to talk about basic economic problems in their purest form. Once we see the problems posed by the environments mentioned above, we investigate efficiency in the problem of allocating private goods with no externalities. A cornerstone of the course is a dominant-strategy version of the Myerson-Satterthwaite theorem which shows the basic friction that any institution must overcome. We then investigate mechanisms for efficient allocation in large economies and we see that the institutions that achieve this begin to resemble markets.
Only at this stage do markets become the primary lens through which to study microeconomics. We look at a simple model competition among profit-maximizing auctioneers and a sketch of convergence to competitive equilibrium. Then we finish with a brief look at general equilibrium in pure exchange economies and the welfare theorems.
There is a minimal amount of game theory, mostly just developing the tools necessary to use mechanism design in dominant strategies, but also a side trip into Nash equilibrium and mixed strategies.
Signal & Noise
More Noise

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
\section{INTRODUCTION}
\input{figs/framework.tex}
\noindent
Parking slot detection plays a critical role in valet parking, which necessitates the reliable method -- being efficient and universal in practice~\cite{a1, a2,a3,a4}. Recently, lots of works have been proposed to tackle this problem including free-space-based parking slot detection \cite{a5}, \cite{a6}, \cite{a7} and vision-based method\cite{a8}.

Free-space-based methods utilize sensors to detect free slots whose neighboring slots are occupied. Despite being simple yet effective in some cases, these methods are limited in realistic cases where neighboring slots are also free. Vision-based methods locate parking slots by recognizing parking slot markings from images such as line segments \cite{a9, a10} and marking points\cite{a4, a17}. In contrast with free-space-based method, it shows the great potential for the universal parking slot detection due to the rich contextual information from images, while overcomes the inability of localizing parking slot without nearby slots being occupied. Therefore, we base our method on vision.

However, it is still very challenging to detect the parking markings because of immense images complexity. Lots of traditional methods have been proposed -- e.g., Hough Transform for line segment detection. However, the shortcomings of these methods have been widely recognized. Despite being efficient, it still has the poor performance due to the considerable variability of parking markings in practice. Nevertheless, the recent deep methods have endowed parking slot detection with the ability of tackling the variability by increasing the capacity of networks. Besides, these methods aim to detect marking points -- intersection of line segments, to leverage point's simplicity. By doing so, marking points based deep methods have dominated the parking slot detection.

Seminal works including DeepPS~\cite{a4} and DMPR-PS~\cite{a17} have been proposed to identify marking points for parking slot detection. The main difference of these two works lies in the manner of describing marking points. DeepPs~\cite{a4} utilizes the rectangular descriptor to extract the pattern within the rectangular neighborhood of the parking slot vertexes \cite{a4}. However, the rectangular descriptor is sensitive to the change of direction. Thus, directional descriptors with the T/L templates have been applied in DMPR-PS \cite{a17} to describe the vertex patterns. While this descriptor is more robust to the direction variation, it can only extract the vertex patterns of T/L-shaped parking slots, which is not suitable for describing the complex non-T/L-shaped scenarios such as oblique and trapezoid parking slots. In this work, we aim to improve this limitation.

To do so, we argue that there is no fixed pattern for the various parking slot vertexes, which makes it hard to find a universal way to describe different parking slot vertexes. To address this issue, we proposed a deformable circular descriptor in this paper to enable the network to learn the feature patterns of different types of parking slot vertexes. For different types of parking slot vertexes, the corresponding type of feature mode is used as the descriptor of the parking slot vertexes. Therefore, this descriptor can be compatible with different types of parking slot detection tasks and has better generalization ability. The comparison of different parking slot detection methods is depicted in Table \ref{table01}.

Additionally, the computation overhead of network severely restricts the application of deep learning algorithms in practical engineering application. For example, DeepPS \cite{a4} and DMPR-PS \cite{a17} require powerful GPU to run deep learning algorithm. However, the mass-produced embedded environments merely have CPU, or less powerful GPU. Even though DMPR-PS is designed for the task of embedded system, it is still difficult to process real-time detection without powerful GPU. Given this situation, it is imperative to seek a highly efficient way of slot detection algorithm.

To this end, we tackle the task in the coarse-to-fine style to reduce the model complexity of the networks. Specifically, our algorithm decomposes the task into two stages as shown in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure01}. In particular, the first stage learns to regress the coarse position of the marking points. This denotes that the optimization of the first stage has the fast convergence due to the simplicity of task. The second stage takes as input the cropped sub-images centered at the predicted coarse position and outputs the finer position to further boost the performance -- offset between coarse position and ground truth. Please note that we use the circular descriptor with different sizes for two stages. Coarse stage (i.e., the first stage) utilizes the larger size of circular descriptor than the fine stage (i.e., the second stage). In this way, our network (i.e., PSDet--Parking slot detection) is capable of being real-time while effective in practice.

Besides, to validate the performance in real-world applications, we collect and annotate a large-scale benchmark dataset -- Parking Slot Detection Dataset (PSDD) which consists of 7 parking scenarios including brick, grass, oblique, trapezoid, open, rectangular and stereo parking slot. We empirically demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our methods on the PSDD and ps2.0 datasets. The experimental results show that PSDet has much smaller computational complexity than other top-performing methods while achieving the competitive performance. In particular, PSDet achieves state-of-the-art precision rate of \textbf{95.67\%} and recall rate \textbf{98.21\%} on PSDD with \textbf{71 kb} parameters and \textbf{25.3} FPS on CPUs -- being much faster than the top performers.

In short, we summarize our contributions as follows:
\begin{itemize}
\item We present a novel way of describing marking points for parking slot detection, namely circular descriptor. It is capable of accurately describing a more universal parking slot vertex pattern than prior art, such as directional descriptor~\cite{a17} and rectangular descriptor~\cite{a4}.
\item We propose the two-stage PSDet to realize practical parking slot vertex detection -- being real-time while achieving state-of-the-art precision rate and recall rate.
\item We annotate the large-scale benchmark dataset -- PSDD which includes 7 different scenarios of parking slot. To the best of our knowledge, it is currently the dataset with the largest size and most types of parking slots from real world. We release the dataset for the benefit of community.
\end{itemize}
\section{RELATED WORK}

\input{tabs/Table01}
\noindent
\paragraph{Dataset for Parking Slot Detection} As the largest and completely labeled public benchmark dataset, ps2.0 \cite{a4} has been widely used for parking slot detection. It contains 12165 surround-view images, which are collected from typical indoor and outdoor parking slots under different lighting conditions, and provides the locations of the marking points. We recognize that the release of ps2.0 has greatly promoted the development of the valet parking field, and provided a benchmark to measure the effectiveness of different methods. However, we observe that the most of parking slots in ps2.0 have simply shapes such as T-shaped and L-shaped. It ignores the complex shapes in real-world such as brick, trapezoidal, stereo and oblique parking slots. Thus, networks trained with this dataset will be biased towards simply shape. To overcome this limitation, we annotate the PSDD to further boost the performance in real-world applications.

\paragraph{Descriptor for marking points} The existing parking slot vertex descriptors include rectangular descriptor and directional descriptor \cite{a4}, \cite{a17} -- the details are shown in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure02}. The rectangular descriptor used in DeepPS \cite{a4} is a template for describing features in the rectangular neighborhood of parking slot vertexes, which can extract features of fixed-type parking slots, such as T-shaped, L-shaped, or oblique parking slot. Although it has less limitation than the line-based approach, it is sensitive to the orientation change of the parking line due to its rectangular shape, which degrades generalization ability to different scenes. To address this issue, the directional descriptor is proposed in DMPR-PS \cite{a17}, which is a circular template with T-shape or L-shape vertexes inside. In this method, the position, direction and shape of the parking slot vertex are detected to obtain the parking slots. DMPR-PS has achieved state-of-the-art performance on ps2.0 dataset and argued that the architecture of combining marking point detection and deep learning networks is effective in parking slot detection tasks. Despite the excellent performance of the directional descriptor in T-shaped and L-shaped parking slot detection schemes, it is still limited by the inability of handling complex parking scenarios such as oblique, trapezoid and stereo parking slots.
We demonstrate the comparison of the different detection algorithms and the corresponding supporting scenarios in Table \ref{table02}.
Inspired by the constraints of the other methods, we propose the deformable circular descriptor to extract the universal vertex feature pattern, which can describe different types of parking slot vertexes. In this way, our method exhibits the capability of detecting parking slots in more complex scenarios.
\begin{figure}[!h]
\centerline{\includegraphics[width=7cm]{figs/Figure02.pdf}}
\captionsetup{font={small}}
\caption{Different parking slot detection methods.}
\label{fig:Figure02}
\end{figure}
\input{tabs/Table02}
\paragraph{Efficient Parking Slot Detection} Among the prior parking slot detection methods based on deep learning, DeepPS \cite{a4} is the first network structure to utilize CNN for parking slot detection. In order to improve the efficiency of the parking slot detection task, Lin Zhang et al.  \cite{a17} have proposed a concept named directional marking-point and designed a network structure DMPR-PS. By predicting position, shape and orientation of all directional marking-points of given surround-view image in a single forward evaluation, DMPR-PS obtains the information of marking-points and their neighborhood. As a consequence, DMPR-PS is more efficient than DeepPS. Although DMPR-PS has achieved tremendous progresses in efficiency, it can only perform real-time detection on GPU. However, in the mass production of embedded environment, many platforms only support CPU. Even though some resort to GPU, the computing ability of the GPU is also limited. Some previous researchs \cite{a18}, \cite{a19} have verified that using decoupling method can reduce the difficulty of network convergence by experiments. Inspired by these works, we use the idea of cascade to decouple this problem. In particular, detecting marking point from the input image can be divided into two stages. In the first stage, we employ a circular descriptor to obtain the initial position of the marking point in a $S\times S$ grid. In the second stage, we use the initial position as the center to crop the sub-image in the fixed size from the original image. Then we employ a smaller circular descriptor than the first stage to regress the position shifted by the initial position for a higher accuracy. We corroborated the state-of-the-art effectiveness and efficiency of PSDet in experiments conducted on the benchmark dataset ps2.0 and PSDD.

\section{UNIVERSAL REPRESENTATION OF VERTEX FEATURE }

\noindent
Among the existing parking slot detection approaches, it is difficult to find a universal feature descriptor to describe the parking slot vertexes with complex and variable types. Therefore, we define various types of parking slot vertexes as a universal feature paradigm, and use this paradigm to describe different types of parking slot vertexes.

Compared with the previous rectangular descriptor and directional descriptor, circular descriptors proposed in our paper can describe different types of parking vertex patterns. This chapter will mainly introduce the definition of vertex paradigm and circular descriptors.

\subsection{The Concept of Vertex Paradigm}

\noindent
\textbf{Vertex Paradigm.}\quad  The vertex paradigm is a common pattern of the neighbor pixels around the marking point, which represents the overlapping relationship between the deformable marking-lines around the marking point, as illustrated in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure001}.

\noindent

\textbf{Vertex Area and Non-Vertex Area.}\quad The vertex area is a collection of pixels containing the vertex of the parking line, represented as $s_p$. The Non-Vertex Area is a collection of pixels that are not centered by any parking slot vertex, represented as $s_{np}$, as depicted in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure001}. And $s$ represents the image.

\begin{figure}[!ht]
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=6cm]{figs/Figure03.pdf}
    \captionsetup{font={small}}
    \caption{The diagram of vertex paradigm. The area contained in the white circle represents $s_p$, and the area contained in the blue circle is an example of $s_{np}$.}
    \label{fig:Figure001}
\end{figure}

\noindent

\textbf{The Metric of Vertex Paradigm.}\quad The boundary of the vertex area $s_p$ and the marking lines of a parking slot intersect at 2 points  $x_m$ and $x_n$. We take the vertex $o$ as the initial point and the intersection points $x_m$ and $x_n$ as the end points to obtain two vectors $(o,x_m)$ and $(o,x_n)$, respectively, as illustrated in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure001}. The metric of the vertex paradigm is as follows:

\begin{equation}
F=sign(y),
\end {equation}
where:

\begin{center}
$
sign(y)=
\left\{
             \begin{array}{lr}
             1,  y > 0 &  \\
             0,  y\leq 0 &
             \end{array}
\right.
$
\end{center}
$y=<(o,x_m),(o,x_n)>$, which represents the inner product between vectors $(o,x_m)$ and $(o,x_n)$.

\textbf{Circular Descriptor.}\quad To describe the vertex paradigm in the parking slot vertex area $s_p$, we introduce a circular region descriptor. Circular descriptor is a deformable circular template that can contain various types of parking slot vertexes with a sufficiently large radius. Circular descriptors of different parking slots are depicted in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure04}. Different from the T-shaped or L-shaped marking-line pattern around a marking point~\cite{a20}, the circular descriptor is able to extract more common pattern and help to solve the non-L-shaped and non-T-shaped situation, such as oblique, brick and trapezoid etc. Circular descriptors are able to contain various categories of patterns. These circular descriptors can be learned according to the paradigm of corresponding feature patterns given by different labels, as illustrated in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure04}.

\begin{figure}[!h]
    \centering
    \captionsetup{font={small}}
    \includegraphics[width=6.5cm]{figs/Figure04.pdf}
    \caption{Circular descriptor of different parking slot. The green and red circles on the top of each subgraph represent the circular descriptor used in the first and second stages respectively. The bottom of each subgraph is an abstract representation of the circular descriptors. The blue point is the center of the circle.}
    \label{fig:Figure04}
\end{figure}

\subsection{Characteristics of the Vertex Paradigm}

\noindent
In order to obtain the bounds of the circular descriptor, we will explore the characteristics of the vertex paradigm to determine the boundary range of the circular descriptor.

\textbf{The Lower Bound of Vertex Paradigm.}\quad The lower bound is the minimum area of the vertex paradigm on the image, which is centered at the vertex with the minimum radius that intersects the parking line, as show in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure03}:
\begin{equation}
D_l=argmin(T_l\subseteq C(l)),
\end{equation}

\noindent
where $T_l$ is the minimum point set containing the vertex, $C(l)$ is the circle with the radius of $l$, $D_l$ is the lower bound of vertex paradigm.

\begin{figure}[!h]
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=5cm]{figs/Figure05.pdf}
    \captionsetup{font={small}}
    \caption{The bounds of vertex paradigm. The position of the red circle and green circle are the lower and upper bound respectively. The area bounded by the dotted gray circle is a circular descriptor, and the blue point is the center of the circle.}
    \label{fig:Figure03}
\end{figure}

\noindent

\textbf{The Upper Bound of Vertex Paradigm.}\quad The upper bound represents the maximum area of the vertex paradigm on the image, as shown in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure03}:

\begin{equation}
D_u=argmax(T_u\subseteq C(u)),
\end{equation}

\noindent
where $T_u$ is the maximum point set containing the vertex, $C(u)$ is the circle with the radius of $u$, $D_u$ is the upper bound of vertex paradigm.

\section{PSDet: EFFICIENT AND UNIVERSAL PARKING SLOT DETECTION}

\noindent
In this section, we describe the proposed parking slot vertex detection approach (i.e.,PSDet) in detail.

\subsection{The Structure of PSDet}

\noindent
To achieve an efficient and universal parking slot vertex detection, we propose a two-stage cascade network PSDet. The structure of PSDet is depicted in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure01}.

\textbf{Cascade Network Structure.}\quad It is very challenging to regress the accurate position of marking points from a large image due to immense complexity. In this work, we tackle this problem in the manner of divide-and-conquer. We propose the two-stage PSDet that firstly computes vertex region proposal and then regresses to the accurate vertex location. To more precise, in the first-stage, we extract the approximate region of the vertex appear to coarsely locate the marking points initially. We then crop from the input image sub-images centered around the vertex proposals resulted from the first stage. Additionally, we utilize the second-stage network to regress the accurate vertex position from sub-images in the form of offset to the coarse vertex proposal.

As shown in Eq. (4), the complexity of detecting marking points directly in the whole image is much higher than detecting marking points in a smaller sub-image.

\begin{equation}
O(w, h) >> O(w/k_w, h/k_h)+O(w_2, h_2),
\end{equation}

\noindent
where $O(w, h)$ is the complexity of detecting marking points in an original image of size $w \times h$. The size $w \times h$ also indicates the detection range of the first stage. $O(w/k_w, h/k_h)$ is the complexity of detecting marking points in an image of size $w/k_w \times h/k_h$, where $k_w$ and $k_h$ represent the down sampling factor of the original image in the vertical and horizontal direction, respectively. $O(w_2, h_2)$ is the complexity of detecting marking points in an image of size $w_2 \times h_2$, where $w_2 \times h_2$ represents the detection range in the second-stage, as demonstrated in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure06}.
In this way, the proposed PSDet achieves the best performance while being real-time in practice.

\textbf{First Stage.}\quad Given a 320$\times$240 surround-view image $I$, two 320$\times$96 images are cropped with the left and right sides of $I$ as the initial boundaries. Then a set of feature maps is extracted from the 320$\times$96 image, as depicted in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure01}. In addition, the pyramidal network is employed to extract feature maps with different resolutions, which can introduce scaling robustness to the network. Afterwards, these feature maps are interpolated to a fixed size and concatenated into synthesized feature maps. Consequently we obtain a series of feature map of size $w_1 \times h_1 \times c_1$, as shown in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure06}. As an example, We named one of the feature maps as $M$ and the value of point with coordinates $(i,j)$ on $M$ as $M(i,j)$. $M(i,j)$ can be regarded as the point response intensity of input image to the first-stage circular descriptor template. Furthermore, $M(i,j)$ is normalized to [0,1] through softmax, as shown in Eq.(5). Finally, the point position $(i,j)$ whose normalized value $M'(i,j)\geq 0.5$ is retained as vertex proposal of parking slot.

\begin{equation}
M'(i,j)=\frac{e^{M(i,j)}}{\sum_i \sum_j e^{M(i,j)}}
\end{equation}

\noindent

\textbf{Second Stage.}\quad
After obtaining the initial location of the marking points in the first-stage, we utilize the positions of vertex proposals as centers to crop a series of $S \times S$ sub-images from the input image. Then a CNN-based regression model and the second-stage circular descriptor template are used to further detect all vertexes in the sub-images. Finally the position of the point with the highest response intensity on the output feature map is retained as the final position of parking slot vertex, and accordingly correcting the position deviation of the parking slot vertex proposal in the first stage. In this way, the accurate position of the parking slot marking point is detected.

\begin{figure}[!h]
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=8.5cm]{figs/Figure06.pdf}
    \captionsetup{font={small}}
    \caption{The flowchart of of our proposed method PSDet. The green circles and red circles are the circular descriptors used in the first-stage and second-stage respectively.}

    \label{fig:Figure06}
\end{figure}

\subsection{Loss}
\noindent
The loss used in PSDet is defined as the sum of squared errors between predictions and ground-truths, and the details will be discussed as follows:

\noindent

\textbf{First Stage Loss.}\quad
The loss used in the first-stage is expressed as following equation:

\begin{equation}
Loss_1=\sum_{i=1}^{w_1}\sum_{j=1}^{h_1}(F_{ij}-\hat{F}_{ij})^2,
\end{equation}

\noindent
where $w_1$ and $h_1$ represent the width and length of the output feature map from the first-stage. $\hat{F}_{ij}$ is the predicted value in the neighborhood with $(i,j)$ as the center, as depicted by the red circle in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure06}, where $u'$ is the radius of the first-stage circular descriptor. ${F}_{ij}$ is the circular descriptor of the first-stage, as depicted by the green circle in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure03}. We measure the response of each pixel in the output feature map with the method shown in Eq. (1), and obtain the metric result $\hat{F}_{ij}$. With regression objectives defined, the loss function in in the first-stage is defined as the sum of square errors between predictions $\hat{F}_{ij}$ and ground-truths ${F}_{ij}$.

\noindent

\textbf{Second Stage Loss.}\quad
The loss used in the second-stage is defined below:

\begin{equation}
Loss_2=\sum_{i=1}^{w_2}\sum_{j=1}^{h_2}(F_{ij}-\hat{F}_{ij})^2,
\end{equation}

\noindent
where $w_2$ and $h_2$ represent the width and length of the output feature map from the second-stage, respectively. In this experiment, both width and length are 25. $\hat{F}_{ij}$ is the predicted value in the neighborhood with $(i,j)$ as the center and $l'$ as the radius, as depicted by the red circle in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure06}, where $l'$ is the radius of the second-stage circular descriptor. ${F}_{ij}$ is the circular descriptor template of the second-stage, as illustrated by the red circle in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure03}.

\section{EXPERIMENT}
\subsection{Benchmark Dataset}
\noindent
In this work, we annotate the large-scale benchmark PSDD which is composed of 14628 calibrated surround-view images collected from typical indoor and outdoor parking slots. We sample the images from 21 video sequences which are captured in 7 different scenarios -- 3 sequences per each scenario. Samples in PSDD are filtered after frame splitting which results in 14628 samples.
The amount of each category of data in the dataset is different, owning to the diverse popularity of the different parking slots in real-world application, such as the rectangular and open parking slots are most frequent. There are 3342 samples in open parking slot category, 5667 samples in rectangular parking slot category, 1242 samples in grass parking slot category, 63 samples in stereo parking slot category, 1946 samples in trapezoidal parking slot category, 500 samples in oblique parking slot category, and 1868 samples in brick parking slot category respectively. A set of samples are shown in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure08}, and the ratio of training set to testing set in all experiment is 1:1.

\begin{figure}[!ht]
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=8cm]{figs/Figure8.pdf}
    \captionsetup{font={small}}
    \caption{A sample set of different types of parking slot in PSDD dataset.}
    \label{fig:Figure08}
\end{figure}

\begin{figure}[!ht]
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=7cm]{figs/Figure9.pdf}
    \captionsetup{font={small}}
    \caption{Marking point responses of different kinds of parking slots. The first row in each sub-image represents the circular descriptors on the original image, the red circles and green circles represent the circular descriptors of the first stage and second stage respectively. The middle row shows the heatmaps of marking points, and the bottom row shows the response intensity of the marking points. }
    \label{fig:Figure09}
\end{figure}

\subsection{Deformable Marking Point Detection Experiment}
\noindent
The circular descriptors and heatmaps of different parking slot are depicted in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure09}. It shows that our approach has better performance. Besides, the precision and recall rate curves obtained after the PSDet first-stage and second-stage are illustrated in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure10} and Fig. \ref{fig:Figure11}, respectively. From all these figures, we observe that the second-stage network significantly improves the precision of the first-stage network while slightly degrades the recall. Please note that the second-stage network is not able to improve the recall due to the hard selection of vertex proposals -- False Positive vertexes are discarded in the second-stage.

\begin{figure}[!h]
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=5.5cm]{figs/Figure10.pdf}
    \captionsetup{font={small}}
    \caption{Comparison of precision obtained by different stages of PSDet. Pink triangles and blue circles are the precision of first stage and second stage respectively. }
    \label{fig:Figure10}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}[!h]
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=5.5cm]{figs/Figure11.pdf}
    \captionsetup{font={small}}
    \caption{Comparison of recall obtained by different stages of PSDet. Pink triangles and blue circles are the recall of first stage and second stage respectively.}
    \label{fig:Figure11}
\end{figure}

\subsection{Parking Slot Detection Experiment}
\noindent
We validate the performance of PSDet on both available benchmarks -- ps2.0~\cite{a22} and PSDD respectively. Precision and recall rates serve as the evaluation metrics. To compare with other methods, we also evaluate the performance of various existing parking slot detection approaches. Table \ref{table02} shows the results on ps2.0. Compared with the most competitive performer -- i.e., DMPR-PS, our PSDet tends to have better recall rate but worse precision. Despite this, we argue that our PSDet achieves the similar precision and recall while with approximately 5$x$ faster speed on simpler dataset. Furthermore, we compare competitors on our more complex PSDD in Table \ref{table03} which has more types of parking slots. In this case, PSDet achieves state-of-the-art in both precision rate and recall rate.

\begin{table}
\centering
\setlength{\abovecaptionskip}{2pt}%
\setlength{\belowcaptionskip}{2pt}%
\captionsetup{font={small}}
\caption{Performance comparison on ps2.0.}\label{table02}
\begin{tabular}{@{}lccc@{}}
\toprule
Method                   & Descriptor     & Precision & Recall  \\ \midrule
Wang et al.'s method~\cite{a10}      & L     & 98.29\%   & 58.33\% \\
Hamada et al.'s method ~\cite{a13}    & L     & 98.45\%   & 61.37\% \\
PSD\-L ~\cite{a21}          & L     & 98.41\%   & 86.96\% \\
DeepPS ~\cite{a4}          & R           & 98.99\%   & 99.13\% \\
DMPR-PS ~\cite{a17}       & D              & \textbf{99.42\%}   & 99.37\% \\
\textbf{PSDet}            & C           & 98.35\%   & \textbf{99.60\%} \\ \bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

\begin{table}
\centering
\setlength{\abovecaptionskip}{2pt}%
\setlength{\belowcaptionskip}{2pt}%
\captionsetup{font={small}}
\caption{Performance comparison on PSDD}\label{table03}
\begin{tabular}{@{}lccc@{}}
\toprule
Method          & Descriptor              & Precision & Recall  \\ \midrule
Wang et al.'s method~\cite{a10}     & L     & 60.13\%   & 10.24\% \\
Hamada et al.'s method ~\cite{a13}  &  L      & 40.96\%   & 12.11\% \\
PSD\-L ~\cite{a21}           &  L          & 65.32\%   & 77.54\% \\
DeepPS ~\cite{a4}            &  R            & 80.23\%   & 78.57\% \\
DMPR-PS ~\cite{a17}         &   D            & 88.45\%   & 81.24\% \\
\textbf{PSDet}              &   C       & \textbf{95.67\%}   & \textbf{98.21\%} \\ \bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

We qualitatively compare the performance of DMPR-PS and our PSDet on parking slot detection. As illustrated in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure12}, we observe that PSDet is more accurate and suitble for diverse scenarios. For example, our method is able to accurately detect the parking slots in some extremely challenging cases such as grass scenes with blurry parking lines shown as Fig. \ref{fig:Figure12}(a). Scenes with strong light reflection are shown in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure12}(c) and (d). Reflectional and unclear parking lines of stereo parking slot are shown in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure12}(f).

\begin{figure}[!h]
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=7cm]{figs/Figure12.pdf}
    \captionsetup{font={small}}
    \caption{Comparison of parking slot detection effect of DMPR-PS (left) and PSDet (right). }
    \label{fig:Figure12}
\end{figure}

\subsection{Running Speed of PSDet}
\noindent
PSDet is implemented in C++, and the model is transformed from caffemodel to NCNN format~\cite{a22}. We conduct experiments on the CPU platform Qualcomm 820a, which is low-cost and can be used in mass production. The experimental results show that after converting the model into NCNN format, it can run at speed up to 25.3 FPS on CPU platform Qualcomm 820a (101.8 FPS on GPU platform Qualcomm 820a). In this way, our method is capable of detecting parking slot in real-time. To distinguish our improvement in terms of efficiency, we summarize the time efficiency of other methods on CPU in Table \ref{table04}. All methods are converted to NCNN format before running speed tests. We observe that PSDet achieves the fastest speed.

\begin{table}[!h]
\centering
\setlength{\abovecaptionskip}{5pt}%
\setlength{\belowcaptionskip}{5pt}%
\captionsetup{font={small}}
\caption{Running speed comparison on CPU}\label{table04}
\begin{tabular}{@{}lcc@{}}
\toprule
Method           & Descriptor       & Speed(FPS)  \\ \midrule
Wang et al.'s method~\cite{a10}   &  L      & 6.1   \\
Hamada et al.'s method ~\cite{a13}  & L       & 7.4   \\
PSD\-L ~\cite{a21}           &    L        & 0.5   \\
DeepPS ~\cite{a4}           &  R             & 1.5   \\
DMPR-PS ~\cite{a17}         &   D            & 5.0   \\
\textbf{PSDet}             &   C        & \textbf{25.3}   \\ \bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

\subsection{Potential Practical Application}
\noindent
We show the potential of the proposed method to be applied in practical scenarios. With the known camera parameters, we can easily project the detection results into the world coordinate system. By doing so, we annotate the parking slots in the local semantic map, which is a critical process in self-parking. Furthermore, it is of great significance for the valet parking and autonomous system as well.

\subsection{Failure Cases of PSDet}
\noindent
We summarize two main reasons for failure cases of PSDet: (1), Missing or false detection occurs when image contains adverse factors, such as different light conditions and blur. (2), Severe occlusion of parking lines leads to the inaccurate orientations of them. To name a few examples, we illustrate some typical failure cases in Fig. \ref{fig:Figure13}.
\begin{figure}[h]
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=6cm]{figs/Figure13.pdf}
    \caption{Failure cases detected by PSDet.}
    \label{fig:Figure13}
\end{figure}

\section{CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK}

\noindent
In this paper, we have proposed an efficient and universal method for parking slot detection, named PSDet.
In contrast with existing work, PSDet is capable of detecting parking slots in various scenarios such as trapezoid, brick and grass parking slots. In addition, PSDet achieves a new state-of-the-art running speed on CPU in embedded platform Qualcomm 820a with a smaller model size -- being much faster than the top performers.
With improved effectiveness and time efficiency, our method therefore provides the technical feasibility for various applications which has limited computing resources such as mobile devices.
Besides, we annotate and release the large-scale benchmark dataset PSDD, which has more types of parking slots and more complex than the existing datasets. We believe that it will be beneficial to the future efforts in enhancing parking slot detection for real-world applications.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


text:
from __future__ import unicode_literals
from __future__ import print_function
from __future__ import division
from __future__ import absolute_import
from future import standard_library
standard_library.install_aliases()
from builtins import *  # noqa

from ycmd.tests.test_utils import DummyCompleter, ExpectedFailure
from ycmd.user_options_store import DefaultOptions
from mock import patch
from nose.tools import eq_
from hamcrest import contains_string

def _FilterAndSortCandidates_Match( candidates, query, expected_matches ):
  completer = DummyCompleter( DefaultOptions() )
  matches = completer.FilterAndSortCandidates( candidates, query )
  eq_( expected_matches, matches )

def FilterAndSortCandidates_OmniCompleter_List_test():
  _FilterAndSortCandidates_Match( [ 'password' ],
                                  'p',
                                  [ 'password' ] )
  _FilterAndSortCandidates_Match( [ 'words' ],
                                  'w',
                                  [ 'words' ] )

def FilterAndSortCandidates_OmniCompleter_Dictionary_test():
  _FilterAndSortCandidates_Match( { 'words': [ 'password' ] },
                                  'p',
                                  [ 'password' ] )
  _FilterAndSortCandidates_Match( { 'words': [ { 'word': 'password' } ] },
                                  'p',
                                  [ { 'word': 'password' } ] )

def FilterAndSortCandidates_ServerCompleter_test():
  _FilterAndSortCandidates_Match( [ { 'insertion_text': 'password' } ],
                                  'p',
                                  [ { 'insertion_text': 'password' } ] )

@ExpectedFailure( 'Filtering does not support unicode characters',
                  contains_string( '[]' ) )
def FilterAndSortCandidates_Unicode_test():
  _FilterAndSortCandidates_Match( [ { 'insertion_text': 'ø' } ],
                                  'ø',
                                  [ { 'insertion_text': 'ø' } ] )

@patch( 'ycmd.tests.test_utils.DummyCompleter.GetSubcommandsMap',
        return_value = { 'Foo': '', 'StopServer': '' } )
def DefinedSubcommands_RemoveStopServerSubcommand_test( subcommands_map ):
  completer = DummyCompleter( DefaultOptions() )
  eq_( completer.DefinedSubcommands(), [ 'Foo' ] )

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


An LSAT Reading Comprehension section consists of 3 individual passages and one pair of passages. The paired passages are referred to as the Comparative Reading element. Each passage (or pair) will be accompanied by 6-7 questions, and there are typically 27 questions total in the section.
An LSAT Reading Comprehension question has three main components: the prompt, the relevant portion of the passage(s), and the answer choices. The prompt will ask you to analyze some aspect of the passage, such as its purpose, structure, main idea, or rhetorical strategy. Comparative Reading prompts will ask you to assess the similarities and differences in the two passages' approaches to a common topic. The relevant portion of the passage(s) may be as short as a single line or as long as an entire passage, but the prompt will almost always provide clues for where to look. There will always be five answer choices.
There is only one Reading Comprehension section on the LSAT, and since it usually contains 27 questions, it's worth about 27% of your total score. You will have 35 minutes to complete the section, which means you'll need an effective strategy to avoid running out of time. Here are some tips to help you progress smoothly through the LSAT Reading Comprehension section.
Check out How Does LSAT Scoring Work and Setting LSAT Prep Goals for detailed help on how to set reasonable goals for your LSAT prep. Generally, a great strategy is to count the number of LSAT Reading Comprehension questions you missed on your most recent practice test and try to cut that number in half. However, this can require more time to accomplish in Reading Comprehension than in the other two sections, so you might want to start by decreasing your missed questions by ⅓. Thus, if you're currently missing 8 or 9 questions per RC section, try to bring that down to 5 or 6.
Most people don't need to attempt every single question in the section. In fact, that's only a wise strategy for a small percentage of the population, trying to score above 165. Everyone else should strategically devote time to questions and passages that are likely to pay off.
You could opt to guess on one entire passage and concentrate on the other 3. This is a great tactic for those who move slowly but have relatively high accuracy. With this approach, you could still net 20 points, or more if you get lucky with your guessing.
Alternatively, you could try to identify the hardest questions in each passage, guess on those, and devote more time to making sure you don't make mistakes on the easy and medium questions. The important thing is, know how many points you want and think critically about where you're most likely to find them in the 35 minutes you're given.
You don't have time to memorize every detail of every passage you read. Instead, pick up your pencil and start circling words that indicate where the passage is headed. Check out How to read LSAT Passages Faster for some detailed tips on how to do this. This strategy allows you to return quickly to relevant parts of the passage when a question demands it, and to avoid wasting time on material you'll never need. A good goal is to finish your first readthrough in less than 3 minutes.
LSAT Reading Comprehension questions can seem dry and repetitive, but they are actually quite complex and nuanced. Words are used with precision on the LSAT. If a question asks you to determine which answer choice could be inferred from information in the passage, it's helpful to know the difference between an inference, an assumption, a suggestion, and an implication.
Furthermore, prompts may be long and convoluted. Read the entire question once, then break it into manageable phrases and translate them. If you can restate the question in your own words, that's a good sign that you understand what it's asking you.
The answer to every question is either in the passage(s) or supported by the passage(s). That's reassuring because it means that you should always be able to point to specific lines that led you to a particular answer. Search for those lines and then respond to the prompt in your own words before looking at the answer choices. If you can't find the lines, it probably means one of two things: you're looking in the wrong place or you're misinterpreting something in the text or prompt. In either case, don't be afraid to give yourself a pass: take a guess, circle the question in your test booklet, and move on.
If you've done your research and come up with an answer in your own words, all you need to do is find the answer choice that matches it better than the others. I recommend looking at answer choices two at a time. Rather than asking yourself, "Is this the right answer?" ask yourself, "Which of these choices is closer to my prediction?" Eliminate the other one and then compare the winner to the next one in line. Before you know it, only one answer will be left standing.
The LSAT sets lots of traps for the unwary. When evaluating answer choices, consider these two pieces of advice: pick the answer choice that is closest in meaning to your predicted answer, and read every word.
First of all, there will frequently be one or more answer choices that feature vocabulary from the relevant part of the passage, but are distorting the passage's meaning. Making a prediction in your own words removes you from this vocabulary and makes it less likely that you'll fall for this trap.
Second, the tougher questions on the exam will often have at least one answer choice that sounds like a perfect fit, except for one extra word or phrase somewhere. I call this the bait and switch. Many test-takers fall for this one because the rest of the answer is so accurate that they are willing to overlook the seemingly misplaced word or phrase. Don't do it! The writers of the LSAT choose their words carefully, and so every word is there for a reason.
Put down your LSAT books and enter the world of the living. Sometimes, the best way to improve your LSAT Reading Comprehension performance is to start with material you enjoy. Find a book, a paper, a website, or a magazine that you love to read, and make yourself comfortable.
Now, imagine a film critic watching a movie. What questions do you think are going through his or her head? Probably questions about the director, the decisions the director made, and their effect on the audience. In your spare time, try to read everything like that.
Who is the author of this article? Why is this article in this magazine? What's going to happen in the next paragraph? How do I know that? What was the point of writing this? Am I being educated or am I being manipulated? Why did the author use that example? Are the author's opinions strong? Neutral? Negative? Positive?


text:
Rent The Little
Cafe + Music
Café Info
Little History
Eastman School of Music Jazz faculty and students: March 3
Eastman School of Music Jazz faculty and students
Thursday, March 3 @ 6:30pm
Location: The Little Cafe
From March 2 through 6, 2022, Eastman will offer a wide variety of performances as they celebrate their centennial and open their doors to the Rochester community. This four-day long "festival" will include a City-wide series of community performances on Thursday, March 3, 2022, where Eastman students and ensembles will be heard in pop-up concerts and various venues in the Rochester area.
As part of the day's performances, the Little Theatre Café is pleased to host a Jazz evening presented by Eastman students and faculty from the Jazz and Contemporary Media department. The public can hear them from 6:30 to 8:30 pm.
New Film Template
2023 Oscar Nominated Short Films
WXXI Public Broadcasting and the Little Theatre are engaged in a formal, long-term affiliation. This combined organization promises to enhance the cultural life of the community and strengthens both institutions by pooling resources and experience in key mission areas. WXXI is the essential, life-long educational public media resource for the Greater Rochester area.
The Little Theatre is the premier cultural center for the presentation of American independent and foreign films, visual arts and music for the greater Rochester community. Through educational events, the Little Theatre provides local artists a place to share and discuss their visions with a diverse audience.
The Little Theatre is made possible thanks to support from:
• The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature.
• The Farash Foundation
• Little Theatre Members
Sign Up for Our Weekly Email Newsletter
240 East Ave, Rochester, NY 14604 • (585) 258-0400 • info@thelittle.org


text:
June 2 to June 9
America and Babylon
Download Audio Download PDF
Guests: Brant Berglin and Mathilde Frey
Relevant Verses: Isaiah 19:18-25
Leading Question: Could Babylon repent?
One of the dangers of a strict historicist approach to Scripture is that is locks in both the innocent and guilty parties to their "prophetic" fate. One doesn't have to baptize the beast. Beastly behavior is already amply documented in the history of the beast. But I see no good reason why the beast should have to retain loyalty to its beastly past. Let's look at some examples
1. Egypt and Assyria. Pride of place has to go to Isaiah's visionary prospects for two of Israel's greatest enemies, Egypt and Assyria. These are the words from Isaiah 19:18-25:
Isaiah 19:18 On that day there will be five cities in the land of Egypt that speak the language of Canaan and swear allegiance to the Lord of hosts. One of these will be called the City of the Sun.
19 On that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the center of the land of Egypt, and a pillar to the Lord at its border. 20 It will be a sign and a witness to the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt; when they cry to the Lord because of oppressors, he will send them a savior, and will defend and deliver them. 21 The Lord will make himself known to the Egyptians; and the Egyptians will know the Lord on that day, and will worship with sacrifice and burnt offering, and they will make vows to the Lord and perform them. 22 The Lord will strike Egypt, striking and healing; they will return to the Lord, and he will listen to their supplications and heal them.
23 On that day there will be a highway from Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian will come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians will worship with the Assyrians.
24 On that day Israel will be the third with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing in the midst of the earth, 25 whom the Lord of hosts has blessed, saying, "Blessed be Egypt my people, and Assyria the work of my hands, and Israel my heritage."
If both Egypt and Assyria can be seen as born-again nations, submissive to Yahweh, couldn't there be hope for the beast?
2. Ninevah. The book of Jonah testifies to the fact that God can accept repentance from the most unlikely of subjects, namely, Ninevah, the capital of Assyria. In short, when the people of Ninevah repented, God repented. Here is the relevant section from Jonah 3:
Jonah 3:4 Jonah began to go into the city, going a day's walk. And he cried out, "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" 5 And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7 Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: "By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal,
no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. 8 Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. 9 Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish."
10 When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.
3. Ahab. After Jezebel arranged to kill Naboth so that Ahab could have a coveted vineyard, a remarkable dialogue ensued involving Ahab, Elijah, and Yahweh. Here it is, from 1 Kings 21:
1 Kings 21:15 As soon as Jezebel heard that Naboth had been stoned and was dead, Jezebel said to Ahab, "Go, take possession of the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, which he refused to give you for money; for Naboth is not alive, but dead." 16 As soon as Ahab heard that Naboth was dead, Ahab set out to go down to the vineyard of Naboth the Jezreelite, to take possession of it.
17 Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite, saying: 18 Go down to meet King Ahab of Israel, who rules in Samaria; he is now in the vineyard of Naboth, where he has gone to take possession. 19 You shall say to him, "Thus says the Lord: Have you killed, and also taken possession?" You shall say to him, "Thus says the Lord: In the place where dogs licked up the blood of Naboth, dogs will also lick up your blood."
20 Ahab said to Elijah, "Have you found me, O my enemy?" He answered, "I have found you. Because you have sold yourself to do what is evil in the sight of the Lord, 21 I will bring disaster on you; I will consume you, and will cut off from Ahab every male, bond or free, in Israel; 22 and I will make your house like the house of Jeroboam son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha son of Ahijah, because you have provoked me to anger and have caused Israel to sin. 23 Also concerning Jezebel the Lord said, 'The dogs shall eat Jezebel within the bounds of Jezreel.' 24 Anyone belonging to Ahab who dies in the city the dogs shall eat; and anyone of his who dies in the open country the birds of the air shall eat."
25 (Indeed, there was no one like Ahab, who sold himself to do what was evil in the sight of the Lord, urged on by his wife Jezebel. 26 He acted most abominably in going after idols, as the Amorites had done, whom the Lord drove out before the Israelites.)
27 When Ahab heard those words, he tore his clothes and put sackcloth over his bare flesh; he fasted, lay in the sackcloth, and went about dejectedly. 28 Then the word of the Lord came to Elijah the Tishbite: 29 "Have you seen how Ahab has humbled himself before me? Because he has humbled himself before me, I will not bring the disaster in his days; but in his son's days I will bring the disaster on his house."
Note: The Lord often postpones punishment rather than cancelling it completely. Josiah's great reform of the Jerusalem temple earned a one generation reprieve (see 2 Kings 22:14-20), just like Ahab's personal reform had done. The primary difference was that Josiah was one of Judah's best kings; Ahab was one of Israel's worst.
4. Adventists and Babylon. In the 1890s circumstances in Battle Creek had greatly deteriorated. It was Ellen White who make the comparison between Adventists and Rome. Here is her quote:
The present is a time of special peril. In 1890 and 1891 there was presented to me a view of dangers that would threaten the work because of a confederacy in the office of publication in Battle Creek. Propositions which to their authors appeared very wise would be introduced, looking to the formation of a confederacy that would make Battle Creek, like Rome, the great head of the work, and enable the office of publication there to swallow up everything in the publishing line among us. This is not God's wisdom, but human wisdom. Those matters have been coming up again and again in different aspects, but this policy of consolidation would, if adopted, result in marring the work. God would have His work move firmly and solidly, but no one branch is to interfere with or absorb other branches of the same great work. – Lt 71, 1894 [Publishing Ministry, 144 (1983)]
Question: In the light of the above examples, could we not offer hope to Babylon?
Here is another quote from Ellen White, one in which she pointedly argues against the attack mode:
The Lord wants His people to follow other methods than that of condemning wrong, even though the condemnation be just. He wants us to do something more than to hurl at our adversaries charges that only drive them further from the truth. The work which Christ came to do in our world was not to erect barriers and constantly thrust upon the people the fact that they were wrong. (121/122)
He who expects to enlighten a deceived people must come near to them and labor for them in love. He must become a center of holy influence. – 6T 121-122
#Brant Berglin
#Mathilde Frey
#Preparation for the End Time
End-time Deceptions →
← God's Seal or the Beast's Mark
A Garment of Innocence
The Two Covenants
Preserving Relationships
Through a Glass Darkly
Reformation: Healing Broken Relationships
Christ and the Sabbath
Getting Ready for the Harvest
Abraham: The First Missionary
Comrades in Arms
How Shall We Wait
Who is the Man of Romans 7


2017 marked the sixth year of the partnership between Harbert and Annodyne. The business school has three internationally ranked graduate executive business degree programs- Executive MBA (EMBA), Physicians Executive MBA (PEMBA), and a Master of Real Estate Development for Executives (MRED).
The college has relied on Annodyne's expertise with hypertargeted lead generation to help recruit students into these programs. A key challenge for the college was targeting prospective students, not only by profession and experience, but also from geographic locations outside of Auburn which could be tapped into.
Instead of casting a wide net requiring significant media budget, Annodyne's media strategy team designed a campaign that specifically targeted qualified prospective students in travel corridors accessible to Auburn. Annodyne then designed campaign creative and a media flight plan that was deployed in paid search, display, and social media ad channels.
A key reason why Annodyne has earned its long term engagement with Harbert is due to the strong performance of its lead generation campaigns. Through Annodyne's efficient targeting approach, 53 Annodyne leads have converted into enrolled students over the past three years, at an average cost per lead (CPL) of less than $130 per lead.
In just the most recent 3 year period, the relationship has generated over $3MM in revenue for Harbert and delivered over a 550% return on their investment in us.


 Divide class into 2 groups.
 There are 8 pictures about the World Heritage Sites.
 Each group plays " Rock, Paper, Scissor" to gain the opportunity to answer.
10 points for each right answer.
 The group with more points will be the winner.
- If you were a travel agent, what information would you provide about this place to persuade the customers to visit?


text:
FANS ALLOWED TO RETURN TO LAUREL PARK
Racing at Laurel Park without fans. Photo by Allison Janezic.
Frank Vespe
After a briefer pitstop at Pimlico than ever before, Maryland racing returns Thursday to Laurel Park with an eight-race card and something that hasn't been seen at a Maryland racetrack in about seven months: fans.
The track will permit up to 250 members of the general public to attend live racing beginning with Thursday's card. Attendance in the interior simulcast area will be limited to 50 percent of capacity.
Patrons will enter the track through the grandstand entrance, where they will be subject to temperature screening. Food service is slated to be available via the first-floor food court. The clubhouse area will remain closed to the general public because it serves as temporary jockeys' quarters.
Face masks will be mandatory, and the track will take additional steps to promote social distancing and ensure cleanliness.
The news was first announced on the Maryland Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association website and was confirmed to The Racing Biz by a Stronach Group spokesman.
Mid-Atlantic Three Stars: January 20
Your five-minute read to catch up on all the Mid-Atlantic racing action you may have missed over the weekend…
In the middle of the six-day Pimlico meeting, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan issued a revised executive order enabling the track to resume permitting fans. The order, issued September 28, amended a September 18 order that had continued the months-long prohibition on spectators at the races that had come into effect during the state's initial efforts to combat the Covid-19 pandemic in March.
Under the September 28 order, Laurel Park and other racetracks in the state "may open to the general public" but with severe restrictions. They may permit only the lesser of 50% of capacity or 250 people.
Additionally, that permission is further subject to local orders, meaning that the Maryland Jockey Club first needed the permission of Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman before it could reopen in even this restricted manner.
The Governor's revised order was – quite literally – too little, too late to provide a boost for the Preakness, which took place later that same week, on October 3.
BackTracks: Blue Sparkler shines bright
In today's BackTracks, the story of Blue Sparkler, the New Jersey-bred who beat the boys and became the champion older mare of 1956.
But it does represent at least a small step towards racing normalcy. While owners had been permitted to attend races at Laurel and Pimlico prior to this change, the experience – with the building closed and no betting or food service available – didn't have much to recommend it.
The eight-race card fans will find when they return to the races October 15 features a maiden special weight event for two-year-old fillies and a first-level allowance for older horses, both on the main track. It also includes a Maryland-bred/Maryland-sired allowance on the turf.
Parx picks and horses to watch: Jan. 20
Alexander Crispin named Eclipse finalist
Laurel Park picks and ponderings Jan. 18, 2021
PreviousArnaldo Bocachica named "Jockey of the Week"
NextPremier Star shines in Jersey Shore Stakes
Frank Vespe, the founder and publisher of The Racing Biz, has owned, bought, sold, claimed, written, and talked about horses, in varying combinations, for a decade. Email him at [email protected] or follow him on twitter @TheRacingBiz.


Materials selection and material development are carried out with the technical team of Japan headquarters using technologies such as single-color molding, two-color molding, three-color molding, simultaneous molding of hard and soft, etc., through integrated production to processing and assembly, we will meet the various needs of our customers.
The injection molding machine has has 5 units from 50t to 220t,. The extruder has a screw diameter of 50 to 65mm and can be used to mold any thermoplastic resin including PVC.
We can respond all mechanical parts with MC, NC milling and Lather machine, Wire cut and Grinding machine. After that, we also do surface treatment and supply finished product to customer with short delivery.
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The one of the top flexible packaging manufacturers in VN.
From the point of view of the users, a package of Saigon Trapaco was born in the form of a feeling that it is esier to use, more beautiful and un-defeated content. In the food field, there are various items such as sweets (snacks, chocolates, candies...), retort foods, frozen foods, health foods, agricultural products, beverages ... etc.
We provide wide range of service including file modification, pre-press services, printing, varnishing, forming, box pasting, shifting, 100% no outsourcing. We insure high quality printing and packaging service, at the fastest turn around time possible with the best price.
Surface finish #200, #400, #600Hairline polishing, Mirror polishing, Electropolishing (EP), Passivation Treatment, Degreasing, Acid pickling. We are the only one capable of electropolishing Stainless Steel for Pharmaceutical plants from small products to large tanks in Vietnam.
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Enshu Sanko VN is a joint company by Sanko Seisaku and Enshu Industry, and has been operated since April 2012. We offer various service based on the surface treatment. In addition, we also travel the regular collection service to each main industrial park. Please feel free to consult about surface treating any time.
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We specialize in UL standard and a general sticker products which an adhesion layer is on the reverse side. Additionally please feel free consult to us about the general printed and other printed.


text:
NGC 2297 is een balkspiraalstelsel in het sterrenbeeld Schilder. Het hemelobject werd op 31 januari 1835 ontdekt door de Britse astronoom John Herschel.

Synoniemen
 ESO 87-40
 FAIR 256
 IRAS 06440-6339
 PGC 19524

Zie ook
Lijst van NGC-objecten

Externe links
  NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database
  SIMBAD Astronomical Database
  SEDS

NGC-object in Schilder
Sterrenstelsel in Schilder

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


The Bermuda National Tourism Plan was unveiled at the Bermuda Tourism Summit last month. It details the country's roadmap to success for a balanced and growing tourism sector through 2025. One of the seven major pillars of the plan is "Local Involvement", underscoring that tourism cannot thrive without the participation and support of local residents.
In each of the information sessions local stakeholders will talk about how the plan impacts their area of the tourism sector. In the first session on December 3, Sean Tucker, chairman of the National Sports Centre and John and Alison Young of Ledgelets Cottage Colony will participate in a panel discussion. Additionally, researchers will provide an explanation of the plan and Minister of Tourism & Transport Zane DeSilva will offer remarks. Each session will follow a similar format, with a rotating cast of local stakeholders. There will be a question and answer session at the end.
Anyone interested in attending the free information sessions should pre-register online at GoToBermuda.com/BTA. An abridged version of the National Tourism Plan is also available online and attendees are encouraged to review it ahead of time. It explains the six success indicators Bermuda aspires to achieve by 2025 and the seven strategic pillars that are designed to guide tourism and tourism-related communities to achieving these success indicators.


text:
Posted on July 5, 2015 Posted By: ravikantsvCategories: HUMAN TRAFFICKING
PUBLISHED IN THE HINDUSTAN TIMES
Fifteen years ago when Lata Lakra came to Delhi from Jharkhand, life was tough. As a domestic help, the hours were long, the work strenuous and a salary of Rs 2,000 just not enough. Today, the 35-year-old has a flat in Delhi, a shopping complex and a lot of real estate in her home state — and she is behind bars.
Lakra, who ran an illegal placement agency in west Delhi's low-income neighbourhood of Shakurpur, built her empire trafficking more than 1,500 minors from Jharkhand, police said. She was arrested in Chano, about 25km from Ranchi on June 23, on charges of human trafficking and kidnapping. She was wearing two kilos of gold at the time, the police said.
"Now, my job is to find these minors, who must be in Delhi and NCR. In Jharkhand, no one dared to speak against Lakra, but now that she is behind bars, I hope the parents of children she kidnapped will come forward," said Aradhna Singh, who heads the Jharkhand Police's anti-human trafficking unit in Khunti district of which Chano is a part.
About 33,000 minor girls and boys are trafficked from the mineral-rich but poor state of Jharkhand every year. A majority of these children end up as domestic helps, working in appalling conditions. Many of the girls are pushed into prostitution or forced into marriage with elderly men.
Lakra, who comes from a small village in Chano block, was fortunate. She chose to come to Delhi to earn a living. During the three years she worked in homes and a nursing clinic, she met a trafficker, police said. She realised there was a lot of money to be made – there was a huge demand for helps in Delhi.
In 2003, she made her first placement — a minor girl sent to a Delhi home. Lakra was on a roll. She "employed" many men from her village as "agents", a euphemism for men who would ensure a constant supply of children, promising a better life and hefty pays to their unsuspecting parents, police said. If needed, they resorted to strong arm tactics.
Human trafficking remains a big problem in Jharkhand, the biggest supplier of domestic helps to Delhi and other metros. Though several laws have been enacted, India has one of the highest numbers of children working as labourers in the world.
"The modus operandi was simple — the placement agency would get at least Rs 20,000 in commission in return for a domestic help. It would also get a part of the salary," a Delhi police officer said on condition of anonymity.
The agency would ask for Rs 5,000 a month for a girl who was "good" with household chores and Rs 4,000 for an "average" girl.
Lakra didn't hesitate in getting children kidnapped and even sold girls to Gulf countries, the police said. She has several abduction cases against her name.
Her network was widespread and she allegedly met her agents in churches in Delhi. To impress the villagers, she would often say her husband – a clerk with a coal PSU — was a CBI officer.
Her lavish lifestyle was the talk of the village – a local girl who made it big in Delhi. Her two children are students at an expensive private school in the Capital. She owns a flat in Shakurpur, the hub of placement agencies in Delhi, a shopping complex and several other properties in Jharkhand. Her bank accounts and those of her relatives are being looked at by the police to get an estimate of the money she made through trafficking children.
NGOs working against human trafficking have criticised the Delhi Police for failing to act against Lakra, who was on the list of 35 kingpins the Jharkhand Police had sent out.
"The woman has been working in Delhi for years and despite having details, Delhi Police did not do anything," said Rishi Kant, an activist with Shakti Vahini NGO. The government should crack down on illegal placement agencies to check the menace of trafficking, he said.
Human Trafficking, Shakti Vahini, SLAVERY, शक्ति वाहिनी


text:
Spinning Discs: Kentucky Fried Movies
This time we salute the spirit of '76–not red, white, and blue, but sex, drugs, and rock and roll. A 70s vibe (1970's vibe, that is) predominates.
Out this week on Blu-ray is The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977), a reminder, after the disaster of Movie 43, that good sketch comedy can be found on the big screen. True, it may be one of the few truly noteworthy examples of its kind, along with 1983's Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (also due on Blu this year) or KFM's spottier, starrier followup, 1987's Amazon Women on the Moon, but still. I laughed my teenage ass off at it on Cinemax at least 100 times back in the day (thrilled at the nudie bits, too, while hoping that Mom wouldn't come into the TV room) and its R-rated spoofery of movie trailers and cine-culture ephemera like Sensurround holds up pretty well. The bits that don't work (the long-ish sketch about the dead, for example) didn't work then, either, and the ones that do (the centerpiece chopsocky vignette, "A Fistful of Yen") still connect, and the decidedly un-PC humor comes at you in a quick, easy-to-take barrage. It's the brief, one-joke, faux trailers that have me on the floor, like "Catholic High School Girls in Trouble" and "Cleopatra Schwartz," the unlikely pairing of blaxploitation heroine and rabbi ("She…was six feet of towering black dynamite! He…lit the Sabbath candles!")
While there are a few famous faces before the camera (Bill Bixby, George Lazenby, and Donald Sutherland "as the clumsy waiter"), it's director John Landis (National Lampoon's Animal House) and co-writers Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker (Airplane!) who got the biggest career boosts when tickets to Kentucky Fried Movie sold by the bucketful, and they and producer Robert K. Weiss participate in a lively commentary track ("five Jews sitting on a couch!") drawn from a prior DVD. The Zuckers have their say via a feature-length conversation in an interview prepared for the Arrow UK DVD of the film, and the original theatrical trailer is also offered. The Arrow disc has a few more extras but if you haven't gone region- or zone-free in your disc purchasing (what's stopping you?) and would appreciate the modest bump in image quality Blu-ray offers such a proudly shoestring enterprise, this is the Fried food for you.
Shout Factory, which has released The Kentucky Fried Movie, has issued or reissued several cult-ish gems recently, notably Ridley Scott's debut, The Duellists, on Blu-ray, and the Spalding Gray favorite Swimming to Cambodia on DVD. Electra Glide in Blue (1973) is less noted, but notable, as a cop-noir spin, sort of, on Easy Rider. If conservative mores and free-and-easy livin' seem unpalatable when mixed, well, they are; still, there are good reasons to check out this very handsome Blu-ray debut. The one-and-done film directed by Chicago producer James William Guercio spotlights a touching performance by Robert Blake as an Arizona motorcycle cop who, when assigned to homicide to aid a murder investigation, falls in with the hippies whom his fellow cops loathe, with cross-cultural reverberations. "Did you know that loneliness will kill you deader than a .357 Magnum?," Blake asks at one point, with the absolute conviction of someone on a downhill spiral. Made in homage to John Ford (who probably wouldn't have liked the hippies, either), the film was exquisitely, and expensively, shot by Conrad Hall, the DP of Blake's best-known feature, In Cold Blood–Guercio forfeited his own salary to pay for Hall's acumen on his low-budget shoot, and he got it in spades. With noir icon Elisha Cook, appearances by Chicago band members and a larger, drug dealer role for Peter Cetera, and a look fast bit by Nick Nolte. Retained from a prior DVD as Shout continues to mine the majors for their cast offs and curiosities are a sparse Guercio commentary and a more expansive introduction.
What do I think of when I think of the 70s? Pop Rocks. The Osmonds. My former hair. And, disaster movies. I saw them all, including the aptly named genre swan song When Time Ran Out… (1980)…and watched as their millennial resurgence, driven by CGI, brought us twisters, volcanoes, asteroids, and a poor remake, 2006's Poseidon.The one untouchable of the bunch is 1974's The Towering Inferno, which, even in an era top-heavy with 9/11 disaster porn, is too close to the bone for a redo. Here, anyway–from Korea comes The Tower, which reboots the concept for the digital age, taking us into the 108-story Tower Sky, a twinned luxury building replete with everything except the basics to survive a Christmas Eve helicopter crash that turns upper-deck partygoers into potential barbecue. With episodic, 70s-style plotting and characterizations and decent effects, particularly some lulus on a scary sky bridge, it's a fun throwback to a simpler time in our moviegoing, before everything became a "metaphor." Director Kim Ji-hoon, who made Tidal Wave (2009), which you can catch on Netflix Instant, is clearly the Roland Emmerich of Asia.
James Franco hasn't appeared in a movie in a long time–say, two weeks? But Spring Breakers is back on Blu-ray, so you can catch up with his bonkers performance as "Alien," which is easily the highlight of Harmony Korine's fever dream of a flick. Whatever it is, you can hear Korine laughing his way to the bank, as it grossed a formidable $32 million worldwide, perplexing mainstream and arthouse audiences alike in the way of the "counterculture" movies that cropped up after Easy Rider's success in 1969. I'm not sure the disc provides much in the way of clarification, yet it is a sexy beast of a transfer, with a good making-of, a Korine commentary plus his thoughts on the score, deleted scenes and outtakes, and Vice-produced featurettes about real life spring break rites. "Look at my sheeyit! I got… I got Blu-rays!"
What kind of director wears a mask on set, and refuses to reveal his first and last name? As tumbleweeds blow around theaters showing The Lone Ranger, Gore Verbinski wishes it were he. "Makinov," however, went incognito after a near-death experience, and his idea of therapy, the horror film Come Out and Play, will likely be a near-death experience for parents and anyone sensitive to violence involving children. These stay-at-home days, that would be me, and yet like the film on which it's fairly faithfully based, 1976's Spain-made Who Can Kill a Child?, it's reasonably discreet concerning underage bloodletting. The potential is certainly there, as an expectant couple (Ebon-Moss Bachrach and Vinessa Shaw) vacationing in Mexico come across a picturesque island, inhabited almost entirely by kids–kids who have inexplicably murdered their elders and are out for new blood. A variant on The Birds, it's stealthily suspenseful rather than slash-and-bash, though when it comes down to decide who can kill a child, have your hands close to your eyes–and remember that the little ones surely had a ball during filming. Extras include a making of, deleted scenes, and cast interviews. Come out and see us some time, Makinov.
There are several brother filmmaking teams, and now we have a sister act–Jen and Sylvia Soska, who have made American Mary. Romantic comedy? Ha. The 30-year-old Canadian twins, makers of that family favorite Dead Hooker in a Trunk (they have those in Canada?), up the ante with an even more outrageous chiller. Medical student Mary (Katharine Isabelle, of the fine Ginger Snaps werewolf films) finds work on the strip club scene performing body modifications, including quite a number on the doctor who rapes her; things get very weird as she perfects her craft, which is presented without scorn or judgment. Indeed this is a very even-handed film, wild, repulsive perhaps, but also controlled and compassionate, and strongly anchored by Isabelle. Can horror co-exist with feminism? Expect the Soskas, known as "The Twisted Twins," to keep exploring that question, and hear from them in the making-of extra and commentary track, which also features Isabelle and co-star Tristan Risk, whose character has been altered to resemble–Betty Boop.
Let us conclude by returning to the 70s with neglected auteur works available manufactured-on-demand from the invaluable Warner Archive. After the one-two punch of The French Connection (1971) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972), character actor Gene Hackman emerged as a major star, but he wouldn't enjoy drawing power again until 1978's Superman: The Movie. He made some excellent movies, notably the neo-noirs The Conversation (1974) and Night Moves (1975), and the underrated French Connection II (1975)–plus some outright flops, like Lucky Lady (1975), The Domino Principle (1977), and 1977's March or Die ("Audiences marched into the theater, and died," he recounted.). Zandy's Bride (1974) is a representative failure, co-starring Liv Ullmann and directed by Jan Troell, whose acclaimed two-part saga with Ullmann and Max von Sydow, The Emigrants (1971) and The New Land (1972), has been mysteriously out of circulation for decades. No one really missed Zandy's Bride, a sluggish Western romance, with Hackman as a gruff, flailing rancher in Big Sur and Ullmann as his mail-order bride, who civilizes him after mistreatment and travail. Written by Marc Norman, it's low on exciting incident (even a grizzly attack is sleepy), and high on authentic atmosphere; a reverse dynamic might have helped. That said the stress on realism is at least interesting, and the actors, including Eileen Heckart, the late Susan Tyrrell (as a Latina rival to Ullmann), and Harry Dean Stanton, faultless. The trailer included on the disc pretty much encapsulates the whole movie and likely dissuaded audiences; perhaps home viewers in this blighted era for Westerns will be more receptive.
With defections and asylum in the news and cerebral espionage thrillers like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Homeland hits on TV and at the movies, now is the perfect time for The Human Factor, which Tom Stoppard adapted from a Graham Greene novel in 1979. Its legendary director, Otto Preminger, of Laura (1944) and Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and other provocative classics, couldn't buy critical or audience favor after the mid-60s, and this was his final film after one of the saddest declines in movie history. While held in slightly higher regard than busts like Skidoo (1968) and Rosebud (1975), it didn't attract much interest, either, save from a few die hard auteurists. Yet The Human Factor is ripe for rediscovery, and it was a surprise to see it looking so well on DVD-R, after seeing a French-subtitled print at a rare screening held at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2011.
The Human Factor concerns a leak discovered in Russia, one that rouses the British Secret Service from its slumber. (The mandarins of the agency are played, impeccably, by Robert Morley and John Gielgud, with Richard Attenborough rising in the ranks as a security officer.) Suspicion falls on a footloose bachelor, Davis (Derek Jacobi), and on Castle (Nicol Williamson), who eight years earlier confounded the government by marrying a South African (Iman, whose inexperience in her debut takes some getting used to) and spiriting her away from its apartheid regime. Arrangements are made to close the leak, permanently, but is the wrong man under suspicion? The mystery (which isn't much of a mystery to us) exposes a subculture of bureaucratic rot, casual racism, and monstrous calculation, and comes to a quietly devastating conclusion. The image that Saul Bass chose for the last of his famous Preminger posters could not be more apt, for the film and for the filmmaker who waited in vain for someone to pick up the phone in his waning years. A gem.
Trivia question: What's the connection between Zandy's Bride and The Human Factor? (Answer below in the comments section.)
Film, Spinning Discs
American Mary, Blu-ray review, Bob Cashill, Come Play with Me, DVD review, Electra Glide in Blue, film, movies, Spinning Discs, Spring Breakers, The Human Factor, The Kentucky Fried Movie, The Tower, Zandy's Bride
Bob Cashill
An Editorial Board Member of Cineaste magazine, Bob is also a member of the Drama Desk theatrical critics society in New York. See what he's watching on Letterboxd and read more from him at New York Theater News.
The Worst of the Best: "The Greatest Show on Earth"
Elder Vs. Scion: "(The) Suicide Squad"
Going Out Looney: Other WarnerMedia Properties That Could've Been in "Space Jam: A New Legacy"
Suburban Metal Dad #278. Bill E. Joel.
Metal!: Sombres ForÁªts, Gris, Hivelords, Humiliation, Deiphago, Ritual Combat, and Sacrocurse


text:
package io.dylemma.frp.test

import io.dylemma.frp._
import org.scalatest._
import org.scalatest.concurrent.Waiters
import org.scalatest.exceptions.TestFailedException

import scala.concurrent.ExecutionContext.Implicits.global
import scala.util.{Failure, Success}

class EventStreamFuturesTest extends FunSuite with TestHelpers with Waiters with Observer {

	test("EventStream.next completes successfully when the stream fires an event") {
		val w = new Waiter
		val s = EventSource[Int]()

		s.next foreach { case 5 => w.dismiss }
		s fire 5
		w.await(dismissals(1))
	}

	test("EventStream.next completes with a failure when called on a stopped stream") {
		val w = new Waiter
		val s = EventSource[Int]()

		s.stop() // stream stopped before `next` is called
		s.next onComplete {
			case Failure(_) => w.dismiss
			case Success(_) =>
		}
		w.await(dismissals(1))
	}

	test("EventStream.next completes with a failure if the stream stops before firing an event") {
		val w = new Waiter
		val s = EventSource[Int]()

		s.next onComplete {
			case Failure(_) => w.dismiss
			case Success(_) =>
		}
		s.stop() // stream stopped after `next` is called
		w.await(dismissals(1))
	}

	test("EventStream.next never completes if the stream does nothing") {
		val w = new Waiter
		val s = EventSource[Int]()

		//this block should never actually run
		s.next onComplete {
			case _ =>
				fail("Future was expected to never complete")
				w.dismiss
		}

		//await should time out, causing a failure. expect and intercept that failure
		intercept[TestFailedException] {
			w.await(dismissals(1))
		}
	}

	test("EventStream.last completes successfully with the last event fired by the stream") {
		val w = new Waiter
		val s = EventSource[Int]()

		s.last foreach { case 3 => w.dismiss }
		s fire 1
		s fire 2
		s fire 3
		s.stop()

		w.await(dismissals(1))
	}

	test("EventStream.last should never complete if the stream never stops") {
		val w = new Waiter
		val s = EventSource[Int]()

		s.last foreach { case 3 => w.dismiss }
		s fire 1
		s fire 2
		s fire 3
		//not stopping...

		intercept[TestFailedException] {
			w.await(dismissals(1))
		}
	}

	test("EventStream.last should be a failure when called on a stopped stream") {
		val w = new Waiter
		val s = EventSource[Int]()
		s.stop()

		s.last onComplete {
			case Failure(_) => w.dismiss
			case Success(_) =>
		}
		w.await(dismissals(1))
	}

	test("EventStream.last should be a failure if the stream stops before firing an event") {
		val w = new Waiter
		val s = EventSource[Int]()

		s.last onComplete {
			case Failure(_) => w.dismiss
			case Success(_) =>
		}
		s.stop()
		w.await(dismissals(1))
	}

	test("EventStream.end completes successfully when called on a stopped stream") {
		val w = new Waiter
		val s = EventSource[Int]()
		s.stop()

		s.end foreach { case _ => w.dismiss }
		w.await(dismissals(1))
	}

	test("EventStream.end completes successfully when the stream stops") {
		val w = new Waiter
		val s = EventSource[Int]()

		s.end foreach { case _ => w.dismiss }
		s.stop()
		w.await(dismissals(1))
	}

	test("EventStream.end never completes if the stream never stops") {
		val w = new Waiter
		val s = EventSource[Int]()

		s.end onComplete { _ => w.dismiss }
		//not stopping s...
		intercept[TestFailedException] {
			w.await(dismissals(1))
		}

	}
}


My team and I are working on a project and an issue was reported during QA in which the layout gets all disjointed when the user zooms in using the browser controls. The development assigned the work to the UX department asking us to include in the wireframes / prototypes how the screens should look.
So the questions is, does UX own this or should the devs own this?
First thing I'd like to say is that I'm not particularly impressed/ convinced by this kind of "who owns what" arguments. As far as I'm concerned, the end product is what matters. Everybody involved in the design and development process should be "owning" the product. Everybody should be taking part somehow into the discussion of how best to deliver the awesome product that users will fall in love.
But anyway, I understand where the arguments are coming from. And it is sometimes a politically necessary thing to do (think Jira or other issue tracking systems).
The first factor to take into account is what is YOUR COMPANY's own definition of the departments, i.e. what are the responsibilities of UX and Dev departments respectively? Is there a formal agreement or something like that which exists?
The second factor is about YOUR TEAM. How willing are you guys to own it? Do you feel like it's something UX guys should be doing?
The third factor is the CONTEXT of this issue concerning the zoom function. Is it a complicated feature/fix that requires elaboration, wireframe, visual design? Was it already defined anywhere anytime before? Or it's just a really simple development detail or bug?
On the other hand, generally speaking, the role of UX is to bridge the gap between users and the system. We are often considered the user advocate, trying to fight against implementation-centric or system-oriented models (which are real bad for users).
The obvious question now is that is it OK for you to let the Dev team solve the issue without consulting you? What if they come up with a implementation-centric solution that looks and works just really bad from a UX point-of-view?
I guess not. In my opinion, UX department would need to have a say anyway in how you would like to design to be fixed. And it's best to do it before the Dev department tries to tackle the problem, usually with their technical know-how and sometimes ignores how it would turn out for users.
In your case, the Dev is asking for wireframes, so it looks like the issue might be something they can't resolve (or so they think) without your input.
So in general, I think UX should "own" it. Having a hand on the problem first, explore it (no matter how fast it can be), then discuss with the Devs to work out a solution.
It's definitely a design problem, the layout should be aesthetically and functionally as good as possible in whatever viewport it's given. Generally I'd say whoever designed the layout should give thought to how it looks at various viewport sizes, but to pigeon hole it as a UX design issue or a graphic design issue or a development issue can be overly restrictive and unproductive.
Sometimes the layout and it's transformations are vaguely specified and left to the developer to fine tune, sometimes it's an iterative process, and sometimes it's pixel-perfectly specified by a graphics designer. And sometimes it's a mix of processes and often it's a collaboration across disciplines. It depends on the team and the project (e.g. a illustrative/graphics heavy page might need to be pixel-perfectly designed by a graphics person).
Some technical tips to help with this issue: 1) use responsive layouts (media queries) to adjust the layout and element sizes, 2) let content (not popular screen sizes) determine the breakpoints, 3) use em or rem units to specify breakpoints and element sizes.
What is the behavior when clicking "Cancel" when there are multiple routes to an Edit page?


Yet again, Los Angeles is a 'visualised' city. Twas ever thus, and with such interesting effects on our understanding of the city - and not just visually, but formally. Mike Davis's City of Quartz is often thought of as the peerless book on LA, with respect to both the imagined city of Chandler and Chinatown and the dark movements of the political and social throughout the 20th century. Reading that means that one then engages with almost any film set in LA in terms of a far richer back-history of imagined and real corruption, beauty, horror, sensual image and vivid music, exploitation, aspiration, politics, crime, grime and so on. It's as if each film is simply a small scene in a growing 'meta-work' about the city (more on this later).
Someone's come up with a great idea for a Flickr group - a collaborative pool of photos of the various Chinatowns around the world: the Chinatown group.
"Many cities have an area known as Chinatown, often chockful of fascinating sights and visuals. Why not share some of those and help to create a pan-global reflection of all Chinatowns."
Jeremy Deller has won the 2004 Turner Prize. Jolly good. I'm fond of Deller's work - as well as his magnificent Battle of Orgreave, he made this fabulous music map I linked to from here.
"Chain Reaction: Simplicity itself. A well-known public figure begins the series by interviewing the person of their choice. The following week the interviewee gets the chance to chat to the person of their choice. And so and so on."
14 December Alan Moore interviews Brian Eno. Award-winning author, Alan Moore, has written some of the best comic book stories, in the industry, for the past two decades. Moore's many credits include such groundbreaking works as Watchmen and Miracleman. Brian Eno found fame with 70s glamsters Roxy Music and went on to explore the aesthetics of ambient and 'Fourth World' music. A prolific artist, he also turns his hand to videos, film music and art installations."