text:
Review by Brian Eggert December 5, 2019
Elaine May
Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, Isabelle Adjani, Charles Grodin, Jack Weston, Tess Harper, Carol Kane, Fred Melamed
Writing about Ishtar is a thorny prospect. Or maybe I should call it a difficult problem, a scary predicament, a bitter herb, a dangerous tunnel? The comedy's reputation as a colossal bomb has followed both the film and its writer-director, Elaine May, since its release in 1987. The title is shorthand for a critical and financial loser. Whenever a comedy goes over budget or will probably result in disaster, it's common to say, "Well, looks like we have another Ishtar on our hands." Only in recent years has it undergone reassessment by critics, scholars, and May's defenders. But after three decades of overwhelmingly bad press, I was surprised to discover that this maligned comedy, often cited among the worst films ever made, isn't all that bad. Rather, it's quite good. An unlikely tale of two inept lounge singers caught up in Cold War shenanigans, Ishtar features Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman playing against type in performances that capture May's improvisational comedy origins. It's far from the disaster that critics at the time made it out to be, though it's hardly a misjudged masterpiece either. Then again, it's easy to fall in love with Ishtar—not unlike the hapless performers played by Beatty and Hoffman, there's something appealing about rooting for an imperfect underdog.
Curiously, the project started with Beatty feeling indebted to May. She had contributed a sizeable, uncredited rewrite and considerable editing room input to his Oscar-winning Reds (1981), which earned Beatty the award for Best Director. Feeling he owed her, Beatty was determined to make whatever project she wanted, using his clout in Hollywood to make it happen. Her idea was a modern take on Bob Hope and Bing Crosby's series of Road movies. She imagined a story about two wannabe lounge performers, Lyle Rogers (Beatty) and Chuck Clarke (Hoffman), described as "Simon and Garfunkel's inbred twins." Unable to get work in New York (their agent tells them, "You're old, you're white, and you've got no gimmick"), they accept a gig at a Morocco venue. While there, they get caught up in the untidy relations between the U.S. and left-wing freedom fighters, represented by a CIA official Jim Harrison (Charles Grodin) and a local revolutionary, Shirra Assel (Adjani). Beatty arranged to make the film at Columbia Studios and intended May to have complete control, apart from the title. The film was originally supposed to be called, "The Road to Ishtar," but Beatty didn't want to be put up against Hope and Crosby's reputation.
Many believed the production, which began shooting in October 1985, was doomed from the start. May insisted on shooting in North Africa, in and around the Sahara Desert, where the conflict between Israeli and Palestinian forces had rocked the area with hijackings, killings, and bombings. The area was also littered with landmines, which the production learned about after days of scouting the area. May, a well-known perfectionist filmmaker, took two uncompromising, Oscar-winning actors into a potentially dangerous environment, and she had a blank check to make her film. Looking back, most involved with the production agree it was a recipe for disaster. The overlong production (five months of shooting, ten months of post-production) spent $51 million in Hollywood capital, owing to the difficulty of shooting around Morocco and the difficulty of the principals involved. Everyone wondered why they had to shoot in North Africa, and no one was happy about the extreme heat, least of all May. Unreliable camel wranglers, reports of costly dune-flattening, May's contentious relationship with Adjani and legendary cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, and the director's insistence on countless takes made the production a living hell for everyone involved, as detailed in a 2010 article in Vanity Fair by Peter Biskind.
As production costs on Ishtar skyrocketed, the executive leadership at Columbia underwent a changing of the guard. David Puttnam took over for studio chief Guy McElwaine and, as is often the case with transitions at the top in Hollywood, the former administration's projects became unwanted stepchildren—symbols of a failed management that would often be sabotaged to further articulate that failure. At first, the cost-conscious Puttnam wanted to pull May from the film and replace her. But Beatty, who produced the film, refused to allow that. It didn't help that, as a producer, Puttnam had made Chariots of Fire, which had competed heavily in the Oscar race against Reds—Puttnam's film took home four statues, including the Best Picture win, while Beatty's film took home three. As personalities clashed and power struggles continued in the editing room, May stepped away from the editing process, while both Beatty and Hoffman vied for control over the footage with their own editors. Puttnam resolved to wash his hands of the production; he allowed the chaos to continue, if only to demonstrate that the production was beyond repair. If Puttnam intervened, he could be blamed if Ishtar tanked, but he knew that if he allowed Beatty and May to continue without his involvement, he could absolve himself of responsibility.
By the time the film missed its first release date of Christmas 1986, the press had gotten wind of the troubled production. Some even suspected that Puttnam sought to kill the film by leaking negative stories to the press, as he had been vocal in his criticism of its director (May later called Puttnam "a major putz"). The trades started calling the production "Warrensgate," linking the film with some monetary scandal of almost criminal proportions. Before it was ever released, the L.A. Times labeled Ishtar "the most expensive comedy ever put on screen," and the general attitude toward such inflated costs signaled an impending artistic and commercial disaster. To be sure, after additional advertising and distribution costs, Ishtar, which opened in May 1987, would lose around $40 million for Columbia. Though, many involved with the film would later claim the negative pre-release publicity doomed the release. Puttnam supposedly fed ugly details to several magazines, which published pieces about the production's massive and protracted budget, likening it to another Heaven's Gate (1980). Taking a cue from the general attitude surrounding the film at the time, critics reviewed the budget rather than the product itself. Roger Ebert, in his half-star review, wrote that May "mounted a multimillion-dollar expedition in search of a plot so thin that it hardly could support a five-minute TV sketch." Indeed, the negative fervor around Ishtar turned it into a film everyone loved to hate.
May was blamed for the outcome and, to this day, remains exiled from filmmaking. Her career may be one of the most painful examples of someone being welcomed into Hollywood only to be chewed up and spit out again. Her entertainment experience began at a young age in her father's Yiddish theater group. After dropping out of high school and having a child at the age of 18, she audited university courses and learned about philosophy, comedy, and stagecraft, becoming someone often considered the smartest person in the room. Working her way up from small theater groups in Chicago to New York, she eventually became a regular face on both Broadway and television, where she contributed her barbed sense of humor to both the stage and as a playwright. She became a sensation alongside her school buddy, Mike Nichols, in their widely-praised improvisational comedy show, An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May, after it landed on Broadway in 1960. After appearing in a few features, she moved on to directing: the forgotten madcap murder-comedy A New Leaf (1971), in which she starred opposite Walter Matthau; the classic of cruel indecision, The Heartbreak Kid (1972); and Mikey and Nicky (1976), a film wrongfully mistaken as a John Cassavetes picture. She later contributed to the scripts of Beatty's Heaven Can Wait (1978) and the Hoffman-starrer Tootsie (1982). And though she later wrote The Birdcage (1996) and received an Oscar nomination for Primary Colors (1998), her last feature as a director was Ishtar.
What works about the film is the shared sense of artistic yearning between Lyle and Chuck. They so desperately want to become singer-songwriters, and May gives her actors luxuriously long takes to work out their partnership—scenes filled with the comic rapport between Beatty and Hoffman. Early in the film, they gaze at a New York shop window, looking at records by Simon & Garfunkel and the Talking Heads, but they'll never be so talented. Their songs, written by May and Paul Williams, may be catchy at times, but their act won't carry over. Still, there's something noble about their willingness to endure and keep performing, ever-unaware of where their talent lies on the spectrum. Although they are frequently the butt of May's humor in the film, Ishtar doesn't mock or rob these characters of their subjectivity. We cannot help but root for them, though their bickering and stupidity may grow tiresome. By the end, when they've resolved to perform their own material instead of tired old tunes like "That's Amore," it cheerful rather than groan inducing, despite the winces from the on-screen audience.
While Ishtar turns Lyle and Chuck's attempt at artistic credibility into the stuff of humor, May uses these daft characters as a platform to address serious issues of the day. Some theories about why the film bombed are quick to note its political message. Ishtar is a movie that, at the height of Reaganism, aligned its heroes with communist guerillas who thwart the CIA's plans to support the despotic Emir of Ishtar. In doing so, they fulfill a prophecy, telegraphed in an expositional scene early on, about two heroes who humble the mighty to raise up the poor and lonely. The conflict between America's support of an oppressive regime and the left-wing rebels fighting them initially splits our leading men—Lyle sides with Shirra, Chuck with Harrison. With their friendship split, they learn that neither side proves entirely trustworthy; they're better off trusting each other. Not only does this realization strengthen the endearing friendship at the center, played with odd couple charm by Beatty and Hoffman, but it reflects a messy political situation unfolding in the Middle East at the time between Afghanistan, Russia, and the United States—which would be Hollywood fodder for years (see Rambo III from 1988). Of course, Spies Like Us covered a similar idea two years earlier. John Landis' 1985 comedy, starring Chevy Chase and Dan Ackroyd, featured two bungling CIA agents who find themselves in the middle of a plot about the Soviet presence in Afghanistan. Played mostly for cheap laughs, Landis' movie has none of the feeling found in Ishtar, though it made a whopping $60 million in receipts. By contrast, we want to see Lyle and Chuck succeed, whereas the crass and dopey characters played by Chase and Ackroyd are far less sympathetic.
The humor of Ishtar derives from desperate characters who refuse to separate despite their apparent resentment of one another—they each think they're the one the other needs more. But they're both flawed and silly men. I particularly liked Beatty's stumbling, with Lyle chronically unable to remember lyrics or even perform without his counterpart, whereas Hoffman fits well into the overconfident Chuck. In a more traditionally cast comedy, their roles would be reversed, with Beatty as the cocksure performer and Hoffman as the nervous one. But May's casting against type enriches the humor. Even so, Ishtar has its fair share of cringe-worthy moments that have not aged well. When Adjani's character, who dresses like a boy to evade capture, must prove she's a woman by kissing Lyle or flashing her breast at Chuck in the middle of a busy airport, it feels cheap and forced. Most of the scenes of Adjani's character seem like plot requirements, not natural developments—which is perhaps why Hoffman clashed with May over the material (the actor proposed that they skip going to Morocco altogether). Likewise, a scene where Chuck pretends to be an Arab auctioneer contains some ugly stereotypes.
By the time machine guns and rockets enter the mix, the film seems to have replaced the singer-songwriter ambitions with a third-act shootout typical of Hollywood films in the 1980s. Still, May's direction shows an impressive handling of the material, especially given the reports of on-set power struggles and disagreements in the editing room. If the film hadn't had such a notorious reputation, I would have never guessed it was a troubled production based on the footage. Her other films have a less distinct visual style—a detail indicated by her three cinematographers on Mikey and Nicky, arguably her best film. Still, she works with Storaro to compose some beautiful shots in Ishtar, often employing protracted takes for a more stage-like style in which the actors can improvise, free of today's impatient cutting. Elsewhere, she shows elegant solutions to standard problems. In a brief flashback sequence, she fades to the past not by using a bar chime—the standard aural indicator of reminiscence—but cuing the change with a familiar ice cream man bell, only to reveal Lyle driving the ice cream truck.
Some have called Ishtar the worst film ever made; by contrast, The New Yorker called it a "wrongly maligned masterwork." But the film is neither so terrible nor so great. It lingers in the middle-ground somewhere, perhaps even tiptoeing into a belated distinction, if only because such an unfairly discarded film often demands that someone champion it. Hoffman later remarked about Ishtar, "There's a spine to it: isn't it better to spend a lifetime being second-rate at what you're passionate about, what you love, than be first-rate without a soul? That's magnificent, and that's what Elaine was after." It's a theme that allows the film to transcend its occasional flaws and inescapable reputation. The story's central friendship, wonderfully played by Beatty and Hoffman as friends who, literally, go out on a ledge for one another, makes everything else in the film seem less important. In a curious parallel, the film's themes of achieving a sublime form of proud mediocrity mirror the behind-the-scenes story, both marvelously and mordantly so.
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Magic Mike XXL 3.5 Stars☆☆☆☆
Infinity Pool 3.5 Stars☆☆☆☆
Close 3 Stars☆☆☆
Return to Seoul 4 Stars☆☆☆☆
Patreon Exclusive: Gattaca 3 Stars☆☆☆
The Pale Blue Eye 2 Stars☆☆
When You Finish Saving the World 2.5 Stars☆☆☆
Sick 3 Stars☆☆☆
Women Talking 3 Stars☆☆☆
Plane 3 Stars☆☆☆
A Man Called Otto 2.5 Stars☆☆☆
EO 3 Stars☆☆☆
Patreon Exclusive: One Fine Morning 4 Stars☆☆☆☆
M3GAN 3 Stars☆☆☆
Living 3 Stars☆☆☆
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Reader's Choice: Hatching


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text:
package com.hazelcast.simulator.coordinator;

import com.hazelcast.simulator.protocol.connector.Connector;
import com.hazelcast.simulator.protocol.core.Response;
import com.hazelcast.simulator.protocol.core.ResponseType;
import com.hazelcast.simulator.protocol.core.SimulatorAddress;
import com.hazelcast.simulator.protocol.core.SimulatorProtocolException;
import com.hazelcast.simulator.protocol.operation.LogOperation;
import com.hazelcast.simulator.protocol.operation.PingOperation;
import com.hazelcast.simulator.protocol.operation.SimulatorOperation;
import com.hazelcast.simulator.protocol.registry.ComponentRegistry;
import com.hazelcast.simulator.utils.CommandLineExitException;
import org.apache.log4j.Logger;

import java.io.Closeable;
import java.util.Map;

import static com.hazelcast.simulator.protocol.core.SimulatorAddress.ALL_AGENTS;
import static com.hazelcast.simulator.protocol.core.SimulatorAddress.ALL_WORKERS;
import static com.hazelcast.simulator.utils.CommonUtils.joinThread;
import static com.hazelcast.simulator.utils.CommonUtils.sleepMillis;
import static java.lang.String.format;

/**
 * Responsible for communication with Simulator Agents and Workers.
 */
public class RemoteClient implements Closeable {

    private static final Logger LOGGER = Logger.getLogger(RemoteClient.class);

    private final Connector connector;
    private final ComponentRegistry componentRegistry;
    private final WorkerPingThread workerPingThread;

    public RemoteClient(Connector connector,
                        ComponentRegistry componentRegistry,
                        int workerPingIntervalMillis) {
        this.connector = connector;
        this.componentRegistry = componentRegistry;
        this.workerPingThread = new WorkerPingThread(workerPingIntervalMillis);

        if (workerPingThread.pingIntervalMillis > 0) {
            workerPingThread.start();
        }
    }

    public Connector getConnector() {
        return connector;
    }

    public void logOnAllAgents(String message) {
        try {
            connector.invoke(ALL_AGENTS, new LogOperation(message));
        } catch (Exception e) {
            LOGGER.debug("Failed to log on all agents", e);
        }
    }

    public void logOnAllWorkers(String message) {
        try {
            connector.invoke(ALL_WORKERS, new LogOperation(message));
        } catch (Exception e) {
            LOGGER.debug("Failed to log on all workers", e);
        }
    }

    public void invokeOnAllAgents(SimulatorOperation operation) {
        Response response = connector.invoke(ALL_AGENTS, operation);
        validateResponse(operation, response);
    }

    public void invokeOnAllWorkers(SimulatorOperation operation) {
        Response response = connector.invoke(ALL_WORKERS, operation);
        validateResponse(operation, response);
    }

    public void invokeOnFirstWorker(SimulatorOperation operation) {
        Response response = connector.invoke(componentRegistry.getFirstWorker().getAddress(), operation);
        validateResponse(operation, response);
    }

    public void invokeOnTestOnAllWorkers(SimulatorAddress testAddress, SimulatorOperation operation) {
        Response response = connector.invoke(testAddress, operation);
        validateResponse(operation, response);
    }

    public void invokeOnTestOnFirstWorker(SimulatorAddress testAddress, SimulatorOperation operation) {
        SimulatorAddress firstWorkerAddress = componentRegistry.getFirstWorker().getAddress();
        Response response = connector.invoke(firstWorkerAddress.getChild(testAddress.getTestIndex()), operation);
        validateResponse(operation, response);
    }

    private void validateResponse(SimulatorOperation operation, Response response) {
        for (Map.Entry<SimulatorAddress, Response.Part> entry : response.getParts()) {
            ResponseType responseType = entry.getValue().getType();
            if (responseType != ResponseType.SUCCESS && responseType != ResponseType.UNBLOCKED_BY_FAILURE) {
                SimulatorAddress source = entry.getKey();
                throw new CommandLineExitException(format("Could not execute %s on %s (%s)", operation, source, responseType));
            }
        }
    }

    @Override
    public void close() {
        workerPingThread.running = false;
        workerPingThread.interrupt();
        joinThread(workerPingThread);
    }

    private final class WorkerPingThread extends Thread {

        private final int pingIntervalMillis;
        private volatile boolean running = true;

        private WorkerPingThread(int pingIntervalMillis) {
            super("WorkerPingThread");
            this.pingIntervalMillis = pingIntervalMillis;

            setDaemon(true);
        }

        @Override
        public void run() {
            PingOperation operation = new PingOperation();
            while (running) {
                try {
                    invokeOnAllWorkers(operation);
                    sleepMillis(pingIntervalMillis);
                } catch (SimulatorProtocolException e) {
                    if (e.getCause() instanceof InterruptedException) {
                        break;
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Troop Rewards' Founder, Tom Burkett, was honored as a Community Hero from the Tampa Bay Lightning Foundation along with a check for $50,000 at the Lightning's home game against the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Our Founders, Tom & Deborah Burkett, tour Lakenheath RAF Base with the Founders of Troop Aid UK, Al & Pam Sutton. The group was given a mission brief about the 48th "Liberty" Fighter Wing, a tour of a static display of a F15 & HH60 Blackhawk Helicopter and a visit to the Control Tower to watch a F15 take off and land. Troop Rewards awarded 10 airmen, and their families, RnR Recovery Vacations during their visit.
Our Founder, Tom Burkett, thanks Le Meridien Tampa's Sales & Events Manager, Michael Facloner, at the " Welcome Home Our Heroes" reception held at the hotel's signature restaurant, Bizou, as WTSP 10 News and Fox 13 Tampa Bay tell the story behind how Troop Rewards was inspired.
Troop Rewards hosts 10 Armed Forces members, and their families, who recently returned home from deployments in connection with the "War Against Terror" campaign. The Hyatt Regency Hotel was the presenting sponsor and hosted the families to a no-cost 5 day / 4 night RnR Recovery vacation at the resort that started on Memorial Day. Other sponsors included local businesses, such as the Clearwater Yacht Club, that hosted a farewell dinner for the families and the Tropics Boat Tours & the Calypso Queen that offered the families a sunset cruise during their stay.
Troop Rewards hosts 10 Armed Forces members, and their families, who recently returned home from deployments in connection with the "War Against Terror" campaign.
Troop Rewards selected as the DeBartolo Family Foundation's "Spirit of Humanity" award for 2016. Candy and Lisa DeBartolo presented the $25,000 check and the beautiful "Spirit of Humanity" Award to our founder, Tom Burkett, at Candy DeBartolo's new premier restaurant called the Sacred Pepper at the family and friends night. Mrs.Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf and her daughter, Jessica Schwarzkopf were there to share the moment along with some Troop Rewards Board Members, Vance Vogel and CMSgt Scott Blake.


Who's who in the medical team looking after someone with Down's Syndrome and a heart problem.
Once a heart defect is suspected, the G.P. or Paediatrician will refer the child to a cardiac unit. Each unit is made up of a wide variety of staff, each with an important role in caring for the child.
This is the surgeon who will actually operate on the child. You will probably see them just before surgery, when they will explain what they intend to do, and just after the operation, when they will explain what has been done and how it will affect the child.
This is the doctor who arranges the overall care for the child. It is their task to discover what exactly is wrong with the heart. You will usually see the cardiologist at the clinic, to discuss the child's condition, how to manage it, and the options open to you. They will be the doctors who perform catheters either to obtain more detailed information about the child's or to treat the problem where it is possible to do it in this way.
You may see one of these doctors at your outpatient's appointment instead of, or in conjunction with, the cardiologist. They assist in any investigations and also in the operating theatre.
A liaison sister or outreach nurse may visit the family at home to do a 'check-up' on the child or simply to chat about the child's condition, the operation, staying in hospital etc. The liaison sister is there to help and support you through the hospital stay with any queries, problems or anxieties you may have.
This is the senior nurse who is in charge of the hospital ward. If they are male they are called Charge Nurse, if female they are called Ward Sister.
This doctor will see the child before surgery or cardiac catheter to ascertain his / her needs. They will give the anaesthetic and monitor the child's breathing and ventilation throughout the operation.
This doctor will care for the child whilst they are in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU).
These nurses are specifically trained to care for and monitor the child constantly whilst they are in Intensive Care.
A physiotherapist will visit the child soon after surgery to encourage correct breathing and movement.
These are the people who perform non invasive investigations on the child to aid the cardiologist in making the diagnosis of the child's heart defect.
This person uses play to help the child before the operation, and is there to help entertain and encourage them during their stay in hospital.
There are a wide range of nurses, administration staff and domestic workers also to be found in each unit. They are all there to help, and all wear identity badges. If you are not sure what anybody is doing or saying, don't be afraid to ask. You know the child best and all the team will value your views.
"The night before surgery Emily was awake all night, crying and fretful. I knew she wasn't 100% and I was worried that being so tired she would take longer to recover. The nurses thought she was out of her routine; the registrar said she was teething; the surgeon was happy to go ahead. When the anaesthetist examined her, he thought she was 'snuffly' and was not prepared to put her at any risk. The operation was cancelled and we were extremely relieved, despite having waited 16 months. When we got home she cut a tooth with a cold and temperature. We went back a fortnight later when everyone was happy with her and she had her operation.".


North Korea is expanding its capacity to mine and mill natural uranium. Recent commercial satellite imagery shows that, over the past year, Pyongyang has begun to refurbish a major mill located near Pyongsan that turns uranium ore into yellowcake. The renovation suggests that North Korea is preparing to expand the production of uranium from a nearby mine.
The question is: What will North Korea do with this uranium? One possibility is that North Korea will enrich the uranium to expand its stockpile of nuclear weapons. Another is that Pyongyang plans to produce fuel for the Experimental Light Water Reactor under construction at its Yongbon nuclear scientific research facility as well as future light-water reactors based on that model.
A major challenge in estimating the size of North Korea's nuclear weapons stockpile is uncertainty about whether Pyongyang has additional centrifuge facilities for enriching uranium. While such facilities may be hard to detect, the expansion of mining and milling near Pyongsan may allow observers to estimate the size of North Korea's enrichment infrastructure based on its demand for uranium. Closer scrutiny of North Korea's uranium resources, including its other declared mines and mills as well as suspected sites, may help arrive at more accurate estimates of this key capability.
While wonks have turned their pointy heads toward North Korea's nuclear reactors, reprocessing facility and enrichment capabilities, all of these capabilities depend on a supply of natural uranium. Uranium, whether natural or enriched, is the essential fuel for nuclear reactors that produce plutonium and can also be enriched to produce nuclear weapons.
The North Koreans like to brag about how much uranium they have. One North Korean publication described the DPRK's uranium resources as "infinite." And poor Andrea Berger, a non-proliferation expert at the Royal United Services Institute in London, even got a lecture on the subject from a North Korean official.
As it turns out, though, North Korea's uranium resources are probably paltry, which means that we may be able to locate and monitor a relatively small number of sites. That, in turn could help us get a better grip on the North's ability to produce reactor fuel and bombs. Thanks to the collapse of the Soviet Union, scholars now have access to internal Soviet and Warsaw Pact documents describing North Korea's efforts to seek assistance in developing its uranium resources.
North Korea asked the Soviet Union for help in the field of the uranium prospecting as early as 1948. The request is described in an internal Soviet memo, translated by the Wilson Center's North Korea International Documentation Project, which suggests such prospecting be postponed. North Korea kept bugging the Soviets, though. By the early 1960s, the Soviets had completed a survey, but concluded North Korean uranium deposits were too poor for exploitation. Two Soviet specialists told their Ambassador in Pyongyang: "Korean uranium ore is not rich and is very scarce. The mining and processing of such ore will be extremely expensive for the Koreans." As it turns out, the North Koreans didn't care that the uranium was extremely expensive. If you wonder whether Kim Il Sung wanted a bomb or not, his abiding interest in a domestic source of uranium at any cost is a hint.
The memos also include technical information. One memo, reporting on a 1979 North Korean effort to acquire uranium mining equipment from Czechoslovakia (hey, remember Czechoslovakia?) states: "[T]he DPRK has two important uranium quarries. In one of these two places, the uranium content of the ore is 0.26 percent, while in the other it is 0.086 percent." Based on other information released by the Soviet Union, it appears these mines are near Pakchon and Pyongsan, with Pyongsan likely having the higher quality ore. In 1985, the North Koreans were still pressing the Soviets to speed up prospecting for new sources of ore.
In 1992, the DPRK declared, as part of its Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), two uranium mines (the Wolbisan Uranium Mine and the Pyongsan Uranium Mine) and two mills for concentration (the Pakchon Uranium Concentrate Pilot Plant and the Pyongsan Uranium Concentrate Plant). While there are naturally questions about whether this declaration was complete, the claim of two uranium mines appears consistent with the Soviet surveys.
Figure 1. North Korea's Uranium Concentrate Plants.
Figure 2. Overview of the Pyongsan Uranium Mine and Uranium Concentration Plant.
Pyongsan is believed to the most important uranium mine and mill in North Korea. (The other mill, near Pakchon, was described as a pilot facility.) Commercial satellite imagery from Digital Globe and Airbus Defense and Space show the layout of the mine and mill that turns uranium ore into yellowcake. The mine is connected to the mill by a conveyor belt that brings uranium ore into the mill for processing. The various structures within the mill are connected to one another allowing the uranium to be processed in stages (see figure 2 for schematic of a typical mill). Finally, the mill is connected to a large pond where tailings are dumped.
Figure 3. Schematic of a typical mill.
While North Korea has operated the facility intermittently over the past decade, new spoil and tailings appeared sometime between 2006-2011, suggesting that the North resumed uranium mining and milling during that period after what appears to have been a lull of many years. This uranium may have been fabricated into new fuel rods for the 5 MWe gas graphite reactor. North Korea had only 2,500 fresh fuel rods for this reactor—less than a third of a full load. (North Korea also had 12,000 rods that had been fabricated for the never completed 50 MWth reactor, which could be converted into reactor fuel.) The uranium might also have been converted into uranium hexafluoride (UF6) that could be enriched to build nuclear weapons, either at the enrichment plant that the North constructed and revealed to Americans visiting Yongbyon in 2010 or at a covert site. Based on the size of the spoil pile and the tailings, it may be possible to make a rough estimate of how much uranium was recovered, but this estimate would be very approximate. However, North Korea seems to be mining more uranium to meet what may be increasing needs for fuel or bombs.
Figure 4. Images of the uranium mine from 2003, 2006 and 2011 show new spoil piles in 2006 and 2011.
The tailings are dumped into a nearby pond that is unlined and surrounded by farms. (If you happen to visit Pyongsan, I would strongly recommend passing on the local produce.) Just as the mine shows new spoil piles between 2006-2011, new tailings appeared in the pond over the same period, demonstrating that the uranium had been processed in the mill.
Figure 5. Images of the tailings pond from 2003, 2006 and 2011 show new tailings in 2006 and 2011.
The most recent commercial satellite imagery indicates that the "Uranium Concentration Plant" plant is currently undergoing significant refurbishment. Since 2013, most of the buildings have received new roofs. The terminus of the conveyor belt was demolished and rebuilt. Other buildings appear to have been gutted and are now in the process of being rebuilt with new roofing. The significant investment in refurbishing the mill suggests that North Korea is expecting to process significant amounts of uranium, either from the Pyongsan mine or other uranium mines.
Figure 6. North Korea has undertaken a significant refurbishment of the Pyongsan Uranium Concentration Plant since 2013.
Quite apart from the nonproliferation aspect of any future nuclear agreement with North Korea, it is important for the health and safety of the local community to clean this site up. While that seems unlikely in the current environment, remediation of this site—and probably countless others in the DPRK—could be an important task if nuclear diplomacy restarts with the North in the future. A possible model is the assistance the European Union provided Estonia in cleaning up the uranium mill at Sillamäe.
Pyongyang appears to be modernizing a key facility associated with the production of uranium yellowcake. This suggests that North Korea intends to mine and mill a significant amount of uranium that could serve as fuel for expanding its nuclear weapons stockpile, as well as for providing fuel for future light-water reactors that may be in the planning phase. Mapping and monitoring North Korea's infrastructure for producing uranium can help estimate the size of North Korea's uranium enrichment program which is otherwise shrouded in secrecy.
Jeffrey Lewis is Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS), Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, and a frequent contributor to 38 North.
 "Yellowcake" is milled uranium oxide, known to chemists as U3O8 and is a first step toward enriched uranium. The milling process rids uranium ore of useless minerals and results in a coarse, oxidized power that is often yellow in color—though color can vary depending on levels of hydration and impurities—commonly referred to as "yellowcake." The powder must then be converted into uranium hexafluoride (UF6) before it can be enriched—the process that makes the sort of uranium used by nuclear power plants and bombs.
 See: Memorandum of the Special Committee of the CC CPSU postponing the geological prospecting for uranium in North Korea, April 12, 1948.
 Conversation Between Soviet Ambassador In North Korea Vasily Moskovsky And Soviet Specialists In North Korea, September 27, 1963.
 Telegram, Embassy Of Hungary In North Korea To The Hungarian Foreign Ministry, February 17, 1979.
 New challenge after the "Cold War": the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, (SVR External Report, 1993), https://web.archive.org/web/20090210064145/http://svr.gov.ru/material/2-13-10.html.


text:
Vision sensor may refer to:

 A camera with an imager chip
 Smart or intelligent vision sensor, a combination of digital camera with a processing unit
 Dynamic vision sensor, a neuromorphic digital camera, which responds to local changes in brightness

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
The season quickly became a roller coaster instead. Three wins, three losses and then five straight wins. They didn't play the best competition, either. Their non-conference strength of schedule ranked 318th out of 344 teams by year's end.
DeAndre Williams led the country in true shooting percentage through non-conference play, breaking out as the Aces' star. He had the best debut by a player in 33 years (since Marty Simmons) while McCarty himself received national attention as a budding young head coach.
Neither finished the year.
Turmoil took over
Only two other Missouri Valley Conference men's teams have ever gone 0-18, and it was a Drake program that did it in back-to-back years in the late 1990s.
The Aces became the third.
There's no point in harping on the losing. They played a good first half of their first MVC game before the wheels fell off at Missouri State. They also probably should've won their second game, but they blew an eight-point lead with under four minutes to play and lost to Valparaiso in overtime.
After that, there was a clear disconnect between the team and interim coach Bennie Seltzer. UE dropped four in a row by double figures.
UE eventually fired McCarty on Jan. 21 and surprisingly hired former assistant Todd Lickliter as head coach the same night. UE wanted to salvage this season by finding a stopgap instead of waiting until the spring to conduct a national search.
The Aces indeed progressed under Lickliter. They like him and fought hard throughout February. They've already established the groundwork for his system.
But even with him, they didn't win another game.
UE athletics director Mark Spencer also gave women's coach Matt Ruffing a contract extension after the Lickliter hire despite the program going 10-79 over the past three years. Conveniently, UE didn't announce it.
The public doesn't even know how long Lickliter will be in charge. What's the harm in saying he'll be here for three more years? You can't foster goodwill by constantly playing the "we're a private school" card.
Anyway... it's uncertain who all will be back next year. There's plenty of time to focus on that moving forward. Currently, there are more important matters to worry about, things bigger than basketball.
What a crazy season.
On Walter McCarty
I was the only media member for what ultimately would be McCarty's final public comments.
It was his postgame news conference following the win over Murray State on Dec. 21. He was in a good mood and thoughtfully answered my handful of questions as UE headed into Christmas break with a 9-4 record after his inaugural 11-21 campaign.
"I hope you have a Merry Christmas, Chad," McCarty finished by saying.
"Same to you, Walter. See you in a week," I replied.
The McCarty debacle placed me in a tough position as the beat writer. Not only do I have to be a good journalist and fairly cover his suspension and eventual firing, but I'm also still the one asking coaches and players questions nearly every day.
I wasn't particularly close to him, but he always treated me with respect. I didn't even have his phone number. I did, however, spend about an hour on the beach in the Bahamas a few feet away from him, his wife and daughters (I was already in my chair!).
I also don't know for certain what alleged behavior got him fired. He had a bit of a reputation as a socialite – weeks before he was hired, a simple "Walter McCarty" Twitter search showed all sorts of photos of him partying with fans. That didn't seem like a big deal at the time.
Dozens of people have told me stories about him since and if you throw enough wet noodles against the wall, some of them are going to stick. Still, no one has come forward to discuss these matters with me for a story. While I've had people give me first-hand information, none of it was Title IX-related.
I sure hope UE provides some clarity when the investigation is finished. Or, McCarty finally speaks out. Maybe this goes to court and plays out in the public eye, but that probably won't happen given the parties involved.
McCarty has returned to social media, though. He has posted eight quotes to his Instagram story in recent days, all with the same messaging. Here's a sampling:
"When people sin or commit other acts they want to hide from others, they often tell lies."
Proverbs 29:12: "If a ruler pays attention to lies, all his servants become wicked. Lying tends to feed on itself. The more people tell lies, the more other people become involved, especially when people in influential positions tell lies."
"You don't always have to tell your side of the story. Time will."
This story isn't going to disappear. It'll linger into the summer and maybe beyond. But everyone remains in the dark.
Contact Chad Lindskog of the Courier & Press by email, clindskog@gannett.com, or on Twitter: @chadlindskog.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


As its name suggests, mechanical engineering deals with design and production of machines. Machines come in all shapes and sizes—not only are they found in factories, but they also take the form of vehicles, air conditioners and power generators. For this reason, mechanical engineering is a very broad discipline.
In Australia, you can either pursue a degree in mechanical engineering or choose a specialisation. Universities guide students in choosing one best suited to their education background and career aspirations.
Australian universities deliver well-organised, industry-relevant programmes that are valued by employers. In fact, most of the programmes are embedded with a work experience option, which involves either undertaking a work placement or completing a suitable project at an external organisation or company.
Most of Australia's 37 universities offer programmes in mechanical engineering.
Mechanical engineers are employed by transport companies (Airbus Group Australia), electricity and power companies (Power Direct), utilities (Water Utilities Australia), mining companies (BHP Billiton), manufacturing (ABB Grain), the government and academia.
Some of the roles graduates take up are Mechanical Engineer, Design Engineer, Mining Engineer and Manufacturing Engineer.
Salaries vary depending on qualifications, job role, location and experience. As a guide, mechanical engineering professionals earn around an average of $72,000 a year (59 lakhs INR approx).
Australia has cemented its place as one of the best study destinations for international students. There are 37 universities in Australia; with 7 featuring in top 100 and 15 in top 250 in QS World Rankings 2019.
Tourism, financial services, education, mining and agriculture are the largest sectors in Australia. Prominent IT and technology companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, in addition to home-grown brands like Atlassian, Gridware, Aconex operate in Australia. Cities of Melbourne and Sydney have a thriving start-up and innovation landscape.
Australians enjoy year-round good weather, high salaries, access to spectacular beaches and a healthy work-life balance. The country is vast and beautiful and has something to offer for everybody, be that opera, music concerts, films, outdoor activities or beaches and surfing.
International graduates are typically offered post-study work visas of up to 3 years upon graduation.
S. R. Nagar, Hyderabad 500038.


A press conference held by the Ministry of Defence revealed details concerning the Parade 2018, an event prepared for the 28th October 2018, National Day, the centenary of the foundation of independent Czechoslovakia: 4357 men and women of different service branches, and 236 vehicles will take part.
The parade will take place on 28th October at 2 p.m. on Evropská třída, Prague 6. At the same time, public can visit static displays of military, police and rescue vehicles, fire engines, equipment, on Letná Plain.
The plans were presented by the Deputy Chief of General Staff Lieutenant General Jiří Baloun, Police President Major General Tomáš Tuhý, General Director of the Integrated Rescue System (IRS) Major General Drahoslav Ryba, and other representatives of the participating institutions.
All arms of the Czech Army will be present. According to Lieutenant General Baloun the public will have the opportunity to spectate the best the army can offer. Together with the Integrated Rescue System, there will be 4357 men and women of different service branches, and 236 vehicles at the parade. Including JAS-39 fighter jets, L-159 light attack jets, T-72M4CZ main battle tank, IVECO light armoured vehicles, Pandur wheeled infantry fighting vehicles, army and police helicopters, etc.
The static displays on Letná will be open from Friday 26th till Sunday 28th October (8 a.m. – 18 p.m.), and will include, besides modern equipment and vehicles of the Army and different parts of the IRS and Custom Administration or Municipal Police historical vehicles to present an overview of the entire period 1918-2018: all together there will be 153 vehicles displayed.
An accompanying program is being prepared by the Prague 6 district on Dejvická třída (a link between Evropská and Vítězné náměstí), with music bands and an exposition dedicated to the centenary of Czechoslovakia, organized by Prague 6 together with the Military History Institute Prague.


text:
In the weeds : around the world and behind the scenes with Anthony Bourdain / Tom Vitale.
Vitale, Tom,(author.).
Description: 304 pages : cm
Publisher: New York : Hachette Books, 2021.
Stoneham Adult Nonfiction Mezzanine 641.5092 VIT (Text to Phone) Available -
E-audio (1)
ISBN: 9780306924095 (hardcover)
ISBN: 0306924099 (hardcover)
Edition: First edition.
Part one: 1. Aftermath -- 2. Ready for prime time -- 3. Appetizer -- 4. Heart of darkness -- 5. ... Signs you're in a cult -- 6. Kill your darlings -- Part two: 7. High-risk environment -- 8. Shiny objects -- 9. Fame -- 10. Jamaica me crazy -- 11. Shooting nightmares -- 12. Roman holiday -- Part three: Read More
"In the nearly two years since Anthony Bourdain's death, no one else has come close to filling the ... void he left. His passion for and genuine interest in the cultures he visited made the world feel smaller and more knowable. Despite his affable, sometimes arch TV persona, the real Tony was intensely private, deeply conflicted about his fame, and an enigma even to those close to him-except for the crew following him around the world. And almost no one knew him better than his long-time producer and director Tom Vitale. Over the course of ten years traveling together, Tony became a boss, a friend, a hero and, sometimes, a tormentor. In the Weeds takes readers behind the scenes and behind the guise, to reveal not just the insanity that went into filming in some of the most volatile places in the world, but the complicated man behind the Anthony Bourdain persona. Tom tells the stories behind-the-scenes of traveling to places like Borneo, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, and many more, all while trying to film a TV show"-- Provided by publisher. Read More
Subject: Vitale, Tom > Travel.
Anthony Bourdain, parts unknown.
No reservations (Television program)
Bourdain, Anthony > Travel.
Television cooking shows > United States.
Travelogues (Television programs) > United States.
Food habits > Anecdotes.
Genre: Anecdotes.
Citation: Vitale, Tom. "In the weeds : around the world and behind the scenes with Anthony Bourdain." New York : Hachette Books, 2021.


In this really long and really good episode of the podcast, Matt (@TheRealMattC) helps introduce three segments featuring three heavy hitter guests. First, Rob (@RobTrench) returns to discuss The Revenant, which is already one of the most divisive films of the year. Next, Mike (@Mumbles3k) discusses the recent 3D boom, explaining how James Cameron brought us here. Finally, Rockie (@RockieWarAntz) returns for another Drafthouse Films segment, this time it's Wrong, yet so, so right. Enjoy, folks!


Sorry for the blog absence! We've been crazy busy the last few months. We literally have hundreds of photos we are waiting to get back from the photographer that we can't wait to share but for now we want to share one of the great projects we've been working on.
We've been working with a lovely family who finally closed on a home they'd been waiting months for. They loved the home and the location but knew it was going to need a lot of work to bring it new life and feel like their home. The entire house is getting refreshed but today we wanted to share our plans for the entry, front room, and family room.
This is the view when you first enter the house. The detail on the staircase is amazing and we knew it had to stay (although it will be getting a facelift too). The faux finish, light fixture, and floor medallion had to go.
A theme throughout this project is mixing elegance with unexpected details and bits of glamour. We though a curvy settee nestled into the staircase would be inviting and bring some softness into a space full of hard finishes. The space also desperately needed a rug but we aren't huge fans of round rugs and a rectangle rug didn't fit the space right. We originally thought the organic shape of a cream cowhide would be the perfect solution but the man of the house vetoed it (that was actually the only thing he put his foot down on) but he was a-ok with a sheep skin. The texture is going to be beautiful in the space. The last big element in this space is the chandelier. The space right now has a very formal feel to it which didn't suite this fun family at all. A blown glass fixture was just the piece it needed. It adds some whimsy and is definitely unexpected. The boys are going to have to stop throwing balls off the balcony once this puppy is installed though.
The first step we tackle when working on design plans is the furniture placement. This room is getting a pretty grand piano so we designed the room with that as a focal point. We divided the room into 2 areas: the piano area, and the sitting area.
The furniture we picked for this space is a bit on the feminine side with gold and glass accents.
We fell completely in love with a wool and silk rug in rich navy and gold and built the color palette around it.
One of our biggest dilemmas in this space was whether or not we should keep the wood trim. Most of the trim in the house is paint grade but there were some great wood details. Originally we were thinking painting them white would be great but after a visit to the open house for the Odgen LDS Temple our client fell in love with the light muted tones of blue and cream mixed with rich wood finishes. So the wood arches get to stay but with a bit of a freshening up.
This space is getting a large built in for the TV on one wall and with the fireplace (which is also getting a new look. Think cream stacked stone floor to ceiling) and windows on the other wall an extra long sectional seemed like the perfect fit.
The furniture needed to be check several boxes: right scale, comfortable, durable, elegant. We think our selections managed to check off each box.
This was such a fun project to work on and we couldn't be more happy with how everything is coming together. Construction has begun and orders have been placed and we are trying to wait patiently for installation day. We will share photos of the completed space as soon as we them.
Check back soon for some pictures of what we've been working on for the past few months. We should be getting the images back fro the photographer any day now.


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EAVE ON DEMAND session for Ecuadorian Producers
November 5 - 8, Quito, Ecuador
Eurocine Film Festival in partnership with EAVE ON DEMAND and COPAE (Corporation of Audiovisual Producers of Ecuador) are organizing a Development Workshop for experienced producers who are currently working on a fiction project with international co- production potential.
The aim of this workshop is to improve the participants' production skills and co- production project management, providing them with the necessary tools in order to succeed in the international market.
The workshop features high-level experts and will combine EAVE's experience in training and creating international network with a tailor-made approach to Ecuadorian producers and each project's specific needs.
A selection committee will choose a maximum of 8 – 10 participants, who during the 4 days of the workshop will receive a complete guide in the fundamental aspects of developing a film project:
How to present a project to the international market.
How to pitch your project.
How to apply to European film funds.
They will also develop tools of co-production, marketing, script development and skills to work with international partners.
The workshop will be held from November 5 – 8, 2018 in Quito.
Deadline for application is September 28, 2018.
Ecuadorian producers who wish to work on an international scale.
Experienced producers who want to create long lasting relationships with Europe and work on an international scale.
Interested producers should apply with a fiction project in development stage.
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE APPLICATION
All documents must be sent in a single pdf to: produccion@ochoymedio.net
Producer's motivation letter (1 pg.): Explain why you want to be part of the workshop and your expectations.
CV of producer and director (1 pg.)
Company profile: Include a list of projects in development stage, pre-production, production, and released projects (specify if it was distributed in cinemas, on tv, dvd, vod, etc.)
Producer's note of intention (1 pg.): Explain how and why you want to develop this project. (Funding sources, co- producers partners, sales and distribution partners, etc.)
Director's note of intention (1 pg.): Explain the artistic vision, how and why you want to direct this movie. (Tone, visual style, etc.)
Estimated budget (1 pg.) and financing plan (1 pg.)
Synopsis (1 pg.)
Treatment (8-10 pgs.)
The script must be sent only if the expert requires it, but it has to be available for the workshop on November 5, 2018.
Regulation and more information: http://eurocineecuador.com/taller-de-desarrollo-de-proyectos/
Registration form: http://eurocineecuador.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Formulario-de-inscripción-es.docx
AGUSTINA CHIARINO
Bachelor's degree in Communication and Master's degree in Creative Documentary. At Control Z Films, she produced the feature films "Gigante", "Hiroshima", "3", "Tanta agua". In 2011, she founded Mutante Cine with Fernando Epstein. They produced and distributed "El 5 de talleres", "Las olas" and the documentary "Locura al aire". They co-produced"Historia del miedo", "Mi amiga del parque", "Benzinho"y "Las herederas". The feature films Alelíand Monos are in post-production. All these films have premiered at major festivals such as Cannes, Berlinale, Venice, Toronto and Sundance, and been awarded. They are co-organizers with EAVE of the PUENTES training project, which takes place every year in Montevideo. For 10 years she was in charge of the committee that receives and develops new projects and co-productions at Uruguay's Channel 10. She has participated nationally and internationally as a teacher, tutor and consultant in training activities such as Biennale College, BrLab and BiobioLab. She has participated as jury member in competitions for project development and finalization, in international festivals and funds such as San Sebastián, BAFICI, Miami, Locarno and Cartagena.
Page last updated 26 November 2019


Charles Edward considers the health and wellbeing of our employees, stakeholders and supply chain a top priority.
We are passionate about adopting a best practice approach when controlling the key health hazards arising from construction activities. Our supply chain are audited prior to mobilisation against our minimum standards. These standards require a demonstration of assessment and control measures of occupational health issues prevalent in the construction industry – those arising from but not limited to exposure to noise, vibration, dust and other respiratory sensitizers, work with chemicals and other substances hazardous to health, manual handling and repetitive tasks and other ergonomic issues.
We are always seeking new and exciting ways to improve on the above and equally embrace initiatives from our larger Main Contracting friends.
Safety is paramount for every one of our projects and is at the forefront of our minds in all that we do – everyone deserves to go home safe and sound at the end of the day.
Our head of HSEQ, Ben Hodsoll, is responsible for implementing and maintaining Environmental, Health and Safety management systems across the business and creating, modifying and approving EHS procedures and practices required for compliance and systematically maintaining and retaining EHS documentation. Managing safety records and information on training, self-inspections, audits, accident/incident investigations, employee medical data and safety monitoring. Whilst Richard leads the team; the responsibility for safety is however allotted to each and every person who comes onto a Charles Edward site.
We believe all accidents are preventable, so we do everything safely, and if it proves to not be we find a safer way.
Innovation: challenging our standards to ensure we exceed them, always seeking a better and safer way of doing things.
In the more practical sense Charles Edward approaches safety through a number of key mechanisms that have ensured we are at zero RIDDORS throughout our 6 year trading history, they are: Daily activity briefings coupled with weekly look heads, health and safety engagement and regular daily interface that allow controlled progress as per programme, ensuring safe delivery of quality installations with a constant focus of identifying future problems or risks, and managing them out collectively. This proven, positive process allows for clear, transparent reporting to our clients from which all parties benefit.


Beautiful colonial building in the middle of a vibrant commercial district and high-end neighborhoods. Direct routes to all points in the City from the central location.
Office build-out currently in the permitting stage with construction expected to be complete in early June 2019.


Is jumping an effective way to burn calories? Yes. But is it a good idea for people who are significantly overweight? No. And that goes double if the person is just starting a fitness regimen.
"While jumps of any kind are a great tool for increasing power, building strength, and blasting your cardio, they will increase your injury risk," says Robert dos Remedios, C.S.C.S., strength coach at College of the Canyons and author Men's Health Power Training. "For an obese person, this injury risk will sky-rocket simply due to the large deficit in their strength to body-weight ratio." So combine a lot of extra weight with muscles that aren't well trained, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Scary Fitness Trend #2: Marathon-Training For Fat Loss Whenever someone tells me they're going to run a marathon, I ask a single question: "Why?" I don't ask sarcastically; I'm truly curious.
While completing a marathon is a truly admiral accomplishment, it's not necessarily an ideal way to lose your excess baggage. In fact, I would argue that if you want to do a marathon, you should first lose the weight before you start your marathon training.
Fitness expert Rachel Cosgrove agrees. Cosgrove is the co-owner of Results Fitness in Santa Clarita, California, and is also an Ironman triathlete. Read: She's not only completed a marathon, but also a 2.4 mile swim and 112-mile bike ride right before that marathon. The upshot: As a both a trainer and an athlete, she knows a lot about marathon-training—and plenty about fat-loss training, too.
Think of it this way: Running just one mile can amount to doing 1300 to 1600 hops. "If you hired me to train you and on day one, I said, 'We're going to do 1500 hops on one leg,' you'd think I was nuts," says Cosgrove. "But that's exactly what you're doing when you head out for a run." And just like Scary Trend #1, this can significantly increase your risk for injury.
Yes, people have successfully used marathon-training to drop weight. But probably more people have suffered ankle, knee, and hip injuries because they weren't prepared for the stress that training for the event put on their bodies.
The take-home message: Make peak fitness your top priority. And once you achieve that goal, you can consider making the marathon your next challenge. One way to know you're ready: Try The Men's Health Spartacus Workout, created by Cosgrove herself. If you can handle this intense routine, you can handle just about anything.
Scary Fitness Trend #3: Extreme Workouts That Are Too . . . Extreme It's cool to push yourself in the gym. In fact, you should push yourself. What's not so cool: To push yourself beyond your limits. It's a quick way to get injured. But in fitness circles, this practice is trending. The idea is this: You work yourself to complete exhaustion, no matter how sloppy your form gets. At the end of your workout, you feel an air of satisfaction, knowing you gave it your all.
But here's the problem: As fatigue starts to set in during an exercise, form starts to falter. That's a fact. "When this happens, your body starts to compensate, altering the muscle fibers that are recruited as well as delaying reflexes," says Men's Health fitness adviser Bill Hartman, P.T., C.S.C.S, co-owner of Indianapolis Fitness and Sports Training. "This causes overload to joints and soft-tissues, and makes fatigue a key component of injury potential."
How do you know when you've taken an exercise too far? One sign is that you achieve "technical" failure. This is the point at which your performance starts to decline, and it can be identified in two ways, says Hartman.
2. You aren't in total control of the weight. In this case, the speed at which you lift a weight slows down as you pass your "sticking point." So if the rate at which you do a pushup starts to slow as you press yourself up, you've achieved technical failure. The other yardstick: You aren't able to lower a weight back to the starting position at the same rate from top to bottom. That is, it feels as though the weight overtakes you. When either of these conditions occurs, you've reached technical failure.
Unlike in absolute failure, in which you can't perform even one more repetition, you'll probably feel as if you could pump out a couple more. But the truth is, once you've hit technical failure, fewer target muscle fibers are firing during each repetition thereafter—so you've achieved already maximal benefit from that exercise. "You'll get better overall results if you rest and add another set, than if you push past what you're capable of doing with good form," says Hartman.
Keep in mind, that beyond the immediate injury risk, you also need to consider the ramifications down the line. "Even though you may be able to gut through an exercise in the short-term, this action could be bringing long-standing issues closer and closer to threshold," says Eric Cressey, C.S.C.S., owner of Cressey Performance in Hudson, Massachusetts, where he trains dozens of professional athletes.
"We know that the overwhelming majority of people have something structurally wrong on MRIs and X-rays—whether it's a disc herniation, rotator cuff tear, or degenerative changes in the knee," Cressey says. "Good training should prevent these issues from ever getting to the point that they cause symptoms, but just plowing through exercises with terrible form can instead bring these issues to the forefront."


text:
The Passion of Christopher Pierznik
Books, Sports, Rhymes & Life
In Appreciation of
Flashback Friday Flop
Books NBA Reviews
The Science of the NBA — "The Midrange Theory" Reviewed
Post author By Christopher Pierznik
No Comments on The Science of the NBA — "The Midrange Theory" Reviewed
To sports columnists and talking heads of a certain age, the word "analytics" has become a pejorative, a shorthand for nerds that are so engrossed in their algorithms that they can't see the actual game being played on the court.
The truth, as always, is far more complex.
As Seth Partnow writes on page one of The Midrange Theory, "The word [analytics] has become hopelessly poisoned, reduced, confused, and misapplied," and that examples of individuals choosing their numbers over their eyes is not analytics, but rather "analytics done poorly."
Partnow, for his part, does analytics extremely well.
Be warned: this is not a book for casual fans or anyone that thinks that scoring a ton of points is the only true mark of a great player. This is, in fact, most likely the smartest book ever devoted to the game of basketball. There are no wasted words here, no fluff paragraphs reciting play-by-play or game recaps (unlike Built to Lose). Even the footnotes are full of insight and valuable information.
I have a graduate certification in the field of analytics and have been an NBA fan my entire life, yet there was so much I learned throughout the book. While educational, it never feels turgid or impenetrable. Partnow was the managing editor of The Nylon Calculus (where he developed new metrics that accounted for previously unknowable measures like defensive rim protection and individual playmaking ability) and then director of basketball research for the Milwaukee Bucks for three years, so he knows his business. Moreover, he knows how to relay it. He manages to thread the needle, writing about things that would normally be above the reader's head, while simultaneously making it accessible enough that it raises the reader up to that level and thus able to understand it.
Partnow was the Director of Basketball Research for the Milwaukee Bucks for 3 years
The Midrange Theory touches on everything, from trying to manage the salary cap, to the exaggerated death of the midrange, to the difficulties of the NBA Draft, to the idiocy of a "quick two" versus a needed three, all the way to what a team's analytics department looks like, and virtually everything in between. He goes into detail as to why Jeremy Lin's turnovers largely offset his ridiculous offensive production during "Linsanity," why Robert Horry was a playoff savior while Carlos Boozer's performance often plummeted in the postseason, and how Russell Westbrook's quest for triple doubles actually proved Goodhart's Law ("when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure").
Despite what sports curmudgeons would have you believe, Partnow and his ilk don't ignore what happens on the court. He uses numbers and graphs in addition to the eye test, not in place of it.
At the start of chapter five, Partnow writes, "The numbers are not the game." That's true, but the numbers – and the ability to harness those numbers and use them to learn about previously unexplored dimensions – allow us to understand the game like never before.
The Midrange Theory is currently available in hardcover and will be in paperback in October, 2022
I was provided a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Christopher Pierznik is the worst-selling author of nine books. Check out more of his writing at Medium. His work has appeared on XXL, Cuepoint, Business Insider, The Cauldron, Fatherly, Hip Hop Golden Age, and many more. Follow him on Facebook or Twitter. Please feel free to get in touch at CPierznik99@gmail.com.
Tags Analytics, Basketball, Book Reviews, Books, NBA, NBA Draft
By Christopher Pierznik
Christopher Pierznik is the author of 9 books and has contributed to numerous websites on a variety of topics including music, sports, movies, TV, personal finance, and life. He works in corporate finance and lives in northern New Jersey with his family. His dream is to one day be a member of the Wu-Tang Clan.
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Priyanka Chopra and Sanjay Dutt Get A Cameo Appearance In Ra One
Date: 07/10/2011:
Looks like Shahrukh Khan will leave no stone unturned to promote his upcoming movie, Ra One (2011) . Now Shahrukh Khan has signed on former Miss World Priyanka Chopra and Sanjay Dutt for a cameo role in movie Ra One (2009) . Currently both Priyanka Chopra and Sanjay Dutt are shotting for Karan Johar's next release, Agneepath (2011) .
Priyanka Chopra To Perform Solo Item Number In Tezz
The buzz is that Priyanka Chopra will be performing a item song in the upcoming movie Tezz (2011) starring Ajay Devgan and Kangna Ranaut . This could be the first solo item song performed by PC, and the procedures are promising a much hotter and sexier than Katrina Kaif �s Sheila Ki Jawani and Malaika Arora Khan �s Muni Badnaam Hui. The music for the song has been done by music composer duo Sajid-Wajid.
Madhur Bhandarkar Not Happy About Cancelling Heroine
Madhur Bhandarkar has finally come out and spoken his mind about the way former Miss World, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan , handled the announcement of her pregency. The movie was announced at the Cannes on May 13, 2011 with shooting to start on June 7, 2011 but on June 21, 2011, Mr. Amitabh Bachchan announces via Twitter that her daughter in law is 5 month pregenant. Per Mr. Bhandarkar the movie was written for Aishwarya and required huge canvas of around 40 locations in which heavy-duty scenes involving massive crowds are to be shot, actress being mobbed, adult content, heavy-duty scenes involving physical exertion, and actress was required to smoke on screen and given Aishwarya condition it was deemed that she would not be able to do just to the part as written. Mr. Bhandarkar feels that Aishwarya could have handled the matter by either not signing the film, or letting him know about the pregnancy directly vs via the news channels.
Bipasha Basu Get Navel Pierced
Bipasha Basu has gotten her navel pierced (very popularly known as belly button piercing) as the actress revealed through her Twitter account. Bipasha mentioned that she had wanted to get the navel pierced since she was 16. Bipasha is still healing from the piercing and hence has not posted any pics, but we all Wonder when one will get a glimpse of it.
04/26/2011: Preity Zinta to play gangster in next film?
04/21/2011: Deepika Padukone Opposite King Of The South, Rajinikanth
04/20/2011: Now It Is Ranbir Kapoor Doing An Item Number In Movie
04/20/2011: Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan Celebrate 4th Wedding Anniversary
04/18/2011: Yana Gupta To Perform Item Song For Murder 2
04/14/2011: Sonakshi Sinha's Dances To Dance Karle English Mein In Joker
04/12/2011: Sarah Jane Dias On Cover Of Maxim India April 2011 Issue
03/29/2011: Kingfisher Model Poonam Pandey : Roots For Team India Win At World Cup 2011
03/22/2011: Deepal Shah On Cover Of Maxim India March 2011 Issue
Sushant Singh Rajput, plays the role of Manav on Pavitra Rishta who is currently also a contestants on Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa Season 4 wants to quit the dance reality show due to a back injury. Sushant has been one of the best dancers on the show along with his choreographer Shampa, getting good scores and is the favorite to win the title this year. Last week on the show requested that he be allowed to quit the show becuase he is unable to perform.
Hollywood News:
Adrianne Palicki Lands the Lead in NBC's Wonder Woman Reboot
NBC and DirecTV's Friday Night Lights star Adrianne Palicki has been selected to play the role of Diana Prince (Wonder Woman) on the pilot being filmed by TV producer David E. Kelley. The last person to play Wonder Woman was Lynda Carter played her in the '70s TV series.
Michelle Trachtenberg On Cover Of Maxim US March 2011 Issue
Michelle Trachtenberg is being featured on the cover of March 2011 edition of Maxim US. The photos will be part of the Maxim US March 2011 edition.
Olivia Munn On Cover Of Maxim US February 2011 Issue
Olivia Munn is being featured on the cover of February 2011 edition of Maxim US. The photos will be part of the Maxim US February 2011 edition.
Olivia Wilde On Cover Of Maxim Italy January 2011 Issue
Olivia Wilde is being featured on the cover of January 2011 edition of Maxim Italy. The photos will be part of the Maxim Italy January 2011 edition.
Movie Releases July 2011:
Chillar Party
Murder 2 (2011)
Cast: Emran Hashmi , Jacqueline Fernandez
Zindagi Milegi Na Dobara (2010)
Cast: Hrithik Roshan , Katrina Kaif , Abhay Deol, Farhan Akhtar, Salman Khan (Special appearance), Akshay Kumar (Special appearence) , Kalki Koechlin
Money, Finance, Technology News:
Sony Ericsson unveiled a PlayStation smartphone at the at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2011 in Barcelona . The phone is known as Xperia Play and comes with 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor CPU and Adreno 205 GPU. The new Xperia Play is the first PlayStation certified smartphone tht is running the Google Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system. Xperia Play smartphone will be able access the PlayStation game content provided through PlayStation Suite. The smartphone comes with a 4 inch multi touch display, supports FWVGA 480x854 pixel resolution, slides out to reveal action buttons, directional pad, tought pad and selection buttons, 5.1 megapixel camera, records 720p HD video, WiFi, bluetooth, accelerometer, proximity sensor, and digital compass. Xperia Play will be available in Black and White color.
World News:
The high priced golden culinary herb saffron, made from crocus flowers, and used in cooking, may hold one of the keys to preventing the loss of sight in old age and could even help improve vision in people suffering from certain blinding eye diseases. A team found that saffron slows the loss of sight becuase the herb has remarkable effects on the genes which actually regulate the performance of the eye's key vision cells.
The Washington Redskins season ended on Sunday night after a 4th quater loss to the San Diego Chargers 23 to 20 in a season filled with injuries and last minute losses. On Monday morning, new General Manager Bruce Allen fired Jim Zorn after a 4-12 season. Zorn was coach of the Redskins for the last two years with a great start his first season, but the 2nd half of 2008 season and all of 2009 season the team struggled to win games. He was hired by owner Dan Snyder back in January 2008 as a offensive coordinator but later was named the team's head coach.
Now the team has hired former Denver Broncos head coach Mike Shanahan as the 28th head coach of the Washington Redskins. Mike will be seventh head coach hired by Snyder since he bought the team in 1999.
Cricket Schedule
Cricket Score
Cricket Photo Gallery
Wold Cup 2011: India Wins 2011 ICC World Cup In Mumbai
The India men is blue won the 2011 World Cup , to bring the cup back to India after 28 years. This one was epically for the little master Sachin Tendulkar who has gotten many of the records in the world of cricket but wanted to win the world cup to add a nice cherry on top of his brilliant career. Going into the world cup India was favored to win it all and now they have behind great and timely batting and a great bowling attack.
Today's match started off with the coin being have to be tossed twice because for some reason the first time no one heard the call from the Sri Lankan's captain, Kumar Sangakkara and had to retoss the coin. Sri Lanka won the toss and elected to bat. They started off slow with losing WU Tharanga with the total at 17 in over 6, but then build a nice total with Tillakaratne Dilshan, Kumar Sangakkara and a brilliant 103 by Mahela Jayawardene and put up a nice and winnable total of 274 for India to chase.
The Indian inning started off to a rough start with Lasith Malinga stricking early to take Virender Sehwag out on just the 2nd bowl of the inning and then followed up taking out the little master Sachin Tendulkar in over 6, with India total at 31. The task to reach 275 was already massive and now with India's opening batsmen back in the club house the task looked even more difficult but the Indian youth showed the world the class of batsmen they are with Gautam Gambhir and Virat Kohli taking the Indian total to 114 when he Virat was dismissed by Tillakaratne Dilshan. At this point to everyone's surprise India's captin Mahendra Singh Dhoni stepped onto the field instead of Yuvraj Singh . Dhoni and Gautam carried the total to a nice total of 223 in over 41 when Gautam was bowled out after a much needed and timely 97 to help set the stage for Dhoni and man of the tournment Yuvraj to carry team India to a historic victory. Dhoni locked in the victory with a captains knock of 91 runs off 79 balls not out. Dhoni ended the innings with a massive 6 to win the world cup. Dhoni's world cup winning monster six will be remembered for decades to come by the Indian all over the world. At the end of the day patiences and persistences paid off for team India.
BollywoodMovies.us team would like to congratulate Team India on the World Cup win.
Now India will have to defend the World Cup title at the 2015 ICC World Cup tournament in New Zealand and Austilia.
Team India expresses itself moments after the historic 2011 World Cup Win:
Virat Kohli: This is for the people of India, this for all their support.
Zaheer Khan: Yes, it's been amazing, you know. Dream come true.
Sachin Tendulkar: Couldn't have asked for something bigger than this. I think winning the World Cup is the biggest thing and I am experiencing it. It's the proudest moment of my life.
On finally winning it after 6 WCs: Yes, it's never too late, like they say. And thanks to all my teammates and support staff and without such fabulous performances and such consistency, it would never have happened. Did he cry? Yes, I was emotional. They were happy tears, so I wouldn't mind crying.
Gautam Gambhir: Hasn't sunk in yet. I think all the guys must have felt about 2007 (world cup early exit). That was a nightmare. This is a dream. All credit to Sachin Tendulkar and the team.
Yuvraj Singh: It is unbelievable. There was the under 19 World Cup win, the T20 win, but this is the most special one for the whole of India. For Sachin, for the whole team. I dedicate this to my gurujis, Guru Ram Singh and Guru Arjen Singh, to my mother, my teammates. Last time (in the 2003 World Cup final) we were chasing 358 and made a lot of mistakes and we didn't want to do that again. We saved a lot of runs in the field and then Gauti and MS batted outstandingly. We've taken the pressure pretty brilliantly, we batted like champions.
Harbhajan Singh: I'm feeling very emotional, hence the tears. I can't explain the feeling. I have been part of three World Cups and the dream has finally come true. This Cup is for the people of India.
Baseball News .. Basketball News .. Golf News
The 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup will be the tenth Cricket World Cup and will be hosted by three South Asian Test cricket playing countries: India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. This will be the first time that Bangladesh has cohosted a Cricket World Cup. The World Cup will use cricket's One Day International format. Fourteen national cricket teams will participate in the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup. The teams in Group A are Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Canada, Kenya. The teams in Group B are India, Bangladesh, England, South Africa, West Indies, Ireland, and Netherlands. The World Cup will be played from 19 February 2011 and 2 April 2011, The opening ceremony will be held on 17 February 2011, two days before the start of the tournament, with the final on 2 April 2011 at Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai. Stumpy is the official mascot for the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup. The official song of the 2011 World Cup is "De Ghuma Ke" which is composed by the trio of Shankar Ehsaan Loy, and is sung in Hindi, Bangla and Sinhala. The official event ambassador for the 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup is Sachin Tendulkar . The 2011 ICC Cricket World Cup will b shown on Willow Cricket, DirecTV, Dish Network within the USA.
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan , Asin Thottumkal , Anushka Sharma , Barbara Mori, Bipasha Basu , Celina Jaitley Deepika Padukone , Kangna Ranaut, Kajol Mukherjee, Kareena Kapoor, Katrina Kaif, Laila Rouass, Lakshmi Menon, Lakshmi RaiKonkona Sen Sharma , Freida Pinto, Gul Panag, Genelia Dsouza, Madhuri Dixit, Priyanka Chopra , Raima Sen, Rakhi Sawant, Riya Sen, Shilpa Shetty Shruti Haasan, Sonali Bendre, Sonakshi Sinha, Sonam Kapoor, Sayali Bhagat,
Aamir Khan , Abhishek Bachchan , Akshay Kumar , Farhan Akhtar, Hrithik Roshan , Ranbir Kapoor , Saif Ali Khan , Salman Khan , Shahrukh Khan
Alexis Bledel, Alicia Silverstone, Anna Walton, Anne Hathaway, Ashley Judd, Daisy Fuentes, Denise Richards, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Eva Mendes, Heidi Montag, Jennifer Love Hewitt Julianne Hough, Gwyneth Paltrow, Keira Knightley, Megan Fox, Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz, Sandra Bullock, Selena Gomez, Alyssa Milano, Angelina Jolie, Brooke Burke, Cameron Diaz, Elisha Cuthbert, Eva Longoria, Halle Berry, Jessica Alba, Jennifer Garner, Jennifer Lopez, Jessica Alba, Katie Holmes, Neve Campbell Salma Hayek Scarlett Johansson
Torrents 2010 Torrents 2011 Hot Breads, Kentlands, Gaithersburg, MD Indian Festivals Indian Idol 4


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Can Drupal outdo native applications?
"Inversion of control" is a powerful design principle that we could use to improve the user experience of Drupal, and rival that of native applications.
I've made no secret of my interest in the open web, so it won't come as a surprise that I'd love to see more web applications and fewer native applications. Nonetheless, many argue that "the future of the internet isn't the web" and that it's only a matter of time before walled gardens like Facebook and Google — and the native applications which serve as their gatekeepers — overwhelm the web as we know it today: a public, inclusive, and decentralized common good.
I'm not convinced. Native applications seem to be winning because they offer a better user experience. So the question is: can open web applications, like those powered by Drupal, ever match up to the user experience exemplified by native applications? In this blog post, I want to describe inversion of control, a technique now common in web applications and that could benefit Drupal's own user experience.
Native applications versus web applications
Using a native application — for the first time — is usually a high-friction, low-performance experience because you need to download, install, and open the application (Android's streamed apps notwithstanding). Once installed, native applications offer unique access to smartphone capabilities such as hardware APIs (e.g. microphone, GPS, fingerprint sensors, camera), events such as push notifications, and gestures such as swipes and pinch-and-zoom. Unfortunately, most of these don't have corresponding APIs for web applications.
A web application, on the other hand, is a low-friction experience upon opening it for the first time. While native applications can require a large amount of time to download initially, web applications usually don't have to be installed and launched. Nevertheless, web applications do incur the constraint of low performance when there is significant code weight or dozens of assets that have to be downloaded from the server. As such, one of the unique challenges facing web applications today is how to emulate a native user experience without the drawbacks that come with a closed, opaque, and proprietary ecosystem.
In the spirit of open source, the Drupal Association invited experts from the wider front-end community to speak at DrupalCon New Orleans, including from Ember and Angular. Ed Faulkner, a member of the Ember core team and contributor to the API-first initiative, delivered a fascinating presentation about how Drupal and Ember working in tandem can enrich the user experience.
One of Ember's primary objectives is to demonstrate how web applications can be indistinguishable from native applications. And one of the key ideas of JavaScript frameworks like Ember is inversion of control, in which the client side essentially "takes over" from the server side by driving requirements and initiating actions. In the traditional page delivery model, the server is in charge, and the end user has to wait for the next page to be delivered and rendered through a page refresh. With inversion of control, the client is in charge, which enables fluid transitions from one place in the web application to another, just like native applications.
Before the advent of JavaScript and AJAX, distinct states in web applications could be defined only on the server side as individual pages and requested and transmitted via a round trip to the server, i.e. a full page refresh. Today, the client can retrieve application states asynchronously rather than depending on the server for a completely new page load. This improves perceived performance. I discuss the history of this trend in more detail in this blog post.
Through inversion of control, JavaScript frameworks like Ember provide much more than seamless interactions and perceived performance enhancements; they also offer client-side storage and offline functionality when the client has no access to the server. As a result, inversion of control opens a door to other features requiring the empowerment of the client beyond just client-driven interactions. In fact, because the JavaScript code is run on a client such as a smartphone rather than on the server, it would be well-positioned to access other hardware APIs, like near-field communication, as web APIs become available.
Inversion of control in end user experiences
When a user clicks a teaser image on the homepage of an Ember-enhanced Drupal.com, the page seamlessly transitions into the full content page for that teaser, with the teaser image as a reference point, even though the URL changes.
In response to our recent evaluation of JavaScript frameworks and their compatibility with Drupal, Ed applied the inversion of control principle to Drupal.com using Ember. Ed's goal was to enhance Drupal.com's end user experience with Ember to make it more application-like, while also preserving Drupal's editorial and rendering capabilities as much as possible.
Ed's changes are not in production on Drupal.com, but in his demo, clicking a teaser image causes it to "explode" to become the hero image of the destination page. Pairing Ember with Drupal in this way allows a user to visually and mentally transition from a piece of teaser content to its corresponding page via an animated transition between pages — all without a page refresh. The animation is very impressive and the animated GIF above doesn't do it full justice. While this transition across pages is similar to behavior found in native mobile applications, it's not currently possible out of the box in Drupal without extensive client-side control.
Rather than the progressively decoupled approach, which embeds JavaScript-driven components into a Drupal-rendered page, Ed's implementation inverts control by allowing Ember to render what is emitted by Drupal. Ember maintains control over how URLs are loaded in the browser by controlling URLs under its responsibility; take a look at Ed's DrupalCon presentation to better understand how Drupal and Ember interact in this model.
These impressive interactions are possible using the Ember plugin Liquid Fire. Fewer than 20 lines of code were needed to build the animations in Ed's demo, much like how SDKs for native mobile applications provide easy-to-implement animations out of the box. Of course, Ember isn't the only tool capable of this kind of functionality. The RefreshLess module for Drupal by Wim Leers (Acquia) also uses client-side control to enable navigating across pages with minimal server requests. Unfortunately, RefreshLess can't tap into Liquid Fire or other Ember plugins.
Inversion of control in editorial experiences
In CardStack Editor, an editorial interface with transitions and animations is superimposed onto the content page in a manner similar to outside-in, and the editor benefits from an in-context, in-preview experience that updates in real time.
We can apply this principle of inversion of control not only to the end user experience but also to editorial experiences. The last demos in Ed's presentation depict CardStack Editor, a fully decoupled Ember application that uses inversion of control to overlay an administrative interface to edit Drupal content, much like in-place editing.
CardStack Editor communicates with Drupal's web services in order to retrieve and manipulate content to be edited, and in this example Drupal serves solely as a central content repository. This is why the API-first initiative is so important; it enables developers to use JavaScript frameworks to build application-like experiences on top of and backed by Drupal. And with the help of SDKs like Waterwheel.js (a native JavaScript library for interacting with Drupal's REST API), Drupal can become a preferred choice for JavaScript developers.
Inversion of control as the rule or exception?
Those of you following the outside-in work might have noticed some striking similarities between outside-in and the work Ed has been doing: both use inversion of control. The primary purpose of our outside-in interfaces is to provide for an in-context editing experience in which state changes take effect live before your eyes; hence the need for inversion of control.
Thinking about the future, we have to answer the following question: does Drupal want inversion of control to be the rule or the exception? We don't have to answer that question today or tomorrow, but at some point we should.
If the answer to that question is "the rule", we should consider embracing a JavaScript framework like Ember. The constellation of tools we have in jQuery, Backbone, and the Drupal AJAX framework makes using inversion of control much harder to implement than it could be. With a JavaScript framework like Ember as a standard, implementation could accelerate by becoming considerably easier. That said, there are many other factors to consider, including the costs of developing and hosting two codebases in different languages.
In the longer term, client-side frameworks like Ember will allow us to build web applications which compete with and even exceed native applications with regard to perceived performance, built-in interactions, and a better developer experience. But these frameworks will also enrich interactions between web applications and device hardware, potentially allowing them to react to pinch-and-zoom, issue native push notifications, and even interact with lower-level devices.
In the meantime, I maintain my recommendation of (1) progressive decoupling as a means to begin exploring inversion of control and (2) a continued focus on the API-first initiative to enable application-like experiences to be developed on Drupal.
I'm hopeful Drupal can exemplify how the open web will ultimately succeed over native applications and walled gardens. Through the API-first initiative, Drupal will provide the underpinnings for web and native applications. But is it enough?
Inversion of control is an important principle that we can apply to Drupal to improve how we power our user interactions and build robust experiences for end users and editors that rival native applications. Doing so will enable us to enhance our user experience long into the future in ways that we may not even be able to think of now. I encourage the community to experiment with these ideas around inversion of control and consider how we can apply them to Drupal.
Special thanks to Preston So for contributions to this blog post and to Angie Byron, Wim Leers, Kevin O'Leary, Matt Grill, and Ted Bowman for their feedback during its writing.
Calendar icon 14 September 2016
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