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Compulsory English Paper (Civil Services Mains) 2013
Author selfstudyhistory Posted on Posted on January 19, 2015 January 19, 2016
Q.1 Write short essays in about 300 words on each of the following (50 x 2 =100 marks)
We Indians are hypocrites.
Fitness and healthcare — latest fad in urban India.
Q2. Read carefully the passage given below and write your answers to the questions that follow in clear, correct, and concise language of your own. 50 marks
In barely one generation, we've moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives, to trying to get away from them — often, in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Like a teenager, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much, all but overnight.
The average person spends at least eight and a half hours a day in front of the screen. The average teenager spends or receives 75 text messages a day. Since luxury, as any economist will tell you, is a function of scarcity, the children of tomorrow will crave nothing more than freedom, if only for a short while, from all the blinking machines, streaming videos and scrolling headlines that leave them feeling empty, and too full all at once. The urgency of slowing down — to find the time and space to think — is nothing new, of course, and wiser souls have always reminded us that the more attention we pay to the moment, the less time and energy we have to place it in some larger context. Even half a century ago, Marshall McLuhan warned, "When things come at you very fast, naturally you lose touch with yourself."
Yet few of those voices can be heard these days, precisely because `breaking news' is coming through perpetually on the news channels, and Meena is posting images of her summer vacation and the phone is ringing. We barely have enough time to see how little time we have. And the more that floods in on us, the less of ourselves we have to give to every snippet.
We have more and more ways to communicate, as Thoreau noted, but less and less to say. Partly because we are so busy communicating. And — as he might also have said — we are rushing to meet so many deadlines that we hardly register that what we need most are lifelines. So what to do ? The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual. All the data in the world cannot teach us how to sift through data; images don't show us how to process images. The only way to do justice to our onscreen lives is by summoning exactly the emotional and moral clarity that cannot be found on any screen.
Maybe that is why more and more people, even if they have no religious commitment, seem to be turning to yoga or meditation, or tai chi; these are not New Age fads so much as ways to connect with what could be called the wisdom of old age. A series of tests in recent years has shown that after spending time in a quiet rural setting, subjects "exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper." More than that, empathy, as well as deep thought, depends on neural processes that are "inherently slow". The very ones our high-speed lives have little time for.
QUESTIONS: (10 x 5 = 50 Marks)
According to the author, what is likely to become a scarcity in the future?
What ability have people lost thanks to the constant inflow of data?
Why does the author say, "We have more and more ways to communicate, but less and less to say?
Why are people taking an active interest in old-age fads?
Why is modern man unable to empathise with others?
Q.3 (a) Make a précis of the following passage in about one-third of its length. Please do not suggest a title. 60 marks.
Honesty in business dealings or in other areas are not the only measures of morals and values. The strength of character of a person is also measured by uncompromising aversion to cowardice, intrigue, envy, ambiguity, falsehood, disloyalty, treachery, in short, all undignified actions. There are, in reality, few human beings endowed with a truly spotless character. This is because an almost immaculate character does not exist until the last lives in human form. Educated individuals are not necessarily endowed with good morals and values. In fact, some of them use education and their intellect as a tool for deceit. However, the advantages and the need for education and culture cannot be denied. They contribute largely for the development of intellectual ability and the power to reason, which are the means by which the spirit analyses, compares, infers and arrives at conclusions in the search for truth about the meaning of life. The most precious assets of the soul are its morals and values, but they are not easy to build. The character of each person requires longer periods of thoughtfulness, reasoning and the practice of those values, during many reincarnations, in the course of which, ideas sink in under life experiences. It is only after enduring much disillusionment, grief, injustice and ingratitude for many successive corporeal lives, that a person will be able to measure, in the innermost recesses of his soul, the extent of human moral misery. Then, disgusted, he rebels against it and opens the door to a more ethical and honourable life. Thus, having known and experienced suffering, the spirit, in countless reincarnations, gradually frees itself from evil actions and, through enlightenment and conviction follows the rigid tracks of a flawless conduct. It is of great significance to talk about morals and values but it is also crucial to define the lines of character that everyone should consider in their lives. Some of the most important ones are: good judgement, fairness, common sense, punctuality, loyalty, courage, magnanimity, dignity, gratitude, politeness, faithfulness, moderation, truthfulness, self-respect, respect for others, etc. All these qualities, if properly cultivated, compose a prime set of dignifying virtues which accounts for a refined character. For example, we all make mistakes and to err is human. However, once an honest person is advised and becomes convinced of his mistake, he should admit it and try not to repeat it. Unfortunately it is common practice to conceal one's mistakes, instead of avoiding them. This is very detrimental to spiritual growth. Most people seldom use impartiality and justice in the innermost evaluation of their own actions. Even those who are too harsh in the judgement of other people's actions, for whom they always have words of criticism and reproach, do not escape the usual tendency. When their own faults are concerned, they find a full, lenient, absolvent justification. In this way, not only it denotes lack of character, but mistakes often end up incorporated to human habits. By acting this way, an individual loses his self-respect and his sense of character and dignity and becomes corrupted. What everyone should do, is to face up his mistakes and avoid new mistakes, by improving his sense of morals and values, with the help of his will-power. (537 words)
Q.3 (b) Make a précis of the following passage in about one-third of its length. Please do not suggest a title. 40 marks
People write and publish autobiographies and autobiographical sketches for a number of reasons. One of these reasons is to put on record the events of a famous or influential career. But not all autobiographies, not even the autobiographies most frequently and widely read, are by famous or extraordinary men. Another reason is to hand on to others, wisdom won through experience and hard labour. Yet many fine autobiographers seem to have little concern to teach or to persuade. A third reason is to distill from past experience events, persons, and situations which hold a firm place in memory, and to put true values on them. In this sense, autobiography is, as Somerset Maugham has said, a 'summing-up', and its first utility is to its author himself.
Whatever its purpose or the fame of the man who writes it, autobiography is a thing created out of the recollections of life. It is not life itself. Whether it be valuable or useless depends upon whether it is well- or ill- made. Good autobiographies can be mined from inconspicuous lives.
For autobiography is the inclusive and summary form of what we call `themes of experience'. It may contain reminiscences, descriptions of places, of animals, of people, the identification of characteristic preferences and prejudices, and other matters as well. It has the traits of all these minor forms.
An autobiography is objectively true, but is not indiscriminately inclusive. It presents a selection of detailed episodes with sufficient fullness to preserve their essential qualities. It is usually written within the framework defused by a consistent point of view. It presents its subject in more than two dimensions, fusing the person and his actions with setting, manner and purpose. One further trait of autobiographical writing raises a few special problems: by its nature autobiography tempts its author to proceed chronologically. The events sort themselves by the calendar, and it is a natural impulse of every autobiographer to begin with the words "I was born on …. "
Strict chronological arrangement poses a discipline of some force. It is by no means easy to "begin at the beginning, go until you come to the end, and then stop." Considerations other than the calendar have a way of forcing their way to notice. With due care, however, a chronological autobiography can be accomplished.
It is important to remember that chronology is not the only principle by which autobiography can be organized. Benjamin Franklin, whose procedure in his autobiography is basically chronological, does not hesitate to recognize the Philadelphia girl who laughed at him as the very one who subsequently became his wife. Joseph Conrad prefers the pattern of walking tour to that of the calendar, and his richly imaginative account is stored with pertinent associations of the past with the present and future. Often, to the autobiographer, it seems that life does not pass so much as it accumulates. Qualities emerge as identities independent of time. For this reason, we should not as we write feel compelled to maintain a steady rate of advance through the time marks of our stories. Like Hazlitt on his journey, we linger over a choice adventure or a valued friend, and then, if we choose, we skip a few years to catch up. (541 words)
Q4. (a) Use each of the following words to make sentences that bring out their meaning clearly. Do not change the form of the words, (No marks will be given for vague and ambiguous sentences.) 10marks
intransigence
susceptible
ubiquitous
venerable
Antonym (5m)
Conceited
Q4(b) Correct the following sentences without changing their meaning. Please do not make unnecessary changes in the original sentence. 10 marks
One must do what he thinks best.
He will surely not do that, did he ?
Can I leave the room now, Sir ?
My neighbour, along with two friends, were pushing his car which is stalled.
I thought to help him, but he did not welcome my suggestion.
When I was a child, I enjoyed to eat ice cream in the bench.
The Principal, along with the teachers, are planning to apply for a leave.
Do you have an idea who is that man ?
Unemployment as well as poverty influence the votes.
When I woke up, the man already disappeared after committing murder in the running train.
Q.5 Rewrite each of the following sentences as directed without changing the meaning (total 10 marks)
No one dares to criticize her for what she says. (Rewrite the sentence starting with 'No matter')
Radha was the eldest. She had to look after her parents. (Combine to form a single sentence)
She decorated the room. The purpose was to make it look beautiful. (Combine using 'so that')
"What a beautiful day !", said the young tourist. (Change the narration)
The one-man committee determined there was no need to take action.(Rewrite using passive structure)
The proud father remarked, "What a wonderful batsman my son is !" (Change into indirect speech)
My mother remarked, "Aren't the children lovely ?" (Change into indirect speech)
Cricket fans filled the streets during the World Cup. (Rewrite using passive structure)
It would be wonderful if we could go to Shimla. (Change into an exclamatory sentence using 'how')
I could have finished the work. But I would have had to go out early.(Combine into one sentence beginning with 'Had')
Q.6 Rewrite the following sentences using 'it' at the beginning of the sentence: 5marks
Impressing Ramesh Mohan would be a piece of cake.
Visiting old people in hospitals is a very good idea.
To smoke 20 cigarettes a day is bad for your health.
Chatting with strangers on the computer can be very dangerous.
My father says, keeping the computer on all day is a waste of electricity.
Q.7 Fill in the blanks using one of the following linkers : 1×5=5
(in case, but , even though, so, provided, as)
____ he was late for the meeting, his boss didn't get angry.
____ he was late for the meeting, his boss became angry.
I'll not get angry, ___ you are not late for the meeting.
I started early ____ I was still late for the meeting.
I'll give you her telephone number ___ you have problems finding her place.
Q.8 Fill in the blanks (5m)
My teacher said that I need to___ (practice, practise) more.
The hot weather ____ (affects, effects) people in different ways.
Wouldn't it be nice if we had to work only on _____ (alternative, alternate) days?
Our politicians are known to ____ (avoid, evade) taxes.
The Principal ____ (complimented, complemented) the students on their fine performance.
Tagged Tagged English Language
Analyze the nature of peasant movements during the nationalist phase and bring out their shortcomings.
Solution: Daily Practise Questions for History Optional Mains 2017 (Medieval India- 26 September)
Analyse the ordinances mentioned by Barani which Alauddin Khalji promulgated for market control.
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Wellston, Missouri facts for kids
Wellston, Missouri
Dr Martin Luther King Drive in Wellston
Location of Wellston, Missouri
Re-incorporated
2,487.1/sq mi (960.3/km2)
Wellston is a city in St. Louis County, Missouri, United States, along the northwest border of the city of St. Louis. The population was 2,313 at the 2010 census.
Industrial area in Wellston
Wellston was incorporated as a city in 1909; due to "government difficulties" the city was dissolved three years later, only to be reestablished in 1949. The city was named for Erastus Wells.
During the early 1900s, the Wagner Electric Company, a manufacturer of small motors for appliances and transformers, began development along Plymouth Avenue in Wellston, growing to occupy the entire block and providing 4,500 jobs during World War I. North of the Wagner site, ABEX Corporation built a steel foundry that began operation in 1923.
In 1982 ABEX moved out of its Wellston location; the next year, the Wagner Electric Company closed its doors. After closure, it took 22 years, and millions of dollars in tax credits and development grants, for the St. Louis County Economic Council to demolish five buildings and clean up 15 acres (6.1 ha) of the Wagner brownfield land along the MetroLink so that it could be made marketable as the Plymouth Industrial Park.
Wellston is located at 38°40′22″N 90°17′32″W / 38.67278°N 90.29222°W / 38.67278; -90.29222 (38.672851, -90.292237).
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 0.93 square miles (2.41 km2), all of it land.
Wellston has a few major roads within its boundaries, including Missouri Route 180, Missouri Route 340, and SR-D.
Wellston station is the main St. Louis MetroLink station for Wellston, featuring 243 park and ride spaces. It is located at 6402 Plymouth Avenue and serves an average of 1,569 passengers daily. Rock Road station is a MetroLink station on the edge of Wellston, featuring 183 park and ride spaces and averaging 2,408 passengers daily. Rock Road Station is located at 7019 St. Charles Rock Road, a major connecting highway between St. Louis City and northwest St. Louis County.
Wellston is one of the 10 poorest cities in Missouri.
As of the census of 2010, there were 2,313 people, 785 households, and 540 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,487.1 inhabitants per square mile (960.3/km2). There were 999 housing units at an average density of 1,074.2 per square mile (414.8/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 2.4% White, 95.4% African American, 0.1% Native American, 0.2% Asian, 0.1% from other races, and 1.7% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.4% of the population.
There were 785 households of which 47.8% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 14.6% were married couples living together, 47.5% had a female householder with no husband present, 6.6% had a male householder with no wife present, and 31.2% were non-families. 27.1% of all households were made up of individuals and 9.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.95 and the average family size was 3.62.
The median age in the city was 26.2 years. 37% of residents were under the age of 18; 11.4% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 23.6% were from 25 to 44; 19.6% were from 45 to 64; and 8.4% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 44.9% male and 55.1% female.
As of the census of 2000, there were 2,460 people, 779 households, and 578 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,732.6 people per square mile (1,055.3/km²). There were 961 housing units at an average density of 1,067.5 per square mile (412.3/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 92.07% African American, 6.30% White, 0.45% Native American, 0.16% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 0.37% from other races, and 0.61% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.06% of the population.
There were 779 households out of which 36.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 22.3% were married couples living together, 44.9% had a female householder with no husband present, and 25.7% were non-families. 23.6% of all households were made up of individuals and 9.5% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.08 and the average family size was 3.64.
In the city the population was spread out with 35.7% under the age of 18, 12.4% from 18 to 24, 23.8% from 25 to 44, 17.6% from 45 to 64, and 10.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 27 years. For every 100 females there were 82.8 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 75.3 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $18,596, and the median income for a family was $20,625. Males had a median income of $21,264 versus $18,917 for females. The per capita income for the city was $6,262. About 59.2% of families and 68.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 70.1% of those under age 18 and 78.6% of those age 65 or over.
Wellston, Missouri Facts for Kids. Kiddle Encyclopedia.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Kingston Economic Development Corporation Wins Gold Award for Excellence in Economic Development
Kingston, Ontario – October 6, 2021 – Kingston Economic Development Corporation won a Gold Rank for its Queen's Career Apprenticeship: Kingston, a project in the category of Partnerships with Educational Institutions from the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) 2021 Excellence in Economic Development Awards Program. The honour was announced on October 5, 2021 during the IEDC Annual Conference in Nashville, Tennessee.
"Addressing workforce challenges and retaining young talent in our community is critically important to Kingston's immediate and future needs. This unique program, which was piloted in Kingston has realized tremendous success with a value proposition equally important to the community as it is to students," says Donna Gillespie, CEO, Kingston Economic Development Corporation. "This award shows the importance of collaboration with post-secondary institutions to address gaps in the community."
"It has been amazing to see this program grow over the last three years and exciting to see other universities nationwide have adopted similar apprenticeship programs," says Dean Barbara Crow, Faculty of Arts and Science at Queen's University. "Experiential learning is a key piece of the university experience and has a direct impact on our students' ability to source jobs while benefitting the local economy by ensuring these Queen's students remain within the Kingston community."
"We have businesses that need talented people, and we have talented arts grads that need jobs, but there is a gap between those two things," notes Gillian Watters, Kingston Economic Development Corporation's Board Chair and Director of Programs at KEYS Employment Services. "This program provides a real career opportunity for arts graduates and helps with mentoring support and funding incentives. It's a win-win for employers and for graduates and a huge win for Kingston."
IEDC's Excellence in Economic Development Awards recognize the world's best economic development programs and partnerships, marketing materials, and the year's most influential leaders. 25 award categories honour organizations and individuals for their efforts in creating positive change in urban, suburban, and rural communities. Awards are judged by a diverse panel of economic and community developers, following a nomination process held earlier this year. IEDC received over 500 submissions from 4 countries.
"The winners of IEDC's Excellence in Economic Development awards represent the best of economic development and exemplify the leadership that our profession strives for every day," says 2021 IEDC Board Chair and Invest Buffalo Niagara, President, and CEO Tom Kucharski. "We're incredibly honored to recognize the outstanding organizations that received this year's Excellence Awards. This year, more than ever, has presented opportunities to innovate, impact, and progress the cities, neighborhoods, and communities around us. Each of this year's recipients represents the best of the economic development profession and exemplifies the ingenuity for fellow economic developers to aspire to in the years to come."
The Queen's Career Apprenticeship: Kingston program is a privately funded, one-year, salary paid, career apprenticeship that helps new graduates jumpstart their careers and gain experience while helping small business attract and retain highly skilled talent in Kingston. Arts graduates apply to local companies; companies receive four months of funding towards the graduate's salary and successful applicants have a guaranteed full-time job for at least one year.
"The Gold Rank award is affirmation of the successful partnership between Kingston Economic Development Corporation and Queen's University Faculty of Arts and Science. Leaders Donna Gillespie, CEO of Kingston Economic Development and Dean Crow focused on innovation and positive outcomes for their respective stakeholders. This award validates the critical importance of both full-time employment upon graduation for new graduates and communities attracting and retaining young talent," says Alan Rottenberg, Program Founder and Venture Capitalist.
Alan Rottenberg, an Ottawa-based philanthropist and venture capitalist, saw how hard it was for his sons and their friends to find an employer willing to invest in them as recent arts graduates. Rottenberg, an arts grad himself, decided to do something about it by piloting the program in Kingston in 2018. The program has seen great results for the employers that participated as well as the community. Since its inception, the program has launched over 40 careers in Kingston and has generated more than $2.5 million in payroll. Kingston is the first community to host a program like this, though today, eight other Canadian communities are taking notes and working with Rottenberg and his Canadian Career Apprenticeship Initiative.
"I started my career as an apprentice almost three years ago and it has been a tremendous opportunity for me to grow. This program is an incredible way understand the full impact of what arts students have to offer to Kingston employers," says Nour Mazloum, Communications & Events Officer, Kingston Economic Development Corporation. "We have world-class employers; we have some of the brightest minds graduating from Queen's. When we can put them together, great things happen in our community."
"'Where/how do I get experience if no one is willing to hire me?' is an all too familiar question," says Chandra Erickson, Experiential Learning Coordinator, Faculty of Arts and Science. "Most entry-level positions ask for experience creating a common hurdle for new graduates during their initial job search. This program bridges the gap, providing meaningful first work experience(s) and keeping our graduates in Kingston."
"We hired two excellent candidates over the past few years through the Queen's Career Apprenticeship: Kingston program. The program allows us to remain connected to the Queen's University community, while accessing an excellent group of candidates. The pool of candidates provided by program easily represent our strongest cohort of applicants and interviews each year. What we appreciate most about the program is the candidates' ability to select employers that suit their interests and career paths; encouraging a strong mutual fit from the hire date," says James Puffer, VP of Operations, Venture Club.
Kingston is the first Canadian city to win in this category and it is the first time that Kingston Economic Development has won an IEDC gold award.
Communications & Events Officer
mazloum@kingstoncanada.com


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Gustav Adolf Michaelis (9 July 1798 – 8 August 1848) was a German obstetrician who was a native of Kiel. He was the founder and establisher of the Michaelis' Rhomboid.

Biography

Education and Career
Gustav Adolf Michaelis was born on the 9th of July, 1798, to an obstetrician Gottfried Philipp Michaelis. Gustav's uncle Christian Rudolf Wiedemann also was an obstetrician, after Philipp's death in 1811 he raised his nephew. Gustav Michaelis graduated from Kiel medical school in 1820 and continued his medical studies in Paris. Among his teachers were Konrad Johann Martin Langenbeck (1776-1851) and obstetrician Friedrich Benjamin Osiander (1759-1822). In 1823 he returned to Kiel and served as an assistant to his uncle, who held the position of director at the city lying-in hospital.

In 1828 he married Julia Jahn, a musician. In 1829 she gave birth to daughter Emma, in 1835 son Adolf Michaelis was born. Later he would become a prominent archaeologist.

In 1836 Michaelis was promoted to a city chief physician. In 1841 he inherited  from his uncle the director's post at local maternity hospital. A year later he started reading lectures in local medical school, also established by Christian Rudolf Wiedemann.

Discoveries
Michaelis was a pioneer of scientific obstetrics, remembered for his work in the field of pelvimetry. He performed extensive research on difficulties associated with a "narrow pelvis" and its relationship to childbirth, of which he documented in a treatise called Das Enge Becken: Nach eigenen Beobachtungen und Untersuchungen. The book was published four years after his death by his successor Theodor Litzman. The rhombus of Michaelis, named after him, is a contour in the coccyx/sacrum region that is rhombus-shaped. Sometimes it is referred to as the "quadrilateral of Michaelis".

Michaelis had a wide range of interests, he studied archaeology and mathematics. In 1830 he published his work Über das Leuchten der Ostsee, where for the first time described the fluorescent microorganisms in the Baltic Sea.

Michaelis and Semmelweis
After being informed of Ignaz Semmelweis's theory of prophylaxis for prevention of puerperal fever, Michaelis was one of the first obstetricians to adopt the practice of compulsory chlorine handwashing. He later became severely depressed over the number of women (including a beloved niece) who had died from puerperal fever due to unsanitary obstetrical practices, and on 8 August 1848, Michaelis committed suicide in Lehrte, Germany.

Legacy

After his death, his position at Kiel was filled by Carl Conrad Theodor Litzmann (1815-1890). Today, the "Michaelis Midwifery School" at the University of Kiel is named in his honor.

References

Sources

Links
 Dorlands Medical Dictionary (definition of eponym)

1798 births
1848 deaths
German obstetricians
Physicians from Kiel
People from the Duchy of Holstein
Academic staff of the University of Kiel

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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For New Readers
constructions in magical thinking
Trigger Narratives and the Nuclear Option
April 10, 2012 By Tempo
We use the phrase nuclear option rather casually as an everyday metaphor for highly consequential, irreversible and consciously triggered decisions. But chances are, you've never actually considered how the actual nuclear option is managed. The turning of this one little key — the picture is of an an actual nuclear trigger — is easily the most analyzed decision in history. The design of the decision process around it is one of the greatest feats of narrative engineering every accomplished. That the trigger has (knock on wood) not been pulled since World War II is an engineering accomplishment comparable to the Moon landing.
The nuclear option is the most extreme example of a special kind of decision narrative that I call a trigger narrative: one built around a major decision requires an explicit triggering action after all the preparation is done: things like proposing marriage, submitting a manuscript to an editor or issuing a press release. Not all major decisions are framed by trigger narratives, but for those that are, the nuclear trigger narrative has much to teach.
In Tempo I focused on narrative-driven decision-making: managing the stream of individually inconsequential, but cumulatively consequential and irreversible, decisions that make up our lives. In this stream, true "fork in the road" trigger moments are actually quite rare.
But where a trigger does exist, the challenge is to script a narrative around it that reduces it to the equivalent of a coin toss. An absolutely pure decision-fork where all relevant information has already been factored in as intelligently as possible, leaving you with only a stark leap of faith into an unknown-unknown future. When the moment comes, there should be no more arguments left to debate. No cost-benefit calculations left to make, no probabilities left to estimate. No personality issues or psychological factors left to consider. No moral or ethical issues left to ponder. Just you, a trigger and a future where the unknowable consequences are the most important ones.
So let's talk about trigger narratives in terms of the building blocks of narrative-driven decision-making: archetypes, doctrines, tempo, key climactic events and so forth. I'll be focusing specifically on the American trigger narrative during the Cold War.
Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick
Perhaps the single most important factor in the design of a trigger narrative is to model the main decision-maker with an appropriate archetype. Truly consequential decisions cannot be trusted to a wildcard personality. Trigger narratives have to be designed around a specific assumed personality (or related range of personalities, from hawk to dove in this case). When multiple people occupy the role of the decision-maker over time, they must conform to that archetype as closely as possible even if it goes against their grain. What's more, those affected by the consequences of the trigger being pulled — the Soviets in the case of the Cold War trigger — must believe in the archetype. This point has rarely been emphasized in nuclear deterrence theory: credible deterrence includes credible central archetypes.
A remarkable feature of the American nuclear trigger narrative is how contrary the central archetype is to common perceptions of Americans: loud, boastful, impatient and ready-fire-aim citizens of a violent country.
Yet, when it comes to nuclear posture, the trigger-pulling archetype that the world has come to believe is best described by Teddy Roosevelt's uncharacteristically subtle dictum: to rule the world, one must speak softly and carry a big stick.
This archetype is evident in the nuclear decision process, and is expressed by the two critical pieces: the President who officially pulls the trigger, and the rest of the nuclear launch infrastructure, with its human and mechanical moving parts, which constitutes the gun. The President speaks softly, the nuclear infrastructure is the Big Stick.
I have been to over a dozen Air and Space museums in the US, and they are usually not shy about loudly proclaiming their presence. You'd never mistake the Smithsonian Udvar-Hazy Museum, the museum at Wright-Patterson AFB or even the Strategic Air and Space museum near Omaha for anything other than what they are: huge, impressive buildings containing huge, impressive war machines. If you randomly drove by, you'd definitely notice them. They are all distinctly American in character.
The Minuteman Missile National Historic Site outside of Rapid City, South Dakota (very near the historic trigger-happy Wild West town of Deadwood) is very different. If you don't know to look for it, and understand what you are looking at, as you drive by on I-90, you are likely to miss it entirely.
In fact, even to get there, you have to drive to an isolated gas station at the entrance to the Badlands National Park, just off Exit 31 on I-90, and get yourself a ticket (free) from the small, squat ugly building next to the convenience store. The gas station has no street address. It's easiest to get to by plugging in actual coordinates into your GPS (43.833571,-101.900441). If it weren't for the modest sign, you'd have no idea what it was.
Once you get your ticket, you drive back up the highway, take an exit, trundle down a dirt road and come to a flimsy chain link fence.
This is the Delta 01 Launch Control Facility (LCF). The location was never a secret, but it wasn't exactly loudly publicized either. The Soviets knew where American silos were, and vice-versa. In fact, during the Cold War, many missiles were targeted at enemy silos rather than population centers.
I'll get to what's inside in a minute, but let's take a quick look at the the actual big stick. When active, D-01 was the LCF for a squadron of Minuteman II missiles scattered all over South Dakota. One of these — Launch Facility Delta 09 — is another inconspicuous fenced-in compound off a few exits away. The site has no staff, just a sheaf of brochures by the gate and a number to call for a self-guided cellphone audio tour.
The compound is so chillingly understated, it feels surreal. All around it you can see the vast American prairies, with cows and horses dotting the landscape. Nothing else.
And then you go in and look inside the glass-encased silo (I suppose the hatch was all-metal when it was operational). This Minuteman II carried a W-56 warhead, of about 1.2 megatons. Or about a 100 times the size of the Hiroshima bomb (war history buffs, please correct me if I am wrong about the specifics).
The Doctrine of Brinkamnship
A classic idea in nuclear geopolitics is known as brinkmanship, a term coined by John Foster Dulles and perhaps best explained by Thomas Schelling, author of the Cold War classic Arms and Influence.
Brinkmanship is about presenting an opponent with a system designed to go out of control in predictable ways, with the opponent being responsible for the actions that cause the loss of control.
If that sounds irresponsible in the context of nuclear weapons, you haven't thought it through. When practiced by irresponsible individuals like Kim Jong Il or Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, it is definitely irresponsible. But when you are dealing with (relatively) responsible democracies where the trigger finger is attached to a rational archetype like a speak-softly-and-carry-a-big-stick President, the only responsible way to use the nuclear option at all is via brinkmanship. Otherwise you might as well retire the weapons.
One way to understand it as follows: pulling the nuclear trigger is always a crazy decision, and if you want somebody to be influenced by the thought that you might actually make that crazy decision, he has to believe that the system is capable of getting to crazy, and that he has ways to prevent it.
Signalling Crazy
When a decision is as consequential as unleashing a 1.2 megaton/100 Hiroshima level of destruction, a visibly sane person threatening to use a 0/1 switch is useless. Your opponent will either believe you'll never pull it, or believe you absolutely will and strike pre-emptively. One of the most brilliant elements of the nuclear trigger narrative was to make the central archetype believably decisive and rational ("speak softly/big stick"), but to make the process capable of gathering runaway irrational momentum.
If you ever suspected that the Hollywood version — ominous sirens, flashing lights, tense standoffs between hawks and doves, and stern people announcing "We're at DEFCON 5" — was an exaggeration, think again. If anything, that's something of an understatement. My guide — an actual retired trigger-finger officer — told me that there were not just the DEFCON levels, there was also a set of numbered Defense Posture levels from 1-9.
That graded series of threat assessment levels and posture levels are essentially about signalling levels of crazy that must be believed by both the people within the decision narrative and the people outside it.
Stand-up comics sometimes make jokes that make them look clueless to better-informed people. I recently heard one such comic joke about the threat-level color-coding used by the Department of Homeland Security since 9/11: all that Orange/Yellow stuff. His joke, what's the point of those colors? What are we supposed to do differently? Ha ha.
That's a perfect example of clueless humor from someone who does not really understand narrative-driven decision-making. The color coding from cooler to warmer colors serves simply to put you increasingly on edge, changing the tempo of the environment by modulating emotion. The DHS model is the doctrine of brinkmanship applied to deploying the citizenry against embedded terrorists. Faced with an unconventional terror threat, the White House needs a mechanism by which to rile up the citizenry all the way to the brink of panic, without sending it off the edge.
The nuclear trigger was designed similarly for the Cold War context. It is unique in that it is practically designed such that the only person who can cause it to be pulled is the enemy. The human archetypes are mostly presented as sane. It is the system that can build up to crazy. As threat levels escalate and the posture gets increasingly aggressive, the probability of a single random event — like the captain of a front-line combat vessel firing at an enemy — snowballing into a pulling of the nuclear trigger should increase. In system-theoretic terms, the system gets closer to criticality. It's pulse races, the systemic fight-flight response gathers momentum.
You've probably heard of the little 13th century ditty, for want of a nail, the kingdom was lost. Managing the nuclear trigger is all about having an opponent believe that the nail-to-kingdom path of destruction can be traversed very fast, and that his actions affect the probability that it will happen.
Crazy Breaking Out
A central idea in Tempo is that systems and processes (or more generally what I call fields and flows) are externalized mental models. One useful way to build a coarse, top-level model of a field-flow complex is to project an archetype onto it. Only one nation in the world has actually seen this lunatic unleashed: Japan. And one of their creative responses was the Godzilla character. Godzilla is the perfect impressionistic model of the nuclear-launch process.
The nuclear weapons infrastructure is the externalization of a single powerful mental model: keep Godzilla from breaking out. Or more precisely, make it so the only way Godzilla can break out is if the opponent chooses to break him out, and design the system to make that easier and easier as a situation escalates.
This is not inconsistent with the Big Stick metaphor. Godzilla is what you get when the Big Stick takes on a life of its own.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were exceptional in ways besides being the first and only nuclear bombings. They also lacked proper trigger narratives. This is one reason why, even though the US was arguably the moral victor in the Pacific theater in World War II, we still feel some ambivalence about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They were the biggest sucker punches in history.
Deep down we realize they were not "fair" uses of nuclear weapons. The US was not really to blame. It took a couple more decades for the surreal idea of "fair" nuclear conflict to even get defined in terms of mature trigger narratives. It is hard to imagine a "fair" counterfactual for Hiroshima– perhaps the US could have removed the veil of secrecy around the Manhattan project late in the game and heavily publicized the last test explosions, signalling the start of brinkmanship; but it is unclear whether the Japanese military establishment would have known their lines in that script. You cannot dance if your partner does not know the moves.
Given that the nuclear trigger is basically pulled by a sane archetype within a narrative designed to build up to crazy, you can think of the design of systems and processes — or fields and flows — as the design of a mental asylum designed to keep a crazy systemic process in check, but not too in check. The opponent has to believe that Godzilla can escape and that he is part of the system of protections designed to keep that from happening.
Ask yourself this: when you think of nuclear weapons installations, what is your worst-case scenario? Terrorists breaking in and stealing the weapons? Enemy spies breaking in and sabotaging things, or merely stealing secrets of how the system runs?
The first scenario is not actually a very realistic one in America, but it is in other parts of the world. It would be far too complicated for a terrorist organization to actually break into a silo and get a warhead out of a live missile and escape with it.
You can call this class of scenarios, "crazy breaking in." It is actually not that important.
The important class of scenarios is actually the other kind: "crazy breaking out." These are the scenarios for which the system was originally designed. So you need slippery-slope controls.
Slippery Slope Controls
Once you understand that the system is design to keep crazy in, but make it easier for the enemy to cause it to break out as a situation escalates, you look at its elements in a completely different way.
Here's a picture of the control panel showing various stages in the launch sequence.
The apparent purpose — to prevent accidental launches or other dangerous errors — is actually secondary. The main purpose is to provide a calibrated series of steps to aid maneuvering on the brink. If that seems schizophrenic, it's because it is.
There are (or rather, were, since this is the 1960s vintage process) multiple safety mechanisms. Launch commands had to be okayed by two geographically separated locations. There was a carefully scripted exchange of multiple encrypted messages to convey mission profile, targeting information and launch authorization. With each move, the system could be moved closer to the brink. Each side could read external signals showing how the other was moving towards or away from the brink.
When everything was ready, the two officers in the launch pod had to simultaneously turn their keys, within a few seconds of each other. The pod was designed so that if a rogue officer attempted to turn his key and then leap across the room to turn the other key, the other officer would have enough time to fight him. "Design for crazy breaking out" was evident even in the last step.
There are many other fascinating details involved in the launch process, and I am tempted to put in and comment on all the pictures I took during my visit, but I'll stop here.
The basic point is this: the launch process is a nested set of Godzilla cages, which are unlocked one at a time.
The Trigger Narrative
If you try to frame the nuclear launch narrative using the Double Freytag model from the book, you can view the exploratory phase as the escalation of tension into the nuclear range. The cheap trick moment is the point at which the nuclear option is seriously contemplated. The sense-making part is the arraying of forces in preparation for brinkmanship rather than conventional warfare.
Then you have the tense valley, where nothing much happens, but tension increases. Surreal-normalcy descends, as everybody gets used to being in operational readiness around a nuclear decision.
And then, a threshold is crossed and steady escalation and active brinkmanship commences. When all stages have been passed, it's down to the President making one last decision. Two keys turn, and Godzilla steps out of his cage.
Nuclear Postures and Doctrines
Cold War nuclear posture and doctrine was entirely designed around a symmetric situation where both sides adopted similar rules for the game, with a certain level of assumed mutual visibility of brink-maneuvering. The result, paradoxically, was four decades of tense peace, a detente. The trigger narratives were so effectively designed that things got to the brink only once.
The US Cold War nuclear posture derived directly from the Truman doctrine. The latter was a political rather than a military doctrine, but the nuclear option is essentially a political option, not a military one. The military doctrine was mostly a set of corollaries (involving ideas that derived from the basic containment model in the Truman doctrine, which I don't have room to get into).
It is the only trigger so consequential that by default only the President, as Commander-in-Chief, can pull it. There is no delegation. There is no definition of a broad set of rules of engagement that allow others to pull the trigger at their discretion.
Nuclear Postures for post-Cold War Scenarios
The description in this post is mostly of historical interest. Cold War era nuclear postures and doctrines are increasingly obsolete today. They do not make sense in the cases of Iran or North Korea. They are not good frameworks to apply to a potential India-Pakistan nuclear conflict. Or even US-China for that matter.
The proliferation of smaller "tactical" nuclear weapons has also muddied a trigger narrative that is fundamental about strategic use by politicians (in the conventional military sense, not in my sense of the terms in Tempo). In a way, tactical nuclear weapons designed for contained damage are scarier than the big strategic warheads. There is a chance that they will some day be deployed for purely military reasons (such as bunker busting), but the result will be that a key psychological barrier will have been crossed, and the idea of nuclear weapons will start to seem dangerously normal. The whole world will edge a little closer to doomsday if that ever happens.
That said, we can still learn a great deal from the original example. What archetypes should the President conform to in the new era of unconventional warfare situations? Does "speak softly and carry a big stick" still work for unconventional threats? Is "caged Godzilla" a good perception to project to Al Qaeda or Iran? Is it even possible to script a trigger narrative that will work at all, or are the weapons obsolete because the narrative engineering is beyond us? What sort of "Islamic nuclear trigger narrative" is evolving in Pakistan and Iran?
We don't really know. All indications are that these ideas haven't been seriously updated in 30 years. I am sure the modern launch control centers are full of snazzy computers and advanced electronics, and look very different from D-01. I bet tons of intelligence is streaming into wall-sized situation room dashboard screens. But I am not convinced the narratives have been updated at all. I suspect the same old frames from the Dr. Strangelove era — mutually assured destruction, second-strike capability, launch detection, brinkmanship — are being clumsily applied to new situations. As a species, we have a great capacity for allowing technological advances and gloss fool us into believing that our thinking has evolved.
And so our demons slumber on.
I'll stop here for now. One of these days, I'll blog about other, less consequential trigger narratives, such as marriage, divorce, accepting and quitting jobs, moving to a new city or country, and so forth. For now, I'll leave you to ponder the surreal insanity that still lurks beneath the surface of our world.
I originally had a much lengthier and more ambitious take on nuclear trigger narratives in the works, but since I haven't had time to research this as deeply as I'd have liked, I've flushed this post out in a preliminary form. If there is interest, I'll develop these ideas more carefully.
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Harlan says
If you've got 2 1/2 hours to spare for a related topic, I highly recommend this Hardcore History podcast on the decision to drop the WWII bombs, and how we as a species got to that point: http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive/Show-42—(BLITZ)-Logical-Insanity/Second%20World%20War-World%20War%20Two-World%20War%20One
J. Scott Shipman says
Hi Venkatesh,
Thanks for sharing this. I was part of the crazy machine in the 80's/early 90's on the navy's submerged launched ballistic missile program. You are correct in your assessment of the highly orchestrated and regimented methods used to employ crazy—it was actually a little more detailed for the navy, if memory serves. I was the guy who served up the weapons for my Weapons Officer standing behind me, holding the literal trigger (we still use this, btw).
If you haven't seen this, I'll share here and at FB:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27039
This provides a very good policy history of US Strategic Nuclear Policy—I watched it twice last year and plan to watch again when time permits.
Also, I need to read TEMPO—and bought a copy last year. My Boyd inspired book is nearing completion and is only about 8 months past the original due date.
Very good post, and once again, thanks for sharing!
Extremely interesting post and a topic I hope you expand upon soon.
Bill Seitz says
Looking forward to more-personal-life-oriented exploration of this idea, as this seems like an awfully nasty example: HighRisk, ZeroSum.
tubelite says
Reminded me of another "signalling crazy" post by John Hempton:
http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2011/11/buy-ben-bernanke-marijuana-pipe-and.html
"To get inflation you need to damage the Federal Reserve's credibility. You need the Federal Reserve to make a credible promise to be reckless.
And Ben Bernanke – despite the helicopter speech in which he outlined this view of the world very clearly – is not your man. Maybe it is the facial hair – but he looks – well just too responsible."
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MS Subbulakshmi was one of the greatest carnatic singers of all time.
On October 23, 1966, she sang Maithreem Bhajata at the United Nations in New York City.
My grandparents were in the audience.
My mother used to sing the song to me as a child and I loved it for its musicality. When I learned the meaning, I loved it even more.
The key message, of the song is "Sreyo Bhooyaath Sakala Janaanaam" which translates to "Let all the people live with bliss".
And that is my wish for 2014.
Let all the people live with bliss.


It's 1935 and Desdemona Hart Spaulding's life is far from what she anticipated after years spent studying art in Boston and Paris. Instead of the bright future she imagined of working as a painter in New York, Dez finds herself locked in a marriage of convenience to a kind but passionless pharmacist in the small town of Cascade, Massachusetts; a commitment made entirely for the sake of her dying father and his beloved Shakespeare theater. As Cascade becomes the potential location for a new reservoir to serve the city of Boston, all of the things Dez has put aside her dreams to work for become threatened, including the Shakespeare theater she vowed to someday reopen. She and the rest of the impassioned townspeople are determined to save Cascade, but when Dez begins to fall in love with Jewish peddler Jacob Solomon, a New York-bound artist just as she aspired to be, she finds out what happens when our heart and morality are stretched in two different directions.


I have been a graphic designer for almost 10 years creating graphics for video games, websites, print work and general illustrations. Game graphics are both a hobby and a passion of mine, and I enjoy seeing the game art of others and creating sprites and characters in my own style.
I have created game art for almost 100 games and you can see a few pieces of my work in the portfolio section. This is only a small selection as some projects are 'classified' others are unfinished and some are done as a 'secret 3rd party'.
For some of the more general game graphics I have created an online store that sells editable vector files ready to use in your game. Every month i learn a little more and since its inception I have added EPS files, then sprite sheets and now I am looking at adding SVG files to future products.
I get this question a lot and to answer, I do accept custom work and I would be happy to quote on your requirements. I am cheap (compared to most) and I am 'usually' pretty quick. My downside is the fact I have two small girls so I can be called away at a moment's notice (i like to be a good dad) so be prepared.
All of the above is very useful to know and although you might be hesitant to give a budget, it really does help as it saves time quoting and waiting for a quote.
I am no Don Bluth or Walt Disney but I can also animate as well. I am not professionally trained in it but I do my best.


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Just Your Everyday Apocalypse by Amelia Walker REVIEW
Nov 29, 2018 Feb 19, 2019 by poetryfiend
Okay, I must admit, this is probably the first contemporary Australian poetry book that I have properly read in a while. And yes I thoroughly enjoyed it and I must thank Amelia for giving me a copy. As always, I have selected 8 poems (which are in no particular order) from Just Your Everyday Apocalypse and provided my own interpretation/analysis for each of them.
1. In Translation
In Translation is packed with metaphors and tells the story of hand-me-downs and thrifted clothing. Walker describes how despite numerous washes, the "fabric" is "flavoured" with "moments that are not [hers]" but of previous owners of the clothing. I really admire her use of alliteration when explaining that thrifted clothing is "a million mixed meanings" open to "minefields of misinterpretation." It really makes you think about the previous owners of thrifted clothing, what they went through whilst wearing those clothes and the experiences they had. How rips or stains came to be? The mismatching of colours and the intricate stitch work? What era the clothing was from?
2. Beautiful
Short, simple and sweet. Dedicated to all the mothers out there with odd quirks and carefree attitudes. They might have a "crooked smile" and "varicose veins" but they are still "beautiful" nonetheless.
3. Walls
A poem that highlights some of the atrocities faced by female detainees, mainly focusing on the story of Cornelia Rau. Walker illustrates the horrid conditions these female detainees undergo as they are trapped in "windowless" rooms and must "sh*t" for an "audience of male guards." She also describes the debilitating impact, life in a detention centre can have on an individual as after leaving and now "safe", the former detainee is still unable to "let go of the teddy bear she clutched all those dark months." Walls ends in a startling fashion as Walker describes that even though the woman has left the detention centre, she is unable to escape the "walls" of society as they have "none."
A direct and brutally honest overview of different life pathways our friends, family and strangers have taken. Pretty self-explanatory.
5. City, Lover, Self
I believe we can all relate to City, Lover, Self regardless of whether you live in Australia or not because we all have places that are like home to us. Walker demonstrates the connection she has with Adelaide, through her use of personification, as she describes she is "intimate" with the "rhythm" of Adelaide's "soft tissue organs" and "strange scarred body." By using figurative language, she depicts how each instant details a specific memory of "things that have been or could have been" as "every shop glass shines with the ghost of some moment."
6. Submerging
A point that's inevitable and you'll face sooner or later unless you're extremely lucky. Submerging, as the name suggests, describes the feeling of losing your sense of self. In Walker's experience, it happened to her "slowly" as she was already "neck deep before [she] realised." She uses metaphors to describe the symptoms of losing one's self as she begins "rejecting sun and air" and finds it "hard to breathe" as "glass" is "encasing [her] head." The line that resonates with me the most is how Walker emphasises how people "who were close" to her feel as if they're "a million miles away" as she struggles to "follow conversations." However, the last stanza is somewhat comforting as she is consoled by Circe, the Greek goddess of magic, who now "holds her hand" as her harsh exterior starts to melt away.
7. Astrocytoma
Poignant and beautifully written. Walker details the experience of a loved one discovering they have astrocytoma (cancer of the brain) and how despite the crippling nature of the disease they still manage to stay "composed" as "science slice [their] skull into squished butterfly segments." Here, Walker uses alliteration to explicitly portray the life of this cancer-ridden individual. I also particularly love her use of a Stephen Hawking quote.
"If you jump into a black hole, your mass energy will be returned to our universe, but in a mangled form which contains the information about what you were like but in an unrecognisable state." (Stephen Hawking, 2004)
I believe this quote serves as a reminder to us all that regardless of the immensity of our problems/issues, they will always be insignificant and eventually be forgotten and "unrecognisable."
The last lines of Astrocytoma despite being quite grim are also somewhat consoling as we find out that this diseased individual is relieved of their suffering as their "six year migraine" is finally "over."
8. Tequila
I just love how cleverly put together this poem is. Walker organises it into three parts and as you guessed it, it starts off with Part One: SALT, then Part Two: TEQUILA and lastly Part Three: LEMON.
Part One: SALT describes the various uses of salt and allows us to contemplate the nature of salt as it is used to "sanctify" in Japanese Shinto culture but also deemed "unhealthy" and "indulgent" in Western culture.
The last lines lead nicely into Part Two: Tequila as salt "addiction" causes "thirst."
I feel Part Two: Tequila describes the intoxicating and blinding effects of alcohol but also, its power to provide us with temporary ecstasy. Walker's decision to provide a short story of the discovery of Tequila really enhances this poem.
Part Three: LEMON delves into a fond memory of Walker "picking lemons" with her grandmother as a young child. She describes through her use of personification that her closest feeling of being drunk at that age is when she swims in "scents of citrus and cinnamon."
I particularly love the last stanza which I feel is pretty self-explanatory.
If you liked this review, I would love to hear from you.
Also, if you're interested in purchasing Just Your Everyday Apocalypse you can do so by emailing poetryisdangerous@gmail.com , FYI it's only $10 a copy!
ameliawalkeraustraliajustyoureverydayapocalypsepoetryReviewsslam poetryspokenword
Local Focus w/ the Showpony Crew [INTERVIEW]
Mariah Carey's New Album"Caution" is All You Want this Christmas!
@poetryyfiendd
I'll be honest it took me a moment but yes I'm with you on this one @justdontecollins. All our voices, povs and demographics are important!! You might not understand an artist's work and dismiss it but someone else might, sometimes it is FUBU. I'm sorry #stephenking but you're wrong on this one.
Gone for a minute but I'm back kinda. Posted this on my personal a while back before I made this account but never here, so here it is. Also, I can't remember who said this but PSA 'materialism ain't love!'
In light of the bushfires happening across our country and the many lives that have been lost and the homes and structures that have been destroyed and the lack of empathy and ignorance displayed by the Liberal government, I find this poem by #rabindranathtagore even more relevant today! I pray that our government (namely #scomo) , realises that we must have minds that are 'led forward... into ever widening' and not lost by 'dead habit' before it's too late (if it isn't already). #australianbushfires #bushfiresaustralia #climateemergency #climatechangeisreal
Resolutions for anytime especially NOW thanks to @alokvmenon 🌱
Never thought I'd post anything like this because I feared being judged. And you were the only one I'd ever properly rapped to but now man you're right. Fearing judgement, it's gonna hold ya back. This one's for you Nikhil! 💚 (link to full video in bio) #theworst #cover #jheneaiko


The Rock Islands of Palau, also called Chelbacheb, are a small collection of limestone or coral uprises, ancient relics of coral reefs that violently surfaced to form Islands in Palau's Southern Lagoon, between Koror and Peleliu, and are now an incorporated part of Koror State.
There are between 250 to 300 islands in the group according to different sources, with an aggregate area of 47 square kilometres (18 sq mi) and a height up to 207 metres (679 ft). They are a World Heritage Site since 2012.
The islands are for the most part uninhabited and are famous for their beaches, blue lagoons and the peculiar umbrella-like shapes of many of the islands themselves.
Many of the islands' display a mushroom-like shape with a smaller base at the intertidal notch than what lies above it.
The Milky Way lagoon in Palau is one of the most attractive tourist spot in the region of the rock island. It is said that Milky Way's mud is very effective for esthetic (Spa) purpose.
Its effect has not yet been scientific proven, but people in and going to Palau has applied mud to their skin and claim that you will lose five years of your age. Well, it doesn't matter if the outcome result is true or not because the experience alone is worth going for.
Jelly fish is one of the unique and popular snorkeling spot in Palau. It begins at the Mecharchar Island dock, then a semi-difficult hike to the a floating dock entry at the lake edge where snorkelers ease into the brackish warm water and swim to the middle of the lake. At the middle, you will then be enjoying swimming with countless number of Golden Mastigias Jellies.
Posted in UncategorizedTagged asia, beach, oceania, palau, photography, rock, rock islands, The Rock Islands, travelBookmark the permalink.
Gorgeous 🙂 book me in!
What a beautiful place, Ani!
All shades of blue and green, I am sure you would have had an amazing time there.
Thanks a lot for sharing these great images from a remote corner of the planet.


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Home Top Stories Inside Edge Season 3 : New Release Date, Cast, and All Other...
Inside Edge Season 3 : New Release Date, Cast, and All Other Details
Rupal Joshi
Thursday, 10 December 2020, 06:40 EST
Inside Edge Season 3, Inside Edge, was made by Karan Anshuman and appeared on July 10, 2017. Its next season was conveyed the prior year on December 6. Both the seasons included ten scenes each. Moreover, every stage is 40 minutes long.
Amazon firsts had conveyed its first Hindi combination in 2017. Moreover, it was, believe it or not, Inside Edge. As of now, fans are holding on for the appearance of its third season. So here are commonly late updates about next season.
Delivery Date of Inside Edge season 3
The Cast of Inside edge season 3
The Plot of inside edge season 3
There is no official assertion concerning when the third season will convey on Amazon prime video. The show was reestablished for the third season during the dispatch of season 2. We expect Inside edge season 3 to be given some spot around mid-2021.
The cast of the plan is the establishment of the show. Additionally, various performers in the third season will rehash their parts from the previous two seasons. Vivek Oberoi accepts the capacity of Vikrant Dhawan. Vikrant Dhawan is the owner of games the heads board. Richa Chadha is seen as Zarina Malik. She is one of the owners of Mumbai dissenters.
Aamir Bashir, as Yashvardhan Patil, is portrayed as the head of the Indian cricket board. Sayani Gupta is seen as the focal analyst of the Mumbai dissident and is named Rohini Raghavan. Sapna Pabbi and Angad Bedi are moreover featured. Further, Karan Anshuman is needed to return in the third season. Similarly, Kanishk Varma may be introduced.
Within Edge is a web TV course of action subject to Indian games. Mumbai Mavericks is a recounted T20 cricket team and the system of action bases on the same. In the last scene of season 2.
We saw that Mumbai Mavericks is restricted for a very long time due to its commitment to facilitating fixing. Consequently, the third season is needed to continue from here, and we will see what will happen in the Power Play union after the blacklist of Mumbai Mavericks.
Inside Edge Season 3 cast
Inside Edge Season 3 plot
Inside Edge Season 3 release date
Inside Edge Season 3 story
Inside Edge Season 3 trailer


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>Tuition & Payment
>Tuition Refunds
>Refund Appeals
Refund Appeals
Tuition Refund Appeal Procedure
I. Authority for Procedure
This procedure is established pursuant to Virginia Code Section §23-9.2:3.7 C, SCHEV Guidelines, and VCCS Policy Manual Section 4.3.2.3. The Vice President of Finance and Administration at Blue Ridge Community College has been delegated authority to consider requests for and, if appropriate, approve appeals for refunds after the last published date for refunds. Such tuition refunds, if approved, will also include the refund of Auxiliary Service and Student Activity fees.
II. Submitting a Request
Tuition refund appeals are accepted by the Vice President of Finance and Administration during normal hours of operation, by email, or by USPS mail. Return notification to the requester of the approval/declining of an appeal normally occurs by mail within one week. Blue Ridge Community College will promptly refund tuition and/or cancel a financial charge from a student's account provided the student meets the requirements outlined below.
Withdrawal from classes – Refund appeal requests will not be considered unless the student has officially withdrawn from the class(es). The Vice President of Finance and Administration does not have the authority to change a grade awarded by an instructor. If a student has a grade other than a "W", the student must first contact the instructor and/or the academic dean to determine whether or not the student is eligible to have the grade in question changed to a "W". If the change is granted, tuition appeals may then be submitted to the Vice President's office.
All tuition refund appeals must be in writing and submitted with written supporting documentation to the Vice President's office within six months from the beginning of the semester for which the charge was incurred.
Refunds may be granted for the reasons listed below, and will do so, as long as the appropriate written supporting documentation is provided:
Major medical emergency - An extended illness or major medical emergency occurring during the semester in which you are registered which requires hospitalization, is life-threatening, or is contagious and is a danger to the remainder of the college community.
Documentation will be by a physician's statement on the doctor's official letterhead (copies of the student's medical records will not be accepted). This must be an unscheduled medical emergency diagnosed after the last day to drop for tuition refund.
The physician's letter must include the date the student was first seen for the medical condition, as well as the beginning and ending date the student was incapacitated or hospitalized and must state that the student was physically unable to attend classes during this period of time (which caused the student to miss 20 percent or more of the scheduled instruction).
A letter that does not specifically state, "the student was physically unable to attend classes" will not be grounds to approve an appeal.
Pre-existing conditions are not justifiable.
Extreme financial hardship – involving the sudden, unforeseen loss of an extreme nature. An example of such an extreme hardship would be that caused by the loss of the student's owned home through fire or flood.
Death of a student's immediate family member - with certification. A student's immediate family is defined as father, mother, spouse, sibling, or the student's child.
Administrative errors by BRCC personnel -- The appeal for refund in these instances must be initiated through, and with the concurrence of, the BRCC employee providing you the advice and counsel.
Military students – involving a military student whose service in the uniformed services requires their sudden withdrawal or prolonged absence from their enrollment. For purposes of this section, military Service in the uniformed services is defined as service (whether voluntary or involuntary) on active duty in the Armed Forces, including such service by a member of the National Guard or Reserve, when mobilized or deployed for a period of more than 30 days under call or order to active duty of more than 30 days.
Dependents of military members may also be given consideration under this policy. Dependents are defined as any civilian qualifying as a military dependent under 37 USC 401 currently or as otherwise amended.
At the option of the military student, such refunds may be retained by the college and be applicable to tuition and fees charged in the semester or term in which the student returns to study.
These restrictions are established by Policy 4.3.2.3 of the Virginia Community College System.
III. Appeal Denial - Tuition refund appeals will not be approved in the following instances:
Personal errors in judgment or irresponsibility involving transportation, availability of finances, academic ability, time management.
Misinterpretation of college policies and procedures as published in the BRCC Catalog, BRCC Student Hand book, BRCC Schedule of Classes or the BRCC webpage.
Lack of knowledge of college policies and procedures as published in the BRCC Catalog, BRCC Student Hand book, the BRCC Schedule of Classes or the BRCC webpage.
Dissatisfaction with course content. Issues concerning academic instruction must be addressed with the appropriate academic dean.
Dissatisfaction with academic progress in course.
Non-attendance or minimal attendance of class.
Inadequate investigation of course requirements prior to registration and attendance.
Non-qualification, late application, or loss of eligibility for financial aid or scholarships.
Non-receipt of mail due to obsolete address on file with the Enrollment Services Office.
Notification of domicile status after the refund period.
Changes of, or personal conflicts with, the instructor of record.
Student errors resulting in the delay of administrative processes relative to registration or the delivery of financial aid funds.
Voluntary/involuntary acceptance of employment or other activity impacting ability to attend class (i.e., lack of child care; work schedule/hours/location changed; vacation).
Incarceration in a civilian or military facility.
IV. Further Appeals
Determination - The Vice President of Finance and Administration is responsible for making the refund appeal decision. The decisions shall be based on information provided on the "Appeal for Tuition Refund for a Class Dropped After the Published Last Date for Refund", supporting documents, and/or any additional supporting provided by college faculty or staff. The Vice President shall follow Virginia Community College Policy in making determinations of eligibility for refund. The determination made by Vice President shall be in writing.
Further Appeal - The decision of the Vice President of Finance and Administration is final and not subject to further appeal.
Approved by Dr. John A. Downey, President
Revised 10/29/13
Refund Appeal Form
Tuition Refund Appeal Form - PDF (requires Acrobat Reader)
QuickPAY®
Fin Aid Payments
Cashier:
Houff Student Center
Window Hours:
M-F: 8:30 am-5:00 pm
24/7 Support:
studentfinancialsvcs@brcc.edu


How does a pear get to the brain?
Does Lust Make Us Stupid?
From parrots to dolphins: how are humans different from animals?
The Polytech Festival of science, art, and technologies is a large-scale popular science educational weekend organized by the Polytechnic Museum for adults and children. In 2017, the outdoor Festival brought together about 100 000 visitors under the open sky. On May 19-20, 2018 the Festival will be held for the fifth time and for the second time in Gorky Park.
This year the main theme of the Festival is Energy. We use energy to describe everything that happens in the Universe: from the human whisper to a supernova burst. It allows us to measure things that are incommensurate at first glance. Energy transformations and transfers occur everywhere every second of the day. The main property of energy is the conservation of its amount in the Universe: energy does not come from nowhere nor does it disappear anywhere, it just undergoes a transformation from one form to another.
The Festival features a variety of projects by Russian and foreign artists, family and children programs, experiments and shows from Science Laboratories of the Polytechnic Museum and many more. Famous scientists from all over the world will give public talks and run workshops for Festival guests.
The Polytech Festival is the best way to spend your energy!


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Good Ones & Bad Ones
Already in 2007 (prior to the introduction of the Biologic Passaport) the UCI had identified a "black list" of suspicious riders, the so-called "Men In Black", apparently because they were training with neutral clothes, without sponsors' logos, mostly in black.
Anne Gripper, who in those days was the UCI anti-doping campaign manager, declared (guardian.co.uk, 22 jun 2007): "We have been informed that they are training in strange places in funny kit. Two of them were recently intercepted in an unusual training location and tested".
The article continued by stating that the riders were tested 3-4 times out of competition in the last few weeks (all were negatives, ed.)
Anne Gripper added : "They are considered high risk because of their suspicious behaviour and because they are likely to want to go well in the Tour de France" (!).
In the so-called "black list" were also eventually included by part of the media some riders deemed "unwelcome" from the UCI: please read "Two stories about Michael Rasmussen" e "Fxxx off" by Klaus
Wivel (newcyclingpathways.blogspot.com) and "A dirty deal " (nyvelocity.com) with regard to the case of Vladimir Gusev.
Yesterday's communiqué by the UCI tells us that in 2011 the anti-doping programme will see a considerable increase in controls for those "riders whose profile may indicate illegal behaviour", rather than for those riders with a "regular profile".
It is not clear yet what they really mean with "profile"...


Alaskan Organic Farm | World Living Water Systems Ltd.
John Evans in an agricultural researcher in Alaska, he farms organic vegetables on his property. He grows the vegetables using only compost tea and water treated with the Vortex Water Revitalizer. Over the years he has experienced countless positive changes to his vegetables, garden, farm and even his sewage system. John has documented much of the growth and transformations his crops have undergone during the growing seasons.
Increases in the carotene in carrots.
Even and perfect cell structures inside his beets. Prior to installing the Vortex Water Revitalizer, his beets would have dry, wooden and even hollow spaces inside them.
Exponential growth of vegetables including cabbage, green beans, swiss chard, tomatoes, zucchini and carrots.
String bean plants which grew twice the size as they had previously without the use of Revitalized Water.
The image displayed to the left is one of John's greenhouses on June 25; he is growing zucchini and tomatoes. The image to the right is of the same greenhouse on July 17, only 22 days later and the increase of growth is substantial in such a short period of time. He used absolutely no fertilizers or harmful chemicals or pesticides.
This image displayed above is of the same tomato plant shown at the back of the greenhouse in the images shown above. There are 105 tomatoes on one plant. John removed the leaves, a technique he uses to ripen the tomatoes during the short season in Alaska. This photo was taken on August 2, with one month still left in the growing season.
The zucchinis pictured above, to the left, were photographed July 3; the image displayed to the right is of the same zucchinis, photographed July 17. In only 14 days the zucchini nearly double in size. Notice the quarter placed on the zucchinis in each photo for comparison.
"Here are a pair of ordinary cucumbers that would usually grow a maximum of 8 inches. As you can see one is just under 15 inches.
The image to the left is a cabbage, the photo was taken June 22. The image to the right is the same cabbage, exactly one month later.
No fertilizers or chemicals were used to grow this cabbage or any of the other vegetables at John Evans' farm.


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After a more than a decade of continuous expansion, historic levels of demand and increasing operational complexity pose risks to the viability of peace operations. Setbacks in high-profile missions have coincided with military overstretch and growing fiscal austerity, while missions that have achieved interim stability lack a clear transition strategy towards sustainable peacebuilding and development. At the same time, the evolving use of a range of alternative models of peace operations, including the hugely expanded use of special political missions, is both creating new options and adding complexity to policy debates. At the UN and elsewhere, new questions about the relative merits of traditional peacekeeping versus lighter options create an ongoing demand for policy-relevant research. CIC aims to provide analysis on these issues and to improve conceptual and operational linkages across political missions, peacekeeping operations, and peacebuilding.
Global Peace Operations Review Web Portal
Global Peace Operations Review | @PeaceOpsCIC
Region/Country: Central Asia, East Asia, Horn of Africa, Middle East, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa
Jim Della-Giacoma
Alexandra Novosseloff
An integrated approach to crisis and conflict prevention requires clarity on what is meant by prevention, and how the concept of prevention fits with the 2030 Agenda, sustaining peace, and other relevant frameworks. This new briefing paper by Sarah Cliffe and David Steven proposes a new paradigm for prevention that has three levels: (i) universal prevention strategies that aim to build healthy societies that manage conflict productively, provide safety and security, increase resilience, and enhance social, political, and economic inclusion; (ii) "at risk" prevention strategies that target groups, communities, and countries that face elevated risk of conflict, or where violence is highest and resilience lowest; and (iii) prevention strategies that are tailored to situations of ongoing conflict or crisis.
Author(s) / Contributor(s): Sarah Cliffe, David Steven
Topic(s): 2030 Agenda, Crises, International Security, Peace Operations, Post 2015 Development, Transnational Threats
Program(s): Multilateral Reform, Peace and Security, Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies
The UN Strategy on Gender Parity
More than 20 years have passed since the United Nations (UN) first committed to achieving gender parity in its managerial and decision-making positions, but the organization still has a long way to go. Karin Landgren, a former senior UN official, provided the data two years ago to show that gender parity at the UN had become a "lost agenda" under the previous Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon. And in spite of a push to have a woman at the top of the UN hierarchy for the first time, the front runners in the Security Council straw polls for a new Secretary-General were largely men. (Perhaps Wonder Woman would have stood a better chance.) Yet the new Secretary-General, António Guterres, seems determined not only to talk about change but to effect it. After ensuring a 50/50 split in his own appointments at the senior level, Guterres has released this week the report of the Gender Parity Task Force: a far-reaching "System-Wide Strategy on Gender Parity," which does not pull any punches in describing the current situation for women trying to make a career inside the UN bureaucracy.
Author(s) / Contributor(s): Paige Arthur
Topic(s): Peace Operations, United Nations
Program(s): Multilateral Reform, Peace and Security
On Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' first day in office, he signaled his intention to reform the peace and security pillar by immediately co-locating staff from the Department of Political Affairs (DPA) and the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) and establishing an internal review team to work on the bigger proposals for change made by the High Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO), the Advisory Group of Experts (AGE) on the Review of the United Nations Peacebuilding Architecture, and the Global Study on the Implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325. CIC supported some of the independent review team's work through our report Restructuring the UN Secretariat to Strengthen Preventative Diplomacy and Peace Operations. The Secretary-General has now made proposals based on the team's recommendation.
Topic(s): International Security, Peace Operations, United Nations
UN Crisis Diplomacy and Peacekeeping: An Emergency Health Check
Project Brief | A Window of Opportunity for Somalia: Will External Actors' Peacebuilding Frameworks Help or Hinder the Effort?
Peacekeeping in Africa : The evolving security architecture
UN Peacekeepers: Not perfect but just good enough
Time to Enforce the Security Council's Syria Resolution
Is John Kerry Cursed by Geneva?
Has Peacebuilding Failed? The Shift to Sustaining Peace
Paige Arthur, CIC Deputy Director, was a member of a distinguished panel of peacebuilding practitioners for the Initiative for Peacebuilding through Education's 2017-18 academic year kickoff event, "Has Peacebuilding Failed? The Shift to Sustaining Peace". The event was held at the NYU SPS Center for Global Affairs on September 15, 2017.
Paige Arthur


Handle is made from 3/8 square steel. It is heated in a coal forge then hand twisted with a reverse twist to give it an attractive appearance. The ends are shaped using a hammer and anvil. The handle is then given a protective coating of bee's wax while hot. Items are handmade and will vary from item to item.


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Die Rathmannsdorfer Schleuse aus dem Baujahr 1784 ist die dritte  von insgesamt sechs Schleusen des ehemaligen Eiderkanals. Eine Sanierung des Bauwerkes mit Ausnahme seines beweglichen Zubehörs erfolgte 1984.

Standort
Die Rathmannsdorfer Schleuse liegt am Nordrand des Achtstückenberges (23 m) südöstlich des Gutes Rathmannsdorf und nordwestlich des Gutes Projensdorf auf den Ländereien des Gutes Projensdorf, das zur Gemeinde Altenholz gehört. Erreichbar ist die öffentlich zugängliche Anlage über die Kreisstraße K 19. Ein Teilstück des Eiderkanals ist in einer Länge von ca. zwei Kilometer in Richtung Gut Knoop noch erhalten geblieben und durch einen Wanderweg auf der Nordostseite erschlossen.

Bauweise
Unter der Leitung der aus Wilster stammenden Zimmerleute Johann und Hartwig Holler wurde die Schleuse im Jahr 1784 erbaut. Sie war – wie die anderen fünf Schleusen des Eiderkanals – eine Zweikammerschleuse: Die große Kammer (35 m lang und 7,8 m breit) diente dem Schiffsverkehr bei einer Hubhöhe von 2,60 Metern; mittels der kleinen Freikammer (35 m lang und 4,9 m breit) konnte der Wasserstand reguliert werden. Die Schiffskammer nahm Schiffe bis zu 160 Tonnen Ladegewicht auf, wobei das Leeren oder Füllen der Kammer durch Schossen in den Toren etwa fünf Minuten dauerte. Das Öffnen der zweiflügeligen Tore aus Eichenbohlen erfolgte durch Winden.
Die Scheitelhaltung des Eiderkanals und damit seine höchstgelegene Strecke befand sich zwischen der Rathmannsdorfer und der Königsförder Schleuse. Zwischen diesen beiden Anlagen floss aus der Eider und der Levensau das für den Kanalbetrieb erforderliche Wasser zu.

Die Wände der Kammern sind aus doppelwandigem Ziegelmauerwerk gemauert, deren Ziegel in Hellingoer (Holland) gebrannt waren. Die Abdeckung des Mauerwerks erfolgte mit Bornholmer Sandstein. Die Scharnierhalterungen der Schleusentore bestanden aus norwegischem Granit.

Im Gegensatz zu den anderen Schleusen erhielt die Rathmannsdorfer Schleuse keine Brückenquerung über den Kanal. Die jeweiligen Schiffskammern in Holtenau, Gut Knoop, Königsförde, Kluvensiek und Rendsburg überquerten im holländischen Stil erbaute Klappbrücken, die von der Carlshütte in Büdelsdorf gefertigt waren. Erhalten sind die Brücken in Königsförde und Kluvensiek.

Literatur
 Kuno Brehm, Gert Uwe Detlefsen, Manfred Jessen-Klingenberg: Schleswig-Holsteinischer Kanal – Der alte Kanal zwischen Nord- und Ostsee. Karl Wachholtz Verlag, Neumünster 1991, ISBN 3-529-05315-5

Weblinks

Einzelnachweise

Schleuse in Schleswig-Holstein
Schleuse in Europa
Ehemalige Schleuse
Kulturdenkmal im Kreis Rendsburg-Eckernförde
Altenholz
Verkehrsbauwerk im Kreis Rendsburg-Eckernförde


Racing Images (www.racingimages.cc) is a web publication and photo service for motor sport photos. With the pictures on Racing Images we are trying to bring you the atmosphere from the world of speed. We feel the images speak for themselves more than thousand words ever can.
We are mainly concentrating on Finnish national motor sport, especially the Super 2000 Race series from which we provide the photos as well as race reports and results. We are also photographing many other events such as Formula 1 tests. We are also offering our photos for purchase for both personal and commercial or publication use. You can get more information here.
Racing Images website has been opened in 1998 by three motor sport fans, who live in Helsinki, Finland. All the members have been together all the time. We have experience of motor sport photography since 1996. From 2004 we have mostly used digital equipment. Before that we were shooting slide film. Our speciality is to try shoot more creative and visual pictures which differ from the most common press photos. Our photos have been published in magazines and adverts in Finland and other countries.
We are happy to receive any kind of feedback, be it positive or negative.
Photos and all other material (including site images and texts) found on Racing Images (www.racingimages.cc) are copyrighted to Racing Images and its photographers. All the material is protected by international copyright laws. You are not allowed to use our photos or any other material from Racing Images without our permission.
For details on purchasing our photos can be found here.
Wonder who are the guys behind the lenses? Just click on the names below to see a profile of our photographers.
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