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Windows 10 Fall Creators Update: New features to try, but don't rush to install it
The fourth feature update to Windows 10 is here now. It's packed with a wide assortment of new and refined features, including some new security options designed to block zero-day exploits and ransomware. But should you upgrade now?
By Ed Bott for The Ed Bott Report | October 18, 2017 -- 11:38 GMT (04:38 PDT) | Topic: Enterprise Software
Top features in the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update (TechRepublic Video)
After a little more than two years, Microsoft has finally settled into a rhythm with its new, fast-paced development cadence for Windows 10.
Check Settings > System > About to see full details about the current Windows 10 installation.
fcu-version-and-build-info.jpg
What Microsoft's marketers are calling the Fall Creators Update (officially version 1709) begins arriving on desktop PCs today via Windows Update and will soon be available for download at all the usual places.
The final build number for this release is 16299.
This is the fourth feature update to Windows 10 in a little over two years. And that pace will continue, with new feature updates (essentially full upgrades) due on a predictable twice-yearly cadence going forward.
As with previous feature updates, there are no last-minute surprises in this update. It's been developed in the open, with dozens of preview releases to members of the Windows Insider Program. For those who haven't been paying close attention, though, this article should get you up to speed quickly.
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More importantly, it means you have to decide whether to allow the upgrade to happen on Microsoft's schedule or to take charge of the upgrade timing yourself. IT pros responsible for managing a fleet of Windows 10 PCs can use group policy settings to temporarily delay the Fall Creators Update for up to 18 months; individual Windows 10 users have simpler options in the user interface. In either case, it's crucial to act now.
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In Microsoft's arcane language, today's release goes to the Semi-Annual Channel for deployment to targeted consumer devices; it will be declared ready for broad deployment to business PCs after several months of cumulative updates and feedback. (Those "targeted" and "broad deployment" milestones replace the previous Current Branch and Current Branch for Business concepts.)
For most business PCs, the correct option is to defer upgrades for at least a few months, while testing the new release on a limited number of pilot devices to identify compatibility issues with existing applications and hardware.
The new and changed features in this release encompass a wide array of user scenarios, including a healthy assortment aimed at IT pros and developers.
One of the most important benefits of the twice-annual feature update schedule is that it allows Windows developers to incrementally improve features that previously would have languished for years between major releases. In this feature update, for example, you'll find the following small but meaningful usability tweaks:
Every Wi-Fi connection now has a prominent option to configure whether it's part of a public or private network, as shown here. In previous versions, that option was difficult to locate.
Setting a wireless network connection as public or private is easier in this release.
Similarly, the venerable Task Manager has several small improvements, including options that allow you to track GPU activity on a per-application basis and more convenient grouping of related processes. This release also incorporates changes designed to improve the experience of running Windows on high-DPI displays; built-in utilities like Registry Editor and Snipping Tool are no longer blurry when moving between multiple displays running at different scaling factors..
The Power Throttling feature makes its debut in this release, offering a simple slider-based option that lets you tune Windows 10 for better battery life or better performance.
The built-in Windows 10 apps also include major improvements in this release. I'll have a more detailed look at them in a follow-up post.
The user experience
After a few gyrations in the first year, the basic design of the Windows 10 Start experience has remained consistent. This build is the first to incorporate elements of Microsoft's new Fluent Design, which adds subtle performance and usability improvements, including easier resizing and smoother transitions.
Action Center, which hosts notifications on the right side of the screen, also gets Fluent Design features (most noticeable when you have transparency turned on) and is redesigned to make it easier to deal with notifications.
Cortana's settings, which used to be available only from within the Cortana app, are now integrated into Settings. And in a cool design change, Cortana now displays answers in a flyout from the Start menu. That also includes results from web searches (powered by Bing only), which means you don't have to open a browser to do a search.
Cortana now makes full use of the space to the right of Start.
These advanced controls for peer-based updates are new in version 1709.
Windows Update has also evolved significantly in the two years since Windows 10's initial release. When new updates are available, you'll see an interactive toast notification that doesn't interrupt whatever you're doing now. In addition, the Windows Update display now offers detailed information about the status of individual updates, so you don't have to wonder whether anything's happening in the background.
The Delivery Optimization feature, which uses peer-to-peer networking to improve download performance of updates for Windows and Store apps, gets a much-needed set of advanced options that allow you to fine-tune the amount of bandwidth it's allowed to use and also limit the total uploads on a monthly basis.
One of my favorite classic Windows features, Volume Mixer, has finally been updated to include Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps, including Microsoft Edge and Groove Music. This option, accessible by right-clicking the speaker icon in the taskbar, lets you set the volume of each app independently without affecting the overall system volume.
UWP apps finally work with the Volume Mixer feature.
Another minor but welcome change is the addition of GPU performance information in Task Manager for systems with a discrete GPU.
The My People feature, which lets you pin icons for frequent correspondents to the taskbar, looks like a gimmick at first but in my experience has become incredibly useful. If you connect mail, calendar, and messaging accounts, it can show appointments, email messages, Skype conversations, and contact details in a scrolling window that's available with a single click.
Settings improvements
The migration of Windows knobs and levers from Control Panel to the modern Settings app continues with this update. Here are a few noteworthy changes:
Settings > System > About has been reorganized and streamlined. Previously, the information displayed here was in a single long, scrolling list. The new arrangement organizes the information into three blocks, covering system health, device information, and Windows details.
Remote Desktop settings, which were scattered in several locations in earlier versions, now get a single home: Settings > System > Remote Desktop.
Remote Desktop options are now available in Windows 10 Settings.
The incredibly useful Magnifier tool, which eases eyestrain by allowing you to zoom in on text and objects, also gets its own top-level category in Settings > Ease Of Use.
The long list of improvements to the security architecture of Windows 10 starts with a momentous change. The horribly insecure SMBv1 protocol is being removed from clean installs of Windows 10. (The SMBv1 components will continue to be included on upgrades where they are already installed.)
Home and Professional editions have the SMBv1 server component uninstalled but keep the client software; Enterprise and Education editions have all SMBv1 components uninstalled.
As a side effect of that change, the legacy Computer Browser service is also being removed.
The Windows Defender Security Center, which was introduced in an earlier feature update, has two major additions. The first is Exploit Protection, which offers many of the mitigations that were previously part of the separate Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET).
Most of the settings previously found in EMET are now here.
The Fall Creators Update also debuts an anti-ransomware feature called Controlled Folder Access, which is also available through the Windows Defender Security Center, under Virus & Threat Protection Settings. When this feature is enabled, only approved apps can access Windows system files and data folders. (You can customize the list of data folders and whitelist specific apps, using the instructions in this online documentation: Protect important folders with Controlled folder access.)
Finally, there's Windows Defender Application Guard, a security feature that uses Hyper-V virtualization to create sandboxed browser sessions using Microsoft Edge. For now, this feature is available only in Windows 10 Enterprise edition.
One of the single most useful features in the Professional and Enterprise editions of Windows 10 is Hyper-V. This extremely robust virtualization platform gets more than its share of attention in this release.
A new Virtual Machine Gallery should make it easier for task-focused users to create useful virtual machines without having to wade through a long series of technical settings. Currently, this gallery includes a preconfigured development environment running an evaluation version of Windows 10 Enterprise.
This one-click option to create a virtual machine is new in version 1709.
After you create a virtual machine, you can export it more easily as well, by clicking the new Share button and compressing its pieces into a .vmcz file that can be imported on another Hyper-V capable PC.
In a change of default settings, checkpoints are now on, allowing you to roll back any VM even if you forgot to create a checkpoint manually.
A new advanced feature worth noting is the addition of virtual battery support in Hyper-V. When this feature is enabled on a VM running on a battery-powered device, you can see your physical machine's battery state inside a VM.
Smarter storage
It took much longer than it should have, but the OneDrive Files on Demand feature is now built into Windows. The settings take some getting used to (I'll publish a tutorial later) but the results are worth it, with a much better way to work with large amounts of cloud storage on devices with minimal local storage.
Click the OneDrive icon to see whether File On Demand is enabled.
For those who use either the consumer version of OneDrive or the Office 365 OneDrive for Business feature, this is probably the single most important new feature in Windows 10.
Another unheralded feature in Windows 10 also gets some improvements in the Fall Creators Update. Storage Sense, which is designed to manage storage intelligently, has a new design and a few new settings.
You can now delete previous versions of Windows directly from Storage Sense instead of having to go to the legacy Disk Cleanup Manager utility.
In addition, you can now opt to automatically delete files that have been in your Downloads folder for 30 days without changes. This and other options are available in Settings > System > Storage > Change how we free up space.
Edge's incremental evolution
Microsoft Edge, the default browser in Windows 10, is still unlikely to win over most Chrome users, but it's steadily improving.
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The biggest change in this update is a vastly improved interface for managing saved Favorites. You can now rename Favorites, edit their URLs, and work with folders directly without having to switch to a special editing mode. (The Edge design team must have been reading the comments on the Creators Update installment in this series.)
The ability to pin sites to the Windows taskbar, previously available in Windows 8, is back, but the implementation is frustratingly incomplete and will disappoint anyone who previously relied on this feature.
Microsoft is also determined to turn Edge into something more than just a web browser, as it's beefed up PDF reading capabilities and added annotations form filling for PDF files. In addition, you can now add notes and annotations for digital books that you read in Edge.
Alternative input methods
One of the major selling points of Windows 10 devices (led by Microsoft's own Surface line) is support for input from sources other than traditional keyboards and pointing devices.
Windows 10 already had some of the best handwriting input tools available on any platform, and this update adds some noteworthy improvements that are worth experimenting with if your PC includes a pen. In addition, Microsoft has improved the design of the touch keyboard to make it easier to use.
But the real news, and probably the single most important feature of this update, is the ability to enter emoji directly into a text box.
OK, I was kidding about this being the most important feature, but it certainly makes using Windows more fun. Press Windows key + period (or semicolon) to pop up an emoji box like the one shown here. Although it's not immediately obvious, you can also begin typing a word to search for a particular emoji based on that term.
This pop-up emoji picker is available with a press of Windows key semicolon.
For those who've been part of the Windows Insider Program and have been following these builds, what are you looking forward to most?
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----Sanity was originally released under the name Biome Madness as the generation mods for a very large 1.7.10 kitchen sink modpack. That modpack has since been abandoned. Now Sanity has become it's own modpack and has been updated to 1.10.2. Sanity is exploring the world of Minecraft without the distractions of new dungeons and monsters. Sanity is about enjoying the nature of Minecraft. Sanity's goal is to make Minecraft feel truly living and breathing.


The Observer participated in the first annual Career Expo held by the East Alabama Workforce Investment Network at Auburn University on Tuesday. Eighth grade students from public and private schools – an estimated 4,000 – from Lee, Russell, Macon, Chambers and Bullock counties participated in the 2-day event.
The Expo brought together industry leaders who formed 12 different clusters, and each cluster was made up of several companies. Students were able to tour the Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum and learn about the areas of healthcare, agriculture, law enforcement, construction and more.
Observer staff members had a great opportunity to meet others in the communications industry as well as show students what it's like to work at a newspaper.
As a part of our presentation, we gave the students the opportunity to see their picture on the front page of our newspaper. While our mock front page was just for the event, many students asked if we were going to print it. Among the shouts of "I'm going to be famous!" and "Look, I'm on the front page!" we were able to explain the ins and outs of the newspaper industry and what takes place at the Opelika Observer every week. Students asked us how we decide what goes in the paper and if designing a page was hard to learn.
We believe it's of the utmost importance to engage students on a personal level. Eighth graders are at such an impressionable age, and many don't know how vital the four years of high school will be to their futures. Engaging students on a personal level and sparking their interest in future careers should always be a priority.
This event was one of only two of its kind in the state of Alabama, the first one being started in Mobile. Think about how student retention and success could skyrocket in Alabama if more counties imitated what the EAWIN has done.
Not only is investing in our students good for them, it's also good for the community as a whole. Growing industries tend to be drawn to areas that have an active, skilled, career-driven workforce available. For instance, Golden State Foods, a California-based company that will bring 173 jobs and $45 million in capital investment to Opelika in 2016, cited available workforce as a primary reason to open their new facility here.
These students are the future leaders of our community; investing in their futures is beneficial for everyone involved.
We look forward to participating again next year. Maybe it was the chance for a field trip that put the excitement in the air, but we like to think this interactive event did a lot of good for those 4,000 teenagers.


AMD have announced new bundles with their GPUs, all of them featuring Devil May Cry 5, Resident Evil 2 Remake and The Division 2. Normally it wouldn't be a big deal, but this could suggest optimisation for AMD's GPU's instead of Nvidia.
AMD are looking to kick off 2019 in a grand fashion, as they have decided to bundle RX 570, RX 580 and RX 590 GPUs with Devil May Cry 5, The Division 2 and Resident Evil 2 remake. Players can get RX 590 for about $280 these days and considering the three games will be fully priced AAA titles, they would get $180 worth of software in the bundle.
The same offer stands for RX Vega, as all three game keys will be up for grabs should someone purchase the GPU. Those who get an RX 580 or RX 570 will get to choose two out of the three games on offer, netting them what is essentially a $120 discount.
Now, this may look just like any other promotion on the surface, but Ubisoft have worked closely with AMD on Far Cry 5 already, which was also optimised for AMD GPUs. The bundle, coupled with the previous cooperation between the companies could imply that The Division 2 will be optimised for AMD cards.
Considering the value AMD are throwing into the RX GPU bundles (dead link), it's possible that the deal between Ubisoft, Capcom and the GPU manufacturer is not a simple cross-promotion and more could be going on behind the scenes.
There are currently no clear statements going around for DMC 5, Resident Evil 2 or The Division 2 being optimised for AMD GPUs, but it should be clear enough by the end of Q1 2019.
Resident Evil 2 is set for release on 25 January 2018, and benchmarks for the game should be the first indicators of whether it was optimised for AMD cards. Devil May Cry 5 is due out on 08 March 2018 and The Division 2 is coming on 15 March 2018.


Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain, opined Lily Tomlin. On a more serious note, the evolution of language, speech, and culture are believed to be some of the causative factors for the rapid evolution of the size and capacity of the human brain. The emergence of human language has been a major milestone in the relentless evolution of complexity on our planet, and has also played a role in the evolution of human consciousness. Apart from the emergence and evolution of language, I also discuss memetics and econophysics in this article.
A mostly Lamarckian process whereby evolution of a transformational nature proceeds via the passage of acquired characters, cultural evolution, like the stellar evolution before it, involves no DNA chemistry and perhaps less selectivity than biological evolution. Culture enables animals to transmit survival kits to their offspring by nongenetic routes; the information gets passed on behaviourally, from brain to brain, from generation to generation, the upshot being that cultural evolution acts much faster than biological evolution.
According to Richard Dawkins (1989), 'most of what is unusual about man can be summed up in one word: "culture".' Of course, one must make a distinction between 'culture' and 'society.' 'A society refers to an actual group of people and how they order their social relations. A culture . . . refers to a body of socially transmitted information' (Barkhow 1989). The term 'culture' encompasses 'all ideas, concepts and skills that are available to us in society. It includes science and mathematics, carpentry and engineering designs, literature and viticulture, systems of musical notation, advertisements and philosophical theories – in short, the collective product of human activities and thought' (Distin 2005).
If there had been no speech, then right and wrong, truth and falsehood, good and bad, attractive and unattractive would not have been made known. Speech makes known all this. Worship speech.
As far as humans are concerned, language has got to be the ultimate evolutionary innovation. It is central to most of what makes us special, from consciousness, empathy and mental time travel to symbolism, spirituality to morality.
Somewhere in the last 100,000 years or so, human beings hit upon language. Human language must have seemed an odd-sounding innovation to the other animals around. But by allowing the expression of arbitrarily complicated concepts, human language allowed people to process information in a highly distributed fashion. The distributed nature of human information processing in turn allowed people to cooperate in new ways, forming groups, associations, societies, companies, and so on. Some of these new forms of cooperation proved strikingly effective, as various forms of distributed information processing, such as democracy, communism, capitalism, religion, and science, took on a life of their own, propagating themselves and evolving over time. It is the richness and complexity of our shared information processing that has brought us this far.
It is notable that, on an evolutionary time scale, there has been an exceptionally rapid expansion of brain capacity in the course of evolution of one of the ape forms (chimpanzees?) to Homo sapiens, i.e. ourselves. This has happened in spite of the fact that the genome of humans is incredibly close to that of chimpanzees. The evolution of language, speech, and culture are believed to be some of the causative factors for this rapid evolution of the human brain. Let us see how.
Homo sapiens was preceded by Homo heidelbergensis, which also had a fairly large brain, but was not very effective as a hunter. He was not able to establish ecological dominance over other animals, even after two million years of evolution. The human advantage is believed to have arisen from the emergence of language. 'No topic is more intriguing and more difficult to address concretely than the evolution of language, but … [it] is almost a kind of sixth sense, since it allows people to supplement their five primary senses with information drawn from the primary senses of others. Seen in this light, language becomes a kind of "knowledge sense" that promotes the construction of extraordinarily complex mental models, and language alone may have provided sufficient benefit to override the cost of brain expansion' (Klein and Edgar 2002).
The reference to 'the cost of brain expansion' here is to the fact that in humans the brain takes up ~20% of the metabolic resources of the body, and the brain tissue requires 22 times more energy than a comparable piece of muscle at rest.
Deacon traces the evolution of social complexity by assuming that the early humans were dual-parenting. Since their sense of smell was not very acute (thus ruling out a role for chemical signalling through pheromones), some other type of sexual signalling evolved between the male and the female. This is how social communication originated and evolved as a kind of social hormone.
This need for hunting in groups resulted in the evolution of a social structure implying a symbolisational solution to the problem of survival. This is because symbolic reference, as also speaking and thinking, are basically of a social nature. There was naturally a concomitant evolution of the speech organ (voice box).
The primates in the savannas also had to find food, and therefore such a large investment of time in grooming would have caused a non-sustainable work vs. life balance. Language emerged as a better way of bonding.
Humans began with sound language, gradually increasing the vocabulary. But there is a severe limit to how many sound calls you can have which still sound distinct. The next step in the evolution of language was a stringing together of sounds into specific sequences, namely words. Word-speaking species naturally had an evolutionary advantage.
Whereas humans and chimpanzees have many genes in common, the expression of certain genes is more common in the human brain. Moreover, the brains of newborn humans are far less developed than those of newborn chimpanzees, and the neural networks of human babies are developed over many years of exposure to a linguistic environment. Through a continuous process of unsupervised learning (experimentation), supervised learning (from parents, teachers, etc.), and reinforced learning (the hard-knocks of life, and rewards for certain kinds of action), the child's brain performs evolutionary computation.
With language came the possibility of emergence of 'memes.' Language coevolved with memes.
We are different from all other animals because we alone, at some time in our far past, became capable of widespread generalized imitation. This let loose new replicators – memes – which then began to propagate, using us as their copying machinery much as genes use the copying machinery inside cells. From then on, this one species has been designed by two replicators, not one. This is why we are different from the millions of other species on the planet. This is how we got our big brains, our language and all our other peculiar 'surplus' abilities.
It is information that evolves in any type of evolution. The most basic aspects of evolution are replication of information (which involves preservation of the replicated information), and the mode of transmittal of information. Genes preserve biological information, and they use DNA for this. What about culture?
Similar to the gene, which is the unit of biological inheritance, Richard Dawkins (1989, 1998) introduced the notion of the meme, which is the unit of cultural inheritance. A meme may be some good idea, a soul-stirring tune, a logical piece of reasoning, or a great philosophical concept. Dawkins visualized that two different evolutionary processes must have operated in tandem: the classical Darwinian evolution, and another one centred round intelligence, language, and culture. Memes are, roughly speaking, the cultural analogues of genes.
The genes that exist in many copies in a population are those that are good at surviving and replicating. Through a reinforcement effect, genes in the population that are good at cooperating with one another stand a better chance of surviving. Similarly, the fittest set of cooperating memes has a better chance of surviving to form the meme pool of the population. They replicate themselves by imitation or copying (Blackmore 1999, 2000), and also by a variety of other mechanisms (Distin 2005). Cultural evolution and progress occurs through a selective propagation of the fittest set of cooperating memes.
Memes evolve, just as genes evolve. In fact, any entities that can replicate, and that have a variation both in their specific features and in their reproductive success, are candidates for Darwinian selection. The coevolution of gene pools and meme pools (through language etc.) resulted in a rapid enlargement of the brain size of Homo sapiens. A large brain size, once attained, resulted in several other capabilities as well.
An important difference between memes and genes is that the speed of cultural evolution (development of ideas, customs, etc.) is far higher than the speed of genetic evolution. Nevertheless, there are several proposed analogies between the two. How far can we carry the gene analogy for understanding the nature of memes? This continues to be a subject of debate. Following Distin (2005), I list here some characteristics of memes.
The most efficient methods of replicating complexity are hierarchical (or modular or particulate). If variation were permitted in every element of a complex structure, then copying processes would lose much of their stability. In genetics, Mendel's work established the particulateness of genes, namely the clear presence or absence of the effects of these replicators on the world. Something similar is necessary for memes in their role in cultural evolution of complexity. This means that memes must be able to fit into established cultural assemblies without their own informational content being lost or blended in the process. That is, memes must have a certain degree of particulateness, so that the results that they produce are generally of a fixed nature. Their identity should be such that they are discernible packets of information (like the genotype). But, whereas the genotype is distinct and clearly definable, the phenotype (which is a manifestation of the genotype) in biological systems possesses a certain degree of flexibility and variability. Likewise, the manifestations of memes have a certain degree of flexibility that enables their effects to be produced in a variety of cultural contexts. Copied in these ways, information is given the stability to grow and develop in complexity. The breadth and depth of human culture is thus explained by the cumulative replication of particulate information.
In both genetics and memetics, the replicators carry information about the effects that they control. In the case of genes, their independence is maintained via the medium of DNA, which preserves biological information in a form that is replicable and can produce its effects in a variety of contexts. In the case of memes, this role is performed by 'representational content,' which is thus the memetic or cultural equivalent of DNA.
Memes are specified by their representational content. As representations of a portion of information, memes can be regarded as having a certain content. A representation in the human mind is some piece of our 'mental furniture' that carries information about the world. For example, a thought that 'the object on my desk is a book' is a mental representation of a bit of the world (i.e. that book). Therefore 'representational content' refers to the information that is included in the content of our representations.
It is representational content which accounts for the mechanisms of memetic heredity and for the influence of the memes over their phenotypic effects. Distin (2005) uses the term memetic DNA for the representational content. It provides the mechanism for memetic evolution, just as DNA provides the mechanism for genetic evolution.
How is the representational content fixed in our brains?
Replicators preserve and copy specific portions of information. For memes, we should be able to identify precisely which bits are carried in each replicator. This means pinpointing the exact content of any representation, and this is something determined partly by the various properties of the object or situation being represented. Yet representational content is determined by other factors as well, e.g. by the capabilities and history of the organism doing the representing.
Some organisms are capable of forming representations the content of which is determined by a combination of the relevant properties of that which is represented, and the organism's own individual and social learning capacities. Such organisms are able, in other words, both to preserve information and to transmit it among themselves.
In the case of complex representations, which have links not only externally to perceptions and behaviour but also internally to other representations, the resultant behavioural flexibility can enable us to track down their content more completely. It should be possible to test all of the links, by altering the associations that the organism encounters, and observing the effects on its behaviour. Only representations with this determinacy of content can count as memes, since a crucial aspect of any replicator is the preservation of given information.
Thus memes are representations which preserve their content in a way that can be copied between generations. As representations, they are specifically those bits of our mental furniture which control our behaviour in response to the information that they carry. In other words, the basis of memes in representational content is precisely what accounts for their ability to exert executive effects on the world.
Representations gain meaning from their context within a representational system (RS), and the uniquely human capacity that lies at the heart of culture is our ability to copy and develop RSs, as well as adding individual representations to our repertoire: the ability, in other words, to meta-represent. Natural languages, as also systems of mathematical and musical notation, are some examples of cultural RSs, and each is peculiarly appropriate to its particular cultural area. Human minds acquire replicators on an ongoing basis throughout their lives, and this means that they can acquire novel RSs as well as novel representations. Amongst these various RSs, the natural languages have primacy: they alone benefit from an innate device for their acquisition. Yet they benefit, too, from the innate ability to meta-represent – and it is this which allows us also to develop nonlinguistic RSs, whose diverse rules and structures are realized in media other than speech. Once these sorts of RS have been taken into account, it becomes clear that there are many concepts that are not available to us until the RS that supports them has been developed.
According to Distin (2005), humans are born with a degree of mindedness that includes, for example, the 'representation instinct': an ability and tendency to learn and manipulate vast numbers of representations, as well as the various systems in which they are embedded. And this innate mental potential of an infant is realized as a result of exposure to the cultural environment.
Genes preserve and replicate biological information by building vehicles for their own propagation and protection. The effects of the genes are found in the machines that they build for their survival, and their replication also depends ultimately on this same machinery. Memes depend for their replication on a faculty of the human mind that is ultimately of a genetic nature, namely the representation instinct. Organisms, as well as minds, develop via interaction between the innate potential and the environment, and in the case of the mind a crucial part of that environment comprises of the memes. A human mind is thus partly a product of the memes, but only because it has the innate potential to interact with and develop in response to these memes. And culture is the product of human minds, although the preservation of information in representational content ensures that the culture we see today is mostly the result of memes produced by human minds of long ago. The development of human minds depends on a combination of two types of processes: their innate potential is the result of an interaction between genes and the physical environment, and that potential is fulfilled as a result of interaction with memes.
Memes are best thought about not by analogy with genes but as new replicators, with their own ways of surviving and getting copied.
Dawkins (1989) described the essence of his 'selfish gene' theory as the insight 'that there are two ways of looking at natural selection, the gene's angle and that of the individual.' The essence of his selfish meme hypothesis is the insight that there are two ways of looking at cultural change, the meme's angle and that of the human individual.
One of the most significant implications of the theory of Dawkins' selfish gene is that the individual organism was not an inevitable outcome of genetic evolution: it so happens that genes have banded together to build survival machines, but the only crucial feature of any form of evolution is the replicator – the unit of selection. Although organisms clearly exist, and have a perspective from which the world of genes is irrelevant to their everyday lives, fundamentally their lives and evolution are determined by that world. According to Distin (2005), no analogous insight arises from the theory of the selfish meme, because memes do not build survival machines. Their replicative mechanisms, and the means of their variation and selection, lie in genetically determined human faculties, and not in vehicles that they themselves build.
Dennett (1991) and Blackmore (1999), however, take the view that we are meme machines, just as we are gene machines. Consequently, they argue that 'there is no conscious self inside' those machines; and that 'a complex interplay of replicators and environment' is all there is to life. Our sense of self may not be illusory, but our sense of control over the collective products of our minds may well be. Although our minds provide the mechanisms of memetic evolution, there is a very real sense in which the directions of that evolution are independent of us.
A financial market is a complex system in which a large number of traders interact with one another, and also react to external information, and determine the 'best' price for a given item. The time evolution of the price and the number of transactions of a traded item is generally unpredictable. The time series indicating the price variation of an item is found to be essentially indistinguishable from a stochastic or random process. Like other complex systems, financial markets are open systems with many interacting subunits, and the subunits interact nonlinearly.
An efficient market is defined as one in which all the available information is processed instantly when it reaches the market, and in which this fact is immediately reflected in new values of prices of the traded assets. The efficient-market hypothesis (EMH) says that any market is highly efficient in determining the most rational price of a traded item or asset. It was originally formulated in the 1960s. There are two assumptions involved here: (i) the market is efficient; and (ii) the behaviour of traders is strictly rational.
Why does the time series of returns appear to be random? This is because it carries so much information that there are no readily discernible regularities in it. It is, by and large, a nonredundant time series. The information it carries is almost irreducible, or algorithmically incompressible for most practical purposes (cf. Part 4). The EMH requires that the concerned time series for market prices has a dense amount of nonredundant information. Since there are limits on the speed and capacity of our computers, a time series carrying this information is almost indistinguishable from a totally random time series. Of course, analysis of the deviation from a totally random time series is a good way of testing the degree of validity of the EMH in a given situation.
Suppose there is good demand for a commodity because of its attractive existing price. Naturally, the price will increase. This will then reduce the demand. And a reduced demand will entail a lowering of the price, and so on, till the demand and the price have reached a state of equilibrium. Thus negative feedbacks tend to stabilize an economy, as per conventional economic theory. This law of diminishing returns implies a single equilibrium point for an economy, and such situations are amenable to analytical control.
By and large, resource-based economic activities (e.g. agriculture and mining) tend to follow the law of diminishing returns. By contrast, knowledge-based parts of an economy are generally governed by the law of increasing returns or positive feedback.
As demonstrated by the pioneering studies of Brian Arthur during the 1990s, positive feedbacks often occur in an economy, with the resultant multiple equilibrium points. Small shifts in the economy can get amplified, rather than smothered out. The economy evolves like any open, nonlinear complex system. There can be multiple bifurcations in phase space, and it is difficult to predict which bifurcation branch will be chosen by the market forces. What is more, once the random events select a particular branch or path in phase space, the choice tends to get locked-in, regardless of the advantages of the alternatives. An example is the history of the VCR industry. The market started out with two competing formats, VHS and Beta, selling at about the same price. It appears, in hindsight, that Beta was technically superior. In the beginning there were increasing returns for each format, as their market shares increased. For example, a large number of VHS recorders in the hands of consumers motivated the vendors to stock more prerecorded tapes in the VHS format. This encouraged more people to buy VHS recorders. The same law of increasing returns operated for the Beta format also. In the beginning there were fluctuations in the fortunes of the two competing brands, attributable to factors such as external circumstances, 'luck', and corporate manoeuvring. Then, perhaps by chance, increasing returns on early gains by VHS (reduced production costs per unit on increased volumes of production) tilted the game in favour of VHS, driving the other technology out of the market. This is something which could not have been predicted in the beginning.
1. In a particular industry, there is often a clustering of firms in a specific geographical location. A different location would have been better, but there is a kind of freezing of historical accidents in what has actually happened. Why? The first firm chooses a location for some logical (or even illogical) reason. The choice of the second firm depends not only on the (real or perceived) merits of that region, but also on the fact that it is profitable to be near the first firm. There is cascading effect because the third firm may be influenced more by the presence of the first two firms in that region, than by the absolute merit of that region; and so on.
2. Railroad gauges are what they are at present because, once a particular choice was made (even arbitrarily), it was economical to stick to that choice everywhere in that region. There is a self-enforcement effect operating here.
3. The initial advantage possessed by a country or a multinational corporation can snowball into total dominance at the global level, until a better or cheaper product overcomes the monopoly. This highlights the importance of industrial research in any knowledge-based economy. Anther important factor is the timing of release of a product.
In the language of evolution of the phase-space trajectory, what we are seeing here are random bifurcations in phase space. Once a branch of a bifurcation gets selected for further time-evolution, there is no going back; there is only a locked-in trajectory along a particular path in phase space. Thus the evolution of a positive-feedback economy has a strong path dependence. This path dependence can cause even hitherto successful economies to become locked into inferior paths of development. There is always a danger that a sound technology, with good long-term potential, may get rejected just because it has a long gestation period and slow initial growth. Similarly, when two new technologies compete, the one with a better initial acceptance by people may oust the other from the market, even when the other technology is inherently better (as shown by later events). Early superiority or 'selectional advantage' is no guarantee of long-term fitness. Arthur (1990) cites the example of how the U.S. nuclear-power programme got 'phase-locked' into the light-water-cooled reactors option, even though the high-temperature, gas-cooled, reactor designs may be inherently superior.
The bottom line is that, unlike negative-feedback economies, positive feedback economies do not head for a unique equilibrium; their phase-space trajectory is not path-independent. Like in a chaotic system, even identical-looking initial conditions can lead to divergence in trajectories, simply because even small events or errors may get hugely amplified as time passes. Long-term accurate forecasting then becomes difficult, if not impossible.
The emergence of humans has sharply accelerated the rise of overall complexity of our Earth. This has happened, and is still happening at an ever-increasing pace, because of the evolution of cultural complexity. A major reason for this is the very high level of intelligence possessed by humans. I shall discuss intelligence and consciousness in the next article in this series.
Human beings and their institutions process more energy per unit mass than do stars or galaxies.
Superb, informative piece of work. Congratulations and thanks.
Thanks. I am delighted to be of some help.
Your analyses are both perceptive and comprehensive, Vinod.
I believe I have already drawn your attention to my work "Unusual Perspectives" Which is available for free download from the eponymous website.
I would urge you to read this as it presents some interpretations that significantly differ from the above treatments in important respects. A caveat – You may find the writing style not to your taste – the book is aimed at the general reader rather than ono such as yourself who has clearly carefully researched these issues.


EDEN HAZARD has struck a deal to join Spanish giants Real Madrid.
That's according to transfer expert Ian McGarry who thinks the Chelsea forward will move at the end of this season.
Real have held a long-running interest in the Belgian forward but with his contract set to expire in under 18 months' time a big decision is looming in the summer.
Chelsea will not want to lose a world-class player for nothing and could be forced to cash in.
Hazard has stalled on signing fresh terms and has revealed that he is considering his future and could be tempted to move on, feeling that he's won all the can at Chelsea during his time at Stamford Bridge.
McGarry told the Transfer Window podcast: "Eden Hazard, 18 months left on his contract, but has been, as he said in and interview with France Football this week, at Chelsea seven years.
"He has won every domestic honour there in that time.
"He does have ambitions to do something differently and as we said right at the beginning of this season, it is my belief that he already has an agreement to join Real Madrid which is up to him whether he takes it or not.
"I believe he will. Therefore, Chelsea's attempts to get him to sign a contract will fail.
"Again, when you get to Hazard's level the financial aspect is not that important because as one of the top ten players in Europe, he will be able to command whatever he wants [at Chelsea] and will be equalled or bettered anywhere else.
"Secondly, the ambition of the club, well he doesn't see much progress in the Champions League and that's what he wants to win.


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A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that alleged a suburban St. Louis senior living community discriminated against a married lesbian couple by denying them housing.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports that U.S. District Judge Jean C. Hamilton said in the decision issued Wednesday that the Fair Housing Act doesn't protect against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Mary Walsh and Bev Nance sued the Friendship Village location in Sunset Hills in July 2018.
After they submitted their application and a $2,000 deposit, they were notified that their request was denied. They were told Friendship Village's cohabitation policy defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman, "as marriage is understood in the Bible."
One of the couple's attorneys says they are considering what to do next.


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Is Earth just a Way Station to Heaven?
January 18, 2021 by Gary DeMar
Most Christians have a limited view of what constitutes a biblical worldview. I suspect that many believe that the Christian's earthly life is a holding pattern for heaven. Earth serves as a way station for true living after death. Is this why God created us? We're born, we live out our lives the best we can, and then we prepare for heaven. In the interim, the Christian's goal is to evangelize the lost for the world to come.
Commenting on Amillennialism
I came across the following post on Facebook: "Prof. D. J. Engelsma gives a devastating rebuke to the Postmil notion of 'Christianizing the world.'" The poster asked for comments. Here was my first comment: "David Engelsma is fixated on the common grace argument. That's a Christian Reformed Church amillennial problem. Engelsma uses almost no Scripture. His eschatology is closer to dispensationalism." I later added this comment: "The Common Grace amils that Engelsma condemns share his prophetic position: 'These common grace Dutch scholars and their North American academic disciples have all been amillennialists.
The Great Tribulation of Ezekiel 5
God tells Israel that He will not bring another calamity on Jerusalem like the one He brought in Ezekiel's day: "And because of all your abominations, I will do among you what I have not done, and the like of which I will never do again" (Ezek. 5:9). One commentator who believes that there is yet to be a future Great Tribulation to surpass all the tribulations brought upon Israel writes the following:
Hyperbole, Preterism, and the Great Tribulation
One of the stumbling blocks to a preterist interpretation of the Olivet Discourse is Jesus' statement about the Great Tribulation "such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever shall" (Matt. 24:21). Critics of a preterist interpretation of the Olivet Discourse maintain that such a tribulation has never occurred even though Jesus made it clear that all the events He said would take place were to take place before their generation passed away (24:34).
Was Preterism Invented by the Jesuits?
One of the arguments used against preterism is that it was developed by Spanish Jesuit Luis De Alcazar (1554–1613) who wrote a commentary titled Vestigio Arcani Sensus in Apocaplysi or Investigation of the Hidden Sense of the Apocalypse in which "he proposed that all of Revelation applied to the era of pagan Rome and the first six centuries of Christianity." Here's a typical example: "The Praeterist School, founded by the Jesuit Alcasar in 1614, explains the Revelation by the Fall of Jerusalem, or by the fall of Pagan Rome in 410 A.
It's Time for a Great Eschatology Reset
December 29, 2020 by Gary DeMar
It all started with comments that Grace Community Church Pastor John MacArthur made where he "warned that today's world is 'perfectly suited for the Antichrist to come' amid the chaos and 'lawlessness' stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic." MacArthur went on to say: Now we are a global world. And that is a setup that we've been waiting for through redemptive history since the Lord promised that there would come, in the future, an Antichrist who would have a global government.
Why a Star? The Bible and Astrology
December 21, 2020 by American Vision
Frequently, around Christmas time, we are treated to yet another (often just a repeat of previous "findings") naturalistic explanation of the biblical "Star of Bethlehem." Natural explanations of biblical phenomena can sometimes have their place, but they can also be diversions—for unbelievers and believers alike. A far better approach for believers is to know and receive the deep, rich biblical meaning to the star. Let's look at it. It seems to be a foregone conclusion of some of the more naturalistic approaches that if an astronomical explanation for the star was to be found, the entire birth narrative—and ultimately the Gospel itself—could be finally dismissed as a myth.
John MacArthur, Israel, and Postmillennialism
I've been putting an outline together in preparation for two talks I did for the December 18–19 online "A Purchased Victory: A Conference on the Bright Hope of Postmillennialism." My two talks deal with biblical and cultural impediments that are often raised against postmillennialism. One topic I did not mention is the place of Israel in prophecy at it relates to postmillennialism. The following is a partial response to the subject since it is integral to premillennialism while postmillennialism is often ignored on the subject.
Clearing the Prophetic Chessboard in Defense of Postmillennialism
The following is the introduction to two talks I produced for the "A Purchased Victory" online conference that will be available to view December 18–19 at CruciformMinistries.org. There's a scene in the 1993 film Searching for Bobby Fischer where Josh Waitzkin, played by Max Pomeranc, is being taught that the complexities of chess require knowing more than where the pieces on the board are at any given moment and what the next move should be.
Enough About Armageddon and the End Times
FrontPage Magazine is one of my favorite go-to sites. It was started by former Communist David Horowitz. Horowitz is Jewish, as are many of the site's writers. In addition to his memoir Radical Son, he has written Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America as a warning to once Christian America. He understands that the United States was founded on fundamental biblical principles even if those advocating for them were not believers.
Is the Rapture Found in Matthew 24?
November 05, 2020 by Gary DeMar
Almost daily I get questions about prophetic topics. In most cases, I've already dealt with them in my books Last Days Madness, The Early Church and the End of the World, Why the End of the World is Not in Your Future, Wars and Rumors of Wars, 10 Popular Prophecy Myths Exposed and Answered, The Rapture and the Fig Tree Generation, Prophecy Wars, Identifying the Real Last Days Scoffers, and Left Behind: Separating Fact from Fiction.
Who Is Defending Classic Dispensationalism Today?
October 27, 2020 by Gary DeMar
Eschatology is the study of the "last things." The more popular terminology is "Bible prophecy." There are numerous schools of thought on the subject. The most popular version—dispensational premillennialism—teaches that particular prophetic events are on the horizon, that a "rapture" of the Church precedes a seven-year period that includes the rise of an antichrist, a rebuilt temple, and a Great Tribulation. One of the distinct features of this view is the belief that there is an Israel-Church distinction, and because of this distinction God has two redemptive programs.
Does 2 Thessalonians 1 Support Amillennialism?
Vern Poythress wrote "2 Thessalonians 1 Supports Amillennialism." It was originally published in THE JOURNAL OF THE EVANGELICAL THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY in 1995. The following is from the Abstract of the article: 2 Thessalonians 1 supports amillennialism because it is in tension with all the other major millennial views…. 2 Thessalonians 1 is in tension with postmillennialism. The text of verses 5–7 indicates that Christians may continue to expect trouble for awhile.
Will There be Circumcision and Animal Sacrifices During the 'Millennium'?
It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery. Behold I, Paul, say to you that if you receive circumcision, Christ will be on no benefit to you. And I testify again to every man who receives circumcision, that he is under obligation to keep the whole Law. . . . For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love (Gal.
"Are we Living in the Last Days?" An Interview With Gary DeMar
Recently, I was interviewed by Hank Hanegraaff on the topic of eschatology. Why is this an important topic? Because millions of Christians are bound by it and live in terms of it in a negative way. Considering the following that was sent to me by a friend: I had a woman tell me today that it may work out better for Christians to vote for Biden because it would hasten Jesus' return and his second coming.
Mideast Peace Treaties and Preparation for the Antichrist?
I knew it was going to happen. On September 16 I did an hour and forty-minute interview with Hank Hanegraaff for his "Hank Unplugged" podcast that is scheduled to air Tuesday, September 22nd. I mentioned that the various peace talks with Israel and Arab nations will be seen by some as an end-time event that will usher in the antichrist. According to some prominent prophecy writers, the antichrist must be alive somewhere in the world today setting the stage for the rapture of the church and another Jewish holocaust.
What Did Peter Mean by "The End of All Things is Near"?
While there has been a dramatic shift in Bible prophecy teaching since I started writing, speaking, and debating the topic when I was in seminary in the mid-1970s, there are still a lot of people who continue to push the belief that we are living in the last days. The following meme caught my attention, especially when there were a lot of "Amens" in the responses: What "end" was Peter referencing?
John Piper Dice que el Coronavirus es una Señal de los Últimos Tiempos
May 14, 2020 by Gary DeMar
Mientras que el escritor de la carta a los Hebreos dice que deberíamos "tener entrenados los sentidos" (5:14), los Bereanos buscaron en las Escrituras diariamente para asegurarse de que Pablo estaba diciendo la verdad (Hech 17:11), y Juan dice "sino probad los espíritus si son de Dios; porque muchos falsos profetas han salido por el mundo" (1 Jn 4:1), parece que hoy los cristianos están siendo fácilmente llevados por cualquier viento de doctrina (Ef 4:14), especialmente cuando se trata de profecía Bíblica.
My New Book is Now Available: 'The Rapture and the Fig Tree Generation'
February 06, 2020 by Gary DeMar
On January 21, 2020, I traveled to Dinosaur Adventure Land in Conecuh County, Alabama, where I debated the topic of the Rapture with Kent Hovind. Kent took the Post Trib/Pre-Wrath position while I took the position that there was no rapture since there is no future seven-year period in which the Antichrist makes and breaks a covenant with Israel. I based my arguments on Daniel 9:24–27, a sequence of verses that does not mention a gap between the 69th and 70th weeks of the 70-weeks-years (490) years, an antichrist, or a covenant made and broken by an antichrist.
The Rapture and Daniel's 70 Weeks
The following interview was held at the Atlanta G3 Conference with my good friends David Shannon, Toby Sumpter, and Gabe Rench from Cross Politic Studios. It's always great to get together with them. The 30-minute interview was about my new book The Rapture and the Fig Tree Generation. A small crowd assembled around the booth as we discussed the book and related topics. The Rapture and the Fig Tree Generation and Daniel's 70 Weeks

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Life of a Legend
Juanita Kakoty
BHUPENDA: THE BARD OF BRAHMAPUTRA
By Kamal Kataki and Devajit Bhuyan
Spectrum Publications, New Delhi, 2012, pp. 224, Rs. 495.00
VOLUME XXXVII NUMBER 12 December 2013
The authors' profound love for Bhupen Hazarika, celebrated as the only great ballad singer in India till his death, comes out in their offering, Bhupenda: Bard of the Brahmaputra. They even have one whole chapter where they quote the condolence messages by prominent people from all walks of life at the time of Hazarika's death. Devajit Bhuyan writes in his note, 'After the demise of Bhupen Hazarika, the people of Assam and the rest of the world suffered a great loss and experienced deep anxiety… I too became very emotional after witnessing the last journey of Bhupenda and decided to overcome this pain through my pen and passion for writing.' This book, therefore, as co-author Kamal Kataki mentions in the foreword, is 'a personal tribute'. Kamal Kataki has had a two and a half decades association with Hazarika as a guitarist and as his honorary secretary for North East India activities. As one goes through the book, the reader realizes that it is but a catharsis for the authors as they, like every Assamese and admirer of Bhupen Hazarika, come to terms with the emotions that his death stormed up. The merits of the book lie in the easy flow of language and narration. It is a good documentation of the legendary Bhupen Hazarika's life and his contribution to the world of arts and culture. It reinforces the fact that he is a legend precisely because of the range of his work from music to films to journalism to activism to politics. The authors have put together some of Hazarika's significant songs in the context they were written with their English translations. The book carries lists of documentaries and films made by Hazarika, films he composed music for, his awards and accolades. It contains content by Hazarika from his website and also reproduces a few of Hazarika's interviews. It talks of the visionary he was and his experiences in trying to make films even as he struggled with finances, the pursuit of his passions whether it was going to Columbia University for a doctorate degree in Mass Communication or giving up the security of a salaried job for music. The authors also source reports from newspapers to give an account of the town-wise tributes paid to Hazarika on his death. A whole chapter is dedicated to the mass hysteria and shock that the loss of the ...


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This game is a SolMan Original. Arachnaphobia turned out to be such a cool game we had to extend it. This game is a two deck version.
A game demanding considerable playing skill, yet with that spider-like quality where you don't know what the cards will drop on you next! When the spider strikes, it drops a card on to only 8 of the 12 piles. You'll learn which ones.


Please bring an application and resume. Interviews on site. All employees must pass a background check.
Applications can be picked up at the MLKCC office at 300 W. MLK Street or the Neighbors Building Neighborhoods office at 207 N. 2nd Street.
Questions, please contact the NBN Program Manager, Laura Hazen at (918) 683-4600.


Unlocking the secret to great skin can be a seemingly lifelong struggle. As soon as you think you've figured it out, the season — or something else unidentifiable — changes and suddenly you're back to square one. And if you're striving for a balanced complexion, yet your current routine seems to come up short, GLAMGLOW's new SUPERSERUM could be your solution. The multitasking serum is supercharged with skin-perfecting ingredients to refine pores, remove dullness, and restore hydration all at once. Yes, really.
It kind of seems like cult-favorite skincare brand GLAMGLOW has a way of anticipating exactly what your skin routine needs at any given moment. Earlier this season, the brand debuted a dry-skin saving night cream ideal for dehydrated winter skin, and now it's offering up two brand-new beauty buys that'll solve other persistent complexion woes. The brand's new SUPERSERUM and SUPERTONER — now available on GLAMGLOW's site and at Sephora — are both packed with buzzy ingredients that target dullness and dryness all at once, so they're bound to shake things up in your skincare routine (for the better, of course).
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As an Editorial Fellow at Washingtonian, I learned about service journalism and a regional magazine's editorial process, through fact-checking stories for publication, researching for articles, working closely with editors and writers, and reporting and writing for print and online.
A service piece about the current day-camp landscape in the D.C.-metropolitan area, and the specialty programs that cater to kids' developing interests.
As we move deeper into autumn, the air cools, foliage bursts with color, and memories of vacation dissipate. Summer flowers in Washingtonians' yards have been replaced with pumpkins and scarecrows. For nearly two months, pools have been closed and schools have been open. Passing October's midway mark means Thanksgiving is on the way, Christmas is around the corner, and winter is looming.
But first it means Halloween -- and you don't have to wait until the 31st to celebrate. The weeks leading up to the haunted holiday promise just as many tricks and treats as the eve itself.
Get active this holiday with these fun runs around Washington. A roundup of turkey trots and family-friendly races in the metro area, for Washingtonian's Well+Being Blog.
Katie and Elliott fuel their busy, active lives by planning their meals ahead. Here's how they do it.
It's hard to believe, but 2014 is almost over. If you're looking to close out the year in style, you've come to the right place: We've rounded up options for every type of New Year's Eve celebration, from debaucherous drink-fests to low-key gatherings and kid-appropriate parties.