An initial take a look at a circuit representation could be complicated, however if you could review a train map, you can read schematics. The purpose coincides: obtaining from point A to direct B. Literally, a circuit is the path that permits electricity to circulation. If you know what to try to find, it ll ended up being force of habit. While in the beginning you ll just be reviewing them, eventually you will start creating your personal. This guide will reveal you a few of the usual icons that you are sure to see in your future electric design profession.
Voltage: Determined in volts (V), voltage is the pressure or pressure of electrical power. This is typically provided by a battery (such as a 9V battery) or keys electrical power, the outlets in your house operate at 120V. Outlets in other countries operate at a various voltage, which is why you need a converter when taking a trip.
Present: Current is the flow of electricity, or more specifically, the flow of electrons. It is measured in Amperes (Amps), and can only move when a voltage supply is connected.
Resistance: Measured in Ohms (R or O), resistance specifies exactly how easily electrons could move through a product. Materials such as gold or copper, are called conductors, as they quickly permit circulation of activity (reduced resistance). Plastic, timber, and also air are instances of insulators, preventing the movement of electrons (high resistance).
DC (Direct Existing). DC is a constant circulation of present in one instructions. DC can flow not just through conductors, however semi-conductors, insulators, as well as a vacuum.
A/C (Alternating Present). In Air Conditioner, the circulation of existing regularly rotates between two directions, often creating a sine wave. The frequency of A/C is gauged in Hertz (Hz), and is commonly 60 Hz for electrical power in property and service functions.
Finishing an electric design degree and also then getting a job in the area means you will see a lot a whole lot a whole lot of these schematics. It s important to understand specifically just what is going on with these.
Whenever you identify your particular area of electrical design, you may see much more complicated diagrams and also icons. You ll find out likewise that different nations utilize various symbols. Of the 2 symbols for resistors over, the first one is used in the UNITED STATE, while the 2nd is utilized in Europe.


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John Keane | John Keane, 'Ideology and Democracy', in Politics and Ideology (Stockholm 2022)
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Karl Marx, by Emil Dreyer, around 1900.
The subject of democracy and ideology has deep and fascinating taproots. They extend back to the late eighteenth century, when the neologism 'ideology' sprang to life during the bitterly fought
opening phase of modern European battles for representative democracy. The first systematic exploration of the subject came almost a generation later, in the writings of Marx. His accounts of ideology and democ- racy are worth revisiting, if only to expose their weakness and to address some basic philosophical issues – concerning language, science and the political implications of pluralism – that are vitally important to demo- cratic politics in the 21st century.
The Marxian legacy
Why begin with Marx? Simply this: he tried to seize the late eighteenth-century concept of ideology from its inventors, idéologues such as Antoine Destutt de Tracy, for the purpose of unmasking the power claims of the rising bourgeoisie. The term ideology was transformed by Marx into a sharp-edged signifier, a weapon in the arsenal of 'true democracy', the self-government of the producers. In consequence, the theory of ideology was no longer synonymous with the concern of the idéologues to destroy religious prejudice and aristocratic privilege and to develop what they called civisme, through top-down state policies guided by empirical-analytic knowledge of the laws governing the human psyche.1
Marx walloped the anti-democratic political intentions of the idéologues. He ensured that the term ideology was no longer synonymous with the quixotic meddling of intellectuals intoxicated with abstractions, esprit de système and a naive faith in human perfectibility, which was the pejorative meaning ascribed to the term by Napoleon Bonaparte when denouncing the idéologues following Malet's abortive conspiracy of December 1812.
Marx gave a wholly new twist to its meaning: ideology as the collectively expressed ideas of the bourgeoisie, which talks democracy, rules the property system of civil society and (note his reductionism) thereby controls the modern state. Marx observed that not all sets of ideas are ideologies in this sense. An ideology is a special constellation of ideas. It comprises dominant and dominating ideas, which function to render 'natural' and invisible the power relations of the property order and its so-called democracy. Ideology protects these arrangements from public questioning and political resistance.
The Communist Manifesto, 1848.
Bourgeois ideology does this by concealing and 'freezing' social divi- sions. It functions as a condition of false compromise and unity among potentially conflicting social groups, principally the classes defined by wage labour and capital. It performs this legitimating function by portraying the dominant private interests of civil society in grandiose formulations that make them appear, falsely, as universal ways of life detached from particular interests. Ruling ideas that claim to be universal are always those of a particular ruling class. Marx illustrates the point by showing how the class relationships of modern society are seen by bourgeois ideologists to epitomise universal justice, individuality and the democratic rights of man. Yet bourgeois theories of universal democracy, liberty and individualism are ideological in the exact sense that they conceal the property-based interests of civil society, or so Marx says. Despite its appearance of guaranteeing individual and collective freedom, talk of democracy in reality guarantees merely the freedom of private property owners to carry on extracting surplus-value from the mass of impoverished waged labourers. Behind the litany and maquillage of democratic liberty there stands, in Marx's view, the harsh reality of market-driven capitalism: a new form of 'slavery' and 'inhumanity' based on the arrogant dominion of private capital. Marx thus tries to explain bourgeois ideology by using methods that critically expose its origins. The illusory disinterestedness and universalism of ideologies is unmasked by confronting them with their actual social basis. Social reality is pitted against its own illusions. Ideologies are accused of mis-recognising their own conditions of social production; they are condemned for trapping themselves within systems of ideas that function as apologies of the patterned exploitation inherent within market-based bourgeois democracy.
New doubts, new horizons
When sketched in this way, the classical Marxian theory of ideology seems to share several points of agreement with most contemporary normative theories of democracy, which emphasise such themes as the (potential) equality of citizens, self-government and public respect for the rule of law and human rights. To speak for a moment in the language of Marx, both are critical of class inequalities and, by extension, the power of private capital to manipulate the outcomes of elections, parliamentary deliberations and state policy-making in representative-democratic form. The two approaches also share a deep reservation about grandly universal political talk. Both suspect that big talk is often in practice a mask for particular interests; they seem to agree, as Marx and Engels put it in the Manifesto of the Communist Party, that ruling power groups typically represent their own conditions of life as 'eternal laws of nature and of reason'.
The affinities between the two political languages are evident; nevertheless, there remain serious doubts about their compatibility and whether, in particular, the Marxian theory of ideology remains plausible. During the past several decades, for understandably strong reasons, the Marxian theory of ideology has suffered a battering, followed by a marked loss of confidence. Numerous writers have tried to expose its fallacious nineteenth-century premises, arguing that those who follow in the footsteps of Marx's attempt at unmasking and abolishing ideological deception are themselves deceived. While the counter arguments are by no means simple or consistent, two reasons in particular explain why Marx's theory of ideology no longer works. Since these reasons bear centrally on any effort to rescue the term ideology as a critical weapon in support of democracy, both merit careful consideration.
Science and ideology
The first line of objection targets Marx's reluctance to label the natural sciences as ideological. According to many critics, the philosophical status of the Marxian theory of ideology is ruined by its dalliance with old-fashioned empiricism. Marx's conviction that 'the material transformation of the economic conditions of production…can be determined with the precision of natural science'2 is said to have assimilated the theory of ideology to the assumptions, empirical-analytic methods and instrumental aims of a nineteenth-century conception of natural science. Marx is charged with embracing the Comtean positivist assumption that absolute knowledge of modern society is possible by adhering to the rules of empirical observation, conceptual precision and methodological exactness. He supposed that this universal knowledge could be used to calculate, predict and control reality. The critique of ideology is thus construed by Marx as a species of technical knowledge in the hands of those who know that others are lost within the fogs of deception.
Several negative consequences are said to flow from this empiricist self- understanding of the critique of ideology. By contrasting the mis-recognition fostered by ideology with the certain knowledge of nat- ural science, the Marxian theory indulged an optimistic bourgeois Victorian conception of scientific-technical progress, which in our times has become highly questionable. It was not just that Marx refused to apply the category of ideology to the modern natural sciences. Because Marx was convinced of the 'scientific' status of his own theory of ideology, it fell victim to the dogmatic assumption, common to all scientism, that it was true knowledge capable of technical implementation. Marx's belief that the theory of ideology produced scientific insights into the laws of motion of 'reality' later aroused the suspicion that it was potentially an ally of manipulative power. In the name of the struggle of enlightened scientific reason against arrogant superstition, of true interests against false interests, it preserved rather than terminated the intellectualist bid for power and authority evident in the original 'civilising' mission of the idéologues. Symptomatic of this flaw was Marx's failure to consider whether his own theory of ideology might itself function as an ideology. A tu quoque question of this kind is surely legitimate, even within the terms of Marx's own discourse. If ideas are ideological because they justify inequalities of social power by misrepresenting, in grandiose universal claims, the real nature of civil society and the state, didn't Marx's own ideas function in this way? And since, as Marx observed of classical political economy, truthful ideas could become ideological due to changes in the class structure of any society, didn't this possibility apply equally to Marx's thought?
These questions were suppressed by the original Marxian theory. As Karl Mannheim observed in Ideology and Utopia, the Marxian theses on the relationship between structures of thought and the conditions of social existence were applied sparingly – to the opponents of Marxism and never to its own structures of thought. They laid claim to correct and politically useful knowledge of the modern democratic state and market economy, which were conceived as a totality governed by a single determining principle of organisation: changes in the forces and relations of production. In this way, Marx's critics say, the science of historical materialism set aside its insistence that only the proletariat can emancipate the proletariat. The so-called science indulged an instrumental relationship to its proletarian addressees. Their 'real historical interests' are known in advance. The Marxian theory plays the tune to which the 'dangerous class' is expected to dance.
The problem of signification
There is a second reason for the loss of credibility of Marx's critique of ideology. This has to do with its neglect of questions concerning spoken language and other (non-verbal) forms of signification. The complaint should be handled with care, if only because there are plenty of passages within his own writings where Marx notes the socio-political importance of language in human affairs. Moreover, it is false to suppose, as Gramsci reminded his contemporaries, that Marx conceived ideology as pure appearance, as an artificial substance draped like a veil over an underlying reality.
Social reality for Marx consists of interacting individuals, groups and classes who produce, by means of language, appearances that are something more than a veil of errors or lies. These ideological appearances are the distorted mode in which social activities manifest themselves in consciousness. As such, they have a material reality for social actors and, under conditions of a class-divided society, this reality generates and presupposes appearances.
Many subsequent critics (most of them indebted to Louis Althusser's influential essay on ideology3) acknowledge these caveats. They argue, nevertheless, that Marx's theory of ideology rests upon the untenable distinction between the ideological forms in which 'reality' appears and a prior domain of 'reality', consisting of 'material' activity uncluttered by processes of signification. That is why Marx understood ideology as a posthumous misrepresentation of an underlying reality – the material life processes of market society – which functions as the pre-symbolic point of origin of ideology. This subterranean reality not only operates 'behind the back' of ideology. It also serves as a foundation that contradicts, as well as explains, the dissimulations of ideology.
Numerous attempts to solve the riddles of ideology by distinguishing a 'surface' or 'superstructure' of ideological representations from a subterranean 'base' of material life activity can be found scattered throughout Marx's writings. A characteristic example is Marx's use of the old Roman story of the cattle rustler Cacus (in the third part of Theories of Surplus Value) to identify and explain the material origins of ideology. Just as Cacus concealed his robberies by herding his prey backwards into his cave, so that it appeared that they had already departed, the bourgeoisie, Marx explains, conceals its parasitic role within the production process by picturing itself, falsely, as the source of all wealth, which in reality is produced by the sweat and toil of the working class.
The distinction between material practice and its ideological misrepresentation is also strongly evident throughout Das Kapital. Certain 'imaginary' categories of bourgeois political economy (such as the 'value and price of labour'; 'wages'; the 'fictio juris of contracts'; 'commodity') are seen by Marx to originate within capitalist relations of production. Contrary to the self-understanding of political economy, says Marx, these concepts are neither timeless nor true. They are historically specific and function as mystifying 'categories for the phenomenal forms of essential relations'. These ideological categories depict complex relations, or relations among relations, such as the wages-money-value-commodity relationship, as self-evidently 'natural' relations, or simply as properties of things themselves. According to Marx, these mystifying categories (which he also calls illusions, forms of manifestation, hieroglyphics, semblances, estranged outward appearances) must be distinguished carefully from – and explained and criticised with reference to – 'real relations', or what he also calls inner connections, essences, real nature, actual relations, or the hidden or secret substratum.
Much the same 'reality-based' explanation of ideology appears within the earliest writings of Marx and Engels. A fundamental contrast is drawn between the 'actual existing world' and what human beings imagine or say about the world. The illusions of the bourgeois epoch are said to be sublimations of the 'material life-process' of social labour, private property and class struggle: 'Ideologists turn everything upside down.' Thus, for example, believers of religion are accused of failing to realise that 'man makes religion, religion does not make man'. Marx emphasises that religion is a form of illusory happiness. Therefore, the critique of religious ideology is at the same time a demand to abolish social conditions that require illusions: 'The criticism of religion is…the germ of the criticism of the valley of tears whose halo is religion.'
In such analyses, Marx and his co-author insist that ideologies have no independent or sui generis logic of development. Their birth, rise to dominance and decay is always determined by the logic of development of material exchanges with outer nature rooted in the social labour process. It follows that the grip of ideologies on the minds and lips of the powerless can be broken only through revolutionary changes of the 'actual existing world'. Life is not determined by consciousness; rather, consciousness is determined by life. Emancipation is not a matter of thinking and speaking differently. It is a 'practical' act, a matter of abolishing the material conditions of civil society and its pseudo-democracy.
These formulations understandably aroused strong reactions. Many have observed that the Marxian theory of ideology, resting as it does on the fundamental distinction between material activity and its apparent forms, fails to acknowledge that all social and political life, including the forces and relations of production in both their objective and subjective dimensions, is structured through codes of signification. The 'material life processes' of civil society do not comprise 'naked' productive activity. Whether in spoken, written or visual form, signs are not cognate to deeds, since deeds are themselves always 'saturated' by signs. Social and political life, to put the point differently, is coextensive with symbolically mediated activity. It is not a 'level' or 'dimension' of social and political life. There is nothing specifically social or political – not even the labour process – which is constituted from an Archimedean point 'outside' or 'below' signifying practices.
Marx's failure to recognise this elementary but fundamental point, his critics argue, produced a number of undesirable consequences. For instance, the theory of ideology could not provide a convincing explanation of how traditions can and do exert a profound influence far beyond their time and place of origin. Symptomatic was Marx's inability to come to terms with his own recognition of the way that classical Greek poetry and art came to be endowed with 'eternal' significance, at least for European civilisations. Linked with this problem of how to understand tradition was Marx's failure to explain the possibility (as he put it in Theories of Surplus Value) that 'free spiritual production' within any society can and often does conflict with politics, law, religion, morality and other 'ideological component parts of the ruling class'.
Finally, Marx's thesis that ideologies can be explained genetically, by referring to the prevailing 'real' forces and relations of production 'underlying' the surface forms of ideology, implied that ideology could be abolished. The elimination of commodity production and exchange and, hence, the abolition of the representative democratic state, would rid the world of illusions. Ideology would wither away. Forms of thought would become attuned to the 'real material conditions' of communist society. Processes of signification would become mere instruments of communication among free and equal subjects. According to Marx's critics, this communist dream of abolishing ideology is now better described as a totalitarian reverie – as a dangerous fantasy of building a future society whose subjects, fully transparent to one another, would be burdened no longer by problems of misrecognition, misunderstanding, rhetoric and all the other paraphernalia of communication.4
Reconstructing the concept of ideology
The Marxian theory of ideology is sometimes criticised for its conceptual imprecision, ambiguity and incompleteness. These are important weaknesses, but they pale before the two challenges described above. At a minimum, the crudely realist bias of the theory of ideology and its reductionist treatment of signifying practices pose some basic questions about the overall plausibility of the Marxian approach. Of central importance is the whole issue of whether or not the concept of ideology still has a legitimate place in the theory and practice of democracy. I believe it does, but I shall argue that in order to retain a critical concept of ideology it must be reconstructed fundamentally: dismantled and reassembled in a new form, in order to unlock its democratic potential.
From science to pluralism
How can this be done? Let us begin with the first objection to the Marxian theory of ideology criticism, for it raises the significant question of whether the theory of ideology can be rescued from its arrogant and outdated nineteenth-century empiricist presumption that science and ideology are diametrically opposed entities. More precisely, the issue is whether a critical theory of ideology can be rid of its empiricist bias, whether it can restrain itself from making absolute truth claims, minimally by acknowledging its own historicity, its contingent embeddedness within any given socio-political context. Can a critical theory of ideology come to understand itself as an interpretation and as therefore subject in principle to self-contradiction, unforeseen social and political developments, drastic revision or even open rejection by its public addressees, without at the same time being reduced to bland and apologetic propositions that kowtow to the status quo? In other words: can the term ideology become more than a bland descriptor, a mere synonym for a particular way of seeing the world? Is there an alternative to definitions of ideology that have no sting in their tail – for instance, those which regard ideology as a mere 'system of political and social beliefs' that embodies 'values and ideals' and 'principles of action' based on 'general beliefs about man, society, and the state'?5
Such questions concerning the possibility of a 'post-scientific' but socially and politically engaged critique of ideology and power are topical and of great importance for democratic politics. The trouble is that during the past couple of decades, the epistemological self-confidence that fed the Marxian theory of ideology has flagged. In its place there has developed a challenge to 'truth', a strong revival of cognitive and ethical scepticism of the kind anticipated in Pascal's maxim: 'What is truth on one side of the Pyrenees is error on the other.' The spirit of recent times is something like, 'No privileged truths, only interpretations!' and it is a key reason why critical theories of ideology, à la Marx, have become so scarce. According to Marx's critics, the struggle to unmask ideological illusions fails to examine its own presumed authority. The critique of ideology clings dogmatically to the misguided belief in the superior innocence of its own premises. In the view of these sceptics, the (Marxian) search for truth, free of illusions, must be called off. Theoretical inquiry must travel light; it should relinquish its traditional claim to absolute knowledge. It must instead embrace the logic of particularity, context-dependence and scepticism in the face of presumed certainties. The so-called real world is said to be only a fable, a struggle among competing fables. Religion, science, democracy, socialism, nationalism and liberalism are so many diverse interpretations of the world or, rather, so many variants of different fables that must be taken at face value, since they have no ultimate reference point or standard of truth outside themselves.
Does this 'post-truth' challenge to the critical theory of ideology constitute a welcome liberation from traditional socio-political and philosophical prejudices, particularly of an empiricist kind? Or is scepticism better seen as a scurrilous attack upon the democratic potential of the classical theory of ideology? There is no straightforward response to these awkward questions, although one influential line of reasoning begins with Hans Barth's Wahrheit und Ideologie. It is an interesting effort, both because it redefines ideology in linguistic terms and because it insists that scepticism is a political dead end. For Barth, the form of government and way of life known as democracy functionally requires the distinction between false (ideological) and true descriptions and universal normative claims. According to his way of thinking, a basic condition of human association under democratic conditions is agreement, and the essence of agreement, whether in scientific investigation or daily life, is the idea of universal truth. In recent years, Barth's point has been taken up by Jürgen Habermas and other deliberative democrats. These democrats emphasise the vital importance of rational argumentation. They defend the possibility of a communication theory of ideology that is critical of unequal power relations. They do so by insisting that such a theory must question dominating language claims, processes of signification that serve to induce and sustain the servile dependency of speaking actors on the powerful. Among these democrats, there is talk of the need for 'depth interpretations' of ideological domination. The approach evidently raises questions, which are often left unaddressed, about the specific institutions and procedures through which conflicting interpretations of what counts as 'domination' can be adjudicated openly and fairly within social and political life. The approach also prompts questions about the truth status of depth interpretations. Given that ideology is a strongly evaluative term, whose use implies criticism of unequal power relations, how can any instance of communication plausibly be deemed ideological? How can ideology critics pretend to stand above the fray, aloofly assessing the discourse of others, when their interpretation is but another interpretation, no different in principle from the interpretations of those whose discourse they seek to assess by way of 'depth interpretations'?
These are good and provocative questions. In effect, they force consideration of whether or not it is possible to avoid the twin pitfalls of empiricist 'science' (as the saviour of truth against the deceptions of ideology) and a wistful, wishy-washy scepticism that has a limited sense of the importance of politics and the dangers of deception. Justificatory theories of truth are one possible response to these searching questions. These theories embrace such principles as self-reflection, rational debate and consensus formation among subjects interacting freely within independent public spheres. They see ideology as a mode of signification that serves to sustain relations of domination among speaking and acting subjects who are situated within a social and political framework of asymmetrical power relations. Their view of ideology usually draws upon some or other version of Jürgen Habermas's theory of universal pragmatics, which is why it is doubtful whether the whole approach can escape unscathed from the latter's unresolved difficulties.
Particularly telling is the failure of theories of universal pragmatics to address directly the challenge of cognitive and ethical scepticism. In the versions presented by Habermas and his colleagues, a normative theory of ideology-free communication implies the political possibility of building public spaces guided by a fundamental principle: action oriented to reaching understanding and 'truthful' agreement, freed from the clutches of ideology. Ignoring the way many forms of communication have little or nothing to do with 'agreement' or 'truth', the theory of universal pragmatics presumed, without further argument, that seminar-style communication or 'deliberation' is, or could become, central in human affairs. The rationalism at work here, the belief that free speech is the enemy of ideology, is less than convincing and it helps explain why the theory of universal pragmatics failed in the end to formulate a plausible critical theory of ideology. The basic reason for this failure is traceable to its privileging of one particular type of communicative action known as 'consensual action': a form of communication among speaking and acting subjects that is guided, implicitly or explicitly, by their common conviction that certain 'validity claims' are in operation.
For Habermas and his colleagues, consensual action serves as the empirical and normative standard for deciding in practice what counts as 'truth' in opposition to ideological delusion. Free speech is the antidote to ideology. For whenever speaking actors engage publicly to debate and decide matters of public importance, they do so by presupposing several things. They suppose the practical importance of reaching mutual understanding. They presume that they are capable of distinguishing the performative and propositional aspects of their utterances. On that basis, above all, they imply that they can reach agreement about the 'truth' of their situation.
Language games
The line of reasoning is unconvincing. Put simply, the chief difficulty of a deliberation theory of ideology and democracy, one which is based on the premises of universal pragmatics, is that it sidesteps the frontal challenge mounted by scepticism. The whole analysis is tautological and impractical. It rests upon the supposition that speaking actors are already in agreement about the possibility of agreements guided by 'truth'. Yet people typically don't agree. They see no need for agreement. Often they actively resist agreement – which is another way of saying that the theory of universal pragmatics and deliberative democracy presupposes what cannot be taken for granted.
The impasse forces us back to the unanswered question: can the term ideology be rescued from its sceptical critics? Is there an alternative and politically more fruitful way of dealing with the twin challenges of scientism and scepticism? And can we go beyond the flawed theory of universal pragmatics, by reviving and redesigning a critical concept of ideology that does not suppose the possibility of rational agreement, or puts it on a pedestal? In other words, is it possible to recast the term ideology so that it both retains the sting in its tail and sits more squarely within a 21st-century understanding of democracy as the ongoing political effort by citizens and their representatives to chasten and humble power, wherever it is exercised? For the sake of democracy, can the old troublemaking term ideology be rescued from its old weaknesses? If so, how can this rescue operation happen?
One fruitful way of proceeding is suggested in the influential essay by Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition. Of special interest to Lyotard is the problem of legitimacy. By this, he means the processes through which every particular language game tends to authorise its own truth, rightness and efficacy – and, therewith, its superiority over other, rival language games – through utterances which specify, more or less explicitly to the agents of that language game, rules covering such matters as the need for narration, internal consistency, experimental verification and consensus obtained through discussion. Lyotard follows Wittgenstein in thinking that these rules are always context dependent. They comprise guidelines concerning how to form denotative utterances (in which the true/false distinction is central). These rules also cover notions of savoir-entendre, savoir-dire, and savoir-faire, that is, they encompass the ability to form and understand 'good' evaluative and prescriptive statements and, thereby, the capacity to speak and interact with others guided by certain norms. It is precisely consensus about these pragmatic rules, Lyotard argues, that permits the participants within any given language game to identify each other as interlocutors, as well as to circumscribe their language game, distinguishing it from other, possibly incommensurate language games.
From this neo-Wittgensteinian perspective, Lyotard forcefully argues that every utterance within a particular language game should be understood as an activity, as a 'move' with or against players of one's own or another language game. Utterances may, in addition, be understood as moves in opposition to the most formidable adversary of all: the prevailing language game itself. This is Lyotard's 'first principle': to perform speech acts involves jousting, adopting agonistic or solidaristic postures toward other players, or against the prevailing language game.
It follows from this principle that players within language games are always embedded in relations of power. Power here is understood not as communication unconstrained by 'truth' and 'free communication', as it was for Barth and for Habermas and other deliberative democrats. Power is rather the capacity of actors wilfully to block or effect changes in the speech activities of others within the already existing framework of a language game, which itself always pre-structures the speech activities of individuals and groups.
This point about power and language games is highly relevant to the subject of ideology and democracy. For it implies – this is Lyotard's 'second principle' – that language games must be considered as definite social practices. To perform rule-bound or rule-breaking utterances is, at the same time, to participate in the production, reproduction or transformation of forms of social and political life. Political orders cannot be understood as organically arranged functional wholes (as Talcott Parsons and other systems theorists supposed). Nor can they be understood as classbased and class-divided totalities (as Marx's theory of ideology supposed). Rather, the social and political bonds within any society typically resemble a complex labyrinth of many different, sometimes hostile, slip- ping and sliding language games. These language games are structured by contingent rules that cannot be understood or 'grasped' by means of some or other 'neutral' meta-discourse. Lyotard quotes Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations, section 18) to drive home this point concerning the thousands of language games, trivial or not so trivial, that normally weave the fabric of our societies: 'Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.'
In Lyotard's view, the ultimate aim of postmodernist analyses of language games is to expose and highlight the ungraspable and splintered character of social and political orders. Practically speaking, this means that postmodernism is committed to the task of dissolving the dominant and dominating language games that cement together and render 'natural' hierarchies of power. Contrary to the Marxian theory of ideology, Lyotard admits that the multiplicity of language games circulating within any society cannot be redescribed and evaluated through 'neutral' and all-knowing meta-discourses, such as a 'science' of ideology based on the rules of 'historical materialism'. Lyotard instead recommends what he calls paralogism (paralogie), that is, intellectual and political efforts to throw into question any given intellectual and political consensus. Since all language games are contingent, the point is to change the world by producing dissension and preventing any single language game from dominating others by smothering them in its pseudo-universal rules.
Lyotard tries to illustrate the fecundity of his approach by interrogating and doubting the rules of various types of language games. Examples include the Platonic dialogue, with its patterns of argument oriented to reaching a consensus between communicating partners; the popular narratives that define what may or may not be said and done in traditional societies; modern scientific discourse, which depends upon techniques such as didacticism, denotation, argument and proof-based methods of falsification, and rules of diachronic rhythm; and German Idealism, with its concern to synthesise the various sub-branches of knowledge through a totalising meta-narrative that understood itself as a moment in the becoming of 'spirit'. In each case, Lyotard aims to underscore the wholly conventional quality of these and other language games. He thereby raises vital doubts about their 'imperialist' claims to be absolute.
This method of questioning language games does not lead Lyotard down the path of self-contradiction, for instance, by privileging his own language game over other, possibly incommensurate language games. Lyotard covers his flanks by rehabilitating the logic of occasion as it is found, say, within the writings of the Greek Sophists. The striking feature of this logic is its claim to give the lie to supposed universal truths by analysing them as merely particular cases of the logic of the particular, of the special case, of the unique occasion. In contrast to the Cretan Epimenides, who contradicted himself by truthfully declaring that all Cretans were liars, the logic of particularity upon which Lyotard relies does not see itself as based on more universal foundations, on a 'truer truth'. Lyotard consistently embraces the logic of occasion and for that reason, or so I would argue, he makes a vital contribution to a revised understanding of ideology that is no longer burdened by past theoretical mistakes.
Think of things in this way. From the perspective of language games, ideologies cannot be understood, nor their riddles explained and their effects criticised, from within the reductionist schemas of either the idéologues, or of Marx. A language-games approach suggests that ideology is not a form of posthumous misrepresentation of a prior 'reality' of class-divided material life processes, which function (as Marx thought) as both the pre-linguistic, Archimedean point 'outside' and 'below' language games and as the point of 'truth' that contradicts and exposes the 'false' dissimulations of ideology. Language games are not a 'level' or 'dimension' of any social and political formation. Whenever they take root, they are coextensive with social and political life as such. It follows that ideology (in the most vulgar Marxian sense) is not a veil-like substance draped over the surface of 'reality'. Ideology operates within language games, which also means that ideology is not tied to any particular social entity and that it can spring up within many and varied and often surprising locales. Seen in this way, there is no necessary reason why the concept of ideology should be tied exclusively to class-based power relations. Ideology is not only a market-produced phenomenon (as Marx supposed). It may be generated and sustained by intellectuals, churches, social movements, political parties, armed forces and other power groups operating within the multiple fields of civil society and government.
This language-games approach has other implications. Its emphasis on language as a medium of social and political life implies that there can be no 'end of ideology', if that means a future society finely tuned to a 'reality' freed from the rules and effects of language games. Yet it does not follow from that proposition that ideologies are inevitable, or irremovable from political life. From the revised perspective of language games, the term ideology refers to a special type of hegemonic language game, one which functions, not always successfully, to mask the conditions of its own engendering by stifling the pluralism of language games within the established socio-political order in which it plays a vital part.
Ideological language games are those which try to command general obedience to their own particular claims. In practice, ideologies always have silencing and exclusionary effects. They are threats to pluralism. They imply the marginalisation or elimination (the 'terrorising', as Lyotard harshly puts it) of every other particular language game. It follows from this way of thinking that the whole project of ideology criticism can and must be rethought. The old arrogance of the Marxian theory of ideology needs to be ditched. Its attempt to devalue the false universality of an opponent's language game by presenting its own language game as empirically true and ethically justified, hence as unassailable, is implausible and, in practice, dangerous. That old way of criticising ideology was presumptuous. It thought of itself as a privileged language game, stand- ing high above the rough and tumble of social and political life, in order better to manipulate it. The new way of ideology criticism gives the lie to all particular language games posing as universal. It sees itself as only a particular case of the logic of the particular, as a specific language game which tolerates other language games just so long as they remain humble and self-limiting and, hence, particular. The criticism of ideology thus becomes an effort to highlight the intimate but inverse relationship between ideology and democracy. It takes aim at ideologies because they stifle and potentially undermine the multiple language games upon which democracy in practice always depends.
Democracy and ideology
To see ideology in this revised but unfamiliar way spells trouble for the long-standing presumption that democracy is itself a higher first principle.6 There is, today, widespread and often smug agreement that democracy stands for respect for ethical pluralism. Understood as the self-government of citizens considered as equals, democracy is presumed to stand for toleration of differences. It is said to be incompatible with political attempts to clothe people in one-size-fits-all ethical systems, such as the nation and state, history, Christianity, Islam, Marxism, social democracy and the market. The line of thinking appears to be convincing; its reason- ing seems perfectly reasonable. It is nevertheless plagued by a string of troubling questions: isn't the history of democracy peppered with examples of the abuse of its own language and ideals in support of particular dominant or ascendant interests (as Marx complained)? Surely democracy rests upon the fetish of the 'sovereign people', a principle that is thought to be timeless, but which has the effect of destroying its own historicity? Philosophically speaking, we may ask, isn't democracy itself an absolute ethic, a cut above other ethics, a necessary, non-negotiable and superior 'common faith', as John Dewey once claimed? Isn't democracy therefore bedevilled by a double standard? Didn't George W Bush prove by his speeches and actions during the past decade that democracy is hypocrisy, as two-faced as the fabled Protestant minister who preached in his Sunday sermon that peace in the Middle East could happen only when Jews and Muslims come to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?
Not necessarily so. From the perspective of a reinvigorated critical theory of ideology, democracy is a language game and a political ethic whose universality, its applicability everywhere on the face of the earth, stems from its commitment to 'pluriversality'. Democracy should stand for the robust protection of peoples and their biosphere against ideological language games, including its own. It questions all bogus first principles. It doubts arrogant grand ideologies and their claims upon power. But this does not mean that democracy is a first principle. It rather keeps watch and stands guard against pompous universals, including, for instance, the ideological imaginings of those champions of liberal democracy and Western democracy who ignore its non-liberal and non-Western forms. Democracy is the organised suspicion of ideology. It embraces institutional pluralism. It cultivates visions of complex equality and a variety of mechanisms of public accountability that ensure, in the face of complexity and diversity, that pompous power can be checked and undone.
From this perspective, democracy is the indispensable friend of humility. It seeks to humble the arrogant and it adopts a certain reserve towards the world. It nurtures public criticism of the ideologies that come clothed in metaphors: every woman needs a man, as the herd needs the shepherd, the ship's crew a captain, the proletariat the party and the nation a moral majority or saviour; scientific evidence is the most rational form of knowledge; market capitalism is the chief guarantor of choice; the end justifies the means; doctors know best; whites are superior to blacks; mankind is the master and possessor of nature; climate change is natural, not man- made; and so on. These and other ideologies are threatening of the spirit and institutions of democracy, for they each contain potentially a bossy and fanatical core. Fortified by their own truth, they seek to break loose from their own contingency, to crash into the world, damaging everything that crosses their path. To defend democracy against ideologies is thus to welcome indeterminacy, controversy and uncertainty. It is to fight against false universals in the open and with a generous contempt for big talk, which contends for the souls of citizens and their representatives. Democracy stands for the equalisation of power. It stands against manipulation, bossing and violent rule. This is not because democracy is 'true' and 'right'. It is rather because democracy as a way of life is the opponent of the powerful, especially when their lust for power is bathed in the ideological presumption that 'true' and 'right' are on their side.
The best study of the idéologues is Brian William Head, Ideology and Social Science: Destutt de Tracy and French liberalism (Dordrecht, 1985). According to Head, the term civisme (like its opposite, incivisme) was coined during the early years of the Revolution to denote appropriate sentiments for the citizen who cheerfully performs his 'Under the Jacobin regime the need to demonstrate one's civisme was increasingly identified with support for current policies and became part of an inquisitorial proce- dure of popular committees.'
Karl Marx, 'Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy', in Selected Works, volume I, (Moscow, 1970), p 504; cf 'The German Ideology', Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society (Garden City, NY, 1967), pp 408–9, where Marx and Engels write that the premises of historical materialism are not arbitrary, but 'actual premises' which can be substantiated 'in a purely empirical way'.
Louis Althusser, 'Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses' in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (London, 1971).
See the satirical treatment of this Marxian fantasy in one of the best-known plays of Václav Havel, The Memorandum. Office workers are expected to learn a new 'strictly scientific' language, Ptydepe, which is said officially to banish the confusions of nat- ural, unscientific It aims to maximise precision in communication by maximising the difference between words, so that no word can be mistaken for another, the length of the word being proportional to its frequency of use (the word for wombat has 319 letters). In fact, Ptydepe baffles everybody who tries to learn it, producing a condition of administrative paralysis and absurdity.
Bernard Williams, 'Democracy and Ideology', The Political Quarterly, volume 32, 4 (October-December, 1961).
This point is analysed at length in John Keane, The Life and Death of Democracy (Simon & Schuster, 2009).
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


I was born in Italy (1977), currently based in Milan. I explore social and gender related issue in our society. My artistic research investigates the "self", exploring its relationship with the world, with the social and natural space that surrounds the human being. Body, identity, and emotions are my key words. I got a degree in Natural Science for which I carried out a research project about lions in Tanzania and for five years I had been a geological and naturalistic guide in Iceland and Morocco. I visited Sarajevo several times after the war for humanitarian purposes where I shot a documentary. I am now working using photography, video, installations and mixed media. I am a Leica Camera Ambassador. If I could live a different life, I would only swap with an extreme mountain climber: one who pushes his mental and physical limits and makes discoveries.


Colorful and nutritious, this beautiful, bright purple sprouting broccoli does wonderfully in mild climates allowing it to produce sprout after sprout of broccoli goodness.
Brijette Peña is the owner operator of San Diego Seed Company which specializes in organic, regionally adapted seeds that gardeners, farmers and market growers can depend on.
A professional landscape designer can save you time, money, and headaches.
It's been called the botanical discovery of the century.
Greg Rubin's Top Plant Recommendation: Favorite California Native Trees.
Dawn Hummel's Top Plant Recommendations: Favorite Fruits & Vegetables for Oregon.
Walter Andersen's Top Recommendations: Favorite "Must Have" Tools.


Five steps for you to become an expert in garage door repairing, summarized as : first to ask, secondly to look ,thirdly to listen, fourth to touch, fifth to measures.
Ask: contact the manufacturer, consult on the cause of the connection failure and reflect the real state.
Look: open the shutter doors shell, to see whether the components on the circuit board are damaged.
Listen: When the relay contact switch, it will produce a clear "dida" sound, to determine whether the work properly.
Touch: sometimes even after the power-touch (with insulated gloves safety reasons) some components. In order to feel if its temperature is correct, concluded that poor devices.
Measure: refers to the use of universal table screwed to the appropriate gear, control circuits related measurements.


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E3 2015: Most Anticipated Multiplatform Games
This week, Shacknews is looking at a handful of the most anticipated games from this year's E3 across each of the major platforms. Today, we look at the most anticipated games to be released across multiple platforms.
Daniel Perez
As part of our coverage for E3 2015, Shacknews is taking a look at some of the most anticipated games for this year's show. Today, News Editor Daniel Perez is looking at the most awaited games across multiple gaming platforms.
Multiplatform games are the kinds of titles we can all enjoy, regardless what console or PC rig we call home. While we continue to argue which is the best platform to play our games on, we can also come together and gush over a game that's been released across multiple platforms. We may not all be well versed in the Halo series or God of War series, but we sure as hell know how great of an experience CD Projekt Red's The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt offers. For the final installment of our pre-E3 coverage, we take a look at some of the most highly-anticipated multiplatform games we expect to make an appearance at E3 2015.
We were all blown away when Bethesda announced Fallout 4 two weeks prior to the start of E3. Based on its debut trailer, we learned Fallout 4 will be taking place in Boston as well as toyed with the idea of Bethesda showing us an earlier post-apocalypse. We've also heard reports of Fallout 4 possibly releasing in 2015, with GameStop going as far as saying it'll launch on October 23. Bethesda has yet to announce when we can expect to adventure through a post-apocalyptic Boston in Fallout 4, but what we do know is they'll have a lot more to show at E3 during its first-ever showcase.
It's been nearly 10 years since the release of Star Wars Battlefront II, which is why fans of the series are extremely excited for its release later this year. If you're unfamiliar with the Battlefront series, the best way we can describe it is combine Dice's iconic Battlefield series with some of the most well-known battles in the Star Wars universe, which of course, includes the Battle of Hoth. We know Battlefront will release on November 17 and will offer the Battle of Jakku for free the following month, but we have yet to see an official gameplay demo of the game as its reveal trailer was created with its in-game engine, but didn't resemble what we will experience when we actually play the game. We have a feeling EA's showing of Battlefront will finally show us some actual gameplay footage.
Love it or hate it, there are a lot of people playing the Call of Duty series on a regular basis. Activision teased Black Ops 3 a few months ago, which we learned about its ambitious multiplayer mode and its single-player campaign, which picks up where Black Ops 2 left off. Considering how Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare evolved the aging first-person shooter series, we're hopeful Black Ops 3 can keep that fresh coat of paint still looking brand-spanking new at this year's E3.
Mirror's Edge Catalyst
A follow up to Dice's Mirror's Edge was finally announced this year as Mirror's Edge Catalyst is expected to make its first appearance at this year's E3. Catalyst won't be a true sequel, but instead, it'll be a game that honors the first game and will dive deeper into Faith's story. The game is expected to bring new and interesting gameplay and features, although we have yet to see any screenshots or videos of the game in action. This year's E3 will be the first time anyone sees the game, and after waiting so long for a new Mirror's Edge game, we hope it'll be worth the wait.
After the abomination that was Assassin's Creed Unity, Ubisoft has a lot to prove with its next Assassin's Creed game. Assassin's Creed Syndicate has a heavy burden to bare and Ubisoft is aware of this, which is why we wouldn't be surprised if this title turns out to be the most-polished game in the series to date. Syndicate takes place in London in 1868 and features two playable protagonists: twins Jacob and Evie Frye. While the setting may not set the Internet on fire, having multiple playable characters seems to be quite popular these days in the gaming industry. We'll see if this formula can help revitalize the Assassin's Creed series when Ubisoft shows it off at E3 next week.
Square Enix announced the third game in the Just Cause series late last year, and since then we've seen a trailer with tons of explosions and its first gameplay trailer with even more explosions. Just Cause 3 will star Rico Rodriguez once again as he attempts to liberate Medici from the regime of the ruthless dictator General Di Ravello. Rico will once again be equipped with a parachute and a grapple, although both are said to be vastly improved in Just Cause 3.
Call of Duty Series
Assassin's Creed series
Star Wars Battlefront Series
Just Cause series
Mirror's Edge Series
Mirror's Edge Catalyst
Windjammers 2 review: Big swingin' discs
Evening Reading - January 19, 2022
Nickelodeon Extreme Tennis interview: Serving on Apple Arcade
10 questions about Microsoft's purchase of Activision Blizzard
Daniel Perez posted a new article, E3 2015: Most Anticipated Multiplatform Games


How to prepare for RBI grade B exam?
Reserve Bank of India has started accepting applications for RBI Grade B Exam from 3rd July 2018. The Phase I Exam is scheduled on 16th August 2018 and the Phase II Exam is scheduled on 7th September 2018. It is high time for the aspirants to start their preparations. So, we have come up with an article on How to prepare for RBI grade B exam- Preparation Tips for RBI Grade B exam 2018- Study Plan for RBI grade B exam 2018.
Since the exam dates are out now and you have just a month left to prepare for the RBI Grade B Exam, we recommend you to go through this article thoroughly. Also, before starting your preps, go through the RBI Grade B exam pattern and RBI Grade B syllabus. As per the RBI Grade B Notification 2018, you must be ready for the cut- throat competition this time. To cope up with this cutting-edge competition, we have prepared a plan for you to study for the exam.
Let us now go through the RBI Grade B exam pattern in detail which will help you with your biggest query i.e. How to prepare for RBI Grade B exam.
The RBI Grade B Phase III will be an interview session which will be asked as per the existing format. This will be the last round of the process of selection.
(i) Practice makes a man perfect. Make it a habit of practising questions on a daily basis.
(ii) Solve RBI Grade B practice papers and RBI Grade B mock tests by analysing time. Analyze your performance and record your scores.
(iii) Better scores in Reasoning and Quant can only be obtained when you practice well. Make sure you practice well from RBI Grade B previous year question papers.
(iv) RBI test series will also help you increase your speed and accuracy.
(i) Time management is an essential factor for RBI Grade B Officers exam.
(ii) Prefix your TIME during your practice sessions.
(i) Speed and accuracy are inevitable factors for success in RBI Grade B Officers exam.
(ii) Don't waste time on a single question. You will end up wasting time in this approach. Rather, move on with the questions which you are comfortable with.
(i) Revise the concepts which you have already prepared.
(ii) Prepare quick notes which will help you get a quick glance at the concepts.


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Home > Articles > Information Technology
Acquisitions and ASPs: What's in It for You?
By Wilson Mattos
Acquisitions and ASPs: What's in It for You?
Interliant, Inc.
How ASP Alliances Can Benefit Your E-Business Strategy
The Downside of Acquisitions
This article profiles application service providers (ASPs) that have strengthened their offerings by acquiring other companies.
This article is excerpted from his book Realizing e-Business with Application Service Providers.
Reliance on partnerships is making the difference between the success or failure of many application service providers (ASPs). Extending the reach of a company, building a strong infrastructure, and even completing e-commerce transaction processing for customers—all are reasons why partnerships are happening daily in the e-business arena.
How does BroadVision make decisions on which companies to acquire? Their purchase of Interleaf in 2000 illustrates that they're actively making decisions to create a foundation for the next stage of growth in the company. Interleaf is an e-content company dedicated to the development, marketing, and sale of XML-based content-management tools. These tools enable the creation, publication, management, and reuse of dynamic, intelligent content for Web and wireless applications. The e-content business unit comprises nearly 70% of Interleaf's approximately 400 employees and has been its most significant area of growth and investment.
BroadVision's intent in acquiring Interleaf was to expand its ability to deliver personalized e-business applications across Web and wireless by combining the two firms' strengths to meet the objectives of improving e-business time-to-market, better integration with content sources and back-end systems, and high performance and scalability. The deal also combined the two firms' customer bases of more than 2,500 blue chip and dot-com companies.
The combination of the suite of BroadVision One-To-One personalized e-business applications and Interleaf's XML-based e-content management tools creates one of the most comprehensive, end-to-end offerings for companies needing to manage content-rich and transactional e-businesses for delivery over the Web and wireless devices. The Gartner Group estimates that by 2003 80% of application-to-application traffic passing over public networks will be in XML (Gartner Group, October, 2000).
Specific benefits of the combined offering are described in the following sections.
Less Time and Lower Cost for E-Content Management
The integrated offering combines Interleaf's XML-based e-content management tools and BroadVision's real-time instant publishing tools to shorten time to production for content. This lowers the total cost of ownership for companies by enabling publishers to more easily create, publish, manage, and re-purpose transactional content. Additionally, the integrated offering is differentiated by its support for the publication of XML-based documents from Microsoft Office applications, greatly expanding general business users' ability to publish Web and wireless content.
Automating B2B E-Commerce Through Intelligent Content
The integrated offering makes the integration of intelligent content with companies' existing e-business initiatives possible, often streamlining operations processes. Intelligent content is personalized, reusable, and dynamically assembled in real time to increase collaboration and communication among commerce partners. Unlike static content, intelligent content automates interactions and transactions among participants, creating a highly productive information value chain.
Expanded E-Business Reach
Interleaf brought to the table its X-WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) and XSL (eXtensible Style Sheet Language, which enables content to be separated from data so that content can be shared across any number of XML documents). These technologies are being steadily adopted by Broadvision customers. The integration of X-WAP and XSL gives users access to dynamic content from mobile and other wireless devices, such as digital cellular telephones, pagers, personal digital assistants, and e-books. End users now are able to access real-time personalized product information, inventory, price, and catalog data, and execute orders from Web sites and wireless devices via BroadVision's capability to deliver e-business anywhere, anytime. The Yankee Group has estimated that wireless subscribers accessing the Internet will continue its aggressive growth, from 669 million in 1999 to 1.26 billion by 2005 (The Yankee Group, November, 2000).
In 1999, Cisco Systems, the king of networking gear, agreed to invest $1.5 billion for a 20% stake in KPMG's consulting business, and teamed with Motorola to acquire the fixed wireless assets of Bosch Telecom, forming joint venture SpectraPoint Wireless to provide high-speed networking services to businesses. In one of its largest acquisitions, Cisco bought Cerent (fiber-optic network equipment) for $7 billion. The company also snapped up several smaller networking companies, including Sentient Networks (ATM products) and GeoTel Communications (call-routing software). Cisco also acquired Aironet Wireless Communications (wireless LAN products) for about $800 million. Also in 1999, Cisco and Qwest Communications collaborated on a nationwide project to bring Internet access to secondary and tertiary geographic markets throughout the U.S. In early 2000, Cisco teamed up with GTE, Whirlpool, and Sun Microsystems to develop the home gateway, an answering machine–sized device that enables high-speed networking of multiple PCs, as well as smart appliances, over a home's existing phone lines. Whirlpool and General Electric are readying appliances that have Internet connectivity for both management of the device and Internet access to the customer from the appliance itself. (Examples include refrigerators with touch screens that provide browsers for Internet surfing.) The company also bought Perilli's fiber-optic telephone equipment operations for more than $2 billion.
Cisco has been acquiring networking companies at a rate of one every month or two, and CEO John Chambers expects this pace to continue for several more years.
Here's a sampling of their acquisitions:
Internet: TGV Software, Network Translation, Internet Junction
Workgroup/LAN: Grand Junction, Nashoba Networks, Granite Systems
Remote access: Combinet
WAN: StrataCom
Cisco has had a lot of success with acquisitions. Granted, a few didn't work out as planned. For example, due to a technology overlap, the value of the acquisition of Lightstream was greatly reduced by the subsequent purchase of StrataCom. But such failures are a rarity for Cisco.
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Sometimes, our life circumstances make our daily walk a difficult uphill climb, "chugging" and "puffing" as we struggle to keep ourselves going. Our self-talk during these times is critical. These internal words can defeat us, delay us, or inspire us. This self-talk is also God-talk as He hears everything we think. There is no alone time. God is ever-present.
Let us press onward like Paul, trust fully in the Lord, and commit to the ultimate goal of heaven.
To behold— the City where I will reside.


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Eagles/NFL
Eagles Notes: DeSean surpasses 1,000 receiving yards
DeSean Jackson celebrated his 27th birthday on Sunday by recording his first 1,000-yard receiving season since 2010 in the Eagles' 24-21 win over the Arizona Cardinals. Jackson, who needed 15 yards to reach the mark, topped it with a 25-yard catch in the second quarter.
Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson. (Matt Rourke/AP)Read more
by By Zach Berman, Inquirer Staff Writer
He finished with three catches for 36 yards, bringing his season total to 61 catches for 1,021 yards. Jackson remains 389 yards shy of setting the Eagles' single-season record set by Mike Quick in 1983. He joined Quick and Harold Carmichael as the only receivers in franchise history with three 1,000-yard seasons.
"He's been fantastic all year long and has worked extremely hard in everything we've asked him to do from [team activities] to the offseason and every day in practice," coach Chip Kelly said. "And what we're seeing on the field is the time he's invested in himself, and I'm real happy for him."
Jackson had a 54-yard punt return for a touchdown in the fourth quarter, but it was called back because of a holding penalty. That would have been Jackson's first return touchdown since 2010.
After the game, there was confusion about which player was charged with the penalty. The officials did not announce a number. Kelly did not see the penalty because he was watching the return. He was told it was Roc Carmichael, although that did not make sense to him, he said. The television replay showed it might have been Kurt Coleman, but even the players on the field did not get an explanation.
"I saw the flag at the end," Kelly said. "I'll wait until we can look at the film to see exactly what happened. But I don't know. I didn't get a number, either."
Jones on a roll
Punter Donnie Jones continued a standout season by setting an Eagles record: landing seven punts inside the 20-yard line. It was the third-highest total in the NFL since 1976, when the league started keeping that stat.
Jones, who was named NFC special teams player of the week two weeks ago, has 29 punts this season inside the 20. The team record is 31, set by Jeff Feagles in 1993.
"We've had a lot more situational punting this year, really meaningful plays at the end of games," Jones said. "I feel I've been really solid. It's putting in the work in the week and coming out executing as a unit. I couldn't do my job if [Jon Dorenbos] wasn't a great snapper. I couldn't do my job if these guys didn't protect and go down and cover."
Injured Birds
Wide receiver Jeff Maehl left Sunday's game with a head injury, and linebacker Najee Goode left with a hamstring injury. Kelly will likely have more on their status for practice this week when he meets with reporters on Monday.
Safety Earl Wolff (knee) was the only player to miss the game because of injury. Other inactive Eagles were quarterback Matt Barkley, cornerback Curtis Marsh, running back Matthew Tucker, linebacker Emmanuel Acho, and tackles Matt Tobin and Dennis Kelly.
Quarterback Michael Vick was active for the first time since Oct. 27, but he did not enter the game. Linebacker Jake Knott played for the first time since Oct. 20.
By Zach Berman, Inquirer Staff Writer


The CAMC Clinical Trials Center provides a focused mechanism for evaluating new drugs and drug uses, new medical devices, and quality of life aspects associated with the use of these products. These studies are conducted within our own facilities as well as at hospitals, clinics, and physicians' offices. The Clinical Trials Center plays an essential role in encouraging and supporting quality research in a controlled medical setting.
Our current involvement includes clinical trials of drugs and devices, prevention programs, outcomes/quality improvement, and quality of life studies. We conduct industry-sponsored funded clinical trials.
These projects have been implemented in a variety of therapeutic areas including cardiology, peripheral vascular, oncology, infectious diseases, endocrinology/metabolism, gynecology, surgery, and device development.
We are interested in conducting research that will benefit the people of West Virginia. The application of what we learn from research is vital to the improvement of the health, quality of service, and patient care throughout West Virginia.


MSR claim that the Reactor Stove System is: "the fastest and most fuel efficient stove ever made" and that it "delivers that level of performance in the cold and wind of the real world." Kev took that as a gauntlet thrown down and has since tested it in some of the most challenging situations in Europe from the Eiger North Face to the motorway service stations of the UK! What's his verdict?
MSR Reactor Stove – using the hanging kit to melt snow in the tent porch.
The MSR Reactor is an integrated cook system where the burner and pot/heat exchanger are designed to all work together as one unit for maximum cooking efficiency. The pot/heat exchanger comes in 3 sizes: 1l, 1.7l and 2.5l . I tested the 1l version which is perfect for a pair, allowing you to melt snow to make water or simply boil water to make hot drinks and add to freeze dried meals. The obvious downside of this system is you are pretty limited with your cooking options but it is essentially a water boiler and let's face it, the reality is that you are not really going to be cooking a gourmet meal strapped to an alpine north face or big wall. I use this sort of system for convenience and efficiency and if I'm car camping, I take a double burner and proper pans!
So the MSR Reactor stove system is best for missions where you need simplicity and are short on space and weight. Alpine climbing, backpacking, big walling etc. I have primarily used it for melting snow to make water to drink and also rehydrate freeze dried meals but it has also had the odd outing in motorway service station carparks when I've been too much of a tight arse to buy their overpriced coffee (MSR do a French Press accessory so you can even have the real thing)!
In use I was very impressed with the performance of the MSR Reactor Stove System. I need to point out there were no scientific tests going on so anything I say is just based on observation and anecdotal comparison from having used other similar units, but here goes. It boiled water quickly at low altitudes, MSR claim 0.5 litre of water boils in 1.5 minutes and at low altitudes I would say this was fair if there was no wind and the temperature was above freezing. Remember that altitude, temperature and wind will always affect the performance of a stove. MSR do point out that any comparisons they did were in a lab and you can see some test results in the diagram below, although the competition is not specified.
The main test for me is how well a stove performs when melting snow, and at this job we felt it was awesome, definitely quicker than rival systems I have used. The main limiting factor was nothing to do with the stove itself and more to do with the performance of the gas canister in cold weather and at altitude. It is definitely worth insulating the base of the canister from the cold ground (MSR make little feet for the canister to do this job, but you can also use their excellent hanging kit or perch it on your foam sleep pad) and even going as far as wrapping the canister body in a piece of foam. I tend to sleep with the gas canisters in my sleeping bag too as this speeds up getting your morning coffee no end!
The MSR Reactor Stove is high quality, feeling robust but light. It is not the lightest or most compact system out there but it is one of the most reliable I have used, although not 100% reliable. Whilst bivvying on a cold, windy night below the Matterhorn's North Face we really struggled to light the burner and keep it lit. Once the heat exchanger pot sits on the burner it does shelter it from the wind but in the meantime we just couldn't get it to light due to the exposed position we were in. I did wonder if the stove was faulty but a pair of friends up there with us had the same stove and it also had exactly the same problem. Luckily we were able to descend and find enough shelter so we didn't go thirsty but half way up a huge face, this may have been a different story.
One other point about the way the pot/heat exchanger sits on the burner is that it doesn't attach in any way like for example, Jetfoil stoves do. It simply sits on the burner. This has pros and cons but the only major drawback is it is easier to knock the pan over than with the locked on systems, but at least if it's not all connected you only knock the pan over and not a towering raging furnace, that you then have to risk burning yourself to knock off.
A pair of MSR Reactor Stoves in action! Breakfast time in the Solvay refuge, descending the Matterhorn after climbing the North Face.
The Reactor Stove System does not have a built in igniter and you need to carry a lighter, matches or flint and steel. This is mainly a good thing as I've found that any stoves I've had with integrated ignition have usually broken within a few uses. However I do wonder if it would have helped in the above situation (where it wouldn't ignite in the wind) as you could light it whilst the heat exchanger pan was already on the burner which would offer wind protection. You can only light the burner over the top, not from the side though.
The lid and pan handler are integrated and easy to use which is a nice touch, and the pan features a pouring spout allowing easy drainage. As I mentioned earlier, MSR make a hanging system to go with the Reactor and this is a really useful accessory, being light simple and compact. It also securely integrates the pot and the burner making it much more difficult to knock the pan over.
MSR Reactor Stove – great for alpine bivies.
I did find the nesting of the burner in the pan for storage to be a little unsatisfactory. MSR claim the burner and a 4oz gas canister nest perfectly in the pot with the lid on but I could never seem to get the burner to sit in and still get a canister in. Either me being incompetent (probable!) or the dimensions needing a rejig?
So all in all the MSR Reactor Stove System is a great stove for backpackers and alpinists who want to boil water or melt snow. You're not going to cook in it as such but it's designed more with rehydrating freeze dried meals in mind. It is high quality, efficient and robust. We did have problems with performance in the wind though and the burner doesn't nest satisfactorily with a gas canister in the pan.
Find out more about the MSR Reactor Stove System at the MSR website.
This is a really odd four star review — the Stove outright failed to light in a specific situation, and the kit doesn't actually fit in the pot with fuel? You mentioned a Jetboil (I consider it the obvious competition), which doesn't have any issue with nesting and comes with an integrated lighter that might have worked in your Matterhorn scenario. Given the MSR's negatives, it's really too bad there wasn't an rigorous competitive testing involved and I don't understand why you would give it four stars.
Hi, I agree with Colin above, I have a Jetboil for several years, it is working very well, and with the wind shelter (own design), I can boil water – melt snow etc in any wind conditions. Lighter integrated and very fast boiling times. Not to mention the price – way smaller that MSR stoves. I want to mention that I don't want to promote Jetboil as a brand – is just to point out that there are better options out there, for far less money. Be smart and shop around.


text:
C&G Partners Design "Comeback Season: Sports After 9/11" Exhibition
The emotion of the crowd was the inspiration C&G Partners (New York) drew on to design "Comeback Season: Sports After 9/11," a new special exhibition at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, which opened on June 27. From the pause in play as the nation mourned in the aftermath of the attacks, national sports and its athletes went on to play a significant role in helping the country come together around a unifying message of collective hope and perseverance.
C&G Partners was tasked with the exhibit design, graphic design, and sound and media production for "Comeback Season," working with the National September 11 Memorial & Museum's own project team. All techniques used to communicate the exhibition narrative are designed to echo actual sports experiences. The exhibit is designed as a chronological account of what happened in sports on the national scale after the events of 9/11. It begins in the moments after the attacks, when all national sports in the US were suspended and stadiums in the New York metro area were used instead to support the relief effort.
C&G Partners divided "Comeback Season" into nine sections, with additional stations dedicated to stories of victims and their families. Each of the nine sections include dramatically large images, objects from the museum's collection or on loan and poignant quotes. They also host custom-made short documentaries drawn from oral histories, combined with powerful excerpts from media of the time.
"Our design strategy uses the emotions of sports crowds at various points after 9/11 as the context for the narrative," said Jonathan Alger, managing partner who oversaw the project for C&G Partners. "It's an effective way to frame the story arc, using design gestures to take visitors back to those key moments in stadiums to portray the changing emotions of a whole nation. By making visitors feel as if they are actually in those crowds, they experience the profound transition from uncertainty and grief to hope that swept the country over the weeks and months once sports leagues resumed play and brought us together."
Find out more at C&G Partnersand 911memorial.org
C&G Partners
Jonathan Alger
Wayne McCutcheon
Drew Carolan
Jill Perardi
Vice-President/Director of Design
Betsy Beaman


What types of cameras do you use? How many? And where do you put them?
We use professional HD cameras. These allow us to achieve our first goal of being discreet during the wedding. At the same time, we can capture beautiful images with the advanced optics. Our basic package includes three ceremony cameras. We try to position ourselves towards the front, but to the sides to get closer to the couple, without obstructing any guests. Occasionally church restrictions limit our shooting angles.
How do you handle church's limitations?
While this is going to be your only wedding, there is a pretty good chance that we will be returning to this venue in the future for another. One of our first goals when we get to a ceremony site is to talk with the planner about where we can shoot. We always assure them that our style is discreet and professional. Some obstacles are beyond our control, but we almost always come to a compromise and we never interfere.
We normally do not use any lighting when shooting the ceremony or reception. It should be noted that the more light we have, the better the footage. While a low-light or no-light ceremony and reception can be very romantic, it can be difficult to get quality footage. In some cases, we might set up small lights to illuminate the toasts and first dances.
We usually work with the sound operator at the ceremony to try and get the best sound possible. Some things are out of our control but we try to use redundancy when possible. For example, we will put a small wireless lapel mic on the groom to capture the vows and ring exchange.
When do you start shooting? When do you finish?
Generally we start at 10am, you have the option of adding earlier morning hours at a rate of $99 per hour. For our Wedding Day Rewind package, we stay through the main dances and the dance floor open to everyone, typically 30 minutes after the dance begins.
We are getting married in an Eastern Orthodox ceremony, could you videotape our wedding?
Cheshire Moon Films shoots a variety of weddings every year and does not discriminate based on race, creed or sexual preference.
For the ceremony, we stay until the end of the ceremony. For the reception, we will stay for at least 30 minutes past the start of the dance - enough to get the major dances. Additional hours may be purchased. We don't generally record "dollar dances." Once the dance is in full swing, we usually get a few of the full dances before we leave. Typically, a final reception film will run from 45-75 minutes.
Do you eat with the guests?
We appreciate the offer to eat with the guests when it is offered, but it is not a requirement that we place on our couples. We ask if a meal will be available so that we can plan out our day. We would prefer to be ready to shoot. That being said, we also try to avoid filming other people eating. It doesn't make for very appealing images and allows your guests to enjoy the special meal without worrying about being filmed.
CAN I USE MY FAVORITE SONGS FOR MY WEDDING FILM?
We have partnered with TracksMusic.com, MusicBed.com, SoundStripe.com and SongFreedom.com to provide you with a large selection of music for your wedding film. Feel free to start browsing their catalogs and making note of what you'd like include. They feature popular artists including Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, American Authors, Imagine Dragons, Ben Rector, and OneRepublic. The licensing costs are covered CM Films. Due to copyright restrictions, music selections must be made from these catalogs.
How long does it take to complete the Wedding Day Rewind?
We can edit the footage in about two hours from arriving at the reception, generally. If there is a great distance between the ceremony and reception sites, that can affect our completion time. Also, the longer time allowed for editing creates the opportunity for the editor to polish the film and add more special touches.
How long is the Wedding Day Rewind?
The wedding footage can range from three to five minutes, or 6-10 with the addition of the Reception Coverage. We emphasize quality not quantity. The Photo Years can add another five minutes and the Love Story Rewind can be from eight to fifteen minutes also.
Do you offer Dedicated Wedding Videography?
Yes. This is the no-cost option to have a block of time set aside specifically for videography. This time allows us to set up more elaborate specialty shots. Utilizing our talents in cinematography, time lapse and special effects, we can create beautiful unique shots.
How long does it take to complete our wedding film?
Editing ceremonies and receptions are the most time consuming part of our business. Most weddings can take over a week to edit. Often the wedding season can create large backlog of work. Our contracts note that couples can expect their discs in about one month, but it very often runs longer than that.
What do I get in the final package?
All wedding packages are delivered online. We also have a thumbdrive delivery and DVD/Blu-ray Authoring options available.
We delivery all of our edding films online. In the event that we are returning photographs or other personal items, we will utilize FedEx Ground. They have a home delivery option that is very reliable although we prefer a business address for delivery if one is available. Also, we post all of our Wedding Day Rewinds on our website.
How long is the completed video?
This varies from wedding to wedding. We work to make sure that your film is packed with quality footage. We would never use "filler" footage just to make a film longer. Your wedding film should not have chapters that you skip over. The emphasis is on quality not quantity. A Wedding Day Rewind can run 8-12 minutes. A Ceremony is the actual length of your ceremony and the Reception can run from 45-75 minutes.
Do you shoot or provide HD quality footage?
Final films are delivered in high-definition online with the option to purchase DVD/Bluray Authoring package for those who still prefer disc media. We also have the option for a thumbdrive delivery via mail.
Do you PROVIDE AERIAL FOOTAGE?
We love getting beautiful shots from the sky! We are insured and FAA-licensed. Due to weather, licensed staff and geographic restrictions, we cannot guarantee aerial footage for every wedding, but will make it available whenever possible.
Can I have my raw footage when you are done?
It is the general policy of Cheshire Moon Films to not release raw footage to our clients. We take great pride in the final product that we deliver. It is our mission to make sure that every piece of video bearing the Cheshire Moon name is of the highest quality. Our raw footage is merely a step in our creative process. It is not produced with the intent of public viewing. However, we do offer the option of the Wedding Day Prewind. This is a bonus service that includes a longer cut of the pre-ceremony footage, essentially giving you all of your useable footage, but edited for watchability.
Currently we prefer cash, check payments. We can also provide online invoicing that will allow you to pay securely with a credit card.
How far do you travel? Do you charge a mileage fee?
What do your shooters usually wear to a wedding?
While it would be awesome to work in a tuxedo, shooting a wedding is very physical and it's just not practical. Our shooters wear dress shirts and slacks/dress denim, often with a tie and/or sports coat. As the day shifts from the ceremony to the reception, it's not uncommon to shed the tie or jacket as the camera becomes more mobile. On rare occasions, including outdoor weddings or on very hot days, we may go with a dress polo shirt.
-At least 6 month notice: $500 retainer.
-At least 30 day notice: 50% of total due.
-At least 14 day notice: 75% of total due.
-Less than 14 days, you will be charged the full total due.
Cheshire Moon Films has been in the wedding business since 2005 and Tom Haggas has been doing weddings since 2000. Tom has worked in video and film production for over 20 years.
We have left a mass of happy couples in our wake. If you would like to contact any of our couples and talk to them yourself, please let us know and we would be happy to put you in contact with them. You can also view feedback from our couples on our Wedding Wire page.


Sounds good, right? It's the kind of relief school districts, especially urban school districts, had been begging for over the last year. Berger and Moore's proposal, which was endorsed by the N.C. Association of School Administrators, phases in the K–3 class-size mandate over the next four years, while giving districts $70 million a year to cover the expenses of hiring more teachers. What's more, the bill increases funds for pre-K programs, up to $91 million a year.
Again, sounds good—until you read the thing.
See, HB 90 does a lot more than address class sizes. There are also two provisions Governor Cooper and legislative Democrats are almost certain to oppose—which the Republicans can then use as a political cudgel, accusing them of being anti-education.
This is the North Carolina General Assembly, after all. You didn't think this thing would be neat and tidy, did you?
The first has to do with Cooper's Atlantic Coast Pipeline mitigation fund—the $58 million the developers of the controversial natural-gas pipeline paid the state to set up a fund to mitigate any environmental damage. The legislature's bill would essentially take that money out of the governor's control. No longer would it be used for mitigation; now it would be routed to school systems in the counties through which the ACP runs.
The second—and probably the ultimate poison pill for Democrats—is the latest salvo in Cooper's war with the legislature over the constitution of the state's election board. Last month, you'll recall, the N.C. Supreme Court struck down the legislature's reconfiguration of the board, preserving Cooper's control of the body instead of evenly dividing eight seats among Republicans and Democrats, as the legislature wished. Under the old system—which the Supreme Court effectively reinstated—the governor's party controlled three of the board's five seats.
This ordeal has gone on since before Cooper took office. Soon after the 2016 election, the legislature—with the lame-duck Pat McCrory still in the governor's chair—passed a series of laws designed to strip the governor of his power, including a remake of the elections board. Cooper sued, and a state court sided with him. So the legislature quickly tweaked the bill and passed it again. And Cooper sued again. Because of the legal wrangling, and because Cooper refused to appoint members, the legislature's eight-member Bipartisan Board of Elections & Ethics Enforcement sat vacant.
With the Supreme Court having weighed in against them, Republicans are now taking a third bite at the apple.
On Twitter, legislative Democrats accused the GOP of playing political games and trying to smear the governor, particularly regarding the ACP, which conservatives have painted as a slush fund/bribe the governor accepted in exchange for the Department of Environmental Quality signing off on the project. It didn't help that Cooper then named as legislative affairs director a man who lobbied for Dominion Energy, which is part of the ACP project.


text:
package org.opendaylight.atrium.routingservice.api;

import com.google.common.base.MoreObjects;

import java.util.Objects;

/**
 * Represents a change to the Forwarding Information Base (FIB).
 */
public class AtriumFibUpdate {

    /**
     * Specifies the type of the FIB update.
     */
    public enum Type {
        /**
         * The update contains a new or updated FIB entry for a prefix.
         */
        UPDATE,

        /**
         * The update signals that a prefix should be removed from the FIB.
         */
        DELETE
    }

    private final Type type;
    private final AtriumFibEntry entry;

    /**
     * Creates a new FIB update.
     *
     * @param type type of the update
     * @param entry FIB entry describing the update
     */
    public AtriumFibUpdate(Type type, AtriumFibEntry entry) {
        this.type = type;
        this.entry = entry;
    }

    /**
     * Returns the type of the update.
     *
     * @return update type
     */
    public Type type() {
        return type;
    }

    /**
     * Returns the FIB entry which contains update information.
     *
     * @return the FIB entry
     */
    public AtriumFibEntry entry() {
        return entry;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object o) {
        if (!(o instanceof AtriumFibUpdate)) {
            return false;
        }

        AtriumFibUpdate that = (AtriumFibUpdate) o;

        return Objects.equals(this.type, that.type) &&
                Objects.equals(this.entry, that.entry);
    }

    @Override
    public int hashCode() {
        return Objects.hash(type, entry);
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return MoreObjects.toStringHelper(getClass())
                .add("type", type)
                .add("entry", entry)
                .toString();
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Q: Google sheets IFS and AND query I'm trying to mod a formula in google sheet to substract a value based on the value of another column
Column E has the amount of hours: 3, 4, 5, 9 for example
If the hours are between 4 and 5 I need to substract 0.25 , if between 5 and 6 - 0.50 and if > 8 - 0.75
this is what I did:
=ArrayFormula(if(len(E2:E) ,(ifs((E2:E=0),IFERROR (1/0),AND(E2:E > 4 , E2:E < 6 , E2:E-0.25) or (E2:E > 6,E2:E < 8 ,E2:E-0.5) OR (E2:E > 8,E2:E-0.75)))))
could anyone please help me figuring out what I'm doing wrong? thank you

A: You can easily achieve this with vlookup.
Build a static array {} of two columns with your limits and results for the vlookup range:
={4,-0.25;5.0001,-0.5;6.0001,0;8.0001,-0.75}

Then a vlookup to test inputs. My input figs are in col G, and the vlookup is in an arrayformula in cell H1:
=arrayformula(if(G1:G<>"",iferror(vlookup(G1:G,{4,-0.25;5.0001,-0.5;6.0001,0;8.0001,-0.75},2,1),),))

You can then add the result to your existing formula.
UPDATE
This takes the hour value from col E and makes the required subtraction. Add this formula to cell F1 and clear all cells below:
=arrayformula({"Adjusted hours";if(E2:E<>"",E2:E+iferror(vlookup(E2:E,{4,-0.25;5.0001,-0.5;8.0001,-0.75},2,1),),)})

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange