text:
Nanostrangalia is een kevergeslacht uit de familie van de boktorren (Cerambycidae). De wetenschappelijke naam van het geslacht werd voor het eerst geldig gepubliceerd in 1959 door Nakane & Ohbayashi.

Soorten
Nanostrangalia omvat de volgende soorten:
 Nanostrangalia abdominalis (Pic, 1927)
 Nanostrangalia binhana (Pic, 1928)
 Nanostrangalia breuningi (Gressitt & Rondon, 1970)
 Nanostrangalia chujoi (Mitono, 1938)
 Nanostrangalia comis Holzschuh, 1998
 Nanostrangalia duffyi (Gressitt & Rondon, 1970)
 Nanostrangalia emeishana Holzschuh, 1991
 Nanostrangalia melanopus Holzschuh, 2008
 Nanostrangalia modicata Holzschuh, 2008
 Nanostrangalia munita Holzschuh, 1999
 Nanostrangalia regularis Holzschuh, 2008
 Nanostrangalia semichujoi (Hayashi, 1974)
 Nanostrangalia sternalis Holzschuh, 1992
 Nanostrangalia torui Holzschuh, 1989


text:
Juan Camilo Gonzalez
Born in Manizales – Colombia (1984). Studied Visual Arts at the Javeriana University of Bogotá. With the support of the Annenberg Fellowship, he finished in 2011 his MFA in Animation & Digital Arts from the University of Southern California. Director and co-founder of the group Moebius Animación dedicated to exhibit artists, films and research around experimental animation in Latin America and Spain. Currently a PhD candidate at the School of Art Design & Media in Singapore where his thesis focuses on the theoretical and practical research of data-driven hand drawn animations.
More info at: http://www.juancgonzalez.com/about
Juan Camilo Gonzalez is a participant of Kinodot competition 2013 with the film YesYesYesYesYesYesYesYesYesYesYes
Also Juan Camilo Gonzalez is the member of the Kinodot international jury 2014

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Bio / Contacts
Burmese refugees in Thailand
Exile and extortion
For more than half a century thousands of human beings have been forced to abandon their homes and villages to save their lives and escape the oppression and ethnic cleansing that is being carried out by the military dictatorship in Myanmar (previously Burma). The majority of these people seek refuge in the neighboring country of Thailand, a country that is open to tourism from the Western World and which projects an idyllic image of paradise. However it is also a country where extreme racism has lurked for centuries, including labour exploitation, human trafficking and unpunished murderers. The passive attitude of the Thai authorities with regard to extortion turns these refugees into citizens without rights, even more vulnerable due to their status as "illegal aliens" who are refused residence papers or a passport.
The refugees coming from Myanmar, turned into second-class citizens, have suffered xenophobic treatment and a lack of sensitivity on the part of the Thais for more than four decades of cruel exile.
The victory obtained in the recent democratic elections by the government of Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and maximum authority of the National League for Democracy (NLD), together with the cease-fire between the Burmese government and the guerrilla has opened a window to hope. But it has also caused a reduction in the international financing going to the NGOs working on Thailand's border, which directly affects the already difficult situation that the vast majority of refugees are suffering, and the return of exiles to their country of origin has not occurred due to the fact that lasting stability is still so uncertain.
© All Rights Reserved to Jesus Ochando


text:
Q: Masspay and MySql I am testing Paypal's masspay using their 'MassPay NVP example' and I having difficulty trying to amend the code so inputs data from my MySql database.
Basically I have user table in MySql which contains email address, status of payment (paid,unpaid) and balance.
CREATE TABLE `users` (
  `user_id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
  `email` varchar(100) collate latin1_general_ci NOT NULL,
  `status` enum('unpaid','paid') collate latin1_general_ci NOT NULL default 'unpaid',
  `balance` int(10) NOT NULL default '0',
  PRIMARY KEY  (`user_id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM AUTO_INCREMENT=6 DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1 COLLATE=latin1_general_ci

Data :
1   test1@example.net   paid    100
2   test2@example.net   unpaid  11
3   test3@example.net   unpaid  20
4   test4@example.net   unpaid  1
5   test5@example.net   unpaid  20
6   test6@example.net   unpaid  15

I then have created a query which selects users with an unpaid balance of $10 and above :
  $conn = db_connect();
  $query=$conn->query("SELECT * from users WHERE
                       balance >='10'
                       AND status = ('unpaid')");

What I would like to is for each record returned from the query for it to populate the code below:
Now the code which I believe I need to amend is as follows:
    for($i = 0; $i < 3; $i++) {
    $receiverData = array(  'receiverEmail' => "user$i@paypal.com",
                            'amount' => "example_amount",);
    $receiversArray[$i] = $receiverData;
}

However I just can't get it to work, I have tried using mysqli_fetch_array and then replaced "user$i@paypal.com" with $row['email'] and "example_amount" with row['balance'] in various methods of coding but it doesn't work. Also I need it to loop to however many rows that were retrieved from the query as <3 in the for loop above.
So the end result I am looking for is for the $nvpStr string to pass with something like this:
$nvpStr = "&EMAILSUBJECT=test&RECEIVERTYPE=EmailAddress&CURRENCYCODE=USD&L_EMAIL0=$test2@example.net&L_Amt=11&L_EMAIL1=$test3@example.net&L_Amt=11&L_EMAIL2=$test3@example.net&L_Amt=20&L_EMAIL3=$test5@example.net&L_Amt=20&L_EMAIL0=$test6@example.net&L_Amt=15";

Thanks

A: I have resolved the issue after some trial and error:
   <?php
     $nvpStr="&EMAILSUBJECT=$emailSubject&RECEIVERTYPE=$receiverType&CURRENCYCODE=$currency";

$conn = db_connect();
  $query=$conn->query("SELECT email,balance from users WHERE
                       balance >='10'
                       AND status = ('unpaid')");
$i = 0;
  while ($i <= mysqli_fetch_row) {
    while($row = mysqli_fetch_object($query)) {
      $nvpStr.="&L_EMAIL$i=$row->email&L_Amt$i=$row->balance";
      $i++;
}
}

    ?>

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Our utmost thanks to Gerald E. Sherard for extracting information from the Colorado CCC enrollment records at the Colorado State Archives. The index lists the CCC enrollee's last name, his birth date, and his assigned camp. Occasionally a container number and folder number may be given where additional information about an enrollee may be found in the CCC Collection.
In order to obtain access to the CCC Collection please contact the Colorado State Archives. They will be happy to provide you with additional information concerning this collection or others. They have search, handling, and copy fees. Please contact them in order to find out the charges for your request.


text:
Can you imagine living in today's information, mobile and service-oriented society after a few hours or days without electricity? It is quite possible that after a few days or weeks something would happen what our descendants would describe in history textbooks as a collapse of civilization.
For the successful continuation of our civilization the electricity is at least as important as the sustainable management of the environment. Electricity obtained from nuclear energy represents 15% of all electricity consumed on the planet. In the countries of the European Community its contribution is twice in size and is equal to 30%. In Slovenia nuclear energy covers as much as 40% of electricity consumption. This share ranks Slovenia high on the 8th place among 30 nuclear countries in the world (IAEA 2011).
Natural nuclear reactor
Natural nuclear reactor (source: Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0)
Before we focus on nuclear energy let us look at the province of Oklo in Gabon (Africa) about two billion years ago. The proportion of fissile isotope U-235 was then approximately 3.5% of all isotopes of uranium (the vast majority being U-238). Water in the lake above deposits of uranium ore was slowly seeping between uranium. Approximately 15 natural reactors in the area of today's uranium mine were created in this way. They have operated with an average output of some 100 kW for hundreds of thousands of years and then spontaneously shut down.
It is interesting to note, that we know about the natural reactors in Oklo only since 1972. French colleagues discovered at first sight insignificant difference in the proportion of U-235, when a routine surveillance of quantities of nuclear materials was performed at the time. In the ore from Oklo the proportion was only 0.717% instead of the expected 0.72%. The phenomenon was investigated further and they finally confirmed the "deficit" of U-235 and the presence of typical long-lived descendants of nuclear chain reaction. This was a proof of the existence and activity of the natural reactor. The proportion of U-235 in uranium over the past two billion years decreased from 3.5% to 0.72% due to the spontaneous decay with half-life of 700 million years.
(source: Wikipedia)
Fissile material in a nuclear reactor is called the nuclear fuel. In today's nuclear reactors we utilize the heat generated by the chain reaction of fissile nuclei. Uranium U-235 and plutonium Pu-239 are used primarily. Uranium U-235 isotope is found in the nature: its proportion in the nuclear fuel is increased with enrichment, which is relatively time consuming and difficult process. Isotope Pu-239 is not found in the nature and is produced in nuclear reactors. Uranium U-238 captures a neutron at first. Then the change of neutron to proton is repeated twice to produce Pu-239. There is enough Pu-239 produced so that before the retirement of a nuclear reactor, the heat produced from Pu-239 and U-235 reactions are about the same.
In nuclear reactors mostly isotopes of U-235 undergo fission. Fission is caused by a neutron that is absorbed by fissile nucleus. In this way, an unstable compound nucleus is created. Such fissioning nucleus usually splits into two smaller nuclei which are called fission fragments.
This process produces heat and a few neutrons, which again cause splitting of other fissile nuclei.
Neutrons released in fission, have a relatively high kinetic energy. To achieve a stable chain reaction in a nuclear reactor they must be slowed down significantly before the collision with the fissile nuclei. We do this with the help of moderator, in which fast neutrons transfer part of their kinetic energy as they collide with smaller nuclei. Common moderators are water, heavy water (with hydrogen isotope deuterium) and graphite. If water is used as a moderator, about 3.5% U-235 enrichment is needed for a stable chain reaction. Heavy water is much more efficient moderator and allows for a chain reaction with natural uranium mixture (0.72% U-235).
Nuclear explosion can only be achieved in very different circumstances. We need fast neutrons and fissile material condensed as much as possible, e. g. 90% or more U-235 enrichment. Therefore, in nuclear reactors a nuclear explosion cannot occur.
A nuclear power plant is largely similar to a conventional thermal power plant. In somewhat simplified view one has to replace a coal, mazut or gas powered steam boiler with a nuclear reactor. Nuclear chain reaction gives off heat to the water in the reactor. This heat is then converted to electricity in the non-nuclear (or the classical) part of the power plant using gas or steam turbines and generators.
Pressurized water reactor power plant (source: ICJT)
Pressurized water reactor power plant in Krško uses enriched uranium (about 5%) as a fuel. Demineralized water is used as a moderator and reactor coolant. Krško NPP produces about 5 TWh of electricity annually. The power plant has to be refuelled with more than 15 tons of nuclear fuel every 18 months to produce such amount of electricity. More information about Krško NPP can be found on their website. For comparison, the thermal power plant Šoštanj consumes 4 million tons of lignite for the slightly lower annual production of close to 4 TWh.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency there are 443 nuclear power plants in the world today. There are 64 in construction and 125 permanently stopped nuclear power plants. Geographically speaking, today's nuclear power plants are placed in 30 world countries. More than half of operating nuclear power plants are older than 25 years. They were designed for a service life of around 40 years. In the U.S. and partly in the European Community the service life is being extended to 60 years, taking into account the latest scientific knowledge and after replacing some key components of a power plant. Of course, a possible extension must be justified and authorized for each plant separately.
Nuclear power plants in the world (source: Wikipedia CC BY 3.0)
Nuclear fuel and radioactive waste
In general nuclear waste is classified as low-level, intermediate-level and high-level radioactive waste.
Typical low-level radioactive waste is contaminated personal equipment for workers in the medical and nuclear power plants (e.g., gloves, overalls, tools ...). Among intermediate-level radioactive waste we mainly find materials that were necessary in the operation of nuclear power plants (e.g., various resins for the extraction of boric acid from the primary coolant) and pieces of medical equipment. Spontaneous decays will reduce the radioactivity of low and intermediate level radioactive wastes to harmlessness in less than 300 years. They are therefore excluded from our environment for a period of 300 years. In Slovenia we annually produce less than a liter of low and intermediate radioactive waste per person.
In Slovenia, we have identified the location and the basic characteristics of the low-and intermediate-active waste. Built and managed by the Agency for Radioactive Waste it will be located in Vrbina near Krško, i.e. in the immediate vicinity of the nuclear power plant.
High level radioactive waste contains primarily spent nuclear fuel. In the fuel we spent primarily U-235, but still very useful Pu-289 and U-238 remain inside. With a relatively complex technology, which is dominated by only a few countries, plutonium can be used as fuel in existing nuclear reactors. In fast breeder reactors of generation IV U-238 will be transformed into Pu-239, which can be used as a nuclear fuel even today. In this way, known reserves of uranium, which with today's technology are sufficient for more than 200 years, can be utilized for more than 1,000 years. Thus, nuclear power could become sustainable.
If we decide to dispose of spent nuclear fuel, we have to remove it from the biosphere for around 100 000 years. Examples of stable geological formations that make this possible are clay, granite and rock salt. This time can be reduced significantly with the separation and transmutation processes. Research in this field is relatively young, but very promising. It suggests that with appropriate processing, radioactivity of spent fuel can be reduced to a few 100 years. In Slovenia we annually produce 5 g of such waste per person.
All activities associated with the decommissioning of the Krško nuclear power plant and disposal of radioactive waste are financed in Slovenia by the fund for decommissioning and disposal of radioactive waste from NEK. Necessary funds are collected from electricity sold from NEK. The contribution to the fund, which currently amounts to slightly less than 4 EUR / MWh, is set by the decommissioning program, which ARAO renews every 5 years.
Page editor: Matej Tekavčič


The industry leader in design and quality. The replaceable bunk liner is formed in a single piece with no seams or inserts and is built rugged to withstand abuse from small or large herds. The welded frame is made from 1.75 inch diameter rounded tubular steel.


text:
Q: Python return a dictionary that groups value by same key I have a file with this format:
name  x   y  clas
x1    1   1   A
x2    2   2   B
x3    3   3   B
x4    4   4   C
x5    5   5   D

and is trying to create a dictionary with clas as keys and groups name based on it:
#Just reading reading the file in
data = {}
with open('sample.csv') as file:
    next(file)
    reads = file.readlines()
    for lines in reads:
        line = lines.strip('\n').lower()
        (name, x, y, clas) = line.split(",")
        data[name] = x,y,clas

#How to assign "array" values based on their "clas"
dictionary = {}
array = ['x1', 'x2', 'x3', 'x4', 'x5']
for i in range(len(array)):
   classs = data.get(array[i])[2]
   dictionary[classs] = [array[i]]
print(dictionary)

The function is expected to output a dictionary with "clas" as keys with corresponding "name" values.
However currently the output is {'a': ['x1'], 'b': ['x3'], 'c': ['x4'], 'd': ['x5']} which does include "name" values with the same key.
Not sure what conditions to write to make dictionary output correctly,so are there ways to make the output to be {'a': ['x1'], 'b': ['x2','x3'], 'c': ['x4'], 'd': ['x5']}with only default python functions?...

A: Use a defaultdict with list values & append to it instead of overwriting.
dictionary = defaultdict(list)
array = ['x1', 'x2', 'x3', 'x4', 'x5']
for i in range(len(array)):
   classs = data.get(array[i])[2]
   dictionary[classs].append(array[i])
print(dictionary)

A: Umm I managed to get the expected result with this:
dictionary = {}
for key, value in sorted(data.items()):
    dictionary.setdefault(value[2], []).append(key)
print(dictionary)


text:
Q: AWS's Elastic Beanstalk not using my virtualenv: "No module named boto" I'm trying to use AWS's Elastic Beanstalk, but when I run eb start, I get "ImportError: No module named boto Cannot run aws.push for local repository HEAD."
I am in the virtual environment of my Django project.
I ran pip install boto and it was successful.
I did pip freeze > requirements.txt, git add requirements.txt, and git commit -m 'Added boto to requirements.txt', all successful.
Then I got into the python shell and imported boto without any resulting errors.
Finally, I ran eb start on the normal command line again. Same "no module named boto" error.
It seems like the eb start command is not using my virtualenv. What should I do?

A: OK, this is a hack, and an ugly one, but it worked.
Now, the error is happening on the local machine, nothing to do with remote.
I have boto installed locally and I am NOT using virtualenv (for reasons of my own, to test a more barebones approach).
1 note where the error is happening - in .git/AWSDevTools/aws/dev_tools.py
2 run a non-virtualenv python and

import boto
      print boto.file
         /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/boto/init.pyc

3 open up that dev_tools.py and add this on top:
import sys
   sys.path.append("/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages")
Since you are appending to sys.path, you will only import modules from that addition if git aws.push hasn't found it in its own stuff.
That fixes the problem for now, except that it will re-occur on the next directory where you do an "eb init"
4 Go to where you have unzipped the CLI.  In my case:
$cd ~/bin/AWS-ElasticBeanstalk-CLI-2.6.1
now
5 look for the original of dev_tools.py used by eb init
$find ~/bin -name dev_tools.py
~/bin/AWS-ElasticBeanstalk-CLI-2.6.1/AWSDevTools/Linux/scripts/aws/dev_tools.py
edit this file as in #3
if you do another eb init elsewhere you will see that your ugly hack is there as well.
Not great, but it works.
p.s. sorry for the formatting, newbie here, it's late and I wanna go skating.

A: I had a similar problem using eb push. The issue is that eb uses git during the process to push the contents to AWS (git aws.push). You can find the scripts inside ".git/AWSDevTools/" on your repository dir.
When git runs it modifies the environment variable $PATH and appends "/usr/libexec/git-core:/usr/bin" to the beginning of $PATH. This makes the AWS scripts to use /usr/bin/python instead of the python on the virtualenv, which doesn't have boto installed.
I fixed this by adding a wrapper on top of the AWS scripts that verifies if there is a virtualenv enabled and corrects the $PATH variable.
.git/AWSDevTools/pre.aws.elasticbeanstalk.push
#!/bin/bash

if [ -n $VIRTUAL_ENV ]; then
    PATH=$VIRTUAL_ENV/bin:$PATH
fi

DIR=$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd )
python $DIR/aws.elasticbeanstalk.push

And then modified the .git/config file to make the aws.push alias call the wrapper
[alias "pre.aws.elasticbeanstalk"]
    push = !.git/AWSDevTools/pre.aws.elasticbeanstalk.push

[alias "aws"]
    push = !git pre.aws.elasticbeanstalk.push  #Modified this line to call the wrapper


Israel has reportedly stolen a large number of confidential documents belonging to Jerusalem al-Quds Islamic Waqf (Endowment) organization, which is trusted with controlling and managing the Islamic edifices on and around the al-Aqsa Mosque's compound.
Hassan Khater, the head of al-Quds International Center, said on Monday that the appropriation had taken place over three days that followed a reported shootout on July 14 near the site, which left two Israeli soldiers and three Palestinians dead. Israel fully closed off the compound after the alleged incident.
The documents comprise title deeds proving the body's ownership of a large number of immovable properties, as well as secret files bearing information on the mosque and religious courthouses, he said.
Khater said the papers feature data on around 90 percent of the properties lying in Jerusalem al-Quds' Old City, where the compound is located, which could enable Tel Aviv to confiscate the properties upon misuse.
The closure of the compound drew sweeping international condemnation, forcing Tel Aviv to reopen the site. The regime, however, set up metal detectors at the entrances, prompting Palestinians to pray outside in protest. Israel finally lifted the detectors, but installed more cameras in the place.
During the recent crackdown, Israeli forces evicted the Endowment's staffers, which the body had stationed there to conduct administrative duties.
Jewish settlers are regularly escorted by troops into the third holiest site in Islam, which is highly provocative to the Palestinians.
According to latest figures, 15 Palestinians have been killed and about 1,400 others injured in the clashes that have ensued Tel Aviv's introduction of the restrictions.


text:
Conduct Zero is the debut extended play from the South Korean boy group sub-unit Bastarz (Korean: 바스타즈; stylized BASTARZ). It was released on April 14, 2015.

Background
Bastarz's label Seven Seasons released teasers for the group and its members throughout the beginning of April, 2015, with photos of each member and videos. The first teaser video was released on April 2, and the next on April 3. On the same day, Block B leader Zico posted lyrics from the title song "Conduct Zero" on Twitter, and Bastarz member B-Bomb posted a teaser image to his personal Twitter page. The third teaser video, released on April 4, contained the main riff from the title song, as well as the name of the sub-unit. The group released teaser images of all three members together on April 8. On April 9, a teaser video containing snippets of the tracks on the album was released through Seven Season's YouTube page. The title song and album were released together on April 14.

One of the teasers for "Conduct Zero" created controversy for its depiction of women wearing Japanese kimonos in the MV. Fans drew parallels to the wartime sex crimes committed against Korea during the Japanese Occupation and Korean comfort women. The images in the teaser were not released in the final edit of the MV.

Composition
The title track, "Conduct Zero", was composed and arranged by Zico and Seven Seasons producer Poptime, with lyrics by Zico and Bastarz member P.O, and contributions by singer Crush. All three Bastarz members, P.O, B-Bomb and U-Kwon, contributed to the album. B-Bomb and U-Kwon contributed to the chorus of "Nobody But You", and all three members contributed to the chorus of "Thief".

Track listing

Reference List

2015 EPs
EPs by South Korean artists

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Please note that we run day tours in all the major South African cities, and sometimes also in Lima, Peru (where we have an established office), in Windhoek, Namibia, and in Thailand at certain times of the year (when Andy is living there).
Our 1-day Cape Town, Johannesburg/Pretoria and Durban area tours cost R4000 for one person, with an extra R500 per person if more than one participant. We run all our 1-day tours as private tours, since we have found we never manage to put groups together. Most people travel singly, in couples, or they bring their own small group along. Half-day trips lasting less than five hours are much poorer value for money as we can only give a R500 discount for groups of two or more (because the guide usually ends up doing a large mileage even for such a short trip).
These prices include guiding fees and vehicle costs, but they exclude the relatively small but variable costs of entrance fees (which depend on which tour you do) and lunch (you can tell us if you prefer "on the run" sandwiches or a sit-down restaurant meal halfway through the day of birding). Entrance fees and lunches for you and the guide are for your account. The birding guide will fetch you from wherever you are staying, after breakfast, and drop you back before dinner/before dark in the case of a 1-day tour (airport drop-offs are also perfectly OK). In the case of a half-day tour, the trip will run either from breakfast until lunch or from lunch until dinner. Please e-mail us for the starting time you prefer – we are happy with an early start (e.g. 5 a.m.), but we also understand that you will sometimes prefer a later start (e.g. 9 a.m.). The trip is yours, and you can tell us when you want to start the day. We often recommend 7:30 a.m. at the entrance to your hotel, but we can also advise about the best time to avoid rush hour for specific tours.
Longer trips – accommodation and meals have to be added to the price – please ask us; we can usually get accommodation for R900 per person sharing per night (ballpark), but if more luxury is needed the price, of course, increases. The guide's accommodation also needs to be paid.
Tour prices for Port Elizabeth and other cities are the same. For smaller cities and towns we sometimes struggle to find guides.
We strongly recommend that you book far in advance even for the three larger cities. At certain times of the year our birding guides get booked particularly far in advance, but even at the best of times we recommend booking as far in advance as possible. On the other hand, we can often accommodate you even if you book a week in advance (sometimes even the day before).
You are welcome to just pay the guide cash (South African Rands; ZAR) on the day of the tour after you have booked with us. For trips that are longer than one day, we need payment of a deposit in advance.
Which tours do we recommend? In Cape Town, if you have never visited the Cape before and only have one day available for guided birding, we suggest doing a 1-day tour of the Cape Peninsula and False Bay, which can be custom-made to your exact needs (you can discuss this with the guide at the start of the day). If you have a second day available, we recommend also doing a 1-day West Coast birding tour. If you have more than two days available, there is a stack more you can do birding-wise – please ask us for suggestions. In Johannesburg, we recommend Suikerbosrand/Marievale (south of Johannesburg) if you only have one day available. If you have a second day, we suggest Zaagkuilsdrift and environs (north of Pretoria), an area which has Kalahari-type birds. The Walter Sisulu National Botanical Garden provides an excellent half day around Johannesburg.
We believe in providing first class service, and if you e-mail us with any questions you will find we answer in lots of detail and very enthusiastically.
We look forward to hosting you here in sunny South Africa!
Please note: Any of these 1-day tours can be run as 1-day photographic birding tours – to convert them into birdwatching photo tours we modify the sites visited and slow down the pace.


text:
Вилар-Формозу ()  —  населённый пункт и район в Португалии,  входит в округ Гуарда. Является составной частью муниципалитета  Алмейда. По старому административному делению входил в провинцию Бейра-Алта. Входит в экономико-статистический  субрегион Бейра-Интериор-Норте, который входит в Центральный регион. Население составляет 2481 человек на 2001 год. Занимает площадь 15,63 км².

Покровителем района считается Иоанн Креститель ().

Районы округа Гуарда


Your first step is to register your intention to seek a CAO college place immediately. If you are interested in getting a place in an Irish university, institute of technology, teacher-training college or private college, offered through the CAO application process, go to cao.ie by January 20th and make an application, paying the €30 charge by credit or debit card. After January 20th and until February 1st, the fee rises to €45.
All the CAO wants at this stage are your personal details, including name, address, phone numbers, disability/specific learning difficulty, country of birth, nationality, email address, payment details, and any post-second level (PLC) educational or other qualifications you have.
When you have done this, you will get your CAO identification number. At this point in your deliberations of your course choices, you may or may not be able to indicate which courses you wish to be considered for next September.
However, you have the freedom to return to your application in May or June, to list or amend your course choices, up until the July 1st final deadline for all such changes. The most comprehensive source of information on courses is on qualifax.ie.
The further-education sector has thousands of opportunities for students who may consider a year consolidating their learning in a specific area of knowledge, and developing their academic self-management skills, would better prepare them for successful engagement with a third-level programme.
Further education is also extremely useful for those who may not secure the CAO points for their preferred course choices, but can secure them through the reserved places schemes offered by many third-level institutions.
Colleges of Further Education (FE), which provide these programmes throughout the country, report that many students who defer entering third level directly from school via the CAO, and instead spend a year securing a PLC award, often perform far better than their school peers when they progress to universities and ITs a year later.
If you have a strength in one subject area in school, but may not be academically strong across the full range of Leaving Cert subjects, then deciding to spend a year at PLC level in that subject could be wise. If students get distinctions in all eight PLC modules, they have a good chance of a reserved place in their preferred CAO course the following year. See careersportal.ie for a database of such linked programmes.
PLC programmes also offer training in practical skills for employment in a trade or craft, such as business, hairdressing, beauty, and the fire and ambulance services.
Students interested in local PLC courses need to fill out application forms from individual colleges in the next few months; further education colleges/PLCs are not in the centralised CAO system. Places are offered mostly on a first-come, first-served basis and may be impossible to secure later in the year.
In some areas, such as nursing, there are unfortunately only a tiny number of CAO places. Up to 2016, most successful nursing PLC students applied for UK programmes which were funded by the UK's National Health Service (NHS) – up to 500 Irish students went annually. However, over the past two academic years, new students on nursing, midwifery and AHP pre-registration courses (which lead to qualification with one of the health professional regulators) in the UK must take out maintenance and tuition loans, rather than getting an NHS grant.
This affects courses leading to professional registration in nursing (all four fields), midwifery, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, podiatry, radiography, dietetics, orthoptics, operating department practice, and prosthetics/orthotics.
This change has impacted hugely on the numbers of students from the Republic seeking nursing/paramedical courses in England through Ucas (Universities and Colleges Admissions Service in the UK) route, as they will now have to pay the full annual tuition fee of at least £9,250 (€10,274).
You need to apply for any course listed as "restricted" in the CAO handbook by February 1st. All other courses can be added or removed from your application list up to the final change-of-mind deadline on July 1st. If you want to apply for university in the UK, you must finalise your course list with Ucas by January 15th. You must also indicate which PLC courses you are applying for on your initial application to each college. For courses in other EU countries offered through English, closing dates are on course profile pages on eunicas.ie.
Between February 5th and March 1st, any CAO applicant may change a course choice for a fee of €10. If you are a mature student or have applied for a restricted application course, or if you want to apply for a course you have not yet listed and wish to correct or amend your application record, you must report any errors or changes to the CAO by March 1st (fee €10).
Otherwise, you don't need to make course changes at this stage but can use the change-of-mind facility (May 5th-July 1st) to make any changes, with no charge.
Before the end of May, all applicants receive a statement of application record as a final acknowledgment and to verify all information is accurate. If this does not arrive by June 1st, contact the CAO immediately.
Accompanying this statement will be a change-of-mind form, which you can use up to the closing date, 5.15pm on July 1st, 2019. You may make as many changes as you wish online or on paper.
In the first week of July, the CAO makes more than 6,000 offers to mature applicants (aged over 23) and applicants who accepted and deferred a place last year. A further 2,000-plus places will be offered to mature applicants at the beginning of August. Places in graduate medicine are offered at this stage. These offers arrive at your home address in the middle of summer, so be sure to make arrangements to deal with any offers sent to you.
Offers are also available online but you need to log on to get them and there is no email or text alert.
When the change-of-mind period closes on July 1st, sixth-year students wait for the results of their Leaving Cert on Tuesday, August 13th. When results are out, admissions officers in the third-level institutions inform the CAO of the number of places available on each course.
The CAO then allocates places via computer, based on the results of each qualifying student and the instructions of the admissions officers.
Colleges offer a specific number of places on each course listed with the CAO. Students are offered their highest choice on each list to which their points entitle them. If there are 100 places on offer, the 100 students with the correct entry requirements, who have the highest points, will be offered these places in round one on August 16th.
When the CAO receives the Leaving Cert results on August 13th, each candidate's choices are examined instantly by the computer, starting with their first choice on each list and working downwards. When their points fall within the number of places offered on a particular course, the computer offers that place and removes all lower-preference courses.
The CAO may later offer a place on a course higher up your list if it becomes available. It is imperative candidates list their choices in the order that they desire them, from one to 10, with one being their most desirable course, and 10 being the least desired.
As the UK loses much of its attraction to Irish students due to the uncertainties concerning Brexit, and higher costs associated with withdrawal of NHS funding to nursing and paramedical programmes, European universities – which offer more than 1,100 undergraduate degrees across all disciplines, taught exclusively through English – are attracting growing numbers of Irish applicants. There are now more than 1,000 young Irish undergraduate students in Dutch universities.
Some of these European universities – which rank in the top 100 worldwide in international ranking – which registered four or five Irish students four years ago, are now admitting 70-100 per year (see eunicas.ie).
As is the norm in continental Europe, fees range from €2,000 in the Netherlands to no fees in Germany and Scandinavian countries. Medical and veterinary programmes in eastern European countries charge fees of €10,000 upwards.
Many of these countries have fewer young people due to their very low birth rates, so third-level education is more easily available. Entry requirements are similar to Irish universities, two H5s and four O6s in most cases, but unlike in Ireland, there are no points requirements.
A student on 300 CAO points could well secure entry to a European university programme to study, for example, physiotherapy or psychology – courses which would require at least 500 points in Ireland. But given that securing a place in a European university is relatively easy compared to an Irish one, failure or drop-out rates after first year are high, so after securing your place, getting your first-year exams and completing the course over three to four years is another challenge.


Doc's note: When I recommend a stock, I focus on income and the company's long history of growing revenues… These businesses will help you generate safe and steady income over time. They should make up what I call the "backbone" of your portfolio.
In a recent issue of Bill Bonner's Diary, Jeff Brown explains what "hypergrowth" companies – especially technology startups – could mean for your portfolio. He also details three things he looks for in these hypergrowth stocks.
If you're interested at all in profiting from the coming wave of technological innovation, you have to read Jeff Brown's research.
I believe reading this one article will make you a better investor. And subscribing to Jeff's Exponential Tech Investor letter, which I wholeheartedly endorse, will set you up for many opportunities for large double-digit and even triple-digit gains in the coming months.
Jeff is perhaps the most impressive man writing tech-focused newsletters today. I've read his work, and there is no one else I would rather trust to uncover the best opportunities in small-cap technology companies.
One of the most successful companies to go public in the last 30 years is Amgen.
In fact, from 1984 to today, Amgen has shot up a staggering 166,980% – going from $0.10 per share to around $167.
Had you invested a mere $600 in Amgen back then, you'd be a millionaire today.
This is the exact type of company I (Jeff Brown) look for in my Exponential Tech Investor research service.
When I analyze technology startups, the first thing I want to know is whether the company is using leading-edge technology – what I call "exponential technology" – in its product or service.
Simply put: It is technology that improves rapidly every year instead of making a slow, linear climb.
And it's happening in various sectors today, like medicine, robotics, artificial intelligence, and information technology.
My advice: If the tech company you're looking at is not using breakthrough technology that's improving by leaps and bounds each year, move on.
Is the industry it's delivering this product or service to growing? More specifically, is this industry growing exponentially?
Here, consider Amgen, the company I mentioned in the start. Over a period of five years in the mid-90s, the industry as a whole was growing at a click of almost 40% per year.
Its industry was doubling about every two years. The market size, and thus the opportunity for Amgen, was growing exponentially.
And the third thing I look for is what I like to call the "disruptor" indicator.
In other words, you want to know if the tech company you're considering is disrupting an existing industry… or if it's disrupting old industries in a way that's actually creating a completely new industry.
The classic example is the advent of the car. Almost overnight, the "horse and buggy" industry was wiped out thanks to the Ford Model T.
Today, we have several "legacy"-type businesses and companies that are facing serious (and potentially terminal) competition.
IBM, FedEx, and Western Union all come to mind.
Companies that offer such compelling products or services, with benefits that are significantly greater than what is available to consumers today, are disruptors. Those companies are almost always delivering something better, faster, and cheaper than consumers or corporations have ever seen before.
Now, of course, there are other things that come into play.
Does the company have strong intellectual property or patents – an example of what Warren Buffett called an "economic moat"?
But if you stick to the three main indicators – exponential technology (is the product using exponential technology to grow?), momentum (is the industry itself growing rapidly), and the "disruptor" (is the company about to displace existing "legacy"-type companies?) – then you will be way ahead of 99% of investors out there.
It's a fairly straightforward formula. And one I think will benefit the tech holdings in any portfolio moving forward.
Now, of course, you can (and I encourage you to) look at these factors yourself when you invest and study interesting technology companies. Because if there's one thing I know… it's that the next Amgen out there will have all three.
While I won't claim I've found that "next Amgen," I will say that I've been following one privately held tech company that checks all three boxes… and many others.
And the company [just made] its initial public offering (IPO) on the NASDAQ.
The technology this company is sitting on is truly exponential. It's the kind of tech that will literally change the world. And it's the final part of a broad-ranging, "three-legged" investment strategy that I developed for my Exponential Tech Investor readers eight months ago.
In short, important scientific studies indicate this technology could play a major role in eradicating close to 6,000 diseases worldwide.
Needless to say, the implications – both from health and investment standpoints – defy the mind.
Now, sometimes these stocks can soar very quickly the day they go public. So there might only be a small window of opportunity to buy this company at a reasonable price. That's why it's valuable to do your due diligence as soon as possible.
Right now, my publisher is offering an exclusive discount to Stansberry Research readers… but you have to act by midnight tonight.
If you want to learn more about this urgent opportunity, you can find all the details here.


text:
Dundee woman 'scared' to be in own home after £15k break-in
by Will Lyon and Adam Hill
The mess in the bedroom in the aftermath of the robbery at the house in Old Glamis Road
A woman has told how she is now "scared" to be in her own home after it was ransacked and up to £15,000-worth of jewellery and cash stolen.
Aisha Ahmed, 31, left her Old Glamis Road property at 6.55pm on Tuesday to pick up her children from a mosque and when she returned 30 minutes later, her house had been broken into.
The culprits had entered through a back door and ripped down some blinds before smashing half of a door inside and wrecking several cabinets. They made off with a safe containing Aisha's gold wedding jewellery.
Police spent three hours examining the scene but their investigation might be hampered, as the recording device for CCTV cameras at the property was also stolen.
Aisha said: "They obviously knew what they were looking for. They've come looking for gold, as they've left the computer, laptops and PlayStation.
"Instead, they've taken my jewellery and all my memories. They were gifts from my wedding day.
"It's not about the money, it's the sentimental value of what they've taken that hurts."
The family believes four necklaces, three bangles, a bracelet, forehead piece, two rings, £400 and some foreign currency were taken.
Aisha added: "I'm really scared after what's happened. I'm just glad I wasn't in at the time. I can't thank police enough for their response. The officers were so quick that they arrived while I was still on the phone to them. I just hope we can get our things back."
Meanwhile, an elderly woman has hit out after her home was targeted by thieves.
Her property on North Dronley Road, near Birkhill, was broken into on Friday between midnight and 4pm.
Crooks made off with jewellery worth hundreds of pounds, including a pearl necklace, pearl earrings, amethyst and gold earrings, rings and a pocket watch.
The victim, who did not want to be named, said: "It is absolutely devastating. You just can't believe it when you come into your home and see what people have done to it. They are nothing but lowlife scumbags."
A Police Scotland spokeswoman urged anyone with information on the crimes to call 101.
Police probe safe theft from Dundee house
break-in
Old Glamis Road


Feng Shui (Wind Water) is the integrated application of Chinese astrology, Yin & Yang, Five Elements, I-Ching numerology, geography, magnetic fields, interior and exterior design on people's living. Feng Shui can help people bring energy, luck, health and wealth into their life. Today, lots of corporations hire Feng Shui consultants to help them earn more money from their business by adopting the Feng Shui advice. It's very expensive to ask a Feng Shui expert to your house today. Outlined below is a simple method using Feng Shui rules to find the lucky places in your house. You should make your lucky places clean and beautiful to keep and improve your luck, since the god of luck never likes a dirty place. You should also spend more time in the lucky places everyday.
If you are a parent, you can try all your family birthdays to find their lucky places. Then you can assign the best bedroom for everybody.
Enter Time Zone, only if your birth month is January or February.


text:
Soslan Petrovitj Andijev, född 21 april 1952 i Dzaudzjikau (nuvarande Vladikavkaz), Ryska SFSR, Sovjetunionen, död 22 november 2018 i Moskva, var en sovjetisk brottare som tog OS-guld i supertungviktsbrottning i fristilsklassen 1976 i Montréal och därefter upprepade han bedriften 1980 på hemmaplan i Moskva.

Källor
 Denna artikel är helt eller delvis översatt från motsvarande artikel på engelska wikipedia.

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Sports-reference.com
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Ryska brottare
Sovjetiska brottare
Sovjetiska olympiska guldmedaljörer
Olympiska guldmedaljörer 1976
Tävlande vid olympiska sommarspelen 1976 från Sovjetunionen
Tävlande i brottning vid olympiska sommarspelen 1976
Olympiska guldmedaljörer 1980
Tävlande vid olympiska sommarspelen 1980 från Sovjetunionen
Tävlande i brottning vid olympiska sommarspelen 1980
Personer från Vladikavkaz
Födda 1952
Avlidna 2018
Män


Singapore, Hong Kong, Apr 4, 2018 - (ACN Newswire) - ASM Pacific Technology Ltd. (ASMPT) has announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement with Tokyo Electron Limited (TEL) to acquire TEL NEXX, Inc. (NEXX). The deal is expected to close when approvals from the authorities have been received. The acquisition is another major step by the Group in pursuing their growth strategy of tapping onto new high growth markets and expanding their product offerings to the semiconductor advanced packaging market.
Established in 2001, NEXX is an industry leader in the Advanced Packaging market and has strong technological capabilities in the highly specialized Electrochemical Deposition (ECD) and Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) technologies. This new business acquisition will be subsumed under the Back-End Equipment segment of ASMPT.
"This strategic acquisition complements our current offerings in Advanced Packaging applications and establishes ASMPT as a premier Interconnect Technology company, while supporting our commitment in driving innovation and delivering the highest value and innovative solutions to our customers. By combining NEXX's highly specialized ECD and PVD technologies, we see tremendous opportunity to grow our business in the Advanced Packaging market which is being driven by the dawn of the Data-Centric era." said Mr Lee Wai Kwong, CEO of ASMPT.
"ASMPT offers an exciting opportunity for NEXX to boost and expand its product offerings in advanced wafer level packaging, ECD and PVD. TEL believes that NEXX will benefit from greater synergies with ASMPT's outsourced assembly and test customers." said Toshiki Kawai, President and CEO of TEL.
"With the demand for semiconductor devices at a historical high, we are looking forward to an increased global customer footprint with ASMPT, as well as expanded sales and service capabilities for our customers", explains Tom Walsh, President of NEXX.
The NEXX Business was founded in 2001 and has developed Electrochemical Deposition (ECD) and Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) processes supplying the Advanced Packaging markets. TEL acquired NEXX Business in 2012 and NEXX became a wholly-owned direct subsidiary of Tokyo Electron U.S Holdings, Inc.


text:
Home Open Access News Mental Health News Pathways to youth resilience
Mental Health News
Pathways to youth resilience
© Rpianoshow
Dr Christine Wekerle from McMaster University discusses youth health risks and why resilience is crucial to youth wellness
Adolescence is a time of risk and resilience. Supporting wellness is a priority for youth involved in child welfare or care systems. Over 400,000 youth are in care homes in the United States, and their trajectory in exiting care needs to set youth up for success. Led by Dr Christine Wekerle at McMaster University, with an interdisciplinary research group, the Maltreatment and Adolescent Pathways (MAP) study was the first large-scale Canadian study of youth in an urban child welfare catchment area. Unexpectedly, MAP youth reported more child sexual abuse (CSA) than anticipated by agency statistics. For youth, engaging in health risk behaviours, like risky sexual practices (Wekerle et al., 2017) or alcohol use, highlight a need for supporting healthy coping (Park et al., 2019; Hudson et al., 2015; Hudson et al., 2017; Goldstein et al., 2011; Stewart et al., 2011). Resilience interventions are needed to support youth in building adaptive daily routines. Maltreated youth have significant resilience; their route to thriving means galvanizing their resilience. A team of Canadian researchers are taking up the challenge of how to support child welfare youth.
Trauma, alcohol problems and coping methods
While the legal age of drinking in Ontario, Canada is 19 years of age, MAP study youth (mean age 16), who reported higher traumatic stress initially, were more likely to report drinking to cope six months later. The motive of drinking to cope predicted higher alcohol use. This may reflect the beginnings of a self-medication cycle, where alcohol use may provide temporary relief, but could amplify trauma symptoms, like hyperarousal, with the agitation feelings of withdrawal. Real-time help, that can respond to variations in symptoms, may bolster the regulation of emotions. Mobile applications (apps) are an easy-to-access potential solution. However, research shows that only a minority of mental health apps identified their research basis or involved mental health expertise in their design (Marshall et al., 2019). The MAP research shows that the key issues impacting youth alcohol use are post-traumatic stress and anxiety symptoms (Park et al., 2019). As summarised in the table, MAP findings point to the need to address maladaptive coping. In response, our team developed the JoyPopTM mobile app, designed to enhance resilience, using research on effective emotion regulation methods (see youthresilience.net). JoyPopTM is a trauma-informed app that prioritises youth safety and privacy. JoyPopTM puts a focus on awareness of positive emotionality and joyful activities, while providing traumatic stress management strategies. The Ontario Centre of Excellence in Child and Youth Mental Health is funding current research examining the response to this app among child welfare system-involved youth, with lead researcher Dr Deborah Goodman from the Child Welfare Research Institute in Toronto, Canada.
Adolescent personality vulnerabilities also play a role in maladaptive coping. Chronically feeling hopeless, tending towards seeking stimulation and impulsivity are all linked with overall alcohol use levels and alcohol problems (Hudson et al., 2015; Stewart et al., 2011). Feeling sensitive or fearful to signs of anxiety, interpreting them as threatening, is related to difficulties with stopping drinking once having started. Trait-like hopelessness and impulsivity are most closely linked with negative emotions and drinking to cope among MAP youth. For youth high on anxiety-sensitivity, motives for drinking are more likely to be related to the need to avoid social rejection. Brief, cognitive behaviour therapy that matches skill development to these specific personality vulnerabilities has an impressive set of research studies supporting decreased substance use, sustained over time. This Preventure intervention, created by Drs Patricia Conrod and Sherry Stewart, is currently being tested with child welfare-involved youth, in collaboration with Dr Hanie Edalati. Based on the Preventure model, the Well-Venture adaptation takes a trauma-informed approach (Edalati & Conrod, 2019). Currently underway in Montreal, Canada, pilot work shows that a third of youth had diagnoses for PTSD and used cannabis on a daily basis (Edalati et al., 2020).
The impact of child sexual abuse
For youth who have experienced CSA, the MAP study points to specific sex differences in coping strategies and motives. CSA and problem drinking was explained by negative emotion symptoms more so in female adolescents than males (Wekerle et al., 2017). For males, greater sexual risk-taking was noted. Males with CSA experiences reported their motives for having sex as including seeking peer and partner approval and coping with negative emotions. For both MAP males and females, coping was a key mediator between their maltreatment and sexual risk-taking.
Altogether, the MAP study points toward the need for more accessible, trauma-informed support for youth negative emotionality (Bargeman et al., 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic puts another layer of traumatic stress on youth experiencing trauma. Among Canadian youth, 23.6% reported drinking face-to-face with peers during the pandemic, particularly among youth who perceived themselves as less popular (Dumas et al., 2020). More attention to youth motives for risk behaviours is needed to support maltreated youth. Research on resilience programming is critical to advance science-based policy. Our youth in care deserve the best opportunities for success, including the resilience resources to achieve success. Reaching out is resilience, but those adaptive coping resources need to be readily available to youth in such risk contexts.
Acknowledgement: We thank the support of our funders and trainees, particularly Katherine Kim, Corinne Moss and Jung Yoon (Jane) Park. CSA research was funded by a Canadian Institute of Health Research, Institute of Gender and Health team grant (Dr Wekerle lead, CIHRTEAMSV).
Please note: This is a commercial profile
Dr Christine Wekerle
Associate Professor, Pediatrics
Pediatrics McMaster University
Email: wekerc@mcmaster.ca
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text:
By Sean Johnston
https://www.terrain.org/mp3/2018/dec/Johnston-FairyTale.mp3
On the drive to work today there were some bears dumped in the ditches beside the road. The light captured everything beautifully with the sunrise like twilight and black clouds way off from a storm that wasn't going to hit us. And four or five bears heaped in a pile whose black edges were sharp against the long green grass and the dark flickering leaves at the fence line where there were poplars. Nothing is to be trusted, however, because the haircut I got at noon was unusual too—the barber switched from clippers to hammer and chisel to block the hair at the back of my neck, without pain, and only the soft dull tapping of the hammer. That particular observation is in doubt, and calls into question every sensation in the great world around me, which when I get down to it the world is not that great; there are two roads that I take quite often, then the main street in town. I see a small group of people regularly and ask them all the same questions and give them all the same replies.
There was a letter sitting on my desk since yesterday, however, and it proved how large the world was, so I think I can be forgiven for not getting things right, necessarily, as they appear so quickly. My cousin Jane died, who was like a sister to me. I was afraid to open it.
Nevertheless, walking one block from the barber to my office I encountered our wildlife expert, Jim Hughes, trying to wire the garbage can to its post at the corner of the town's park, named after his mother's mother—Burwell Park—while in the bandshell a number of ducks hid out of season for some kind of dramatic purpose known only to them. The music was just below the level of comprehension.
"Huey," I said, "what about these bears in the ditches?"
"That's out by your house?"
"On the way into town."
"That's the County, Ken, if it's not in town."
"Right by the tracks, Huey. Not saying go get them. I just wonder what happened." "That's still the County. I got a porcupine. Pretty big, but no bear," he said.
It was in his truck, with its bottom half flat but the head intact. Gave me a wink so I jumped off the bumper and said "Ha ha!" to make light of the magic that was seeping into this world right here.
"Not quite as big as a bear. You're right," I said, and clapped him on the back. Then, "Good day!" I promised, a little too loudly.
Weins was popping out the door of the village office for his after-lunch cigarette. I couldn't meet his eyes. He never says anything anyway, we never do to each other, but I did bob my head as I walked past, because we usually nod, only:
"What's up?" I hear as I am just past, as if the magic infects also his buttoned-up clerk's skull, so I turned and managed to meet his eyes and smile.
"Oh, just a hard time keeping the rabbits out of the garden," I said. I said rabbits but I didn't know. It felt new, because we never had the problem before. I was going to say just getting ready to dig up the potatoes but it was much too early for that; there's no magic so far for speeding up potatoes. His eyes were pale and he squinted too, given the direction he looked.
"You got a sore eye?" I asked him. Pale guys are sometimes red without being sore but there was a little red knob on the lip of his right eye, I thought. He admitted the eye was sore and that admission returned some faith to me, some faith in my ability to perceive correctly, and I felt a little goodwill toward Weins, which had been absent in me for some time, for a reason lost in the past. I wanted to offer advice of some kind and comfort him perhaps but all I could think of was, "Allergies?"
"I don't know," he said. "It's new. It's been a weird year all around."
"It has," I said, and though I felt moved to offer more, I did not. Without a hat on it's like the whole street is melting at noon, so I nodded, turned, and resumed the walk back to work. The melting street today, of course, was normal, given its asphalt composition and its relative freshness, but even so, the wavering of the light on its surface was explained by multiple natural laws that describe our world. It's no desert, but give it time. It was just half a block to the office, so quite a simple walk. No magic on the way.
In the air-conditioned office, I walked through the front, as I usually do.
"Alright, Mr. Bunn?" the girl asked. Strange idiom for the culture, but okay.
"Fine," I said. "You?"
And she nodded.
I shared the building with a local business, my biggest client: Agrifeed Co-op. They took orders at this shop, but it was all stored elsewhere, mostly at the farm by the highway. The MacIntosh place, no longer a farm. You could see the old house in among the new buildings but it was no longer lived in. The dugout beside the driveway remained, and it was full this year, a rare year, so far so good. The right rain, the right sun, everything on course. The yellows too yellow, the greens too green, and wait until the gold later on in the summer. Nobody knew if it would continue, but it was a good time to farm, after those lean years before. This was new.
Once I sat down, the Weins dispute was obvious. It was nothing. Seven years ago he approached the village council to suggest he could do their books along with his clerk job. I was disappointed because of the longevity of my own contract to do the same work but with the feed company and so many locals renting out bunkhouses in the summer it makes no sense now, yes, give him the work.
It took me often five minutes or so, in the summer, to adjust to the relative dimness and cool of the office after being outside at noon. I looked at the mail and the perfect right angles of the envelopes face down on my dark desk. One was from a lawyer, I knew that, and I didn't want to open it. My cousin, Jane, had recently died.
Once the possibility of magical occurrences is confirmed, it's hard to maintain your place in whichever rational universe previously existed. The possibility had been confirmed by many things of unequal value. I would place Weins's statement about it being a weird year at the bottom of the list of confirmations, but it contributed to the whole effect. The porcupine winking was at the top and the bears piling up in the ditches I would have to check on my way home. The barber using a chisel and hammer was somewhere right around the porcupine winking but it didn't hurt me so I was not quite ready to categorize it as anything but a daydream clinging to the shape of reality like the skin of a broken balloon picked up in wet grass by the toe of a rubber boot, which had happened the other day, and was then, as it is now, a simple digression.
The balloon's existence was not difficult to explain, but its persistence and its remaining hidden since the family reunion the previous summer was a surprise. It might easily be explained if necessary: the balloons were made for the occasion, with the picture of a great grandfather riding a moose stamped in black ink on balloons of pale yellow, green, and pink; balloons meant to be inflated with helium and anchored around my place to commemorate the reunion, which was not an anniversary, obviously, but had some number associated with it, a number I now forget. Was it a 50th anniversary of some couple or was it the 80th or 90th birthday of someone else? Regardless, the preparations were too much for me to remember the balloons.
It's the kids that surprise you, though. I hadn't imagined so many, or they seemed more when they weren't just names on a list or numbers under their parents' names and however it happened it was a shock, the number of small people running out of the vans and into the yard with freckles yelling and sunglasses bent and little limbs tangled with sisters and brothers and cousins in such loud celebration. Soon Jane, my cousin from the coast, was in with her kids then all the others filling an old wash tub with balloons full of water from the hose behind the house.
My house was my mother's house and Jane and her brother lived there in the summer with me and I had no siblings. It was their house too, until they all grew up and moved to the coast. In the back it had no lawn and the wild grass and hard-packed dirt sloped slightly down to the beginning of the woods and further down to the septic field then on to the woods proper which then turned into a pasture. I rent that pasture out now but I still have chickens. The sun doesn't get in there much. The woods aren't really woods, though they were to us as children. They're poplars and scrub brush, saskatoons and choke cherries. We camped in there sometimes as children. The whole summer was ours. We played Dungeons & Dragons around a fire all night once, and finished in the morning. We thought it was noon, but when we got back to the house after pouring water on the fire all the grownups, meaning my mother and Jack, were still sleeping.
Jack's arm hung over the side of the bed and his mouth was open. His white shoulder was like the plucked skin of a chicken and I'd never seen it before. His arms and his neck were so dark and he was always to work before I woke up. The nakedness of them both, limp and helpless, as the light grew from the corners of the house despite the curtains and blinds, made me run out embarrassed and tell the others quietly Let's get to sleep, so we went out to the camper parked by the shed and first feigned sleeping then slept. When we woke everything was back to normal. Jack was gone. My mother was baking bread, and we hadn't stayed up all night almost dying just to find treasure.
There was no real treasure that night—some small number of gold coins, perhaps, but no magic items, or potions or anything—but there was the magic of that first fantastic collaboration. It seemed to have something to do with the woods, or the light of the fire, and though we tried to recreate it many times that summer, there is nothing as magical as the first time you play Dungeons & Dragons. Later on I decided it was as if someone had discovered all these laws that governed our imaginations with the same authority as the laws of thermodynamics governed energy, which I only understood in the broadest terms. I argued once with my grade nine teacher and was suspended for three days. He said music could not exist without math, and I knew he was wrong; math and natural laws can describe something, but not cause it.
Other discoveries followed as I grew. I once saw my Aunt Sadie who was always so loud and happy when she thought nobody was around. I was spying, hiding behind a couch that was not against a wall. She was not unhappy when I spied that time, just slack in the face. She was tired and a crumb was bothering her on her top lip. Her eyes were shut, her arms lay on the arms of the chair like great loaves of dough wrapped in flowered gauze. After an excruciating effort to slowly locate the crumb and move it to the desired location, she succeeded, and spit it with a surprisingly nimble focus, a dart-thin sound that grew round at the end, and it was lost in the dim room. I was astonished at something so crude, and so practiced, because her whole life was doilies and powder. But she was not finished. She sucked into her mouth a small line of spittle, the byproduct of the crumb's ejection, heaved a sigh, and began snoring like Leo Lesko, the old guy who smelt like a campfire and slept on the bench in front of the Co-op.
I stared at her in wonder and in admiration, and as I did the foul odor of a human fart settled around me in my hiding place. It enveloped me and was alive. I thought of it as some monster and, holding my breath, ran outside to breathe, in the heat of the afternoon when no one was in the sun. Jane was there, with her brother—I saw them soon after they laughed, after my eyes could see again. They were sitting in the shade on the old blue bench seat from a car long gone.
"We need to buy the Monster Manual," I said. "I just encountered a ferocious beast."
That was the first summer Jane and Henry stayed with us. Summers they usually stayed with their parents but those parents had been killed in the winter on icy roads. We took Aunt Sadie to the airport the next day and everybody cried but I didn't know why. When we got home our ducklings were laying all over the yard.
"Oh kids," Mom said. "We forgot the ducks when we left."
Jane jumped out and picked one up. She carried it to my mother and cried.
"A weasel," my Mom said, and knelt down to gather Jane into her arms.
"It's Kenny's job. We don't even live here," Jane said. Henry gathered the rest of the ducks in his arms but kept dropping them. He wanted to hold all six and couldn't.
My mother's face was hidden but I heard her saying "I know, I know," as she held Jane with Henry's wide eyes in the background.
"I didn't know you loved Aunt Sadie," I said later that night. We were in our pajamas and having a cookie in the kitchen. I was looking at Jane but Henry started to sob.
"Kenny, you dumb shit!" Jane said as she stood and went to Henry.
But I knew it wasn't my fault. We were all responsible for everything, and that included the ducklings. They didn't act like rich kids but I knew they were. They went to boarding school all year and I rode the bus half an hour into town. It was cold in the winter and I lived alone with Mom and Jack. They came home for Christmas most times after Sadie died, and every summer.
It was so obvious, now, suddenly: the bears were truckfuls of ruined sod—yellow grass and black dirt made blacker by the impossible green of the ditches. It was obvious too, that Henry missed his dead parents, not Aunt Sadie, and that this first summer together wasn't their choice. I know I was a child too, but I know now I was pretty thick. I stood that night outside the camper, wanting to say sorry but not sure why. I heard the wet sounds of sobbing and someone's nose running. The sound Jane and her brother were making was just practice, trying to siphon water through a stolen rubber hose too small for anything. When I opened the door to the camper, Henry looked up, red faced, with water on his chin.
"We'll have to steal a car, and gas, if we ever want to get back home," he said, and Jane dropped the gas can she'd been steadying with her legs and she let out a strangled cry at their hopelessness.
"It's not gas, we're practicing with water," Jane said quietly, and I stared at them both, unable to say what I thought I should say.
"Jane . . ." I began.
"We'll take you with us, you little shit. Don't worry."
"You little shit," Henry said too, and the rest of the memory is lost, but I expect hard laughter, and talking about hotwiring cars and camping and all the rest of the summer.
And now she's dead too, and if she'd had any secrets they're hidden to me. There's a trick to it. Some days everything in this world seems to point to one cause, and that's false.
Sean Johnston lives in Kelowna, British Columbia, and teaches at Okanagan College. His latest books are the novel Listen All You Bullets and the short fiction collection We Don't Listen to Them. "Fairy Tale" is from his short story manuscript Multiplicanda Ah Um.
Header photo by Erik Mandre, courtesy Shutterstock. Photo of Sean Johnston by Jessica Zais.
animalsbearschildrendeathfamilygamesgardensimaginationlovemagicmemorymythologyparenthoodSean Johnstonwildlife
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Holy Water from the Sanctuary of Fatima
Find protection in the Miracle of Fatima
Our Lady of Fatima is followed all over the world by thousands of pilgrims moved by their faith in the Miracle of the Sun. Hundreds claim to have been cured of diseases and ridden of other ailments by the Virgin. Among them is Pope John Paul II, who credited Fatima for his survival to the attack on his life:
"The Blessed Virgin Mary, the first of the redeemed, the first to have been closely associated with the work of Redemption, will always be our guide and model." - Pope John Paul II
Holy Water directly from the Sanctuary: each bottle is filled with Holy Water from the Sanctuary of Fatima by us. The water is blessed and sought by thousands of pilgrims devoted to Our Lady. Some say it can cure diseases.
Protect yourself from harm: the use of Holy Water while making a sign of the cross reflects a renewal of baptism, a cleansing of sin, as well as protection against evil. It is often accompanied by the following prayer: "By this Holy water and by your Precious Blood, wash away my sins O Lord".
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What is the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima?
Located in the center of Portugal, the Sanctuary of Fatima built in honor of the Miracle has become the fourth biggest Catholic pilgrimage site in the world, receiving between 4 and 5 million visitors every year. Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis have visited the Sanctuary to pray to Our Lady of Fatima, next to thousands of devoted pilgrims.
The pilgrims gather for one of the most beautiful processions in the Catholic Faith: the Procession of the Candles. Millions of people light a candle and follow the image of Our Lady of Fatima at night as It moves around the Sanctuary, praying and singing Her praises.
Learn more about the Miracle of the Sun
Our Lady of Fatima, the Blessed Virgin Mary, is known for Her apparitions in 1917 to three shepherd children at Cova da Iria, in Fatima, Portugal.
The Miracle of Fatima (also known as the Miracle of the Sun) happened between May and October on the 13th day of each month, at approximately noon. The three children: Lucia and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco (ages 7, 9 and 10) were spoken to by a luminous lady who entrusted them with three secrets.
The first secret was a frightening vision of hell, "where the souls of poor sinners go," and contained an urgent plea from Our Lady for acts of prayer and sacrifice to save souls, with particular emphasis on praying of the rosary and devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
The second secret prophesied the outbreak of World War II and contained the prediction of the huge damage that Russia would do to humanity by abandoning the Christian faith and embracing Communists' totalitarianism.
The third secret was not revealed until 2000. Its revelation coincided with the beatification of Francisco and Jacinta. It did not contain any cataclysmic prediction, but, instead, the vision affirmed the immense suffering endured by witnesses of the faith. Sister Lucia, the surviving member of the three children, confirmed that in the vision "the Bishop clothed in white," who prays for all the faithful, is the Pope. As he makes his way with great difficulty towards the Cross amid the corpses of those who were martyred, he too falls to the ground, apparently dead, under a hail of gunfire. It is possible that the vision predicted the 1981 attack on Pope John Paul II's life. The Pope has always credited the Virgin for his survival.
The Miracle of the Sun occurred in October 13, when a crowd of seventy thousand people who had gathered in Fatima, in response to a prophecy made by the three children. The prophecy was that the Virgin Mary would appear and perform a miracle on that date. The crowd witnessed an extraordinary zig-zag dance of the sun in the sky that lasted ten minutes that afternoon. No one had ever seen such a phenomenon. The whole crowd was in awe.
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Loja Esperança
A Loja Esperança é uma loja de artigos religiosos com mais de uma década de existência situada no coração de Fátima. Com uma vasta coleção de artigos de Arte Sacra em prata, ouro e madeira. Todos estes artigos são costumizados e/ou feitos por medida.
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