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July 21 – Kathleen R. Smythe
Posted on June 28, 2013 Posted By: uufdc Categories: Sunday Services
Kathleen Smythe
THE 10,000 YEAR REVOLUTIONARY
Agriculture is approximately 10,000 years old. Thus, it has only been practiced for a very small portion of human existence, yet agriculture is arguably the single most important development in human history. It is also probably the most ecologically disruptive development in human history. A sustainability visionary has been working on changing human agriculture, undoing 10,000 years of human history, with the hope of ensuring the continued existence of human civilization and our planet's rich ecosystems. Come hear about his work and the necessity of cultivating a sense of a deep human past.
Kathleen Smythe received her Ph.D. in African History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her study of Africa and her experiences there lead her to the fields of economic development, sustainability, and globalization, as she sought to understand for herself and then explain to her students the dynamics—historical and current—that have led to global apartheid and ecological devastation. Much of her teaching and research currently focus on these issues, including a book manuscript derived from her teaching, Why We Need African History, which explores ideas and institutions that are long-lived and might broaden our economic, political and social responses to the aforementioned crises.
Music: Ellen Shahbazi
Service Leader: Marilyn Hansotia
Pluralism vs. Fundamentalism
Pluralism vs. Fundamentalism by Rev. Sam Trumbore — Presented by Donna Johnson Our religious tradition of Unitarian Universalism is quite different from the "true believers". A visitor would feel this in…
The Parallel of Abuse and Oppression
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On November 5 and 6, at the Ministerial Meeting on Health to be held in Milan, we will launch a new perspective on health. We have an ambitious program, for the first time built on scientific basis through the so-called Delphi, an organizational model based on the opinions of world's leading experts, with the aim of assessing the impact of climate change on people's health.
Scientific evidence shows that in recent years there has been the spread of vector insects due to climate change in areas where they were not present. In Italy, for example, there have been cases of Chikungunya. In the course of the summit, we will also address other important issues: the health of women and teenagers, the antibiotic resistance and the proliferation of new infections. We will try to coordinate global and concrete actions. There will also be events related to nutrition and prevention, drug accessibility, and personalized therapies.
We will also address the health of animals and therefore the situation of our farms, an aspect that affects what we eat. Finally, we will discuss the impact on health of refugees and migrants, the migrations due to climate change and the consequences of air pollution on health.


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Q: Cucumber tests and captcha: how to handle that? We are considering using Cucumber for testing web applications (not in rails, most of them are asp.net actually).
The applications are in production, our main goal is to test if everything is fine with the services, from time to time, infra people would run it.
We have two questions:
1) Is this a good use for cucumber? Do community people encourage this use of cucumber feature definitions?
2) We have some captchas in our applications. Is there an widely adopted solution for this common problem?

A: Cucumber looks relatively new.  I am a Java person and have used Selenium, HtmlUnit, JWebUnit, etc.  Selenium runs in .net, ruby, java, and some other scripting languages.
Selenium has been around for a while (2004 whereas Cucumber is relatively new, 2007).
Selenium has an IDE so you can easily record tests in firefox, save them, and then run them in your integration tests.
I am biased towards Selenium, but it does a good job and allows you to test your applications in several browsers (firefox, safari, IE).  It also has support for distributing tests across several servers (if your environment is that large, it supports it).
Ideally, you would have developers or the infrastructure people writing the tests.  Then if you have a CI server, you could automatically run the tests you have recorded/written, and then continuously check your application still works as a whole.  This works really great for catching errors as soon as they happen so if the developer makes a change and breaks something out of his scope, it will be fresh in his or her head.
As far as CAPTCHA goes, there are various libraries out there.  I am unfortunately more knowledgeable with the Java equivalent and not so much with the .Net.  Don't write your own, there should be a library you can use.
Walter

A: ad 1. in my opinion cucumber is great, also we were able to convince our customers to actually understand and verify the tests we wrote in cucumber. We used cucumber + watir for webtesting
ad 2. as far as captcha goes, do you mean how to ignore the captcha for testing? we do not show captcha for our own ip addresses, you could also always accept a specific value for the captcha if the request comes from your development or test environments ip

A: I can recommend Cucumber. I trained a team of developers and managers to use it on my last project (a PHP application). It worked very well in most cases.
I think your two questions are mutually exclusive. Captcha is designed to prevent something automated so you're going to have to solve that problem for which ever automated test runner you use. You can probably mock something up or work out how to disable it in your test environment. I would opt for the latter. I don't imagine it would be critical to cover your captcha in your test suite.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


A few days ago, the Federal Aviation Administration published a list of air traffic control towers which are slated for closure now that the sequestration-related budget cuts have kicked in. Looking at the list of Southern California facilities, one sees quite a few busy airports which sit under multiple layers of airspace.
At times like these, it's important to take a deep breath, remember that the vast majority of airports are already non-towered, and as always, cast a skeptical eye on the antics of those in Washington.
I've been monitoring the hue and cry from aviation magazines, organizations, and bloggers and have been impressed by how many have refused to adopt a hysterical "the sky is falling!" attitude. It's also worth noting that the cut extend beyond tower staffing. For example, the FAA does not intend to repair all navaids when they fail, only those that are part of their minimal network plan.
My take? The degradation of ATC services isn't the end of the world. I view it as somewhat akin to "partial panel": not an ideal situation, but definitely flyable.
Of course, there's a big difference between flying around, say, Santa Monica, California and… well, just about everywhere else. After reviewing the expected closures, my eye was caught not by what was on the list, but rather what wasn't. There are quite a few low-traffic, rural towers that are somehow escaping the axe.
Example: last month I flew coast-to-coast in a DA-40 DiamondStar and we stopped at seven towered airports, the majority of which are in far less densely populated areas that Los Angeles and only one of which has anywhere near the traffic of the SoCal area airports whose towers are slated for closure.
I used the FAA's Air Traffic Activity System (ATADS) to compile a list of all the towers in the United States for which data was available and requested the number of tower ops (takeoffs, landings, and transient operations) for the last twelve months. They were then sorted by number of operations. See the full list (.xlsx format).
Based on the closure list and comments from FAA officials, it seems that everything with less than about 150,000 operations per year is on the table. That means only White Plains would survive. But when I look for these identifiers, I only see two — Rosewell and Lewisburg — which are actually scheduled for closure.
So what's going on here? Why is Camarillo, with 146,000 operations per year, being closed while Greenwood, with less than 42,000 ops annually, remains open? It seems airports with U.S. Customs service are being spared. Morristown and Knoxville are airports-of-entry, so they keep their tower. Greenwood's tower is owned and operated by the city, so the FAA doesn't save anything by closing it. As far as Henderson is concerned, I cannot see any reason that it escaped the axe beyond it's status as a reliever for McCarren Int'l Airport. But if reliever towers were to be left open, surely Santa Monica and Hawthorne would be safe. Those airports are just a couple of miles north and south, respectively, of LAX.
Safety would be compromised, if by nothing else, the mix of aircraft (A/C) that use the airport. Combined with frequency congestion, this could put fast moving A/C in conflict with slower, less experienced A/C with little time to respond.
That does not even address the difficulty that would be experienced trying to get in or out of SMO on an IFR flight plan, due to the fact we are not procedurally separated from LAX. Even our arrivals are not separated from LAX arrivals due to the circling approach. When the tower is open, we can instruct A/C unable to land straight in what to do; without a tower, you either cancel IFR by BEVEY, or get taken off the approach. If they let you circle, you are in conflict with the LAX arrivals and they would have to build a 20 mile or greater gap in their arrivals, and time it perfectly with your circle.
Airspace? Piece of cake. Especially when you get rid of all the towers!
Obviously I'm not privy to the inter workings of the FAA, but the list of L.A.-area towers being cut seems excessive. These towers not only see a lot of traffic but serve other purposes, such as special flight routes across the Class B airspace, handling continual Medfly overflights, complex IFR traffic coordination with LAX arrivals and departures, and dense layers of helicopter, fixed-wing GA, and corporate & airline flights.
Rather than just close a tower because is has an arbitrary number of operations per year, wouldn't it make more sense to look at the type of activity, the airspace being controlled by that tower, and so on? Fullerton, for example, is a Class D tower with Charlie airspace nearby and Bravo above. That's got to be more complicated than a Delta tower in the middle of nowhere. You'll see this reflected in the discrepancy between tower ops and airport ops. The larger the difference, the more likely it is that the facility is handling a significant transient aircraft load. From a safety perspective, that's a big red flag. The tower is handling a lot of traffic which did not takeoff or land from that airport. Translation: busy airspace, and a potentially legitimate need for that control tower.
Sadly, the current administration strategy lends credence to those who say the directive from the top is to create as much pain as possible. It makes sense from a political standpoint as well. They want more money and fear what will happen if the sky doesn't fall over this minor cut. It's human nature and not government-specific.
Think of any office department you've been a part of. The end of the fiscal year is typically accompanied by a spending spree to eliminate any leftover money. And why? Because if you return a surplus to the general fund, it might be assumed that your department can get by with less.
The FAA's finances are worth looking at while we're on the topic. Their budget for 2013 was $7 billion and the sequestration cut is $600 million, or about 8%. In real dollars, the 2013 sequestered budget of $6.4 billion is still $500 million higher than their 2008 spending allotment. Why can't they survive on that, especially considering traffic levels have fallen from their 2008 highs?
If the FAA's primary concern truly is flight safety, then it seems to me there are many alternatives to tower closures of this kind. For one, start by slowing or halting NexGen development. A year ago, Congress approved $63.4 billion for the program. That's enough to keep those towers open for the next 100 years.
Restrict administrative expenses like travel costs. Use videoconferencing. The agency budgets $2.7 billion just for supplies and travel expenses for its 48,000 employees. That's $56,250 per person. I know they're in the transportation business, but isn't that a bit much?
Reduce controller salaries at the high end. It stinks to have a $140,000/year salary reduced, but doctors, lawyers, and other highly-educated member of our workforce are taking their lumps these days, too.
How about reducing staffing hours at those towers? Most are closed at night anyway. Shut them down an hour earlier and/or open them later during the week. The Delta towers are most needed on the weekend.
How about eliminating the 3rd class medical? Downsizing the Aeromedical branch and changing policy to presume medical certification is acceptable until they get around to reviewing a deferred application? Statistics show that pilots who fly under Sport Pilot rules using medical self-certification are no more prone to incapacitation in flight than those with traditional AME-based certificates.
Should an 8% budget cut close this many towers in a region with good weather year-round, many airports in close proximity, lots of airline and corporate jet activity, and some of the most densely packed airspace in the country? I don't think so. They can do better than this.
And if they don't? We'll keep on flying anyway.
← IPC as a Flight Review?
Apparently there are federally operated towers and contracted towers. They close the contracted towers first because it is the easiest to do.
In most of them the staff is paid annually. Snipping an hour off here or there doesn't change their pay grade (all that federal stuff is so nasty in regards to pay and hours worked).
Sure would be cool to get some of the automated towers operating about now.
I figured all the contract facilities would be cut immediately, but in truth I didn't see any distinction between NFCT (non-federal contract towers) and traditional FAA towers in the closure list except to say that the NFCT facilities tend to be the smaller ones with fewer operations. Apparently not all of them are going to be closed.
I believe one of the FAA's existing plans is, along with closing the towers, to require virtually all agency employees to take one furlough day per pay period, with a resulting decrease in compensation.
"Automated towers" would be nice, but the closest thing I've seen to any automated ATC function would be some of the NexGen technology, and that's many years (and tens of billions of dollars we don't have) away.
Good article! Makes sense, common sense… but then government has never been accused of having much of that. Government is all about empire building, and that is why it's appetite for dollars is insatiable.
Nauseating. Your government busy serving you. And the over-schooled, under-educated morons who continue to vote for these criminals are oblivous to the destruction they visit on all of us.
Lots of younger pilots don't remember when the air traffic controller went on strike in the 80's and Ronald Regan fired them all. We survived it then, and we will survive it again. Any pilot that flys a lot knows that most of the towers scheduled to close (with some exceptions) never needed a tower in the first place. I live in MA. and the 6 towers to be closed in my opinion will not be missed. They are a complete waste of taxpayer dollars and should be closed regardless of budget cuts.
I fly around puerto rico and the caribbean. we have a lot of smaller airports that do not have a tower but have customs. With the e aphis system, customs does not ever need to know tower activity.
Yes, it's definitely true that not all airports-of-entry have a tower. Calexico (CXL) is just one example. And that pre-dates the E-APIS system by decades.
Contract Tower Controllers are NOT paid annually. They are paid hourly. I agree there are some that need to be closed. However why is the government so scared of NATCA. That's why they are closing the contract towers. NATCA has wanted the contract program to go away for a very long time. The contract program threatens th vitality of the FAA. Especially when the contract program saves the government millions of dollars. Why don't they cut the fat in their own facilities first.
Gentlemen, do you'll truly understand the impacts of closing all those towers around LAX for example, with the towers closing, the corresponding approach controllers for those airspaces will be working on a one-in, one-out concept concerning IFR traffic, whereas the tower controllers can keep visual separation between arrivals and departures now that responsibility will fall on the approach controllers, hence if you have 2 or 3 inbounds and/or 2 or 3 outbounds someone is gonna have to wait, subsequently with congestion, if arrivals are put in holding due to a previous arrival not reporting down or departure that has reported airborne subsequent arrivals will have to be put in holding and with all the congestion with LAX, that does not paint a pretty picture, the wx is good more times than not but on a bad wx day that could be catastrosphic. Delays are imminent not so much so at LAX but every airport in a 50 mile radius surely will, not to mention controller workload, before they could rely and trust the towers to do some of the dirty work, now it will all fall on the shoulders of the approach controllers, and that particular controller may be working traffic into and out of as many as 10 airports controlled and uncontrolled. Henceforth, the general public will not notice a big difference at large Hubs but general aviation will take a big hit, think about it when you sitting at the hold short third in line and it takes you 15 minutes to get airborne becauseIFR 2 learjet are ahead of you but they can't go because of the 2 IFR citations that haven't landed yet. That is quite of bit of fuel that is consumed and with fuel prices the way they are nowadays i don't think too many pilots will be happy!!
It's definitely going to be painful for GA aircraft wanting to landing or depart at prime times during low-ish IMC conditions under IFR. On the other hand, while I still think the SoCal class D tower closures are a bad idea, most of the time — even when the coastal stratus is present — I have a feeling aircraft will get below the layer while still with approach and be able to cancel.
Once the axe falls on these facilities and we're dealing with the effects, it would be interesting to to get a comparative take from any current corporate and charter pilots who were flying in the days after the PATCO strike in the early 80s.
I am a controller at a Federal Contract Tower located just ouside a Class B and adjacent to a major university. One of the consequences of the closing of our tower will affect aircraft intending to land on "football" Saturdays when the TFR is in effect. All pilots will have to be in contact with the FAA Approach Control in order to land and take-off without violating this airspace. Considering past game days, the approach controllers could have an additional 100 aircraft on their frequency. Delays for all aircraft will be significant because, without the tower controllers, visual separation can not be applied. Additionaly, significant delays will occur when the 100 plus aircraft want to depart after the game. The approach controller will have to issue all IFR clearances and will only allow one in and one out for separation purposes. Good Luck.
Ah yes, the infamous stadium TFR. That restriction is only in effect from one hour before to one hour after the scheduled game time. I assume the majority of transient aircraft coming for that event would arrive before and leave after the TFR's effective time, which would make that particular item less of a concern.
I'd expect to see more VFR departures after the tower closures, although that could prove difficult for some Part 135 operators with op-specs that limit their VFR operations to a specific distance from the arrival and/or destination airports.
I too work at a FCT. Yeah landing at an uncontrolled airport maybe fine at night or at a place with one in and one out traffic. But add to the mix general aviation operating in the VFR pattern landing on crossing runways from the corperate Jet traffic. The Approach Controller won't see that when they issue an release. How about jet traffic taxi to the runway only to fine out there is a ground stop or he has an EDCT. Pilots here don't call the approach controller until they are usually at the runway….then what…what about vehicle traffic, construction, snow removal, mowing operations and animals/flocks of birds on the runway. What happens when a jet blows a tire on landing or hit a flock of birds and any other emergency. Some pilots might say it will be okay but alot more responsibility will be place on them as well as the approach controller. I can't say every FCT should remain open but those near Major HUBs like ORD, LAX, ATL they should reconsider.
Another affect will be reduced operations per hour. LAX currently has about 90 operations an hour. They will be reducing that to about 60. Thirty operations less an hour. They will not have an assist, there will not be someone assigned to helicopter operations (which will probably effectively close the "Mini Route". HHR is less than 1/2 mile from LAX Class B and SMO has already been talked about. The LA area is busy closing towers here is a bad idea. Another Cerritos crash is in the making with these irresponsible closers.
Not to mention will flight following be available ( my guess would be no). What about Sun-N-Fun and Air Venture? OSH (contract most of the year) us on the closure list.
"For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
Thanks for your thoughts on this. I assume TT is bracing for a whole bunch of fun at LAX tower, eh?
I don't think SoCal TRACON staffing is being cut — or if it is, I haven't heard about it — so flight following should be available. Most approach controllers I've talked to say they would prefer we DID use it, as it makes their job easier. They can't vector or alert a target that's not talking to them.
OSH is staffed by volunteers during AirVenture, so I'm sure that wont be affected. And SnF said they'd shell out for the controller salaries if necessary. Hopefully some local communities will fund their towers individually and keep the closures to a minimum.
I'd still love to do that tower tour if its possible! Hope you're doing well….
Ron, I am slated to tour the Tracon this coming Saturday. Will be happy to report what I learn. I visited the tower at KRAL on Sunday to wish them well and drop off a good bottle of wine. On a personal level, they are good guys and they do a great job and, despite their best efforts, they were obviously upset by what is about to happen. My heart goes out to all the good people who will be losing their jobs.
It was nice of you to provide the guys with some liquid refreshment over there! It's a shame they'll be out of business, but hopefully normal attrition from the FAA ranks will allow these folks to pick up that slack without too much time "off". I look forward to hearing back from you after the TRACON visit! I'm sure there will be many changes in store for them regardless of whether or not they lose any staff. The letters of agreement they have with various towers are, obviously, predicated on the presence of the controllers there. On the other hand, all the towers that are closing are part-time, so they'll already have some time-tested strategies in place since those airports have been operating half of each day as non-towered fields anyway.
As planned, I was fortunate to tour our TRACON facility, yesterday. My thanks to the local chapter of the 99's and the Air Traffic Controllers who dedicated their time and energies to make the tour possible. It should be a must for all pilots. We did have a conversation about the proposed cuts. One economist estimates the impact on the US economy to be $1.3 billion/day. There is a planned reduction in ATC that will translate into a constricting of the entire system. If North Korea wants to destroy us, they had better hurry. Washingtom may beat them to it!
I saw a news article today about the wait for customs clearance at Ft Lauderdale. It was 2.5 hours for GA aircraft– and as you are aware, nobody can deplane until customs officers complete their work. That's going to become a life-threatening wait for folks without an APU once summer really arrives!


(Springfield) — Traffic cameras that snap a picture of your license plate when you run a red light may soon also send you a 100-dollar ticket when you break the speed limit.
Lawmakers are looking at adding traffic cameras to ticket speeding drivers in Chicago, the suburbs, and the Metro East.
Right now the cameras are attached to red lights,but the new cameras could be put anywhere to catch people driving too fast.
Cameras could only monitor speeding on surface streets, not expressways or interstates.
House Democrat Joe Lyons says people are driving too fast, and cameras sending out speeding tickets should slow them down. Waukegan State Senator Terry Link says more traffic cameras will stop people from speeding and save lives. Link says since Chicago put in red-light cameras, drivers running lights dropped by half.
He says he expects cameras could also be a deterrent to speeding.
Critics say traffic cameras send out too many bogus tickets and are just a way for cities to get more money from drivers. Link is also pushing a separate plan to expand red-light cameras to Bloomington-Normal, Rockford, DeKalb, and Decatur. Some lawmakers are fighting to keep red-light cameras out of their cities.
Link says that drivers who complain about getting tickets from cameras would be fine if they don't run red lights or drive too fast.


Pipes are a unix staple. They're core to the unix philosophy of modularity. Bashes named pipes just knock this up a notch.
Lets say we have two directories that should have contain the same files, but one is on a case insensitive file system, so some files might differ in case. We could do this, using normal pipes to process the directory entries.
But this is kind of hacky and creates two temporary files.
Bash named pipes lets you use the output of a pipe system in place of a filename. Its almost like the pipes were written into temporary files and the files deleted afterwards, but no disk space is consumed by the files.
Mind you I haven't used these often, but if you know they exist they can make some painful multistep processes much simpler.
With thre requirement that you add something like this to a source file for every class you require metadata for. Failing to do this will generate a link time error.
Personally I don't like link time errors and prefer compile time errors, so we could try using template specialisation to get a similar result.
Another trick we can use to avoid needing to define static variables in a .cpp file is to use metadata that uses singleton functions for each variable. Then the function static variable is created inside the function, (on first function use I think) and lives until the end of the application.
(Almost) Template free type map.
There's an alternative to using templates as a way into the C++ type system, and that is type_info (Well there's also polymorphism, but we'll ignore that option for now). If we go down that route we can reduce the usage of templates and global/singleton variables significantly.
And while you now need to pass in an additional parameter to the OpenLib function, these functions are now easily testable. And if you really hate that additional member you can make the MetaDataMap a global variable or singleton.
I found an interesting discussion on why there is no default comparison operator (operator==) on PODs even though there is a default assignment (operator=).
operator= can be trivial for PODs as byte=by-byte copy will produce an equivalent result to an element by element copy. Essentially memcpy will work as operator= for PODs. At first you might think that operator== could work the same way, lets just use memcmp.
However theres a spanner in the works - floats cause us some problems. And not in the usual "floating point comparison for numbers that are very close together not showing up as equal" - but something a little more subtle.
For most floats the bit patterns being equal means the floats are equal and vice versa. However theres a couple of exceptions. -0.0 == 0.0 even though the bit patterns are different. Also NaN != NaN even though the bit patterns are the same.
This means that a bit by bit POD operator== can never work the same way as an element by elememt comparison when floats (or doubles) are in the mix. And that means no default operator==. A sad loss, but maybe a little more understandable to me now.
Smashing The Stack : What is a neat way of breaking out of many for loops at once?
Here we've wrapped all other data that is changing into a context object that is updated every iteration, and is tested against. So how can we make this "neat" .. here's one kind of solution.
IMHO this is easier to maintain than the original loop with flags and breaks. This is usually handy as we can make the updateContext and shouldBreak functions members of the Looper class. Of course in most cases this can be refactored to be even neater, depending on what your context is.
Domain of Heroes is a strange little indie game that gets a lot of things right (in my opinion).
Its a fairly standard RPG style game. You kill monsters to get items to get more powerful to kill harder monsters. "The Grind" is central to this game. What I'm going to talk about is how its stat system works and what this means for minmaxer style players.
The enchantments come in 3 tiers.
Next players can replace attributes with attributes of their choosing, with a couple of key limitations.
The one we're interested in here is that players cant create the % increase attributes, only the + increase attributes.
This means that valuable items are the items with higher rarity with t3% or multiple t3% enchants. The non-% slots are then typically filled with t3+ enchants.
What's interesting about this question is that "it depends"
If you already have a high base MND value you will gain more from 5.6% than the extra 75. If you have a low MND base value you will get more from the myth. We can actually work out the cross over, the maths is quite easy. However I might leave that for another post.
The interesting thing in my opinion is how the multiplicative nature of the two bonuses means that stacking too much of either one gives you a sub optimal result. i.e. +490% MND if you've only got 10 MND gives you only 59 MND, +10%MND if you have 490 MND gives you 539 MND which is better, but +250%MND with 250MND gives over 875 MND which is vastly superior. This also means that different people will value items differently resulting in a potentially "richer" system.
Wow that feels like a lot of cruft to read through to get to a relatively simple (but deep) point. I'll delve more into the maths behind this balance in another post.
Search and replace using regex in multiple files from the command line. What more could a serious coder want.
I Often find I want to just replace whole words. The way you do this will depend on the version of sed you're using.
In the last post i looked at one way of handling exceptions that come out of C++ when wrapping classes to be called from C. On the upside this code looks very similar to how I'd wrap exception free code. On the downside the exception handling callbacks aren't very flexible and result in an uglier interface.
By restructuring the C interface slightly we can get what I think is a much cleaner interface.
So not much trickier than the other implementation, and now that I've built them both I consider this way of doing the wrapping to be easier to work with.
Sorry theres not much discussion of the code this time. But hopefully it will still be helpful to someone.
So this first article is about calling C++ functions and classes from C. So this solution covers the simple case. Usesr asked about how we can handle exceptions and allocating small objects on the stack rather than the heap. I'm going to show you a way that these can be addressed.
There's a few key issues.
Catching _all_ exceptions by catch(...) can leave your application in an invalid/unrecoverable state. Some compilers (VC++) will allow catch(...) to catch things like segmentation faults etc. The only sane thing to do in that case is immediately exit.
Other exception may be recoverable, and we need a way to handle this.
Things to note are exposing std::pair<int,int> as CLocation struct, (rather than opaque handle). Allowing specification of an exception handler in the HMyMap class.
I'm not 100% happy with the way the exception handling is done, and will show another option in another post.
We have some C++ code that we build using makefile system. We even use this on OS X where we could build using XCode instead, but we prefer a uniformity of build methods.
Now when a nasty and hard to trace bug crops up on an OS X build box we could try to track down the bug using good old GDB. However while I feel everyone should be able to use GDB I get sick of constantly making GDB give me what info I want. XCodes built in debugger does this nicely - in fact its just a front end to GDB. The question is how do we get our non-xcode binary to be debugged under XCode.
Turns out its EASY. (Well 90% easy).
Now you should be able to run your app through the debugger. But how do you set breakpoints? You can add your source files to the project by dragging them from finder into the XCode project sidebar. Then double click the file to open it in the XCode editor, and click in the left side by the line numbers to set breakpoints.
"Warning - No location found for "foo.cpp:12"
The reason for this was the file was being built from a subdirectory - its real name was autogen/foo.cpp.
Typing "break foo.cpp:12" into the console works, presumably due to the lack of quote marks around the file/line pair.


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My PhD research aims to develop an evaluative framework that assesses sustainability performance in volunteer tourism. Based on realistic evaluation the research investigates what influences outcomes and impacts in volunteer tourism and applies collaboration theory in examining the different relationships within the main stakeholders. The qualitative study is based on volunteer projects managed by peopleandplaces and Calabash Tours in South Africa. The results will provide a detailed understanding on how to measure sustainability performance in volunteer tourism, and are applicable in other tourism markets. Applying realistic evaluation in tourism is breaking new ground and the results will contribute to a growing academic discourse on its practical applications.
In September 2016 I transferred as a part-time PhD researcher to the University of Surrey from Leeds Beckett University.
Throughout my career I have pursued my personal and professional interest in sustainability. My background is in conservation as I gained an BSc in Applied Environmental Sciences from King's College London and a PGDip in Conservation at University College London. I hold an MSc with Merit in Responsible Tourism Management from the University of Greenwich. I am interested how economic, social and environmental balance is achievable by fair redistribution of resources within the travel and tourism industry.
I have over 15 years' experience in the tourism and travel industry mostly in management and consultancy roles working within the private, public and third sectors. I have undertaken field and desk based sustainable tourism research for primarily in Oman and the UK. As a tourism lecturer at the Oman Tourism College I enjoyed engaging with young people, as well as taking on leadership roles and academic responsibilities. Most recently at Liverpool John Moores University I am lecturing on their BA and MA international tourism management programmes.
As an undergraduate I volunteered on several expeditions, ranging from marine projects in Borneo and the Isles of Scillies to terrestrial projects on Krakatau Islands in Indonesia. I developed a passion for traveling and doing something useful. My first conservation job was volunteer programme manager at Earthwatch Institute Europe sharing my passion with like-minded colleagues and volunteers. Through reviewing the nominations in the volunteer organisation category for the World Responsible Tourism Awards over several years, I noticed how the industry was rapidly changing. This prompted me to develop my PhD research topic.
My research interests include sustainable performance measurement, effectiveness of travel philanthropy, tourists' attitudes and perceptions towards sustainability. I am also interested in nature based tourism and development.
Destination:RT 2011, published by ICRT and produced by Cinnamon Tourism Consulting Ltd.


text:
Tax forms help reveal extent of unemployment fraud in US
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Unemployment agencies across the U.S. became lucrative targets for criminals when they were bombarded with claims last year as millions lost jobs due to coronavirus shutdowns.
Now, simple tax forms being sent to people who never collected unemployment benefits are revealing that their identity was likely stolen months ago and used to claim bogus benefits that have totaled billions of dollars nationwide.
Unemployment benefits are taxable, so government agencies send a 1099-G form to people who received them so they can report the income on their tax returns. States are mailing 1099-Gs in huge numbers this year after processing and paying a record number of claims.
In Ohio, Bernie Irwin was shocked two weeks ago when she opened the mail and found a 1099-G form saying her husband had claimed $17,292 in unemployment benefits last year. The only problem: Jim Irwin, 83, hadn't worked in 13 years.
Bernie Irwin, 86, said her daughter-in-law and a friend also received the tax forms. So did Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, his wife, Fran, and Republican Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, even though none of them had claimed unemployment benefits.
Nearly 26 million people requested unemployment aid in the initial months after states began ordering shutdowns. The unprecedented surge strained unemployment offices that are governed by federal rules but administered in patchwork fashion by state governments, with many relying on 1960s-era software to process applications and issue payments.
The federal government, as part of its $2 trillion relief package approved in March, significantly expanded jobless aid, making it a richer target for fraud. By November, the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Inspector General estimated states had paid as much as $36 billion in improper benefits, with a significant portion of that blamed on fraud.
In California alone, officials say the fraud totaled at least $11 billion, with $810 million paid in the names of ineligible prisoners.
Now, overwhelmed unemployment agencies could face another onslaught — this time from people requesting corrected tax forms. A report from the California state auditor last week warned about the problem, and this week the state's Republican congressional delegation and state GOP Senate caucus both sent letters to Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom's administration raising concerns about the impact on taxpayers.
"It does open a can of worms," said Rob Seltzer, a certified public accountant in Los Angeles and a member of the California Society of CPAs. "It really depends upon how fast the (state) is able to send out a corrected form."
Ohio has set up a telephone hotline and created a website allowing residents to report identity theft. Once the state confirms fraud has been committed, taxpayers will receive a corrected 1099-G form. In the past two weeks, 62,000 people had filed a report, according to spokesman Thomas Betti.
"It's really easy for somebody to be like, 'This isn't my problem. They sent me the form, I've never been to Ohio.' Still, you need to take care of this," Betti said. "Every unemployment system in the country is dealing with this massive amount of fraud."
Last month, the IRS said it is likely that many victims won't be able to get a corrected tax form in time to file their federal taxes. In those instances, the IRS says taxpayers should ignore the 1099-G and file their taxes without reporting the fraudulent income.
Christina Elliott, owner of BEM Financial Services, worries that process could delay tax refunds for people who are counting on them to make it through the pandemic. She has two clients — one in California and one in Georgia — who say they received incorrect forms showing they received as much as $27,000 in unemployment benefits last year.
"They are literally going to have to investigate each one," Elliot said about the IRS. "These people already had their identity stolen that they didn't know about, here lies another problem where they will be waiting months just to get their (tax refunds) that are owed to them."
The problem could be most acute in California, where officials mailed close to 8 million tax forms last month — more than five times the number they send in a normal year. The state Employment Development Department said it has updated its website and hired an additional 300 agents for its call center, training them on how to handle questions about the 1099-G forms.
Rooting out fraud and identity theft has been a struggle for the agency. A state audit released last week showed that from April to October, it responded to less than 2% of fraud reports. By November, it had a backlog of more than 77,000 such reports.
That likely included a report by Greg Musson, who owns a business near Fresno. State officials contacted his company in September to let him know one of his employees had filed for unemployment benefits in March. Musson was surprised to learn that person was him. He put a freeze on his credit and filed a fraud report with the state unemployment department but so far hasn't heard anything back.
"To know that somebody has my information and has been able to get really pretty personal with it, it's like your home being broken into," he said.
Carol Williams, chief deputy director of operations for the California Employment Development Department, said people who get incorrect tax forms should fill out a worksheet on the department website, adding that the website has been "busy."
Some lawmakers worry the agency might not be able to handle the workload. Republican state Sen. Scott Wilk said one of his constituents was "dumbfounded" to get a notice that he owed taxes on $11,000 in unemployment benefits.
"In a time when we really need people to have confidence in their government, going through this pandemic and rolling out the vaccine, the last thing we need to do is additionally shatter their confidence in our ability to be competent," Wilk said.
No. 16 Virginia Tech escapes with overtime win at Miami VDOT: Road conditions expected to improve later today with warmer temperatures

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


We have a strong team of managers and project coordinators, our mobile groups of working personnel are ready to help you whenever it is needed. We will set up a schedule for the work to be done. We will take care of delivery of the materials of the complete installation. Knowing the specifics of ship construction market with precise labor productivity, timing, guarantees, material certificates – JSC "Adrijus" will provide the best service for a very competitive price.


text:
Who Makes the Inevitable Conversion of Agricultural Lands to Urban Uses at the Peripheries of a Megacity?
Shohel Amin, Luis Amador
School of Energy, Construction and Environment
Urban planners and policy makers are confronted with tremendous pressures to develop city management strategies for sustainable land use planning in order to counterpart unprecedented rates of agricultural land conversion for urban uses. In addition, a wide range of challenges have intricate the urban space. Land market at the urban fringe of a megacity is a complex form of interlinked characteristics, whose mechanisms can be explained by understanding the demand from the inner city, supply of land at the periphery and attitudes of different actors playing a role in the land market. This paper discusses the conceptual issues of land market at the urban periphery of a megacity in order to understand the actors of agricultural land conversion. It explains the implications of economic development, government policies, land ownership, planning control, land speculation and land banking on agricultural land conversion. In specific, growth boundary will not only increase land price, congestion and dis-amenities of the inner city but also evokes rapid expansion of the city. Impact of land speculation and land banking on agricultural land conversion is graphically explained to justify that land speculation booms rapid urban expansion. Critical discussion of agricultural land conversion urges researchers, planners and policy makers to carefully consider all available attributes before working with the dynamic land market at the periphery of a megacity.
International Journal of the Constructed Environment
Urban Agglomeration
Growth Boundary
Land Speculation
Land Banking
Fingerprint Dive into the research topics of 'Who Makes the Inevitable Conversion of Agricultural Lands to Urban Uses at the Peripheries of a Megacity?'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
megacity Earth & Environmental Sciences
land market Earth & Environmental Sciences
agricultural land Earth & Environmental Sciences
land Earth & Environmental Sciences
banking Earth & Environmental Sciences
inner city Earth & Environmental Sciences
landownership Earth & Environmental Sciences
policy Earth & Environmental Sciences
Amin, S., & Amador, L. (2011). Who Makes the Inevitable Conversion of Agricultural Lands to Urban Uses at the Peripheries of a Megacity? International Journal of the Constructed Environment, 2(2), 95-110.
Who Makes the Inevitable Conversion of Agricultural Lands to Urban Uses at the Peripheries of a Megacity? / Amin, Shohel; Amador, Luis.
In: International Journal of the Constructed Environment, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2011, p. 95-110.
Amin, S & Amador, L 2011, 'Who Makes the Inevitable Conversion of Agricultural Lands to Urban Uses at the Peripheries of a Megacity?', International Journal of the Constructed Environment, vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 95-110.
Amin S, Amador L. Who Makes the Inevitable Conversion of Agricultural Lands to Urban Uses at the Peripheries of a Megacity? International Journal of the Constructed Environment. 2011;2(2):95-110.
Amin, Shohel ; Amador, Luis. / Who Makes the Inevitable Conversion of Agricultural Lands to Urban Uses at the Peripheries of a Megacity?. In: International Journal of the Constructed Environment. 2011 ; Vol. 2, No. 2. pp. 95-110.
@article{070845ff66ce42cb8e9ab5a8041a80ff,
title = "Who Makes the Inevitable Conversion of Agricultural Lands to Urban Uses at the Peripheries of a Megacity?",
abstract = "Urban planners and policy makers are confronted with tremendous pressures to develop city management strategies for sustainable land use planning in order to counterpart unprecedented rates of agricultural land conversion for urban uses. In addition, a wide range of challenges have intricate the urban space. Land market at the urban fringe of a megacity is a complex form of interlinked characteristics, whose mechanisms can be explained by understanding the demand from the inner city, supply of land at the periphery and attitudes of different actors playing a role in the land market. This paper discusses the conceptual issues of land market at the urban periphery of a megacity in order to understand the actors of agricultural land conversion. It explains the implications of economic development, government policies, land ownership, planning control, land speculation and land banking on agricultural land conversion. In specific, growth boundary will not only increase land price, congestion and dis-amenities of the inner city but also evokes rapid expansion of the city. Impact of land speculation and land banking on agricultural land conversion is graphically explained to justify that land speculation booms rapid urban expansion. Critical discussion of agricultural land conversion urges researchers, planners and policy makers to carefully consider all available attributes before working with the dynamic land market at the periphery of a megacity.",
keywords = "Urban Agglomeration, Urbanization, Development Plan, Economic Development, Growth Boundary, Land Ownership, Land Speculation, Land Banking",
author = "Shohel Amin and Luis Amador",
journal = "International Journal of the Constructed Environment",
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T1 - Who Makes the Inevitable Conversion of Agricultural Lands to Urban Uses at the Peripheries of a Megacity?
AU - Amin, Shohel
AU - Amador, Luis
N2 - Urban planners and policy makers are confronted with tremendous pressures to develop city management strategies for sustainable land use planning in order to counterpart unprecedented rates of agricultural land conversion for urban uses. In addition, a wide range of challenges have intricate the urban space. Land market at the urban fringe of a megacity is a complex form of interlinked characteristics, whose mechanisms can be explained by understanding the demand from the inner city, supply of land at the periphery and attitudes of different actors playing a role in the land market. This paper discusses the conceptual issues of land market at the urban periphery of a megacity in order to understand the actors of agricultural land conversion. It explains the implications of economic development, government policies, land ownership, planning control, land speculation and land banking on agricultural land conversion. In specific, growth boundary will not only increase land price, congestion and dis-amenities of the inner city but also evokes rapid expansion of the city. Impact of land speculation and land banking on agricultural land conversion is graphically explained to justify that land speculation booms rapid urban expansion. Critical discussion of agricultural land conversion urges researchers, planners and policy makers to carefully consider all available attributes before working with the dynamic land market at the periphery of a megacity.
AB - Urban planners and policy makers are confronted with tremendous pressures to develop city management strategies for sustainable land use planning in order to counterpart unprecedented rates of agricultural land conversion for urban uses. In addition, a wide range of challenges have intricate the urban space. Land market at the urban fringe of a megacity is a complex form of interlinked characteristics, whose mechanisms can be explained by understanding the demand from the inner city, supply of land at the periphery and attitudes of different actors playing a role in the land market. This paper discusses the conceptual issues of land market at the urban periphery of a megacity in order to understand the actors of agricultural land conversion. It explains the implications of economic development, government policies, land ownership, planning control, land speculation and land banking on agricultural land conversion. In specific, growth boundary will not only increase land price, congestion and dis-amenities of the inner city but also evokes rapid expansion of the city. Impact of land speculation and land banking on agricultural land conversion is graphically explained to justify that land speculation booms rapid urban expansion. Critical discussion of agricultural land conversion urges researchers, planners and policy makers to carefully consider all available attributes before working with the dynamic land market at the periphery of a megacity.
KW - Urban Agglomeration
KW - Urbanization
KW - Development Plan
KW - Economic Development
KW - Growth Boundary
KW - Land Ownership
KW - Land Speculation
KW - Land Banking
JO - International Journal of the Constructed Environment
JF - International Journal of the Constructed Environment


text:
Home Comics Graphic Novels Allie Brosh's long awaited Solutions and other Problems scheduled for September
Allie Brosh's long awaited Solutions and other Problems scheduled for September
The sequel to the bestseller Hyperbole and a Half has been in the works for years.
Heidi MacDonald
It looks like the long awaited sequel by Allie Brosh, Solutions and Other Problems, the follow up to her bestselling first book, is finally on the schedule for September through Simon & Shuster's Gallery Books imprint.
Whether this is a firm date or just another placeholder is unknown, but you can preorder the book at Amazon or Bookshop.org.
When it was released in 2013 Allie Brosh's Hyperbole and a Half was an instant and huge hit – collecting her stream of consciousness sort of webcomics, sort of essays about acute social anxiety and family issues. The series started as a blog and gained a huge following, and the book was another success. The awkward Paintbrush drawings resonated with late millennial/Gen Z readers dealing with their own anxieties and depression. Of it noted NON millennial Bill Gates wrote "I suspect that anyone who has experienced depression would get a lot out of reading this book. The mental illness she describes is profoundly isolating: 'When you have to spend every social interaction consciously manipulating your face into shapes that are only approximately the right ones, alienating people is inevitable.' It must be empowering for those who have struggled with depression to read this book, see themselves, and know they're far from alone."
While the book was a bestseller and Brosh made several public appearances, including Guest of Honor at Comic-Con in 2015, she kept a low profile and soon dropped out of sight. This tweet from 2014 was her last one, and an appearance at JoCo Cruise in 2016 was her last public appearance. Given her honest writing about her ongoing depression, her taking time off was understandable.
One of these days, I'm going to lose control, sign up for every social media platform on the internet, and show everyone everything.
— Allie Brosh (@AllieBrosh) November 13, 2014
The sequel has been announced many times since then, but always pushed back. But now we have a cover! And a page count (528 pages to Hyperbole and a Half's 369.) And a blurb!
For the first time in seven years, Allie Brosh—beloved author and artist of the extraordinary #1 New York Times bestseller Hyperbole and a Half—returns with a new collection of comedic, autobiographical, and illustrated essays.
Solutions and Other Problems includes humorous stories from Allie Brosh's childhood; the adventures of her very bad animals; merciless dissection of her own character flaws; incisive essays on grief, loneliness, and powerlessness; as well as reflections on the absurdity of modern life.
This full-color, beautifully illustrated edition features all-new material with more than 1,600 pieces of art. Solutions and Other Problems marks the return of a beloved American humorist who has "the observational skills of a scientist, the creativity of an artist, and the wit of a comedian" (Bill Gates).
So maybe this time it's for real!
While I'm excited for a sequel to one of the signature books of the decade, I'm also hopeful that Allie Brosh is in a place that finds her happy and productive. According to a blurb (seen below) the book includes 1678 pictures, so it may be even closer to a comic this time. Also, looking at the cover to the new book, Brosh's art seems to be a bit more deliberately polished.
[This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something we may earn a commission. Thanks.]
allie brosh
simons and shuster
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https://www.comicsbeat.com
Heidi MacDonald is an award-winning editor/journalist with 20 years. An editor at Disney and DC Comics, she edited such titles as The Lion King, Scooby Doo, Swamp Thing, and Y: The Last Man. She cohosts Publishers Weekly's graphic novel podcast More to Come.
New Allie Brosh in 2015: Solutions and Other Problems
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text:
Q: Some extensions to pst-solides3d I asked this set of questions (actually 2 of the 3 below) on the PSTricks mailing list a couple of days ago, but have since heard that Herbert's "to do" list is quite lengthy. So, I'm distributing them to a wider audience here, in hopes of getting some feedback...
Consider the following minimal example:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{multido}%
\usepackage{pst-solides3d}%
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\begin{pspicture}(-4,-4)(10,10)
  \psset{viewpoint=50 45 20 rtp2xyz,Decran=25,lightsrc=50 45 20,lightintensity=1}%

  % ================== SPHERE ==================
  \psSolid[%
    r=3.5,% sphere radius
    object=calottesphere,% sphere
    theta=90,phi=-90,% angles between which to draw the hollow spherical section
    ngrid=45 45,% number of grid lines across 2 dimensions r
    grid,% remove line edges
    fillcolor=black!15,%
    incolor=black!15,%
    hollow=true,% object has a hollow look
    action=draw**](0,0,0)% draw the object

  % ================== SECTION CURVE ==================
  % pi/2~1.5707963267948966192313216916398
  % pi/30~0.10471975511965977461542144610932
  % pi/15~0.20943951023931954923084289221863
  % pi/6~0.52359877559829887307710723054658
  % r=3.5*sin(45)~2.4748737341529
  % x=r*cos(t), y=r*sin(t), z={2.4748737341529,4.4748737341529}
  \defFunction[algebraic]%
    {sectioncut}(t)%
    {3.5*cos(0.5236)*cos(t)}{3.5*cos(0.5236)*sin(t)}{3.5*sin(0.5236)}%
  \multido{\rA=0.0+0.2094,\rB=0.1047+0.2094}{15}{%
    \psSolid[%
      object=courbe,% object is a curve
      r=0,% with of curve line is 0
      range=\rA\space \rB,%
      linecolor=black,%
      linewidth=0.5\pslinewidth,%
      resolution=360,%
      RotZ=-45,%
      function=sectioncut]%
  }%
\end{pspicture}
\end{document}

It produces this sphere and dashed line segment:

Since I am unfamiliar with fiddling around in the guts of packages, I am not sure whether my questions are at all reasonable, or perhaps just too far-fetched. However, asking is free, right? Riiight...

Question 1: Is it possible to change the default shadow colour from black to something else?
My motivation for this question stems from the fact that the shadow of the object from the light source (lightsrc) depends on the specified viewpoint parameter, and could potentially be solid black. Consequently, in an attempt to reduce the shadow intensity, lightsrc and viewpoint could be chosen closer together. However, the package documentation suggests against this by stating the following (on page 16):

Note: In order to get some shadow regions to appear in the graphic —
  which emphasises the 3D character — we would suggest choosing the
  light source and the view point differently.

So, in order to heed this note, it would be ideal to have/use an option like shadowcolor=black!50 (say). On that thought - and here I'm going for gold - how about an option like lightsrccolor=green!50!red (say) for those festive times when you're really screwing around with different-coloured light bulbs.

Question 2: Is it possible to create a dashed line style (linestyle=dashed) for a parametric curve in 3D (object=courbe)?
Although the section curve in the graphic looks like a dashed line, it actually uses the multido package to sequentially print 15 solid line segments of a parametric curve along intervals of pi (pi/15~0.2094 to more accurate). However, I think this artificially bloats the resulting EPS/PDF since each of the (15) line segments is considered its own \psSolid[object=courbe,...].

Question 3: pst-solides3d provides the option opacity=k where 0<=k<=1 which sets the fill opacity of a surface. Is it possible to add a similar option for stroke opacity?
This option stems from playing around with PSTricks' options for opacity: strokeopacity (for normal stroke operation) and opacity (for filled areas).

A: For objects which should test if visible or not it is not possible with linestyle=dashed because all line segments are in general shorter than the ones from the dash and they will be sorted before drawn. However, you can delete some segments from such a line:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pst-solides3d}
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\begin{pspicture}(-4,-4)(10,10)
\psset{viewpoint=50 45 20 rtp2xyz,Decran=25,lightsrc=viewpoint,lightintensity=1.25}
\psSolid[object=sphere,r=3.5,ngrid=30 30,hue =0 0.5,grid=false]
\defFunction[algebraic]{sectioncut}(t)
    {3.5*cos(0.5236)*cos(t)}
    {3.5*cos(0.5236)*sin(t)}
    {3.5*sin(0.5236)}
\psSolid[object=courbe,r=0,range=-0.75 2.5,resolution=90,
    rm=1 2 88{} for, % delete every second segment
    function=sectioncut]
\end{pspicture}
\end{document}

strokeopacity in general should work and the shadowcolor cannot be modified by now.