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I regret that my own weirdness made me a fascist about people who were not weird. - Lynda Barry
This blog is is changing platforms and moving to a new URL: http://www.tassava.com/blowing-and-drifting/ (note the hyphens instead of the underscores). I explain this latest - and lastest? - change o' site in the first post there.
I'll set up redirects so that, with luck, everyone's bookmarks and RSS feeds will point there, as they say, automagically. (Of course, I can't set up all the forwards that I might like, or people actually looking for the old URL will get passed along to the new one...)
Please let me know with a comment here if you have trouble. Thank you for reading B&D, sorry if you encounter any glitches, and see you at the new URL.
The New York Times reports that the wraiths behind the McCain campaign have launched a new effort to paint Obama as "out of touch" and - yes - "elitist." I liked the Times article on its face, and while I know it's a fool's errand to criticize journalists for not covering every last angle of a story, I have nevertheless been perplexed at the article's inability or unwillingness connect this McCain campaign rhetoric with either his own inadvertent recent demonstration of incredible out-of-touchness - "do a Google" and never having sent an email and all that - or with the towering elitism of his own adult life.
With respect to the former, one need only look at chronology to see that McCain's gaffes re. the internet and grocery-store prices have spurred this new attempt to slur Obama.
With respect to the former, more important, matter, it's a plain fact that McCain has lived his entire life in various elites, chosen and not. For instance, he has never been significantly employed by anybody but the federal government, whether as a pilot in the Navy or as a senator. And it's not like his campaign for president will suddenly make him into a member of the hoi polloi. Rather, he's aiming to enter one of the few groups of Americans more elite than the Senate: the roster of presidents. Why doesn't the paper of record point out the simple fact of the hypocrisy and plain old ridiculousness of McCain's stance here?
Right now, the girls - fresh from the the tub - are marching loudly in circles around their playroom table, one in a diaper, one in her underwear, yelling, "Ve va a marcha, ve ca a marcha!" I dunno what this means, but it has the advantage of being easily said by either one.
I must have the crap knack now. When I came home from work today, Vivi called for me to come upstairs and change a terrible diaper. Shannon said that the tyke had rejected all attempts to change it, telling her, "No, Daddy boop." So I changed the mess and all was well.
Until bathtime. Wearing a dirty diaper for 20 minutes while waiting for me to get home gave the little girl a horrifying case of diaper rash, so bad that she started crying when I dried her off after her bath. Gobs of Desitin were applied. I hope tomorrow breaks the poop streak.
After a few minutes of talking to herself tonight, Vivi started to call out urgently. I went upstairs to her, asking "What's wrong, honey?" She lifted her head up off the mattress and said, "Needa mwah" - "I need a kiss." I gave her a kiss and a hug and she went right to sleep. That there is a good moment, more than making up for the bathtime incident.
Though Northfield is still the small town with big city troubles - like a do-nothing city council - at least we're also the kind of place where demented local playwrights get written up on the op-ed page and where single-sort recycling is finally in place.
I'm in favor of both things. First of all,Brendon Etter needs all the attention he can get, especially when it's the laughing-with, not the laughing-at, kind.
Second, it's a hell of a lot easier to do your recycling when you pretty much just chuck everything in a giant blue-and-yellow bin. (Nice colors, by the way: Carleton approves.) But after spending - what?- half my lifetime sorting recycling into this, that, and the other, it also feels kinda subversive to lift the lid of the bin and throw in two cans, a jar, three bottles, and the Sunday paper. I'm sure I'll get over it.
I was prepared, given last night's nocturnal snot spot, to have a nice excretion-free evening tonight.
No luck. After doing all kinds of odd walks, which I ascribed to post-dinner silliness, Vivi hopped in the tub and promptly pooped two well-formed turds.
This is not okay.
Get both girls out of the tub. Dry them off. Put Vivi in a diaper. Drain the tub. Dispose of the fugitive feces. Clean the tub. Run a new bath. Get both girls back in the tub. Wash them both, fast. Out again, dry again, put them in the jammies.
If anything like this is on tap for Wednesday night, I'll skip it.
Ten Minutes to Bedtime
Shannon had to go off to an emergency meeting to deal with the Big Ugly Mess tonight, so I had to handle the bedtime routine by myself. I was girded for battle, expecting at least as much trouble as last night (i.e., Vivi up for an hour past her 7:15 bedtime, Julia up until nine). Perhaps because I psyched the universe out, none of that came to pass. After an easy bathtime and some hilarious playing (the capper: Vivi, clad only in her diaper, putting on a pair of dress-up fairy wings and parading around, flapping her arms madly), they went off to bed with no meltdowns or tears or even fussing. Vivi went to sleep after just a few minutes of desultory chatter, and Julia fell asleep right away. At around 8:15, I moved Julia from the guest room bed - where she still has to fall asleep (or at least lie down quietly) - to her own bed.
As soon as I got back downstairs, I started to hear Julia snuffling and snorting. After a few minutes, she called for me, very quietly. Up I went to her room. She said her nose was running, which I surmised from the sounds and from the fact that my allergies were acting up, too. I helped her blow her nose and went back downstairs. I'd barely sat down when she called for me again, more urgently. Back in her darkened room, I leaned down to ask, "What's wrong?" She said, "My finger is covered with snot!" and then proved it by sticking her index finger into my hand, clearly expecting that my hand had been transformed into wad of Kleenex. It was, however, not a blot for snot, so I had to just kiss her on the head, tell her to go to sleep, and then sprint to the bathroom for some actual Kleenex.
Ahh, parenting.
Blurry
As we - and by "we" I mean "I" - move into the high season for grant applications, work's getting busy enough that there's no spare daytime to generate blog posts. Thus I have to dip into my del.icio.us bookmarks for great stuff like photos by Andrey Titarenko. Here is "Untitled, (Crowd 2)" from 1993 from his City of Shadows collection:
This use of blurring is, I think, pretty creepy, but other shots - like his collection from Venice - use the blurring to achieve an effect that's less horror-movie and more lived-scene.
The other day, Julia and Genevieve and I went out for a walk and met some new down-the-block neighbors. They introduced themselves, we introduced ourselves, the girls told them how old they were, we chatted for a bit about life in our townhouse association, and then we went our separate ways.
When we got back home, I told Shannon that we'd met these new neighbors, but then realized that I had forgotten - despite my best efforts, including repeating their names when we met. Annoyed with myself, I asked Julia if she remembered their names. She gave me a "why are you asking such a silly question?" look and supplied two names. I jotted them down, not sure if she was right but leaning in that direction.
Today I received an email from these new neighbors and by golly, Julia was right. The kid's got a great memory.
Flipping Out
˙sʎɐp uʍop-ǝpısdn ɟo ǝuo ƃuıƃƃolq ɹoɟ ʇɔǝɟɹǝd ǝq ʇɥƃıɯ ʇɐɥʇ looʇ ƃuıddılɟ-ʇxǝʇ ǝlʇʇıl ʇɐǝu ɐ "'dılɟ" pǝɹǝʌoɔsıp ı 'pǝǝɟ ɹǝʇʇıʍʇ s,ǝʇlʎs ǝıɹɐɯ ɥʇnɹ oʇ sʞuɐɥʇ
Devilish Fun
Julia's fascination with the nativity story is only growing. The past couple days, she's spent at least a couple hours using a toy barn and a motley collection of LEGO, Playmobil, Little People, and other dolls to act out elaborate scenarios involving Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. She recites every line in that You Tube video. To say she's engrossed in all this is to understate the depth of her focus. In fact, the only things that break her concentration are the need to ask me questions ("Why did Mary have to have Jesus in the stable? Didn't they have hospitals in Bethlehem?") and the need to resist raids by her sister.
Vivi loves to barrel into the room where Julia is playing, scoop up one of the toy figures (usually, the blonde, pink-clothed Playmobil doll which is most often Jesus), and then race away, literally cackling with glee. She zooms down the hall in her little bottom-heavy run, darts into the girls' room, and happily shuts the door. If you go and open the door to look inside, you find her standing next to the bed, clutching the purloined Savior in her sweaty palm and giggling. She may be acting the part of a minor demon, but it's a very cute, towheaded imp who may or may not be clad only in a diaper.
Of course, Julia hates this. "I hate when she does this, Daddy!" The first few times this happened today, she tore off after Vivi and tried to wrest the stolen toy away. This, naturally, never worked. Finally, I counseled Julia to do the opposite of trying to get the doll back: to instead just keep playing with the other dolls, preferably without even commenting on Vivi's thievery. I assured her that Vivi was only taking the dolls because Julia kept reacting with so much annoyance and anger.
Julia doubted all this, but I told her that this is what my mom told me to do when faced, in sixth grade, with that hat-stealing Kyle Zarimba. Ignoring him worked like a charm, I told Julia, and I got my kromer back right away. She agreed to try it the next time Vivi launched one of her nativity raids.
Ten seconds later, Vivi swooped in on the ersatz Bethlehem, grabbed someone, and disappeared down the hallway. Julia didn't follow. A minute after that, Vivi opened the door to see if Julia was coming, even calling, "Oo-ia?" Julia yelled back, "I'm in here playing, Genevieve!" Vivi opened the door wider, walked down the hall to Julia, and handed back the stolen toy, then sat down to look at a magazine. Probably "Toddling Devilry Today."
The girls - or rather, "Big Sister Fairy" and little sister - reading a book the other day.
Where can you come across a mule wearing a hat and grazing at the fountain in the middle of downtown?
Why, Northfield, of course.
I'll note that it is impossible to be near a mule for more than two seconds before you end up near the mule's butt. It just works that way.
Born for the Great Depression
Via the genius at Happy to Be from Iowa, the "1930s Marital Scale" test. (I won't reveal my answer to item #100: "Writes on tablecloth with pencil.")
As a 1930s husband, I am
Very Superior
The real question is what kind of 1930s wife I am.
Skiing the Tour de France
Wednesday's "queen stage" of the Tour de France was a doozy, with Carlos Sastre emerging from the GC to take the lead in the race with juuust enough time over favorite Cadel Evans that Saturday's time trial will be a scorching good race to decide the whole thing. Wednesday's final climb up l'Alpe d'Huez was, as anticipated, the decisive section of the race: all the contenders were together at the bottom, but then Sastre uncorked a big surge that wound up putting nearly two minutes into the field.
He made that attack stick on cycling's biggest, craziest platform, a hill that is notorious for insane fans - up to a million of them (not a misprint) - who literally get in the racers' faces throughout the 15-some kilometers of climbing. This is the hill where even Lance Armstrong feared the fans.
Then again, not all of them are drunken Netherlanders mobbing the "Dutch corner" in their orange shirts. Some are Norwegians, rollerskiing up the goddamn thing.
Shot cribbed from a great photoessay on the fans on the Alpe by Ed Hood on Pez Cycling News.
Hard Day at the Office
When I came home from work on Wednesday, I found Shannon and the girls all sitting at the top of the steps, clearly tired out from a long day. Julia and Genevieve slumped down onto their backs, then pantomimed going to sleep right there. When Shannon headed downstairs to make dinner, Julia looked up at me and said wearily, "Daddy, it's hard to be a stay at home sister. It's very tiring."
Vivi was heartbroken this evening when Shannon took Julia to her dance class. She cried pretty much nonstop from 5:35, when we watched them leave in the car, until 5:55, when I finally got her, pink-faced from the weeping, into her bath. Once naked and slippery, she enjoyed playing without the physical and psychological encumbrances of Julia's four-year-oldness, but her playing was a bit hollow - nostalgic, even. As I dried her off afterwards, telling her that it wasn't long now until Mama came home, she looked at me and shrieked, "Mama! Happy! Julia! Happy!"
I guess I'm chopped liver, huh?
Anyhow, she's now happily occupying herself in the playroom, building one of her patented elaborate block towers on a picture-book foundation. She's really just biding her time until Mama comes home and she can be reunited.
UPDATE, 6:35: I just changed Vivi into an overnight diaper, a process she punctuated by moaning, "Mama? Happy?" and then breaking down into another crying fit.
Wall-y
Via the Fail Blog, internet home of schadenfreude, this video lesson: "Sometimes you pwn the wall, and sometimes the wall pwns you."
Queeny
Wednesday is the "queen stage" of the Tour de France: a 210.5km (131 mile) race through the Alps that will include three horrific beyond-category climbs - including, at the end, the ascent of the greatest climb of them all, the 21 switchbacks of l'Alpe d'Huez.
With stage 16 pushing American Christian Vande Velde and Russian Denis Menchov out beyond the magical (and meaningless) mark of one minute behind the leader, the group contesting the yellow jersey on the Alpe will probably number just four. Ominously, two of that group - Frank Schleck (in the yellow jersey) and Carlos Sastre (in fourth, 49 seconds behind) - race for the same team, CSC, whose relentless pace damaged Menchov and Vande Velde. The other two racers, Cadel Evans and Bernhard Kohl, are just 8 and 7 seconds behind Schleck, respectively, and will be eager to stay close to him or even to attack him. Can CSC continue to defend Schleck's yellow jersey so successfully and brutally? It will be fun to watch the 15,000 feet of climbing on the queen stage answer that question.
I just blew the evening working on my online class - grading papers, wrestling with the unfriendly online-course application, answering emails (like the one from the student who begged his way into the course, has earned 0 points through the first two-thirds of the semester, and now wants to know how he can still earn a C - answer: you can't), and generally doing stuff I'd rather not have spent that much time doing. Oh well. It (literally) pays the bills.
Jinxing, but...
I'm sure this will jinx it all, but I have to go on record to praise Apple for my recent MacBook repair.
First of all, the whole process was quick as hell. I called to report the damage last Friday, received the free overnight DHL box on Saturday, shipped the computer on Monday, and had it back on Wednesday.
Second, the repair was excellent. The contractor (Apple doesn't do its own repairs, I found out) replaced half of the laptop's case, not only fixing the tiny - but growing - crack next to the touchpad, but endowing the computer with a new keyboard that is poppier and easier to use, and - mysteriously - scaring away certain odd, irresolvable wi-fi problems with which I've been wrestling with since getting the machine in the winter.
Well done, Apple.
Vivi's Faces
No, not her excellent facial expressions (which I hope to photoblog soon - wait'll you see the "sly face"), but her first attempt at drawing some faces. Click through to Flickr for the usual mouse-over notes. Not bad, eh? I like the palette, myself: brown & black is where it's at.
Tour de Frantic
Today's the second and last rest day at the Tour de France, during which the racers have been doing some "easy" (for them) riding to keep the legs moving and to prepare for the two brutal days in the mountains on Tuesday and Wednesday. Pretty much everything will be at stake in those two ascent-happy days, from the best young rider prize and the green and polka-dot jerseys for points and mountain champions all the way up to the podium spots, including the yellow jersey.
The stakes are extraordinarily high now. Experts and fans expected to see some turnover at the top of the general classification during Sunday's stage 15, and, indeed, the stage put a new man in the yellow jersey. But the staggering number of attacks by GC contenders throughout the stage actually increased the number of racers within striking distance of first place. Australian Cadel Evans, who'd worn yellow before the day started, couldn't respond to a series of attacks on the stage's final, steep climb to Prato Nevoso, Italy. One after another, Evans' rivals rode away from him, with the Luxembourger Frank Schleck waiting until almost the last second before surging up the slope to take the second by which he trailed Evans in the general classification. Schleck thereby assumed a scant 8-second climb over Evans and a 7-second lead over another late attacker, the little-known Austrian climber Bernhard Kohl. Behind that trio, the Spaniard Carlos Sastre climbed back to within fifty seconds of the yellow jersey, in sixth position, just behind the Russian Denis Menchov in fourth (38s down) and American Christian Vande Velde (39s down). The Tour de France has never seen so many racers separated by so few seconds so late in the race.
My money is still on Vande Velde, who is showing good form and has just enough of a team to carry him up the big HC climbs to come. On the other hand, with Schleck in yellow and Sastre within a few seconds of the podium, the strong CSC team will have every reason to push the pace, especially on the climbs, and put time into Evans, Kohl, Menchov, and Vande Velde. Stages 16 and 17 will be hellaciously brutal racing. It'll be fantastic.
Not-ivity
Sunday was wonderfully fun, start to finish. We had oodles of outside time (am park, pm sprinkler), good indoor fun, some "eets" (treats, pronounced à la mode Genevieive), and - most importantly - an insane number of new words from Vivi. Among other new or nearly-new words were "thay-oo" for "thank you," "bay" for "play" (actually older, but in heavy use now), "ni-ni" and "bye-bye" for "night-night" and "bye-bye" (duh), "ooks-ee" for "excuse me" (hilarious when addressed to me after she passed a monumental fart in the bathtub), "sowwee" for "sorry" (also in heavy use, because swatting Julia was big sport this weekend), "bee bud" for "bread and butter" (her dinnertime staple, and roughly 98% of her daily calories).
In addition to that lexicon, she's started saying "Dee-zah" for "Jesus," which is critical for properly assuming her role in the ubiquitous "nativity scene" playing we're doing here these days. Julia is Mary and I'm Joseph, and Julia is Mary, who assumes the heavy responsibility of repeating virtually every line from that damn YouTube video and taking care of Jesus, right down to swaddling "him" in an old blanket. This activity probably ate up 50% of all the time we spent indoors today, and Vivi got so into it after dinner tonight that when I said, "Vivi, it's time to go take your bath!" she looked up at me, scowled, and patted her stomach before saying, "No Vivi. Deezah! Deezah!" Delusio ns of grandeur much?
After "Deezah" went to bed in "his" crib a half hour ago, Julia started a long mashup Nativity using the girls' Playmobil barn and its inhabitants and some stray LEGO figures. Fittingly - at least in the view of this atheist parent - she is using a Playmobil chicken as the angel who announces Jesus' birth.
Slow Walk on a Long Sidewalk
Today's long, quiet morning was punctuated with a long, slow walk with the girls. Actually, the walk was less a walk than the serial alteration of standstills and brief strolls. It took Genevieve and me on foot, and Julia on her scooter nearly ninety minutes to walk 8/10ths of a mile around two blocks. That's slow, man. Very slow. Frustratingly slow, at the time. Any slower, and time would have run backwards, making me younger when we got back home than I had been when I left.
I tried to keep a good perspective on this slow pace. On the one hand, everyone knows a four-year-old needs a lot of time to inspect interesting rocks, collect beautiful leaves, ask questions about certain houses, et cetera. And a two-year-old needs a lot of time to watch her sister inspect, collect, ask, et cetera. On the other hand, do I have to explain again why we can't just stroll onto someone's lawn and pick their day lillies? I guess I do.
My poor attitude notwithstanding, the girls still had fun. We met some new neighbors, to whom Julia spoke very politely and nicely (telling them how old she and her sister were); Vivi exclaimed, "Uh-oh! Boo-boos!" when a rusted-out junker car rumbled past us; both girls waved at almost every other car that went by; Julia threw her worshipful stare at the "big girl" (an eight-year-old) who rode her scooter around us; and, yes, they collected a trove of "berries," leaves, sticks, and rocks - all, today, sharing a maroon-ish hue.
Tour de Can't Wait
Yeah, yeah, the Tour de France has been plagued with doping for the zillionth straight year, but I'm still very excited about the rest of the race, which ends next Sunday with the traditional stage to Paris. First, though, the race itself has to be decided. The final standings could be determined as late as next Saturday, with an individual time trial, but that race will probably instead be more-or-less settled over the next three stages, all brutal mountain stages in the high Alps.
Between them, stages 15 on Sunday, 16 on Tuesday (following a rest day), and 17 on Wednesday include six hors-categorie climbs, the slopes that are so long and steep as to be "beyond category." These six climbs will eliminate some of the five racers who are now separated by less than a minute at the top of the general classification, and the battles should be brutal. The current yellow jersey, Australian Cadel Evans, is leading a painfully weak Silence-Lotto team that provided almost no support in the Pyrenees. A strong climber, Evans will thus be subjected to attack after attack by other contenders, including especially the mountain goat Frank Schleck, whose CSC team is the strongest in the race and who is only 1 second back of Evans. Lurking in third, 39s behind Evans, is American Christian Vande Velde, who leads a new team, Garmin-Chipotle (GPS and burritos!) that might - especially with the Tour win on the line - be capable of some good attacking as well.
In short, the next three stages will see a classic sporting contest between the immovable object, Evans, and the irresistible force of CSC - with Garmin-Chipotle and a couple other teams injecting some chaos as well. I can't wait to see how Sunday's stage plays out. It's a 185km run that starts in Embrun, in southeastern France, then climbs almost immediately over the 9,000-foot Col Agnel pass (the first in the series of HC climbs) on the Italian border. If CSC attacks Evans on the Agnel, they could put him into enough difficulty - either by destroying his team or by stressing him personally - that he won't be able to adequately respond on the second, much later climb of the day, which comes after a long run across the Piedmont in northwestern Italy.
By the time the racers reach that second climb, the ascent to the Italian ski resort of Prato Nevoso, the leaders should be back together, but Evans might be isolated and thus unable to keep up with Schleck - or with Vande Velde or another opportunist. Then again, perhaps the long respite between the Agnel and Prato Nevoso will allow Evans' team to regroup and help him fend off the later attacks - or even to counteratttack and extend his lead. And maybe Evans will himself be strong enough to handle CSC. It should be great sport, no matter what happens.
Peak of Summer
The cycles of summertime foliage have turned to sunflowers, black-eyed susans, and other gorgeous flowers. A few shots from some hidden corners of campus:
A wonderful tiny swatch of prairie on the east side of Olin Hall:
A lush flowerbed near a bench overlooking the Lyman Lakes and Mai Fête Island:
The plaque on the stone in the lower left corner is inscribed with an interesting summery poem...
Vivi Words
VIvi's verbal adventurousness is growing every day now. A few favorites:
"nome" for "comb," but used like so: "Vivi nome bee" - "Give me the comb, please."
"botdipple" for "popsicle," like the homemade applesauces ones or the pastel-colored rubber duckie which she pretended to lick after her bath
"Oo, Vivi," echoing "Oh, Genevieve," a frequent parental exclamation (for good and bad reasons)
"Nana... doga... ereil" for the banana, yogurt, and cereal in her breakfast bowl
"Ee-sus" for Jesus, the lovable little scamp in this YouTube video, which will haunt me forever
Bad Old Days
Cleaning out some old notes on my computer, I came across a bill incurred the night before we moved out of our Minneapolis house, two and a half years ago.
That night, the new owners suddenly decided that, actually, they wouldn't close on the house unless we did fix that "leaky" pipe under the bathroom sink. (This, after they had earlier said that - since both our and their inspector thought it was no biggie, it was something they'd handle later.) Fact was, the pipe was just old, not corroded.
But after they dropped this bomb around dinnertime, our realtor called her favorite plumber, and he came down at 7 pm to check the pipe and "fix" it. This entailed not only tearing our vanity away from the wall, but creating a massive mess of water, wet plaster, inside-the-wall filth, and general dirt. He got it all cleaned up, though, and then handed me the bill, which I passed on to my realtor and she passed on to the buyers' realtor. Here's a verbatim chunk of that invoice:
emergency service: $200.00
"check for leak under bathroom sink (no leak found on drain pipe)
replace 1/2" shut-off valve: $259.00
repair drip from Moen single handle faucet (install new cartridge): $129.00
Not bad for 30 minutes of work.
Vivi and Me
This evening, I spent some rare time one-on-one with Vivi while Julia went to her new dance class. We had some good fun dancing to the new Justin Roberts CD - she can specify at least three different songs - and being silly, but bathtime was an ordeal. First, she refused to get undressed, calling "Booah! Booah!" ("Julia! Julia!") and then, once I finally got her in the water, patting the spot in the tub where Julia usually sits and continuing to call for her, even more mournfully. Scrub, scrub, rinse, rinse and we were done, but by this time she was bright pink - the color of the Twitter feed badge at left - from all the weeping. Helping her into her jammies and asking her to help set up her room calmed things down again, and she ended up going to bed relatively quietly, if not quickly. The poor girl missed her sister a lot.
Julia: Self-Portrait as Fairy
Every few days or so, Julia adds another item to her artistic repertoire. This drawing, of herself as a fairy, is a pretty good summary of the state of the art. Click through to the Flickr page for notes on the various elements of the picture.
Given the candidacy of my man Barack Obama - a presidential candidate so cool he appears at Wilco concerts (what, was Radiohead busy?) for crissakes - I have been feeling oddly optimistic about American politics lately. Then, sleepily making the girls' breakfasts this morning, I heard recaps of the weekend's news: nine American troops killed in Afghanistan in a well-planned Taliban attack; the sudden but catastrophic collapses of Indy Mac, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac;fallout from the new FISA bill...
So here are two good - that is, scary as hell - articles to fan the flames.
First, the Harper's blogger Scott Horton interviews the journo Jane Mayer about her new book, The Dark Side, an elaboration of her terrifying New Yorker articles that describe how Cheney's cabal subverted the Constitution in fashioning a quasi-legal apparatus that permitted the torture and apparently even the murder of anyone who could be labeled a "terrorist." I'd love to read the book, but frankly it sounds too scary and depressing to digest: basing interrogation techniques on 1960s experiments involving the torture of dogs, the cabal's fear of war-crimes prosecutions, the contravention of John Walker Lindh's civil rights, the way that - as summarized by one historian she quotes - "Fear and anxiety were exploited by zealots and fools." Terrifying.
Second, in light of the recent FISA bill, it's worth rereading the security scholar James Bamford's analysis in the Atlantic of what the Bush administration's surveillance regime might mean to you and me. Again, terrifying: "Today, the NSA has access to more information than ever before. People express their most intimate thoughts in e-mails, send their tax returns over the Internet, satisfy their curiosity and desires with Google searches, let their hair down in chat rooms, discuss every event over cell phones, make appointments with their BlackBerrys, and do business by computer in WiFi hot spots... NSA personnel, the customs inspectors of the information superhighway, have the ultimate goal of intercepting and reviewing every syllable and murmur zapping into, out of, or through the United States. They are close to achieving it... As history has shown, the availability of such vast amounts of information is a temptation for an intelligence agency. The criteria for compiling watch lists and collecting information may be very strict at the beginning of such a program, but the reality—in a sort of bureaucratic law of expansion—is that it will draw in more and more people whose only offense was knowing the wrong person or protesting the wrong war."
Blowing in the Wind
The weekend's picture-perfect weather made for a lot of high-quality outdoor time, which was improved by having my dad here for the weekend. In that way you can during spring and summer in the Midwest (when you know you're cashing chips earned during all those below-freezing January days), we soaked it all up with an almost embarrassing array of outsideness.
Saturday's high point was a half hour of miraculously ideal kite-flying weather. I've never flown a kite before this summer, when Julia got one for her birthday. So far we've had some good fun getting the kite up and running to keep it up, but Saturday, the westerly wind was ideal: it pulled the kite right up into the air and kept it there as long we could have wanted. Amazing.
After we tired of that, the girls shifted over to the slide, where Julia finally got the courage to try jumping off the the top, in imitation of her friend from next door. This is skill that will come in handy...
Vivi, being unable to leap like the big girls, watched for a while and then chilled out.
Sunday, we tried to make a little trip to Cannon Falls. We had to call it off on discovering that the town's only coffeeshop was out of business, and everything else in town was closed, too. Sunday morning and all.
So we headed back toward home, stopping at a huge playground in the county park on Lake Byllseby, just outside Cannon Falls. We've seen a fair number of playgrounds in our day, and this was a good one. The girls ran themselves ragged, and even Shannon tried the climbing wall. She's many, many feet inches millimeters off the ground.
All in all, a well-spent weekend.
Nature Out of Control
Nature is just going nuts over here lately. First, we had Friday night's massive thunderstorm-cum-blackout generator, which we've already discussed here. Driving back from downtown today, we passed a little house that had its frontyard elm fall squarely on the crown of its roof. The place is almost squashed. Terrible.
Second, during my run in the Arb today I encountered not just one but two separate bird wings. They came from different birds (judging by the feathers) and appeared far apart on the trail, but they were both whole. Then at home, as we were playing outside this afternoon, I found a third one, right about where Vivi was getting set to kick a soccer ball. Bad night for birdies?
Then, third, and still on the bird tip, a juvenile robin was stuck in our garage all day. We left the garage door open in the hope that it would fly out, but it hadn't yet mastered the ability of flying down: anytime it was spooked, it just flew up into the ceiling, bounced along until it hit a wall, then turned and bumped its away to some perch. Its mother even visited periodically throughout the day, delivering worms.
Finally, I remembered that Nonna brought a big butterfly net the last time they visited. I used a broom to get the bird moving (and peeping madly), but after just a few seconds of terrified flight it hit a wall and slid down, cartoon-style, to the floor, breast heaving. I scooped it up in the net and delivered it to the lawn outside. A second later, its mother flew past and it zoomed up into the air. Fly, you stupid little bird, fly!
Après Ca, le Deluge?
Or something. This is the last thing I saw out the window before the lights went out last night around 9:30 and it got very, very quiet outside.
Then the rain started. Standing at another window to watch the lightning strobes, I could see a thick stream of water pouring down off the upper roof onto the roof over the front door. It was hitting that lower roof so hard I could feel a thrum in my feet.
I thought for sure that the power would come back on within a few minutes. Two hours later, after reading a novel by the light of my headlamp, I went to bed. Seven hours after that, I woke up to hear the girls stirring at their usual seven am time. We still had no power. It finally flicked on around 8:30, giving us a cool eleven hours without power.
Or rather, a hot eleven hours. The girls woke up countless times over night, disturbed by the heat and the lack of white-noise machine whirring. I slept through all that, unfortunately, but Shannon was up all night with them.
Dribs and Drabs
A long week and some late nights have left me unable to post anything substantial this evening. Instead, a mini link dump:
1. "Fragments from A-Rod! The Musical" at the New Yorker. I LOVE doggerel, so I love this a lot. A sample:
With MADONNA at his side, A-ROD's batting average surges, though the Yankees' fortunes do not improve. The sexual passion of the affair intensifies.
MADONNA:
Remember when I dressed up
As Marilyn Monroe?
If you play your cards right
You can be DiMaggio
You know that heady feeling
When you hit a shot into the gap?
You can tell me all about it
When I shift and settle on your lap
A-ROD:
You're Madonna
You enjoy
Double entendre
2. Hilarious public art at the Wooster Collective:
3. Today's most appropriate someecard:
Best Cycling Post Ever
Cycling is a sport that's heavily overrepresented in the blogosphere, but thankfully the average cycling blog is well written (if not outright hilarious) and serves, amidst the eye-glazing gear reviews, to analyze important phenomena like riders' victory salutes like this one by some American wheelman.
Jotting Things Down
Day 1 of the new cell phones has been a smash hit - at least for me. The phones are pretty neat, in and of themselves, with better-than-adequate hardware and software and a pretty good user interface.
The biggest deal, though, was having a gadgety sort of friend put me on to Jott, a web application that "converts your voice into emails, text messages, reminders, lists and appointments." No, really: you call it up on your celly and talk to the Jott bot and a few minutes later get an email (or txt or a number of other media) with a transcription of what you just said. It works very well - a few missed words now and then, but largely spot on.
Not only is Jott as free as air, but it hooks into a bunch of other web apps, like Twitter (I used Jott to tweet two times this afternoonwith good success; less so this evening), Tumblr, and Google Calendar. Google Calendar! I can call Jott and rattle off a new appointment; five minutes later, it's automagically there on my GCal.
Not Just the Country around Budapest
If it's Tour de France time, it's time for blog posts on how amazingly much the racers eat per day: about 5,900 for an average stage, which entails anywhere from four to six hours of riding, and up to about 9,000 for one of the tough mountain stages, like this year's "queen stage," number 17, a 210.5km stretch from Embrun to l'Alpe d'Huez.
A "normal" male of my size and age - and I'm a bit bigger and a bit older than the average Tour racer - should eat about 2,200 to 2,500 calories a day, so the average tour rider - who's a bit shorter, thinner, and younger than me - is eating anywhere from 100% to 350% more calories.
And this isn't easy to do, as the guys at Science of Sport show. Since a rider is "occupied for up to 16 hours a day with riding, sleeping, and other activities, he has only about 7-8 h[ours] to ingest 5500 calories, which works out to about 700+ calories an hour during the time he is available to eat and drink." That's a lot of intense chowing. (For comparison, a Big Mac packs about 540 calories - but not many elite athletes are going to eat Big Macs to catch up on their calories.)
Though I cannot (or need to) eat at quite that rate, anyone who's ever had a meal with me - or tried to feed me - might know that I can on occasion eat quite a bit of food, especially relative to my relentlessly average height and weight. And yet I'm almost always hungry: my stomach starts growling within an hour of finishing any given meal, even if I've taken pains to eat thirds of the heaviest fare. Part of this is that I must have a pretty high natural metabolic rate; another part must be that my metabolism is in high gear thanks to relatively regular workouts. I've long suspected that the "normal" number of calories for a guy like me - 2,500 - isn't sufficient.
Following a link from another story about the Tour de France, I recently came some decent evidence to bear this out: a webpage that helps determine a person's "energy expenditure," which is basically how many calories (okay, kilocalories - I know at least one dietitian who might be reading this) are needed to sustain a certain level of daily activity. To help calculate that energy expenditure, the site offers an "easy" method (weight multiplied by a certain factor - such as 20 for "active people" working out 5-7 times a week) and an "accurate" method (calculating and then adding together the basal metabolic rate, the energy expended during physical activity, and the thermic effect of using energy for digestion).
Running each method, I came out with a total caloric need that's a good 500 kcal above the "norm" for an adult male and thus way above the guidelines I've been using (serving sizes as listed on the side of food containers, for instance). Oops. That 20% margin of error probably explains why I am, even as I finish this post, seriously considering a second dinner.
Bathroom Talk
While she brushed her teeth this morning, Julia dissertated on various topics. She was supposedly talking to me, but I'll transcribe part of it here as the monologue which it was in spirit. (Like her mother, much of Julia's talking is out-loud thinking to herself that happens to occur in the company of another person.)
"Daddy, did you know that I am Genevieve's sister? She is my first sister and I am her last sister. Did you know what she was my first sister the moment she came out of Mama's tummy? Well, she was. She was even my sister before she came out of Mama's tummy, but I couldn't see her very well. The doctors who helped Mama... Genevieve and I have very good doctors, so we will stay alive for a very long time. A very long time. You have a good doctor, too, so you will stay alive a very long time too. You are very healthy, Daddy. You are very healthy except that you snore."
With that, she stuck her toothbrush back in its cup and walked out of the bathroom.
Northfield Weather: Temperate?
I'm just back from a run in the Arb, which is green and glowing with humidity. The air temp is about 80 degrees F, but the 80% relative humidity pushes the heat index up to about 85 degrees F. This is just about the hottest day of 2008, so I wondered whether we've had a 100-degree swing of temperatures yet this year.
Looking back at my training log, I see that it was rather cool on New Years Day. I skied just after noon, when the wind chills were down around -20 degrees F. Tack that onto today's current temperature and we get a nice 100-degree swing - at least perceptually: heat index and wind chill are both imaginary "feels-like" measures. Which is useful when ignoring them and heading outside.
I'm siting in the playroom, Sibelius playing through iTunes (because Julia wondered what "violin music" sounded like), and supervising some art-table action. Vivi is wearing her Disney Princess nightgown and obsessively drawing concentric circles on a sheet of paper. Across from her, Julia is drawing very (imaginatively) detailed skeletons with a red pen. All the skulls include two "hairbones."
Egyptian Cotton
Being a guy, I've mostly avoided learning much about thread counts and percale and all those other details of white goods. But with the recent bed-acquisition activity, I've seen an annoyingly large number of references to "Egyptian cotton," and to its implicit high quality. (Our new mattress pad incorporates this term in the packaging three times.) So what is "Egyptian cotton"? Why it is so esteemed - at least by marketers? Does Egypt really produces that much cotton?
With a little help from Google and Wikipedia, it turns out that "Egyptian cotton" is actually the name of a kind of cotton with especially long fibers, which makes it easy to weave into light, sturdy, and soft fabrics. "Egyptian cotton" really is grown in Egypt, using a type of plant imported from the United States in the 19th century. During the American Civil War, Egypt became a major producer of cotton for British mills, though it has long since lost its primacy and now ranks as a minor producer in terms of the number of bales grown annually.
For what it's worth, the top cotton producers, in terms of the number of bales produced, are China (35.5 million bales in 2008-09), India (26.5), the United States (14.5), Pakistan (9.4), Brazil (6.4), Uzbekistan (5.1), the "African franc zone" in west and central Africa (3.4), Turkey (2.6), Australia (1.5), and the EU and Turkmenistan (1.3 each). Syria (1.0) and Egypt (0.6) run just behind. It's curious that so many of the big cotton producers are also hotbeds of Islamic extremism.
Fifth of July
Little bit of everything today. Both girls had extremely good nights of sleep (not so much long as high-quality), so they were in excellent moods almost all day.
The qualifier is used only because, at bedtime, Vivi had one of her usual fuss-and-delay episodes, which I inadvertently compounded by misinterpreting "baby bye" as a backwards way of saying "goodnight" when in fact it meant, "Please sing 'Rockabye Baby' again." Once I got that straightened out, she was happy and went right to sleep. What's a day as a parent without realizing that you're actually rather bad at figuring out your kids?
Over the thirteen hours till then, things went very well indeed. Julia had so much energy stored up that she basically talked nonstop from about 7:30 am until one. I was dazed by the sheer intensity of her commentary during a shopping trip to Target, which covered everything from what we were buying and what's up with this Hannah Montana person to detailed exchanges with Vivi about her need to walk this way and questions about fellow shoppers. Of a man in sweats and a tee, she commented, "Daddy, I think that man wore his pajamas to Target!" The college-aged guy turned and laughed and said, "Yes, I did, little girl! I was too lazy to get dressed this morning!" This quieted Julia down for a good thirty seconds - her longest stretch of silence all morning.
The girls took two good, long naps after lunch. I took advantage, going for a run in the summer's first really brutally hot weather and then turning Shannon and me into T-Mobile customers. We haven't had cell phones in years, and now I know why: the only thing more byzantine than the ridiculous plans are the deals on the phones. Supposedly, the phones we "bought" are worth $520, yet T-Mobile is giving us $75 back on each. This makes no sense.
After the naps and finishing off some great cheesecake left over from yesterday's party, the girls went with me to the bike shop to retrieve my bike tire, which turned out to have had a little sliver of glass in it. I'd missed this in changing the tube four times, and the bike shop guys had missed it the first time they "fixed" the tire a couple weeks ago. But they didn't change me for this second, hopefully-permanent fix. While I talked to the mechanics, Julia entertained herself by sitting on a "big kids bike" and asking me a million times about when she could get a bike like that one. Nonna and Boppa, save us!
Back at home, the girls helped me start to assemble our new bed, a task which quickly bored them - at which point they went off to the playroom to have a "dance party" which featured much shrieking and laughing that carried right through dinner all the way to bathtime.
After the girls went to bed, I finished putting together the new bed. The directions were less than helpful, I'll say that much. Before throwing out the insanely large quantity of packaging (including a triple-layer box around the bedframe), I had to take a picture of the box which the delivery guy handed to me, pointing to the word and saying portentously, "Knobs."
Scorched
We've had some warm days so far this summer, but today I think summer has well and truly hit. I'm just back from a run, easily my most unpleasant outing of the last few months due to blazing sun and a scirocco-quality wind from the south. Oof, and no thanks. Give me my 50-degree spring evenings, please.
Boy, I have a ton of stuff for which to be thankful right now, as I sit here with a stomach full of great food and tired legs from a long, busy day. Usually it's my better half who delivers the "Gratitude Friday" posts, but I'll take a shot today. A partial list, in more-or-less chronological order:
1. Two wonderful daughters who mostly compensated for an insanely late night (up til 9:30 pm on Thursday!) by sleeping in this morning and then being in great moods all day.
2. The Declaration of Independence, as written by Thomas Jefferson and as read by the NPR anchors and reporters this morning. Maybe it was the early morning, but I got chills when I heard, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Powerful stuff, and as hard to live up to in 1776 as in 2008.
3. Our stimulus check, which was converted to a new bed and mattress. Economy, you're on your own now.
4. The annual "Fourth of July Criterium" bike races here in Northfield. Julia and I stumbled on them in 2006, made a point to go last year, and this year attended them because now it's a tradition. Julia even got to skip her nap to go! Good lord, can these racers fly. And my god, the size of their thighs...
5. Five of my oldest friends, who - along with their kids - came from points far and wide to have a Fourth of July party at our place and brought a wide assortment of delectables, from pork sandwiches and hot dogs to potato salad and a killer s'mores cheesecake. That's not a typo, and yes, it was as good as it sounds.
6. My wife, who not only did all the virtual legwork of getting our friends together today, but then made a couple dishes, organized the entire event, and played hostess for the better part of four hours. Then she cleaned up virtually everything - and looked good doing it. Amazing.
When I attended that Edward Tufte seminar a couple weeks ago, it was the first time that I'd been around many working professionals of my own age (plus or minus) in a very long time. I was reassured to find that, sure enough, most guys were still wearing polos and chinos.
Women's fashions were similarly familiar, though there were a lot more floral prints than I remembered. What really struck me were the number of ridiculously large handbags carried by those women. These things were gaudy (those floral prints again, or very bright solid colors, or blinged-out black) and HUGE. At one break, I was briefly in line behind a woman of average height who was carrying a bag that was longer than her torso: the zipper was level with her ear, and the bottom seam was below her hip. What's that, about three feet? What does a person put in a bag that big? Another person?
Clearly I know nothing about women's fashions. But then today the New York Times ran an excellent audio slideshow on the prevalence of giant, crazy bags. If the Paper of Record thinks this phenomenon is worth noting, surely this blog can, too!
Bottoning Up
Turns out my extremely well-traveled friend Alison (she's been to Kazakhstan!) is a fan of Alain de Botton, a writer whose books I've recently read and - somewhat to my surprise, given his rather flowery and self-conscious style - thoroughly enjoyed. I promised to send her a few lines (his or others') I'd liked in the two books I'd read, but then I thought to post them instead, given that they might pique interest in his books. Viz.,
Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness (Pantheon, 2006)
p. 98: Stendhal: "Beauty is the promise of happiness."
p. 100: Stendhal: "There are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness."
p. 100: "Architecture can arrest transient and timid inclinations, amplify and solidify them, and thereby grant us more permanent access to a range of emotional textures which we might otherwise have experienced only accidentally and occasionally."
p. 123: "As we write so we build: to keep a record of what matters to us."
p. 168: "As the ways in which we are unbalanced alters, so our attention will continue to be drawn to new parts of the spectrum of taste, to new styles which we will declare beautiful on the basis that they embody in a concentrated form what now lies in shadow within us."
p. 247: "Our designs go wrong because our feelings of contentment are woven from fine and unexpected filaments."
p. 249: "The places we call beautiful are, by contrast, the work of those rare architects with the humility to interrogate themselves adequately about their desires and the tenacity to translate their fleeting apprehensions of joy into logical plans - a combination that enables them to create environments that satisfy needs we never consciously knew we even had."
Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel (Pantheon, 2002)
p. 54: "Journeys are the midwives of thought. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is before our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, and new thoughts, new places."
p. 69: "If I call the Schipol sign exotic, it is because it succeeds in suggesting, vaguely but intensely, that they country that made it and that lies beyond the uitgang [exit] may in critical ways prove more congenial than my own to my temperament and concerns. The sign is a promise of happiness."
p. 95: Flaubert on Egypt: "Stupidity is an immovable object you can't ry to attck it without being broken by it... In Alexandria, a certain Thompson, of Sunderland, has inscribed his name in letters six feet high on Pompey's Pillar. You can read it from a quarter of a mile away. You can't see the pillar without seeing Thompson's name and consequently thinking of Thompson... All imbeciles are more or less Thompsons from Sunderland."
p. 116: "Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions."
p. 117: "Unfortunately for the traveller, most objects don't come affixed with the question that will generate the excitement they deserve."
p. 147: "Unhappiness can stem from having only one perspective to play with."
p. 218: John Ruskin on sketching: "The really precious things are thought and sight, not pace. It does the bullet no good to go fast; and a man, if he be truly a man, no harm to go slow; for this glory is not at all in going, but in being."
p. 222: "Drawing brutally shows up our previous blindness to the appearance of things."
Nine Reasons Why Luke S. Should Get a Mac for College
Responding to a comment last week, I hereby offer some advice to Luke S., a Massachusettsean who is getting set to go off to a liberal-arts college in the fall. (Luke is also a cross-country skier, and no doubt much faster than I have ever been or will ever be, but I am much more adept at changing diapers.) Luke wanted advice as to why he oughta get a Mac instead of an ostensibly cheaper PC.
My reasons:
1. Macs are much, much prettier than any PC.
2. Macs work better with all the other Apple stuff that you either have or will soon have, like an iPod, as well as with all the other electronic geegaws which everyone has nowadays - cell phones, digital cameras, etc.
3. Once you consider the various costs with which PC makers later stick you, Macs actually don't cost more than comparable Windows machines, despite the myths.
4. You don't want to try to wrestle with Vista the night before your final paper is due. That'd be worse than trying to outsprint Petter Northug at the end of a double pursuit: he might trip, but chances are better he'll put ten seconds in you in a hundred meters.
5. OS X is much easier to use and more stable, at the application level and at the system level, than either XP or Vista. (see #4)
6. Almost everyone else at college will have Macs and while peer pressure or "being cool" is a poor reason to join the fun, the ease of sharing files and applications and experiences when on a Mac is itself a good reason to have a Mac. (I mean, iMovie or Final Cut Pro versus something from Microsoft?)
7. When you want to upgrade, you'll get a lot more for a used Mac than a used PC. (I've seen Carleton students selling 4-year-old PowerBooks for $500, while a 2-year-old Dell laptop goes for $150 or less.)
8. From my experience, college IT help desks - student and staff - are much more adept at handling Mac problems than PC problems.
9. Though some ne'er-do-wells are working up viruses for Macs, right now even the most secure PC is much more susceptible to viruses and other such troubles than even unprotected Macs.
As I finished assembling Vivi's breakfast this morning, I pulled out the box of Cheerios. "Do you want these?" She shook her head in her usual violent way and said, "Nah-ah! Odder!" I was surprised at this new word. "You want the other cereal?" She nodded, "Uh-huh!" A new and very useful word, before 6:30 am!
Thrashday
I knew the day had gone entirely off the rails when, at three, I checked my to-do list and discovered that not only had I not finished the task I meant to start at 8:30 this morning, but I had not even finished my three tasks for Monday. Uff da.
Fortunately, I did get a lot of stuff done on both days. It just happens that almost all that work was the "surprise, surprise!" sort.
On getting home, I found the girls outside playing in the pool and sprinkler, thoroughly tired from a bad night and a busy day. Events moved rapidly toward dinner, baths, and early bedtimes, which seem, surprisingly, to have taken.
Before heading off to the sack, though, Julia came up to me with one of her classic Milne storybooks and said, "Can we pretend this is the Biple [sic]? And Christopher Robin is Jesus?" It was all I could do to avoid shouting, "Hallelujah! Finally, some Scripture I can get behind." As it turns out, she wanted me to riff on interesting "decorations" in the book with stories about Jesus. It was oddly easy to adapt this or that parable to this or that drawing by Ernest Shepard.
Forecast: Significant blowing and drifting, with the possibility of heavy accumulation in rural areas.


we shall look upon in retrospect as a life.
we say we know what it means to be lonely.
like a refrain from the nineteen thirties.
are interrupted by thunder and the radio crackles.
and September has outstayed its welcome.
Today our clothes will be spoiled by rain.
that all summer made us comfortable.
Though all of that remains to be seen.
Thank you for this poem – there is a langourous quality to it which captures the autumnal mood. Just lovely.
Thanks for stopping by and for reading poetry.
I enjoy the quiet vulnerability in this poem. I will definitely be looking for more of Conor O'Callaghan's work!
We're glad you liked it! Have you read his latest, The Sun King? It was just shortlisted for the 2014 Irish Times Poetry Now Award, and we're quite happy for him.


text:
Q: When comparing floats, what do you call the threshold of difference? I'm comparing floats in Java right now and the simplest formula is:
Math.abs(a - b) < THRESHOLD

When naming your variable for the threshold of difference, should you name it delta or epsilon? Specifically, which of the two is the correct term for the smallest value that a floating-point number can represent?
Is the term programming language specific, or is it universal across languages?

A: To directly answer your question, you want to use the term epsilon.  More accurately, it's machine epsilon but common usage drops "machine" and just uses epsilon.
Looking in my local copy of float.h I see:
#define DBL_EPSILON     2.2204460492503131e-016 /* smallest such that 1.0+DBL_EPSILON != 1.0 */
#define FLT_EPSILON     1.192092896e-07F        /* smallest such that 1.0+FLT_EPSILON != 1.0 */
#define LDBL_EPSILON    DBL_EPSILON             /* smallest such that 1.0+LDBL_EPSILON != 1.0 */

And the associated comments makes it clear that epsilon is the term you're referring to.
But we can also rely upon some other, external references to verify that epsilon is the correct term.  See here, here, here, and finally this combination of SO query tags.  I wasn't able to find a direct reference to the IEEE 754 standard to quote.

You didn't ask, but I found this reference that is very relevant to the example you provided to clarify your question.

Have a look at this blog article by Bruce Dawson of Valve on comparing floating point values for some insight as to why you don't want to use the comparison that you suggested.
There's quite a bit of information packed into that article, but this is the most relevant snipppet from there:

If comparing floats for equality is a bad idea then how about checking whether their difference is within some error bounds or epsilon value, like this:
bool isEqual = fabs(f1 – f2) <= epsilon;

With this calculation we can express the concept of two floats being close enough that we want to consider them to be equal. But what value should we use for epsilon?
  Given our experimentation above we might be tempted to use the error in our sum, which was about 1.19e-7f. In fact, there's even a define in float.h with that exact value, and it's called FLT_EPSILON.
  Clearly that's it. The header file gods have spoken and FLT_EPSILON is the one true epsilon!
  Except that that is rubbish. For numbers between 1.0 and 2.0 FLT_EPSILON represents the difference between adjacent floats. For numbers smaller than 1.0 an epsilon of FLT_EPSILON quickly becomes too large, and with small enough numbers FLT_EPSILON may be bigger than the numbers you are comparing!

Dawson goes over quite a few other considerations about the intricacies involved when comparing floats and dealing with very small values like this, so I would encourage your reading the rest of his post.

A: This is an error function; absolute error is usually called ε (epsilon) or Δx for some quantity x:

ε = |expected − actual|
Δx = |x0 − x |

Relative error is sometimes called η (eta):

η = |1 − actual/expected|

For programming purposes, absoluteError and relativeError (or some abbreviations thereof) are more descriptive. If you want to assert that the error is less than a certain value, that value would simply be called a threshold or tolerance.
See:

*

*Absolute Error at Wolfram MathWorld

*Approximation Error on Wikipedia

A: I would call it "tolerance".
Maybe that is not the mathematically correct term, but the mere fact that you ask the question implies to me that neither "delta" nor "epsilon" would be a good variable name to use.
In my experience, it is better to use identifier names that makes sense to those who will actually read the code. What good is a perfectly correct name if it means that the reader needs to look it up on Wikipedia to understand what it means?

A: Epsilon in maths and engineering
In maths and engineering in general:

*

*Delta is generally used to refer to a difference, which can be of any scale.

*Epsilon is generally used to refer to a negligible quantity.

and epsilon seems more appropriate in your case.

Epsilon in computer science
In computer science in particular, the term epsilon also refers to machine espilon which measures the difference between 1.0f and the smallest float which is strictly larger than 1.0f. That latter number is 1.00000011920928955078125f for floats in Java and can be calculated with:
float f = Float.intBitsToFloat(Float.floatToIntBits(1f) + 1);

The definition of machine epsilon is consistent with the general use of epsilon described above.

Comparing floats
Note however that before comparing floats for "proximity", you need to have an idea of their scale. Two very large and supposedly very different float can be equal:
9223372036854775808f == 9223372036854775808f + 1000000000f; //this is true!

And inversely, there might be many possible float values (and several orders of magnitude) between two small floats which differ by the machine epsilon "only". In the example below, there are 10,000,000 available float values between small and f, but their difference is still well below the machine epsilon:
float small = Float.MIN_VALUE; // small = 1.4E-45
float f = Float.intBitsToFloat(Float.floatToIntBits(small) + 100000000); // f = 2.3122343E-35
boolean b = (f - small < 0.00000011920928955078125f); //true!

The article linked in GlenH7's answer investigates float comparison further and proposes several solutions to overcome these issues.

A: In mathematics, delta is used to represent some difference from a value, epsilon is used to represent an arbitrary error value.  In this case, epsilon would be the conventional name.

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text:
Greenhouse Effect: A Visual Essay on Tunisian Artist Farah Khelil | By Weronika Morawiec
Essays, Profiles, Reviews
by TSA Editors
Farah Khelil proposes ecology and archive digging as possible means of decolonization in her practice that integrates nature, images, sound and text.
Tunisian artist Farah Khelil (1980) works and lives in France.
Khelil's multifaceted works are arrangements of images, objects or texts that she transforms into physical or sound installations, reconfiguring their meaning. She uses protocols of translation, coding distancing and blindness, employing games of composition and analogies of meaning. Drawing on a variety of techniques and materials, these works shape a reflection on the relationship of art to writing, language and information.
To me, Khelil is the most subtle anarchist I know; true to herself, her artistic freedom of speech and her freedom of topic choice. Through her carefully designed exhibitions, she uncovers the weakness and hopelessness of old approaches: institutional, artistic, political. Through extreme elegant and complex gestures, she shows where the colonial perspective has led us and how much she dislikes it. Through her artworks, she constantly reinforces the non-commercial and non-institutional objectives of art.
Having said that, I have some questions and notes for the reader: how do you meditate on images? Have you ever wondered how far into an artwork you can or want to look? Or rather, how close the artist will let you look?
Effet de Serre (eng. Greenhouse Effect) was an exhibition organized in a recreated greenhouse in the old Belvedere Parc in Tunis, Tunisia. A very special place because from the beginning it was meant to dazzle with its aesthetic construction and show plants as inanimate objects ready to be admired by the viewers. You can read more about the exhibition itself and the project here: curatorial text by Clelia Coussonnet along with a visual portfolio.
I spoke to Khelil twice, first in the middle of the first pandemic year 2020 and then in early 2022 (still) during the pandemic, the refugee crisis on Polish territory and on the verge of Russia's attack on Ukraine. Imagine that you are an artist who looks after her project how a computer scientist looks after his software code. She makes plans, deals with logistics, researches objects' history and their emotional charge long before she puts them in the public eye. Or, long before she decides not to show it to you, as to whistle about it.
You may begin to wonder how it happened that the artist collaborated closely with the municipal authorities. Here, please, consider your thoughts and experiences with any municipal institution you have ever had to work with. Was it good cooperation? Did they listen? How freely were you able to express your personal views to the official?
Bearing this in mind – given that Effet de Serre was a process scheduled to be implemented during 2019 and 2020 – are you able to feel the pain of being involved in artistic creation while at the same time being involved with endlessly ping-ponging with the municipal office?
Such questions help me to explore the relationship between living stories and seemingly dead artefacts.
How would your body and your decisions about moving in this isolated microcosm interfere with its objects, ideas and memories behind them? Would you be the one to discover these "secrets"? Or would Effet de Serre treat you, your presence in the world, and your cultural and racial background as a rare export commodity that needs to be seen, and then archived?
By the way, how aware are you of your senses? Can you touch something? Think about it because the idea of a perfect exhibition in a white box is beginning to be slightly distorted here.
The story of two plants – and their seeds – is representing not only the objects of archival interest and the objects that would be perfect for exhibition in a greenhouse built on Tunisian soil. A palm tree – native to the territory – and an alien that just grows here, the eucalyptus are also a representation of the complex history of this land, and of colonizing acts in general. A double identity, observed in warm and isolated infrastructures (of a greenhouse, of Khelil's exhibition, of visitors' memories). What does this exploration mean to you: do you notice an already colonized landscape full of eucalyptus trees? Would you fight with traditionalists to ensure that the environment consists only of "palm trees"?
The more you think about it, the better. How much of this observed and obvious division of the world (whether it is your childhood playground, the art world or the cultural idea we are talking about) is just capitalist market rules imposed on every piece of information, culture and artwork? How much is cataloguing and dividing into clear sections worth to you? At this point, I want to stop you. The most important and necessary change in the (art)world is to break the colonial approach. However, this process cannot be limited to certain objects and cannot be carried out by those who invented it.
As Ariella Azoulay states: "It is not possible to decolonize […] without decolonizing the world. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't engage with this important work, but we have to do so with the full awareness that decolonization cannot be limited to discrete objects, museums, or archives, and cannot be substantial as long as the people from whom all this wealth was expropriated are not allowed to lead the process."1 To break every "universal" standard and every scope, go back to the seeds and plant them as decolonized ideas; this is where the new (art)world will begin.
In these times, torn by wars and plagues, let us hope that artists will be saved. Maybe one day, another Khelil will consider our stories fertile soil for a tender tale, a wise observation on the nature of humans and non-humans. A powerful insight.
Because, I believe, power circulates in networks. Not just social ones, but also networks of meanings, clusters of personal and collective beliefs or memories, in landscapes filled with plants and timescapes filled with events.
Hopefully, through projects like Effet de Serre, art museums will become true witnesses to our stories: alive and responsive, like the gardens that will grow upon us.
Images 1/5/7/8: Installation view of 'Effet de Serre' (2021) by Farah Khelil. Courtesy of the artist
Featured illustrations by Weronika Morawiec
Weronika Morawiec is a writer and curator from Poland. In 2019 she participated in the Curatorial Intensive program of the Lagos Biennial. She cooperates with: Goyki3 Art Inkubator, Tunis Central art association and Selma Feriani Gallery.
1 Quote from a brilliant talk between Ariella Aïsha Azoulay and Sabrina Alli https://www.guernicamag.com/miscellaneous-files-ariella-aisha-azoulay/ [online access: 10.02.2022]
Tags: Decolonization, Decolonize, Ecological Art, Farah Khelil, Installation Art, Tunisian artist
Jacob Lawrence's Collaboration with The Mbari Club, Nigeria's Preeminent Cultural Group, Takes Center Stage in a Major US Museum Exhibition
'A Small World': Cyrus Kabiru at AKKA Project, Venice
TSA Editors August 12, 2022
Ndidi Dike's Exhibitions on Transatlantic Histories Expand with "Commodities of Consumption and Sites of Extraction in the Global South"
TSA Editors January 29, 2021

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Happy New Year! Here's an audio game we played near the Holidays. It's using the Risus system, and Mike F is the GM.
This entry was posted on Monday, January 3rd, 2011at 10:58 am	and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.


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Abstracts and Links to Music studies with animals (This information is also downloadable as a pdf.)
Dogs detect sounds as low as the 16 to 20 Hz frequency range (compared to 20 to 70 Hz for humans) and as high as 70,000 to 100,000 Hz (compared to 20,000 Hz for humans), and in addition have a degree of ear mobility that helps them to rapidly pinpoint the exact location of a sound. Eighteen or more muscles can tilt, rotate and raise or lower a dog's ear. Additionally, a dog can identify a sound's location much faster than a human can, as well as hear sounds up to four times the distance that humans are able to.
1.The influence of auditory stimulation on the behaviour of dogs housed in a rescue shelter
Authors: Wells, D.L.; Graham, L.; Hepper, P.G.
Source: Animal Welfare, Volume 11, Number 4, November 2002 , pp. 385-393(9)This study explored the influence of five types of auditory stimulation (human conversation, classical music, heavy metal music, pop music, and a control) on the behavior of 50 dogs housed in a rescue shelter. The dogs were exposed to each type of auditory
stimulation for 4 h, with an intervening period of one day between conditions. The dogs' position in their kennels (front, back), their activity (moving, standing, sitting, resting, sleeping), and their vocalization (barking, quiet, other) were recorded over 4 h at 10 min intervals during each condition of auditory stimulation. The dogs' activity and vocalization were significantly related to auditory stimulation. Dogs spent more time resting and less time standing when classical music was played than when any of the other stimuli were played. Exposure to heavy metal music encouraged dogs to spend significantly more of their time barking than did other types of auditory stimulation. Classical music resulted in dogs spending significantly more of their time quiet than did other types of auditory stimulation. It is suggested that the welfare of sheltered dogs may be enhanced through exposure to appropriate forms of auditory stimulation. Classical music appears particularly beneficial, resulting in activities suggestive of relaxation and behaviors that are considered desirable by potential buyers. This form of music may also appeal to visitors, resulting in enhanced perceptions of the rescue shelter's environment and an increased desire to adopt a dog from such a source.
2.Effects of harp music therapy on canine patients in the veterinary hospital setting. The Harp Therapy Journal, 8(2), 1, 4-5,15. Boone, A., & Quelch, V. (2003)
[Three groups of 32 canine patients received 60 minute sessions of harp therapy (Group 1: hospitalized less than 8 hrs.; Group 2: hospitalized longer than 8 hrs.; and Group 3: post-surgical patients). Visual measures of discomfort: restlessness, anxiety and respiration rate; all decreased during the harp therapy session. The control group displayed no such decrease and, in fact, continued to increase in all three measures. The harp therapy group demonstrated a gradual decline in respiration rates over the one-hour in contrast to the control group – which remained unchanged during the same period. Both groups demonstrated a shallow trend in reduction of heart rate.]
3. The effects of sound and music on our patients and workplace (Proceedings) http://veterinarycalendar.dvm360.com, April 1, 2010 By: Susan O. Wagner, DVM, MS, DACVIM
Sound is an important part of an animal's surroundings, and should be considered when taking a history on an anxious or reactive pet. Many owners don't realize the significance of sound in their homes, and most veterinarians are not cognizant of the sonic environment their hospitalized patients are exposed to.
4. Psychologists' trials find music tempo affects productivity http://www.le.ac.uk/press/press/moosicstudy.html June 2001 No. 67
Dairy cows produce more milk when listening to REM's 'Everybody Hurts' or Beethoven's 'Pastoral Symphony' than when subjected to Wonderstuff's 'Size of a Cow' or the Beatles' 'Back In The USSR' a new study by music research specialists at the University of Leicester has found.
Their milk yield rose by 0.73 litres per cow per day when they were exposed to slow music rather than fast music. The results revealed a three per cent increase in output when slow rather than fast music was played.
Scientists Adrian North and Liam MacKenzie from the Music Research Group at the University of Leicester School of Psychology exposed cattle to fast, slow and no music at all over a nine-week period.
The trials, at LCAH Dairies in Lincolnshire and Bishop Burton Agricultural College in Humberside, involved playing music to the cows for 12 hours a day, from 5am to 5pm.
Dr North said: These results are statistically significant they reveal that milk yields could be increased by 3% simply by playing certain types of music to the cows.
We have found that cows respond to a pleasant auditory environment by producing more milk. It seems that slow music had the effect of alleviating stress and relaxing the animals which resulted in greater milk yields.
Liam MacKenzie said that the research was an extension of the School's ongoing study into the effects of music on aspects of human behaviour: Most theories of music preferences are based on humans.
We were testing whether the theories, which had been proven with humans, would also hold true of other animals. We found that slow music improved milk yields perhaps because it relaxes the cows in much the same way as it relaxes humans.
5. The influence of olfactory stimulation on the behaviour of dogs housed in a rescue shelter
Lynne Graham, Deborah L. Wells, Peter G. Hepper Applied Animal Behaviour Science
Volume 91, Issue 1 , Pages 143-153, May 2005 Abstract
This study explored the influence of five types of olfactory stimulation (control, lavender, chamomile, rosemary and peppermint) on the behaviour of 55 dogs housed in a rescue shelter. The dogs were exposed to each type of olfactory stimulation, through the diffusion of essential oils, for 4h a day for 5 days, with an intervening period of 2 days between conditions. The dogs' behaviour was recorded on days 1, 3 and 5, during each condition of olfactory stimulation. Certain aspects of the dogs' behaviour were influenced by the odours. Dogs spent more time resting and less time moving upon exposure to lavender and chamomile than any of the other olfactory stimuli. These odourants also encouraged less vocalization than other types of aroma. The diffusion of rosemary and peppermint into the dogs' environment encouraged significantly more standing, moving and vocalizing than other types of odour. It is suggested that the welfare of sheltered dogs may be enhanced through exposure to appropriate forms of olfactory stimulation. Lavender and chamomile appear particularly beneficial, resulting in activities suggestive of relaxation and behaviours that are considered desirable by potential adopters. These types of olfactory stimulation may also appeal to visitors, resulting in enhanced perceptions of the rescue shelter and an increased desire to adopt a dog from such an environment.
6. Behavioral Effects of Auditory Stimulation on Kenneled Dogs – Lori R. Kogan, Regina Schoenfeld-Tacher, Allen A. Simon
Clinical Sciences Department, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado.  2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Abstract: Dogs are kenneled in professional facilities for a variety of reasons; however, the kennel environment, even for short periods, is a potential psychogenic stressor for most dogs. Continual stress and the resultant anxiety are undesirable for both ethical and physiological reasons. One growing area of research pertaining to the welfare of kenneled dogs is environmental enrichment, including auditory stimulation. The current study investigated the impact of music (classical, heavy metal, and specifically designed/altered classical) on activity level, vocalization, and body shaking of 117 kenneled dogs.
Results suggest that classical music leads to kenneled dogs spending more time sleeping (F8,354 5 12.24, P . 0.0001) and less time vocalizing (F8,354 5 3.61, P . 0.0005) than when exposed to other music types or no music. Heavy metal music, compared with other music types, appears to increase body shaking (F8,354 5 96.97, P . 0.0001), a behavior suggestive of nervousness. It is suggested that playing classical music in a shelter environment may help mitigate some of the stress inherent for many kenneled dogs.
7. Music Changes the Way You Think – Different music encourages different frames of mind
Scientific American Jun 24, 2014 |By Daniel A. Yudkin and Yaacov Trope
An article about music and how different note intervals affects us (our animals too)
8. Four Seasons' in an animal rescue centre; classical music reduces environmental stress in kennelled dogs
Physiol Behav. 2015 May 1;143:70-82. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2015.02.035. Epub 2015 Feb 21.Bowman A1, Scottish Spca2, Dowell FJ3, Evans NP4
Abstract: On admission to rescue and rehoming centres dogs are faced with a variety of short- and long-term stressors including novelty, spatial/social restriction and increased noise levels. Animate and inanimate environmental enrichment techniques have been employed within the kennel environment in an attempt to minimise stress experienced by dogs. Previous studies have shown the potential physiological and psychological benefits of auditory stimulation, particularly classical music, within the kennel environment. This study determined the physiological/psychological changes that occur when kennelled dogs are exposed to long-term (7 days) auditory stimulation in the form of classical music through assessment of effects on heart rate variability (HRV), salivary cortisol and behaviour. The study utilised a cross over design in which two groups were exposed to two consecutive 7 day treatments; silence (control) and classical music (test). Group A was studied under silent conditions followed by 7 days of test conditions during which a fixed classical music playlist was played from 10:00-16:30 h. Group B received treatment in the reverse order. Results showed that auditory stimulation induced changes in HRV and behavioural data indicative of reduced stress levels in dogs in both groups (salivary cortisol data did not show any consistent patterns of change throughout the study). Specifically, there was a significant increase in HRV parameters such as μRR, STDRR, RMSSD, pNN50, RRTI, SD1 and SD2 and a significant decrease in μHR and LF/HF from the first day of silence (S1) to the first day of music (M1). Similarly, examination of behavioural data showed that dogs in both groups spent significantly more time sitting/lying and silent and less time standing and barking during auditory stimulation. General Regression Analysis (GRA) of the change in HRV parameters from S1 to M1 revealed that male dogs responded better to auditory stimulation relative to female. Interestingly, HRV and behavioural data collected on the seventh day of music (M2) was similar to that collected on S1 suggesting that the calming effects of music are lost within the 7 days of exposure. A small '9-Day' study was conducted in attempt to determine the time-scale in which dogs become habituated to classical music and examination of the results suggests that this occurs within as soon as the second day of exposure. The results of this study show the potential of auditory stimulation as a highly effective environmental enrichment technique for kennelled dogs. However, the results also indicate the requirement for further investigations into the way in which auditory stimulation should be incorporated within the daily kennel management regime in order to harness the full physiological and psychological benefits of music. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


Holdings: Letters From the Right Reverend John England, D.D., to the Honorable William Gaston, LL.D., 1821-1840. Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia. Volume XIX. Pages 98-122.
Letters From the Right Reverend John England, D.D., to the Honorable William Gaston, LL.D., 1821-1840. Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia. Volume XIX. Pages 98-122.
England, John, 1786-1842 > Correspondence.
Catholic Church. Diocese of Charleston (S.C.).
Gaston, William, 1778-1844 > Correspondence.


燃尽图,维基百科 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_down_chart, Feb 13, 2017.
Dusan Kocurek,Understanding the Scrum Burndown Chart, http://www.methodsandtools.com/archive/scrumburndown.php, Feb 13, 2017.
通过燃尽图了解项目的进展 , http://www.zentao.net/book/zentaopm''shelp/105.html, Feb 14, 2017.


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Daily Market Trend Guide -- Friday, May 23, 2014
MARKET REPORT May 23, 2014
The Markets continued to show signs of tiredness in yesterday's session as came off from the day's high before ended the day with modest gains. The Markets opened on a modestly positive note yesterday and in the first half of the session, kept inching upwards in rising trajectory while gradually forming new tops. By afternoon trade, the Markets went on to form the day's high of 7319.55. However, in the second half, the Markets saw itself changing its trajectory. In wake some selling pressure, the Markets started gradually paring its gains. By late afternoon trade, the Markets ended up paring most of its gains while forming day's low of 7258.15. A minor recovery was seen from the lows and the Markets finally ended the day at 7276.40, posting a net gain of 23.50 points or 0.32% while forming a higher top and higher bottom on the Daily High Low Charts.
Today's analysis remains more or less similar on yesterday's lines. The Markets are expected to open on a flat to modestly positive note and look for directions. Given the local technicals on the Charts, the F&O data and overall cues, the Markets are expected to continue with its corrective activities and we can witness paring of gains, if any. The intraday trajectory would continue to remain important and volumes too would be critical.
For today, the levels of 7310 and 7345 are immediate resistance levels for the Markets today. The supports exist much lower at 7210 and 7075 levels on the down side.
The lead indicators too show some signs of tiredness. The RSI—Relative Strength Index on the Daily Charts is 79.4273 and it does not show any failure swings. It continues to trade in "extremely overbought" territory. Also, the NIFTY has marked a new 14-period high but the RSI has not yet and this is a clear "Bearish Divergence".
On the derivative front, the NIFTY May futures have shed nearly 9.79 lakh shares or 4.43% in open interest. This very clearly indicates that there has been shedding of long / unwinding of positions from yesterday's high levels while the Markets pared its gains.
On the charts, going by pattern analysis, the Markets have consolidated till today after forming a very high bar on the Daily High Low Charts and the bias has remained on the downside as the Market have shown reduction in open interest. Further, there would be no sustainable up move as the Markets continue to trade in "extremely overbought" territory and any up move shall continue to make the markets unhealthy and pose risks of equally imminent sharp correction at some point of time.
All and all, the Markets are consolidating and unless it corrects itself a bit and lead indicators suggest, we are exposed to equally sharp correction which looks imminent and long overdue. The Markets cannot continue to rise in the manner in which they are rising even if they are supported by very strong inflows. Such meteoric rise even in the overbought zone certainly makes the markets quite unhealthy susceptible to a sharp correction. In such a scenario, we continue to reiterate advice of remaining moderate on the overall exposure and maintain high degree of caution for today.
http://milan-vaishnav.blogspot.com
Posted by MyMoneyPlant.co.in at 5/23/2014 08:46:00 AM No comments: Links to this post
Daily Market Trend Guide -- Thursday, May 22, 2014
The Markets showed first signs of correction yesterday as it witnessed a selloff but recovered bulk of its gains to end the day with modest losses. The Markets opened on a quiet and mildly negative mode but soon came into positive territory while it formed its day's high of 7287.15. However, it remained in the positive for very brief period as it started drifting into the red. The markets traded with capped losses in the morning trade but saw a good amount of weakness creeping in the afternoon trade. The Markets went further into the red and formed its day's low of 7206.70 by late afternoon trade. It however recovered nearly 50-odd points from those lows and finally ended the day at 7252.90 still with a net loss of 22.60 points or 0.31% while forming a lower top and lower bottom on the Daily High Low Charts.
Today, expect the Markets to open on a modestly positive note and continue with its recovery at least in the initial trade. However, given the other factors, the Markets are likely to continue to remain overall in the consolidation / corrective mode. Though intraday trajectory would continue to remain critical the Markets are overall remain capped on the upper side with some amount of volatility ingrained in it.
For today, the levels of 7290 and 7345 are immediate resistance levels for today. The supports exists at 7205 and 7160 levels.
The RSI—Relative Strength Index on the Daily Chart is 78..6147 and it is neutral as it shows no bullish or bearish divergences or any failure swings. It however continues to trade in "overbought" territory. The Daily MACD continues to trade above its signal line.
On the derivative front, NIFTY May futures have added nearly 5.03 lakh shares or 2.33% in open interest. This shows some fresh buying done yesterday while the Markets recovered some 50-odd points from its day's low.
Going by the pattern analysis, the Markets have made a temporary top on May 16th as we have mentioned often in our previous editions and this will continue to act as a immediate top. The Markets would either continue to correct or would continue to consolidate in this broad range with the bias on the downside. This downside bias would persist so long as the Markets continue to trade "overbought".
Overall, the Markets would see some initial uptick but the possibilities of the consolidation / correction cannot be ruled out. Further with FIIs remaining net sellers in last 2 sessions, this is likely to persist today as well and this may keep the Markets volatile. We continue to reiterate our advice of maintaining very moderate exposures in the Markets while adopting a cautious approach for today.
Daily Market Trend Guide -- Wednesday, May 21, 2014
The Markets ended in green for 9th day in a row but ended after paring of most of its gains and showing all the signs of continuing consolidation. The Markets opened on a positive note and soon strengthened its gains in the morning trade as the Markets formed its day's high of 7353.65 in the morning trade. However, the Markets pared all of these gains by late morning trade as it traded flat again and also dipped into the negative territory while forming day's low of 7247.70 coming off nearly 80-odd points from its high. The Markets then spent most of the session trading flat in sideways trajectory in a very narrow and capped range. It saw a spurt in the last hour of the trade and recovered some 45-odd points but again pared those gains in the last half an hour of trade. The Markets finally ended the day with at 7275.50 posting a nominal gain of 11.95 points or 0.16% while forming a higher top and higher bottom on the Daily High Low Charts.
Today, expect the Markets to open and trade modestly positive again in the initial trade. However, the global cues remain weak and given the local technicals, there are fair chances that the Markets continue to consolidate and mildly correct. Some profit taking from higher levels cannot be ruled out baring some sectoral out performance. Intraday trajectory would remain critically important to decide the trend for the day.
For today, the levels of 7295 and 7350 would act as immediate resistance for the Markets. The supports exist much lower at 7225 and 7185 levels.
The RSI—Relative Strength Index on the Daily Charts is 81.4890 and it has reached its highest value in last 14-days which is bullish. However, it does not show any bullish or bearish divergence and it continues to trade in "extremely overbought" condition. The Daily MACD continues to trade above its signal line.
On the derivative front, NIFTY May futures have shed over 2.83 lakh shares or 1.30% in Open Interest. This signifies that there has been some shedding of open interest from higher levels yesterday.
Going by the pattern analysis, the Markets have been trading in extremely overbought condition and at any stage, paring of some gains and profit taking just cannot be ruled out. Given the never-ending inflows, even if the Markets continue to rise in this fashion, it is making the rise un healthy in the immediate short term. Going purely by the pattern analysis, some correction / profit taking from these levels remain imminent and overdue.
Overall, Markets have shown some signs of tiredness by way of reduction in OI and this, along with technicals and other factors continue to point towards consolidation continuing in the Markets. However, sectoral out performance in the defensives and low beta stocks is likely to be seen. We continue to reiterate on the advice of maintaining very modest exposures (avoiding over leverage) and maintaining high degree of caution for today.
Daily Market Trend Guide -- Tuesday, May 20, 2014
The Markets witnessed a volatile session yesterday and swung nearly 98-odd points on either side but ultimately ended yet another day with gains despite being in miserably overbought condition. The Markets opened on a positive note and soon formed its intraday high of 7291.10 in the early minutes of the trade. However, the Markets pared all of its gains in the morning session as it gradually came off and in the afternoon trade even dipped briefly into the negative territory while forming the day's low of 7193.55. The second half of the session saw the Markets recovering again and slowly recovered most of its losses again. It finally ended the day at 7263.55, posting a net gain of 60.55 or 0.84% while forming a sharply lower top but higher bottom on the Daily High Low Charts.
Today's analysis for the Markets remain more or less on similar lines that of yesterday. The Markets are now trading in "extremely overbought" condition. The Markets are likely to open on a modestly positive note and see some up tick in the initial trade but there are great chances that the volatility shall persist and the Markets continue to see consolidation or imminent profit taking.
For today, the levels of 7295 and 7330 would act as immediate resistance levels. The supports exist far lower at 7210 and 7125 levels.
The RSI—Relative Strength on the Daily Chart is 81.1506 and it has reached its highest value in last 14-period which is bullish. However, it does not show any bullish or bearish divergence and it continues to remain in "extremely overbought condition". The Daily MACD continues to trade above its signal line.
On the derivative front, NIFTY May futures have added 3.52 lakh shares or 1.64% in total open interest. This signifies that no major offloading was seen. Minor fresh longs might have been added. NIFTY PCR rose from 0.69 to 0.72 yesterday.
Going by pattern analysis, the Markets have formed a top of 7563 on 16th of May and until this is breached on the up side the Markets will not have a break out. However, having said this, the range for the Markets would be much broader and wider while it consolidates .So, even if it consolidates, it would do so in a wide range and this would make this consolidation quite volatile. Also if some profit taking happens, it would be little healthy for the Markets.
All and all, the Markets are now at dizzying levels and since liquidity is pushing it, it generally tends to disregard the technical factors. However, we would not advice to take any blanket long positions at these levels. Any purchases, if any, should be making in the defensives. Also while continuing to over leverage and take extended exposures, it should be kept moderate while continuing to maintain extreme caution in the Markets.
Daily Market Trend Guide -- Thursday, May 22, 201...
Daily Market Trend Guide -- Wednesday, May 21, 20...
Daily Market Trend Guide -- Tuesday, May 20, 2014...
Daily Market Trend Guide -- Monday, May 19, 2014


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Supporting museums Art we've helped buy Sir Michael Redgrave preparing for 'The Beggar's Opera'
Feliks Topolski
Joan Hurst through The Art Fund
Four drawings.
Part of a gift to 19 museums by Joan Hurst through the Art Fund in 2002. The decision to move from her 16th-century house near Eltham Palace in South London led Joan Hurst to donate much of her collection to the Art Fund for presentation to public collections. This magnificent gift consists of an eclectic range of items spanning some 800 years, and its sheer scale and variety-over 300 items, including textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, toys and nursery furniture, sculpture, paintings and drawings- reflects the wide-ranging tastes of this inveterate collector.