text:
\section{Introduction}
Blood pressure is a primary physiological parameter of the human body and an essential basis for disease diagnosis. Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death globally. Most of them are highly related with hypertension. In this context, convenient ordinary monitoring of blood pressure in daily life becomes critical.\par

Many outstanding scientists\cite{45Daniel2021,46Anand2020} have devoted themselves to the study of calculating blood pressure by extracting the morphology and temporal characteristics of remote photoplethysmographic (rPPG) waveform and obtained good results in the end, which proves that a single pulse wave can effectively reflect the change of blood flow in the human cardiovascular system in different heart cycles. However, most of them need a special contact photoelectric sensor to obtain blood volume pulse (BVP), which greatly limits the application range. Recently many excellent works were proposed that can robustly simulate BVP based on face videos and able to accurately calculate heart rate and heart rate variability. In addition, some works such as RthymNet~\cite{36Niu2019} showed that spatio-temporal map of face videos is capable of exploiting blood flow state in blood vessels, Cheng~\cite{40Cheng2021} also designed a method to convert BVP into pressure pulse wave, indicating that PPG waveform can be filtered from the BP waveform at the same artery and comprise BP information. These results of the previous results enable us to believe that the spatio-temporal map of single point face video can calculate accurate blood pressure value.

 Still, there are many challenges in non-contact blood pressure measurements; the accuracy of such tasks is easily affected by many factors~\cite{2Markandu2000TheMS}, including the professional abilities of the conductors, the height, weight, and age of the subjects, and the seasons and environments. For example, head motion creates difficulties for the region cutting algorithm, causes residual motion image, and degrades the image quality. In addition, the weak remote BVP signal reflecting changes in hemoglobin concentration in the circulatory system can easily be contaminated and submerged by changing ambient light. Moreover, because of difficulties of blood pressure data collection and the privacy issues of face video, there is very few large-scale blood pressure database with face videos. The lack of data greatly hinders the rapid development in the field of non-contact measurement of blood pressure.\par
Therefore, this study is proposing the first end-to-end non-contact blood pressure measurement network based on face videos in this study. The main contributions are summarized as follows:
\begin{enumerate}
    \item Design a continuous BP estimation method only based on spatial-temporal map of facial videos.
    \item Propose a blood pressure classifier to transform a regression problem into a joint problem of classification and regression.
    \item Exploit an oversampling training scheme for blood pressure monitoring task, which effectively addresses the uneven distribution of blood pressure data set in the training process.
    \item Only require a short-time (15 seconds) facial video to measure diastolic and systolic blood pressure.
\end{enumerate}

\subsection{Related work}
Until now, two categories of methods have been used to measure blood pressure: contact and non-contact measurements. Contact blood pressure measurements are made with medical equipment to directly monitor human biological signals~\cite{8Young1990,7KK2021,9Tholl2004,5Beevers2001}, including two main technical approaches. One route is to measure the pressure change with a pressure transducer, for example, arterial manometry~\cite{14Pressman1963}.The other technical approach is to control the pressure applied to the measured area by an external device and then map Coriolis sound realted information to BP values via experience-based correlation. The most classic apparatus is the mercury sphygmomanometer~\cite{5Beevers2001}, and its accuracy largely depends on the professional level of the user.

Non-contact blood pressure measurements usually calculate the systolic and diastolic blood pressure based on the features of BVP signals~\cite{3TK2001}. Pulse wave velocity (PWV) referred as the pressure wave velocity propagates along the wall of the great artery during each cardiac ejection. It is a simple, effective, and economic index for the non-contact evaluation of arterial stiffness~\cite{16B1976,29Mousavi2018}. Moreover, it is an independent predictor of cardiovascular events closely related to blood pressure~\cite{18ML1957,17RA2006,19,41Fan2020}. A series of simulation experiments on humans and animals demonstrate that pulse wave transit time (PWT) is closely related to diastolic and systolic blood pressures. Owing to this theory, a novel indirect method, which differed from the traditional direct methods using cuff or oscilloscope devices, was proposed to measure blood pressure values. In 2014, Rohan et al. introduced that the arterial blood pressure value can be calculated accurately based on the extracted morphology features of BVP signals~\cite{20Samria2014}, which was obatained by the skin-contact noninvasive sensors derived from optical plethysmography (PPG) technology. After detecting the blood volume changes of the cardiac cycle with infrared light, the time delay of systolic and diastolic peak values were also extracted to model the relationship between these features and BP values. Another study added 1/2 pulse width and 2/3 pulse width as the characteristics of BVP signal together with systolic upstroke time and diastolic time to facilitate the model for calculating BP values~\cite{23Teng2003}. As the correlation between blood pressure and BVP signals was assumed as nonlinear and vulnerable to noise, artificial neural networks, which is good at feature extraction, were adopted to achieve satisfactory results of estimated BP values.~\cite{27Kurylyak2013,24Wang2018}.\par

In order to extract as much information as possible, and then investigate the best combination, some study considered additional data source.Some researchers~\cite{21Shen2015} proposed that electrodes and instruments could collect ECG signals while PPG signals were obtained. Others designed a new sensor to integrate PPG signal and ECG signal simultaneously~\cite{22Han2020} and then eliminated baseline drift noise by wavelet change, which significantly improved the measured results. Similar to the development route of blood pressure detection method with only PPG signal, some papers~\cite{26Jung2005} also used artificial neural network (ANN) to train the network model to predict blood pressure according to the sample experiment~\cite{26Jung2005,25Maher2020}. Based on previous work, demographic information (including weight, height, and other factors) was added as the input of network for training. The results showed that the performance of the mode~\cite{44Rong2021}l was much better than that of the multiple regression method. In addition to the use of artificial neural networks and other network models, traditional machine learning method~\cite{29Mousavi2018,30He2016,28Zhang2017} was also expolited in many studies to optimize the feature extraction process. In 2021 Meng et al.~\cite{44Rong2021} showd that temporal and energy features of BVP signal obtained by face videos can also be adopted to estimate blood pressure comprehensively.\par

\section{Methodology}
This study proposes a non-contact blood pressure measurement network.The overall workflow is shown in Figure~\ref{fig1}. Firstly, four ROIs, which contains the blood pressure signal from the input facial video, was defined based on landmarks detected by SeetaFace6. Secondly, the data augmentation (DA) module randomly mask a part of above cropped video sequence along both time-domain and spatial-domain and transform RGB color space into YUVT color space, aiming to reduce interferences caused by illumination variations and sudden non-rigid motions. Then, the cropped video sequence is sliced to generate the multi-domain spatial-temporal mapping, facilitating the succeeding to map the relationship between video sequence and BP values. Finally, the Blood Pressure Estimator module, including blood pressure classifier and blood pressure calculator, estimates systolic and diastolic blood pressure, respectively. Details of each module are explained in the following subsections.\par
\begin{figure}[ht]
	\centering
        		\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{PIC2.png}
	  \caption{Overview of the module of ROI Definition and Data Augmentation. Seetaface6 is used to detect human face and localize 68 landmarks, which are then fed into the Data augmentation module to get spatial-temporal map (STM).}
	  \label{fig1}
\end{figure}

\subsection{ROI Definition}
In order to make full use of informative parts containing efective signals and eliminate the noisy parts such as eyes, nose, hair, and mouth, four regions of interest (ROIs) are defined by selecting the forehead and cheek with rich vascular information. First, the authors use SeetaFace6 to detect face and localize 68 landmarks and select 7 points to delineate the ROIs in each frame in the video sequence, as shown in Figure~\ref{fig1}. Next, we calculate the average pixel values of each ROI to represent physiological information, noted as initial spatial-temporal map (ISTM): \begin{equation}
f(n, t)=\frac{\sum_{\mathrm{x}, \mathrm{y} \in \mathrm{R(n)}} V(x, y, t)}{\mathrm{A(n)}}
\end{equation}
Where R(n) represents the $n_{th}$ ROI, A(n) represents the number of pixels in the selected region, V(x,y,t) represents the pixel value of the $n_{th}$ ROI position (x, y) of frame t of the face video sequence.

\subsection{Data Augmentation}
Due to the moving artifacts and environmental illumination variation during signal acquisition, the accuracy of non-contact blood pressure detection is easily affected. Therefore, a data augmentation strategy is proposed to solve the problem of signal contamination. First, we randomly mask a small part of the initial spatial-temporal map $f(n,t)$ along both the time dimension and spatial dimension as shown in  Figure~\ref{fig2}. Then, YUV Transformation (YUVT) color space, which gives more attention to brightness dimension features in color space, is proposed here to extract information related to BVP to get spatial-temporal maps (STM) $g\left(n,t\right)$. The new color space transformation can be formulated as:
\begin{small}
 \begin{footnotesize}
\begin{equation}
\left[\begin{array}{l}
Y_{t}(x, y) \\
U_{t}(x, y) \\
V_{t}(x, y)
\end{array}\right]=\left[\begin{array}{ccc}
0.299 & 0.587 & 0.114 \\
-0.169 & -0.331 & 0.5 \\
0.5 & -0.419 & -0.081
\end{array}\right]\left[\begin{array}{c}
R_{t}(x, y) \\
G_{t}(x, y) \\
B_{t}(x, y)
\end{array}\right]
\label{eq1}
\end{equation}
\end{footnotesize}
\end{small}

where t indicates video frame index, $R_{t}(x, y)$, $G_{t}(x, y)$, $B_{t}(x, y)\in g_{roi}^{\prime}\left(t, r_{i}\right)$, and $R_{t}(x, y)$,$ G_{t}(x, y)$, $B_{t}(x, y)$ represents the pixel value in RGB color space, while $Y_{t}(x, y)$, $U_{t}(x, y)$, $V_{t}(x, y)$ are the pixel value of the YUVT color channel. All of them constitute the video sequence after data enhancement together. The enhanced video sequence is noted as a spatial-temporal map (STM) $g\left(n,t\right)$.\par

\subsection{Architecture}
\begin{figure}[ht]
	\centering
		\includegraphics[width=0.75\linewidth]{PIC3.png}
	  \caption{Architecture of the BPM-Net. Firstly, STM is transformed into multi-domain spatial-temporal feature mapping (MDSTM) $\left\{\mathrm{T_{1}}, \mathrm{T_{2}}, \ldots, \mathrm{T_{M}}\right\}$. Then the feature extractor composed of a series backbone network and BiLSTM fits the high-dimensional feature, which is fed into blood pressure classifier to locates the blood pressure interval through this feature. Finally, the blood pressure calculator combines the results of the feature extractor and the blood pressure classifier to output the final blood pressure value.}
	  \label{fig2}
\end{figure}
\subsubsection{Spatial-Temporal Slicer}
The average value of each ROI of STM is flattened and spliced to form the feature vector corresponding to the t frame, which can be written as :
\begin{equation}
\mathrm{SS}(\mathrm{t})=\mathrm{CAT}\left(\emptyset\left(\bigcup_{\mathrm{n}=1}^{\mathrm{N}} g(\mathrm{n}, \mathrm{t})\right)\right)
\end{equation}W
where $\emptyset$ represents the extracting non empty subsets operation, and $\mathrm{CAT}(\cdot)$ represents the feature vector splicing operation.
We combine the eigenvectors of all frames into a spatial-temporal feature map, and divide them into two parts by sliding windows with step length L. M separate time-space fragments $\left\{\mathrm{T_{1}}, \mathrm{T_{2}}, \ldots, \mathrm{T_{M}}\right\}$ are constructed as multi-domain spatial-temporal feature mapping $\mathrm{STS}(m)$, which can be defined as :
\begin{equation}
\mathrm{STS}(m)=\bigcup_{t=N \times c l}^{(N+1) \times c l} \mathrm{SS}(t)
\end{equation}
where m is the index of spatial-temporal slicer. In order to use video information effectively and help network learning, I normalized the pixel values of all video frames to the range of [0,1].

\subsubsection{Blood Pressure Estimator}
In this experiment, the residual convolution neural network~\cite{37Yu2019} is used as the backbone network, and the size of all convolution kernels is 3 × 3. The step is 1. Firstly, the feature extraction network module is used to perform high-dimensional feature extraction on the multi-temporal spatial feature map STS(m). The feature extraction network corresponding to each time domain segment adopts the same parameters. The results are fed to the subsequent LSTM to strengthen the temporal correlation and obtain the high-dimensional semantic features F. Then blood pressure classifier is used to classify the high-dimensional semantic features F to obtain the blood pressure interval. This operation can establish a benchmark for the features and effectively reduce the over fitting phenomenon of the network. Finally, The results of the classifier are integrated with the output of the feature extractor to calculate the specific value of blood pressure, which can also effectively help in classifier training.

We express the whole BPE process as the following formula:
\begin{equation}
\mathrm{F}=\mathrm{CAT}\left(\bigcup\mathrm{FE}\left(\mathrm{STS}(\mathrm{m})\right)\right)
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
\mathrm{F}_{\mathrm{cla}}=\mathrm{CLA}(\mathrm{F})
\end{equation}

\begin{equation}
\mathrm{R}_{\mathrm{reg}}=\mathrm{REG}\left(\mathrm{CAT}\left(\mathrm{F}, \mathrm{F}_{\mathrm{cla}}\right)\right)
\end{equation}

\begin{equation}
\mathrm{R}_{\mathrm {cla }}=\mathrm{SOFTMAX}\left(\mathrm{F}_{\mathrm{cla}}\right)
\end{equation}
where $\mathrm{FE}$ represents the feature extraction network composed of depth residual network and LSTM, $\mathrm{CAT}(\cdot)$ represents dimension splicing operation, $\mathrm{CLA}$ represents blood pressure classifier, REG represents blood pressure calculator, $\mathrm{R}_{\mathrm{cla}}$ represents the output features of classifier, $\mathrm{R}_{\mathrm{reg}}$ represents the output results of classifier and calculator respectively, and  $\mathrm{SOFTMAX}(\cdot)$ represents softmax operation.
We use the cross entropy loss function to train the classifier and MAE loss function to train the calculator. The two loss functions are combined to train the proposed model, which are formulated as follows:
\begin{equation}
\mathrm{Loss}_{\mathrm{cla}}=\frac{1}{N} \sum_{i}-\left[q_{i} \cdot \log \left(p_{i}\right)+\left(1-q_{i}\right) \cdot \log \left(1-p_{i}\right)\right]
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
\mathrm{Loss}_{\mathrm{reg}}=\frac{\sum_{\mathrm{i}=1}^{N}|f_{i}-h_{i}|}{N}
\end{equation}
\begin{equation}
\mathrm{Loss} = \mathrm{Loss}_{\mathrm{cla}} +  \mathrm{Loss}_{\mathrm{reg}}
\end{equation}
where $p_{i}$ represents the result of classifier, $q_{i}$ represents the category label of blood pressure truth value, $f_{i}$ represents the result of calculator, $h_{i}$ represents the truth calue of blood pressure.
The final output result R needs to be calculated with the classifier result as the reference value and the deviation calibration of the calculator.
\begin{equation}
\mathrm{R}=\alpha \cdot \mathrm{STA}\left(\mathrm{R}_{\mathrm{cla}}\right)+ \beta \cdot \mathrm{R}_{\mathrm{reg}}
\end{equation}
where $\mathrm{{STA}}$ represents the reference value of each blood pressure interval and the deviation weight, and $\alpha$ represents the weight of the calculator results, $\beta$ represents the weight of the classifier results.

\subsection{Oversampling training strategy}\par
In order to deal with unabalance distribution of data in different blood pressure intervals in datasets, an oversampling training strategy is proposed to deal with the unbalance distribution of blood pressures. First, according to the distribution and level of blood pressure, different grouping strategies are designed for systolic and diastolic pressure data, which is then divided into four big groups based on the value of blood pressure $\left\{\mathrm{G}_{1}, \mathrm{G}_{2}, \mathrm{G}_{3}, \mathrm{G}_{4}\right\}$. In the five-fold cross validation experiment, each big group was divided into five small groups equally again, four of them are as training set and the other one is as the validation set. For each batch, the ratio of samples from each large group is 1:1:1:1. Data is extracted from each group in order. If the quantity is insufficient, the sample will be selected from the beginning. The sampling strategy to construct training dataset group ST(d,c) and validation dataset group SV(d,c) can be respectively computed as:

\begin{equation}
\mathrm{ST}(d, c)=\bigcup_{d=1}^{4}\left(G_{d c}\right)
\end{equation}

\begin{equation}
\mathrm{SV}(d, c)=\bigcup_{d=1}^{4}\left(\bigcup_{d=1}^{c} G_{d c}+\bigcup_{d=c+1}^{5} G_{d c}\right)
\end{equation}
where $G_{dc}$ represents a small dataset group, and $d$ and $c$ indicates the times of cross-validation and the index of samll group in each big group.

\subsection{Experiments}
subsection{Dataset}
The performance of the proposed network is evaluated on a public dataset and a private dataset. MMSE-HR~\cite{35Tulyakov2016} is a public non-contact heart rate and blood pressure estimation database composed of 102 face videos from 40 subjects and recorded at 25 frames per second (fps). A physiology data acquisition system is used to collect the average HR and BP values.\par
A private database for non-contact blood pressure estimation is created, named as Advanced Sensor Physiological Dataset (ASPD). In this dataset, the physiological data and corresponding face videos of 124 people are collected by using a multi-channel physiological signal acquisition system (Biopac M160), a blood pressure monitor (OMRON HEM-1020), and a mobile phone camera (Huawei Mate30), respectively. The face video for each subject is collected for about 1 minute. The frame rate of the video is 30fps, and the resolution is 1920×1080. The distributions of systolic and diastolic blood pressures of ASPD dataset are shown in Figure \ref{fig3}. Moreover, the devices and setup is illuminated in Figure~\ref{fig5}.\par

\begin{figure}[h!]
	\centering
\subfigure[The distributions of the systolic blood pressure values in ASPD dataset]
	{	\includegraphics[width=0.7\linewidth]{SBP-ASPD.jpg}
	}\\
\subfigure[The distributions of the diastolic blood pressure values in ASPD dataset]
	{	\includegraphics[width=0.7\linewidth]{DBP-ASPD.jpg}
	}
	  \caption{The distributions of the ground-truth blood pressure values in ASPD dataset. (a) The systolic blood pressures. (b) The diastolic blood pressures.}
	  \label{fig3}
\end{figure}

Three metrics were used to evaluate the performance of the network including the standard deviation (SD), the root mean square error (RMSE), and the mean absolute error (MAE).\par
\begin{figure}[ht]
	\centering
		\includegraphics[width=.5\linewidth]{Fig6.png}
	  \caption{Devices and setup used in collecting ASPD.}
	  \label{fig5}
\end{figure}
In ASPD cross validation, all face videos are sampled to 30fps. Training is done with Nvidia-v100 and Pytorch. The authors design an independent oversampling learning strategy for systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and conduct independent cross validation and cross dataset testing.  Firstly, a five-fold cross validation is performed on ASPD dataset, and comparative experiments are conducted to verify various key module parameters of the network and the optimal combination scheme. After that, ASPD is used to train and test cross datasets on MMSE-HR. Finally, a five-fold cross-validation is performed on ASPD, and ablation experiments were done on the oversampling training scheme to verify its effectiveness.\par

\subsection{Ablation study}
\subsubsection{The effectiveness of spatial-temporal slicer}
\begin{table}[h!]
\centering
\caption{\centering{Performance comparison of different network.}}\label{tb4}
\setlength{\tabcolsep}{1mm}{
\begin{tabular}{ccccc}
\toprule
 & Method & SD$(\mathrm{mmHg})$ & RMSE $(\mathrm{mmHg})$ & MAE$(\mathrm{mmHg})$ \\
\midrule
 \multirow{4}*{SBP} & Without LSTM & $10.49$ & $17.85$ & $15.78$ \\
 & LSTM-90 & $10.06$ & $10.33$ & $8.44$ \\
 & LSTM-150 & \textcolor{red}{9.81} & \textcolor{red}{9.94} & \textcolor{red}{8.07}\\
 & LSTM-225 & $10.09$ & $10.16$ & $8.32$ \\

\midrule
\multirow{4}*{DBP}
 & Without LSTM & $9.28$ & $17.06$ & $15.04$ \\
 & LSTM-90 & $8.35$ & $9.12$ & $7.31$ \\
 & LSTM-150 & \textcolor{red}{8.28} & \textcolor{red}{8.45} & \textcolor{red}{6.78}\\
 & LSTM-225 & $8.33$ & $9.05$ & $7.33$ \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}}
\end{table}
In order to verify the effectiveness of the combination of the spatiotemporal slicer and LSTM, we use the oversampling training scheme to train systolic and diastolic blood pressure, respectively. At the same time, they all use ResNet18 as the backbone network and YUVT as the color space. It is predicted that the specific length of the spatiotemporal slicer would greatly affect the final training results, and the optimal scheme of spatiotemporal slicing can be found. Clip length is tested for 90,150,225 and 450. \par
From Table~\ref{tb4}, spatiotemporal slicer with LSTM can help the network obtain the detailed characteristics of physiological information more effectively, and the slice length of 150 frames can maximize the effect of this network combination. For example, as shown in Table~\ref{tb4}, MAE of systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure reached 8.07mmHg and 6.78mmHg, respectively. Compared with other slice length schemes, MAE of systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure increases by 0.37mmHg and 0.55mmHg, respectively, which is much better than the network scheme without temporal and spatial slices (15.78 mmHg and 15.04 mmHg, respectively). Then observe SD and RMSE. In practical measurement, the number of observations n is always limited, and the actual value can only be replaced by the most reliable (optimal) value. RMSE is susceptible to a group of significant or minor errors in measurement, so it can well reflect measurement precision. It can be seen from the table that RMSE and SD of the 150 slice length scheme are still the best, which shows that this scheme not only improves accuracy but also enhances stability.\par
\subsubsection{The effectiveness of oversampling strategy(OSS)}

\begin{table}[h!]
\centering
\caption{\centering{Performance comparison of different networks.}}\label{tb5}
\setlength{\tabcolsep}{2mm}{
\begin{tabular}{ccccccccc}
\toprule
 & Method & SD$(\mathrm{mmHg})$ & RMSE $(\mathrm{mmHg})$ & MAE$(\mathrm{mmHg})$ \\
\midrule
 \multirow{2}*{SBP} & With OSS & \textcolor{red}{9.81} & \textcolor{red}{9.94} & \textcolor{red}{8.07}\\
& Without OSS & $10.12$ & $10.14$ & $8.27$ \\
\midrule
\multirow{2}*{DBP} & With OSS & \textcolor{red}{8.28} & \textcolor{red}{8.45} & \textcolor{red}{6.78} \\
& Without OSS & $8.35$ & $8.6$ & $6.92$ \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}}
\end{table}\par
Then the effectiveness of the oversampling training scheme is tested, with the standard data sampling training scheme as a comparison (in each epoch, training samples were imported into the network for training). The above results show that the combination of spatiotemporal slice and LSTM is the best when clip length is 150. Therefore, in this test, LSTM-150 is used as the primary network structure. Table \ref{tb5} shows that the training scheme enabled the same network model with more vital fitting ability and robustness. MAE of systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure decreases from 8.27mmHg and 6.92mmHg to 8.07mmHg and 6.78mmHg. RMSE also decreases by 0.2mmHg and 0.15mmHg, respectively. This shows that for the blood pressure task with few training samples, appropriate oversampling training scheme is helpful to further enhance the network potential.\par

\subsection{Cross-dataset testing}
A recent study provide a solution for blood pressure estimation based on rPPG. It used thousands of data for training, and 50 samples for test~\cite{43SF2021}. For our BPM-Net, 125  data samples are used for training and MMSE-HR data are used for testing. The sample ratio tends to be close to 1:1. After three fine-tuning of the model, our BPM-Net obtained the best performance for the test is that the MAE of systolic blood pressure is 13.6mmHg and the MAE of diastolic blood pressure is 10.3mmHg. The comparative results are shown in Table\ref{tb3}. In this study, we reproduced the NCBP~\cite{44Rong2021} algorithm, trained it with ASPD and tested it on MMSE-HR. Besides the results of NIBPP~\cite{43SF2021} on its test data set (about 20 people) are also placed in the table for comparison. From the results, it can be seen that, our method get better performance than the recent study.  In order to verify the effectiveness of BPM-Net, the Bland-Altman plots as showed in Figure~\ref{fig6} show a good consistency between the estimated blood pressure and the ground truth.

\begin{center}
\begin{table}[h!]
\centering
\caption{\centering{Results of BP measurements}}\label{tb3}
\setlength{\tabcolsep}{2.5mm}{
\begin{tabular}{ccccc}
\toprule
& Method & SD($\mathrm{mmHg}$) & RMSE $(\mathrm{mmHg})$ & MAE($\mathrm{mmHg}$) \\
\midrule
\multirow{3}*{SBP} & NIBPP~\cite{43SF2021} & $-$ & $-$ & $13.6$ \\
~ & NCBP~\cite{44Rong2021} & $19.81$ & $22.43$ & $17.52$ \\
~ & LSTM-90 & $17.02$ & $17.35$ & $13.42$ \\
~ & LSTM-150 & \textcolor{red}{16.02} & \textcolor{red}{16.55} & \textcolor{red}{12.35} \\
~ & LSTM-225 & $16.98$ & $17.12$ & $13.15$ \\
\midrule
\multirow{3}*{DBP} & NIBPP~\cite{43SF2021} & $-$ & $-$ & $10.3$ \\
~ & NCBP~\cite{44Rong2021} & $15.21$ & $15.23$ & $12.13$ \\
~ & LSTM-90 & $13.34$ & $13.44$ & $10.41$ \\
~ & LSTM-150 & \textcolor{red}{11.98} & \textcolor{red}{12.22} & \textcolor{red}{9.54} \\
~ & LSTM-225 & $12.87$ & $13.22$ & $10.33$ \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}}
\end{table}
\end{center}

\begin{figure}[h]
	\centering
	\subfigure[The Bland-Altman plots of the estimated systolic blood pressure values]
	{\includegraphics[width=0.6\linewidth]{Fig4f.png}
	}\\
	\subfigure[The Bland-Altman plots of the estimated diastolic blood pressure values]
	{\includegraphics[width=0.6\linewidth]{Fig5f.png}
	}\\
\caption{The Bland-Altman plots of the estimated (a) systolic blood pressure and (b) diastolic blood pressures comparing with their ground truths.
}
	\label{fig6}
\end{figure}

\section{Conclusion}
This paper presents the first non-contact end-to-end blood pressure measurement network, which only uses face video information to quickly calculate diastolic and systolic blood pressure in 15 seconds. Tests have been run on the public dataset MMSE-HR and the self-collected data set ASPD, and the results show that the proposed BPM-Net can effectively and efficiently measure blood pressure.

\section{Acknowledgments}
This work is supported by the Sichuan Science and Technology Program under Grant 2022YFS0032 to Xiujuan Zheng, the Shaanxi Provincial Natural Science Basic Research Program under Grant 2021JQ-455 to Bin Li. The authors would like to thank the engineers of Xi'an Singularity Fusion Information Technology Co. Ltd for their supports of data collection and experimental procedures.

\section*{Declaration of competing interest}
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.\par

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaArXiv


We were asked by some members to post some of our things. These are some of the shell gorgets we do, most are out of Lightning Whelks. We hope you enjoy them. All pictures are copyrighted.
Over the years we have sold quite a few shells. Some we do not have pictures of while others we only have a poor quality video of them. Please excuse some of the poor quality pictures as they were taken off of that video.
To show how we came up with some of the things made, we will explain this picture and this gourd rattler. It is rather obvious that the beaded raccoon on the handle of the rattler is taken from the raccoon hanging on the "pole" on the shell gorget. If you look in the hands of each of the 'dancers' you will see a gourd rattler with a design on it. The same design is engraved on the gourd rattler below. What has happened is that one of the items shown in the design has now become a workable artifact than can be used as a teaching tool or at a ceremonial stomp. We hope you like it.


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THESE RELATIONSHIPS HAVE PURPOSE IN THE DIVINE PLAN FOR YOUR LIFE AND IN OUR COLLECTIVE LIFE IN THE BODY OF CHRIST PROVIDED YOU DON'T TRY TO CONTROL THEM. DISCOVERING THE HIGHER GOOD THAT G-D HAS PLANNED FOR THESE CHRIST MANAGED RELATIONSHIPS WILL RESULT IN PRAISE AND HONOR GOING TO HIM FOR GRANTING THE SIMPLE PLEASURE OF LIFE-GIVING RELATIONSHIPS WITH FLAWED PEOPLE.
PEOPLE DON'T JUST HAPHAZARDLEY ENTER INTO OUR LIVES FOR NO REASON, BLINDLY, BUT ARE SENT TO US STRATEGICALLY TO HELP US GRASP THE PLAN G-D HAS FOR OUR LIVES. TO SPREAD THE GLORIOUS RICHES OF HIS GRACE TO THE FOUR CORNERS OF THE WORLD AND FULFILLING THE GREAT COMMISSION AND DEVELOPING THE HOPE OF GLORY IN US BY HIS LOVING DEMONSTRATIVE GRACE.
BY THE ONE WHO ORCHESTRATES OUR STEPS DAILY,LIVING OUT PREDETERMINED PATHS THAT ARE ACCESSED BY OUR WALK OF FAITH.
WE BELIEVE THAT IF G-D'S INITIAL INTERNAL DESIGN WAS FOR US "TO WALK BY FAITH" TO ACTUALIZE AND ACT UPON OUR ABILITY TO WALK BY FAITH IS WITHOUT A DOUBT ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY TO LIVE OUT OUR CALLING TO BRING ABOUT THE GREATEST GOOD FOR MANKIND AND THE KINGDOM OF THE ONE WE PROCLAIM.
TO NOT ACTUALIZE A LIFE OF FAITH IS TO LIVE OUR LIVES WELL BELOW OUR G-D GIVEN POTENTIAL.
THESE WORDS ARE NOT DESIGNED TO CONDEMN YOU, BUT SIMPLY TO OFFER AN OBSERVATION GAINED THROUGH MANY TEDIOUS YEARS OF LONELINESS AND LIVING IN THE HELLISH PREDICAMENT OF FAMILY COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN AND LOCAL CHURCH MISUNDERSTANDING. THROUGH THESE EXPERIENCES, I MANY TIMES FELT COMPLETELY OVERWHELMED BY THE EXASPERATING INTERNAL WRESTLING AND CONFLICT THAT CHURNED ON THE INSIDE OF ME. AT LAST, I CAME TO THE PLACE OF "REST"
THAT IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO PLEASE G-D WITHOUT OUR ACTIVE MEASURE OF FAITH (HEB 11:6). THE KNOW THAT THERE ARE CIRCUMSTANCES SPECIFICALLY ARRANGED BY OUR LOVING FATHERLY HAND TO PROMOTE HIS DESIRE INSIDE OF US. THAT HIS WAYS ARE HIGHER THAN OURS (ISAIAH 55:11). WHEN WE LIVE AGAINST FAITH WE LIVE AGAINST OUR PURPOSE AND DESIGN AND IN TURN WE FAIL TO MATURE TO THE FULLNESS OF THE STATURE OF CHRIST.
WE MISS OUR GREATEST GOOD IN THIS WORLD. WE MUST, FOR THE SAKE OF HUMANITY, IN OUR GENERATION, TO LIVE OUT OF OUR LEARNED FAITH "INTENTIONAL LIVING" IT IS UNCOMMON AT FIRST, UNCOMFORTABLE AT BEST, DISTURBING AT TIMES AS A WAY OF LIVING, YET THE ONLY WAY TO FLY AT THE HEIGHTS OF G-D'S LOVE IN KINGDOM OF HIS MARVELOUS LIGHT IS BY LETTING THE MOST HIGH TRAIN US BY THIS CROSS BEARING WAY.
AS WE LEARN TRUSTING THE L-RD DESPITE OUR INTELLECT & MENTAL RESISTANCE, AS PROVERBS 3:5-6 DECLARES, HE WILL NEVER REQUIRE ANYTHING CONTRARY TO SCRIPTURE, BUT WILL IN EFFECT CONFIRM IT.
LIVING A LIFE BASED ON PRE ORDAINED CONNECTIONS TO FURTHER THE GLORY OF G-D IN MESSIAH YESHUA THROUGH ONE ON ONE INDIVIDUAL CONNECTIONS ENCOURAGING AND FOSTERING INDIVIDUAL MANIFESTATIONS OF G-D GIVEN GIFTS AS OUTLINED IN ROM 12. DEMONSTRATED THROUGH THE VARIOUS FORM OF G-D'S GRACE 1 PETER 4: 7-11 PRODUCING THE ABILITY TO LOVE DEEPLY ONE ANOTHER.
ONE BODY, ONE SPIRIT, ONE UNITED IN HIM, OUR TRUE PEACE, AND HOPE OF REDEMPTION, OH MAY HE COME SOON.


Amy Grant is a noted American singer, author and media personality. Explore this biography to learn more about her profile, childhood, life and timeline.
Born in: Augusta, Georgia, U.S.
Amy Grant became one of the first faces to give life and meaning to contemporary Christian music in the 20th century. She is also one of the first Christian artists to have successfully made a shift into the pop music market. Over the years, her music has delivered a weightier, spiritual platter for listeners to draw from but like every other artist, she too has had her share of triumphs and challenges. Her songs are in fact life lessons that reverberate meaning, truth and tender wisdom. Most of her life incidents are instrumental in inspiring the sort of music that she had produced during her prime years. At a very young age, she signed her first recording contract and became an instant success in the realm of Christian music. During her peak time, she managed to make a transition into the pop music genre and although some of her fans were taken aback by this sudden change, many of her Christian fans remained loyal and even backed her pop music success. Apart from her musical career, she hosted the reality TV show, 'Three Wishes' and has also authored a number of books, one of the most popular ones being, her memoir, 'Mosaic: Pieces of My Life So Far'. To acquaint yourself with this famous personality, read further.
Amy Lee Grant was born in Augusta, Georgia and is the youngest of the four sisters born to her parents.
She grew up in a closely-knit family in Nashville, Tennessee and it was her early church-going days that triggered her love for Christian stories, hymns and songs, that would later go on to influence her work.
She attended Harpeth Hall School, where she would regularly perform on stage. When she was a teenager, she taught herself to play the guitar and also worked part-time at a recording studio.
She signed her first recording contract with a Christian music label and eventually, went on to record her self-titled debut album, which was released in 1978. The same year, she gave her debut performance in a jam-packed concert, while she started her first year at Furman University.
In 1979, she met her future husband, Gary Chapman, during her second album-release party for 'My Father's Eyes'. The next year, she moved to Vanderbilt University, where she became a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta guild.
She rode high on the success of her album, 'Age to Age' and then began to release a string of Christmas albums that would later be used for her holiday concerts. In 1984, she released the Christian album, 'Straight Ahead', which had pop nuances.
1985 was a year of perseverance and sheer grit. She wanted to broaden her fan base and was more determined than ever to become the first Christian Pop singer-songwriter and thus, released her album, 'Unguarded', which came as a surprise (both, pleasant and rude) to a number of her Christian fans.
In 1988, she released another album, 'Lead Me On', which contained a huge list of melodies based on love and Christianity. This album went on to become one of the greatest Contemporary-Christian records of all time.
In 1991, she began to expand into the pop music genre and released the album, 'Heart in Motion'. Many fans were taken aback by her sudden wish to switch genres and some even frowned upon her choice of music. However, Grant added that she meant to deviate because she wanted to expand her fan base. The album became a hit and she was established as a popular face even in the mainstream world.
From 1992 to 1994, she released two Christian albums with shades of pop music such as 'Home for Christmas' and 'House of Love'.
Her 15th album, 'Behind the Eyes' was released in 1997 and delved on darker foci related to heartbreaks, marriage, divorce and themes of optimism. Although she believed that the album would make waves in the market, it failed to hit it big with the audience, who were already beginning to lose interest in her newly found interest for mainstream music.
Nevertheless, she came back with a bang with the album, 'A Christmas to Remember' in 1999. The album became a huge hit and her popularity slowly began to ascend again.
In the new millennium, she returned to her gospel music origins with the release of 'Legacy…Hymns and Faith', in 2002. The subsequent year, she released a pop album, 'Simple Things', which was not as popular.
In 2005, she released a sequel to her hymns collection titled, 'Rock of Ages… Hymns and Faith'. The same year, she joined as a host on the NBC reality show, 'Three Wishes', which was cancelled after a brief run, due to sky-high production costs.
In 2007, she authored her memoirs titled, 'Mosaic: Pieces of My Life So Far'. The same year marked her 30th year in the world of music and re-released most of her albums after they were re-mastered by the record group, EMI CMG.
In 2010, she released, 'Somewhere down the Road', which was considered a Billboard Hit and contained the single, 'Better than a Hallelujah'.
Two years later, she participated in a campaign to support a media project called, 'Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide'.
Her latest album, 'How Mercy Looks From Here' was released on May 14, 2013.
'Amy Grant', her debut album as a teenager, released in 1977, sold initially only in Christian stores. However, the album became her first magnum opus and it sold 50,000 copies in the first year. Three of the singles from the Christian album made it onto the Christian radio including, 'What a Difference You've Made', 'Old Man's Rubble' and 'Beautiful Music'.
In 1988, she released 'Lead Me On', which showed her pluck as a contemporary-Christian singer-songwriter. It was ranked as the '#1 Christian Album of all time' by CCM Magazine and has also been featured in 'WOW #1s: 31 of the Greatest Christian Music Hits Ever' list. Three of the singles from the album peaked at the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks.
In 1982, she won a Grammy Award for 'Best Gospel Performance, Contemporary or Inspirational' for the album, 'Age to Age'.
In 1983, she won the GMA Dove Awards for 'Artist of the Year'.
In 1994, she was honored with the Nashville Symphony Harmony Award.
In 1996, she was presented the 'Academy of Achievement' Golden Plate Award.
She was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in 2005.
In 2007, she was inducted in to the Christian Music Hall of Fame.
In 2012, she was presented a Honorary Doctorate Degree of Music and Performance by Grand Canyon University.
She married Gary Chapman on June 19, 1982. The couple had three children together. However, they divorced after 16 years of marriage.
She married Vince Gill on March 10, 2000 and the following year, she gave birth to their daughter, Corinna.
While performing on stage, this famous Christian-contemporary singer-songwriter, would always remove her shoes on stage, performing barefoot, because she claimed that it made her feel comfort. This would later go on to become her trademark 'concert' gimmick.


Post all your awesome maps here.
auto pick: you can't change your character when you dead.
all pick: you can choose chacter free.
skills: all character has 4 skills.
this map need file of link.
Last edited by panic on Mon Aug 22, 2016 2:31 pm, edited 2 times in total.
open source of this map.


§ 45.1-161.318. Chapter subject to provisions of general law.
This chapter shall be subject to all the provisions of general law applicable to coal mining operations.
Code 1950, § 45-154; 1950, p. 33; 1966, c. 594, § 45.1-154; 1994, c. 28.


Promote players card to all gamers.
Interact with gaming customers to get player's card sign ups, explaining the perks of gaming with us.
Operate and balance cash register without shortages/overages staying within company standards.
Prepare variety of food/drinks, coffee, operate and, clean equipment such as roller grill, creamer machine, soda fountain machines and other cold/frozen dispensed equipment and, any display cases.
Stock product on sales floor, cooler, and freezer.
Clean store and maintain company standard on sales floor cleanliness.
Help clean and maintain organization in backroom/stockrooms.
Clean restroom, as assigned checking hourly and signing off sheet that they are properly cleaned.


A Public interest litigation(PIL) has been filed in the Supreme Court seeking to restrain swearing-in of AIADMK leader VK Sasikala as Tamil Nadu chief minister.
However, the Madras University Auditorium, which had earlier hosted the swearing-in of late chief minister Jayalalithaa, was being reportedly spruced up for the occasion, while apparently awaiting the court directive. A senior AIADMK source told PTI that all arrangements were in place in the event of the ceremony taking place tomorrow.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has asked the Karnataka government to wait for one week for the verdict on batch of pleas challenging the acquittal of the late Tamil Nadu chief minister Jayalalithaa in a disproportionate assets case, also involving AIADMK leader V K Sasikala.
Dave said that they have been waiting for the judgement for quite some time and requested the bench to pronounce it soon. The apex court had last year, before the demise of Jayalalithaa, reserved its verdict on a batch of petitions challenging the order of her acquittal of the Karnataka High Court.
Sasikala, a shadow of Jayalalithaa for nearly three decades, is set to become the chief minister of Tamil Nadu as the AIADMK legislature party yesterday elected her as its leader, over a month after she became the party's powerful General Secretary.


text:
Juice Quotes
Mike Pence is the kind of guy that brushes his teeth and then drinks orange juice and thinks, 'Mmm.'
Author Profession: Comedian
Find on Amazon: Michelle Wolf
Groucho Marx, Steven Wright, Mitch Hedberg, George Carlin, Rodney Dangerfield, Robin Williams, W. C. Fields, Jerry Seinfeld
Brushes, Drinks, Guy, His, Juice, Kind, Mike, Orange, Teeth, Then, Thinks
I'm very quiet off stage. I think I'm a pretty boring person. I'm not super talkative; I spend a lot of my time running and zoning out. I spend so much time trying to write jokes and 'be on,' so when I'm finally off stage, I just want to sit.
Time Think Boring Person
The most useful information on CNN is when Anthony Bourdain tells me where to eat noodles.
Me Information Noodles Eat
It's important for people to, instead of automatically assuming everything the opposite side says is incorrect, you have to at least listen and see why someone might feel a certain way.
You People Feel Way
I think I'm a good joke writer. I'm also very scared that the last joke I wrote is the last joke I'll ever write.
Good Think Joke Last
The more confident I am, the more daring I am.
I Am Confident More Daring
That's why we should respect people: not for how pretty they are, for how useful they are. What would you rather have, a pretty friend or a friend that can help you move? Always a friend that can help you move!
You People Respect Friend
I always loved comedy, but in my mind, it wasn't a viable career option. I always thought, 'You go to college. You get a job, and then you pay off college.'
You Loved Mind Job
Writing for late night is really good for learning how to write when you don't want to write. You have to produce every day. It's also very good for refining the difference between your point of view and the host's.
Good Day Learning You
Before comedy, I worked at a tech company, and before that, I worked on Wall Street. And, honestly, I've never really been sexually harassed.
Street Never Comedy Company
Watching Rachel Maddow is like going to Target. You went in for milk, but you left with shampoo, candles, and the entire history of the Byzantine Empire. 'I didn't need this.'
History You Need Target
We cannot forget about Rachel Maddow. She is the Peter Pan of MSNBC. But instead of never growing up, she never gets to the point.
Forget Growing Up Never She
We're never gonna have a nice lady run for president.
Nice Never Lady Run
As a woman, I have access to hit women in a way that men might not be able to hit them with jokes. I don't mean physically hit. But you know, because I'm a woman, I can say things about women because I know what it's like to be a woman, if that makes any sense.
Women You Woman Men
I would love to be a dad. There are plenty of comedians who have kids. But they're dads. Being a dad is so different from being a mom.
Love Mom Dad Being

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Alcohol giant takes sober leap for parenthood
By Karabo Ledwaba - 08 August 2019 - 10:33
An alcoholic beverage company has changed its paternity and maternity leave policy
Image: 123RF/ JAKUB GOJDA
An alcoholic beverages company has announced a new paternity and maternity policy regime that has been hailed as progressive just in time for Women's Day.
Global spirits giant Diageo which owns popular alcoholic brands such as Tanqueray, Ciroc and Johnnie Walker said it will be providing 26 weeks of maternity and four weeks of paternity leave for all its employees on full pay.
This will also be applicable for couples in same sex relationships and parents who have adopted their children.
Currently, men are able to claim between three to 10 days of paternity leave. Gay men and adoptive parents were also recently granted 10 days leave through the Labour Laws Amendment Bill.
Nomxolisi Sikhondze, 33, is one of the first mothers to benefit from Diageo's 26 weeks maternity leave policy.
"As a first-time mom, I really wanted to take 6 months off to get the hang of it. So I was busy navigating my annual leave to see how far it could take me after exhausting paid maternity leave. I guess the universe conspired in my favour," she said.
Sikhondze, who is employed as legal counsel, said she will be able to bond with her child and set a solid foundation before hiring someone she can trust to look after her child.
Numsa says it's ready to down tools over wages in vehicle sector
The union wants a one-year, 20% wage increase across the board, and extensive benefits, and has set aside four days of negotiations 'to purely fight'
Kabelo Chabalala, the founder of the Young Men Movement, said the increase in paternity leave will allow fathers to bond with their children in the early days of their arrival.
"We undermine how tired mothers get and the pressure they are put under. It will allow for men to be present and this will surely make a difference, maybe it will make men more active in their children's lives," he said.
Siya Khumalo, the author of You have to be gay to know God, said the inclusion of the LGBTI should have been normalised a long time ago.
"It depends on how you look at it. I'm not speaking for the whole LGBTI community, and I don't have much detail on the announcement; I am learning about the situation as it develops. From a workplace equality perspective, it's only fair when the benefits availed to cis-heterosexual employees are extended to the LGBTI community," said Khumalo.
"Unequal rights sends out a toxic message - that heteronormativity is the norm, and some employees are more equal than others. This move shouldn't even be a new thing to be announced; it should have been a given all along."
Still a long road for transgender women
Yaya says family never tried to change her
Reality show strives to bring closure to ex-lovers
PHOTOS | XiTsonga wedding sets social media alight
Friends can have sex without any strings attached
Author warns about 'Dubai girls' lifestyle
Your cellphone is weighing you down, obesity study finds
A cop and a pilot walk into a bar ... and walk out sober after a few ciders
Homemade beer, drugs, cellphones, cash found in raid on Durban's Westville ...
The bottom of the bottle: How many drinks are too many?
Nearly 900 arrested in July for drunk-driving offences in Joburg


Shine, Salon and Spa, Timaru.
Or delight someone with a thoughtful and luxurious treat.
On behalf of the bridal party I would like to thank you all for such a wonderful stress-free experience! You guys are amazing and did a fantastic job! We couldn't have asked for better!
I'm one of those clients who never books until the last minute, is usually in a rush, wants a distinctive style created without fuss in upmarket surroundings and all this from welcoming professionals who are genuinely interested in making me look and feel great. I get all this and more from Shine – a fantastic team with exceptional skills.
Shine, Salon and Spa, Corner George & Stafford Streets, Timaru.


text:
Thought-shifting art
Andrew Fuhrmann: Performing Climates
Enfold
The arts have always provided a mirror on our relationship with the environment. The epic poems of the ancient world in which heroes sailed forth to do battle with terrifying monsters in unmapped regions register culturally specific ways of thinking about nature, its concealed resources and potential transformations. This is also true of the cave paintings at Lascaux and Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring, for the landscape paintings of Li Cheng and Jane Campion's Top of the Lake.
But is the ancient role of sensitive and receptive observer enough in an age when we are beginning to feel the impacts of anthropogenic climate change? For many artists, the answer is no. Today's issues are too important. There is a feeling in the air that now more than ever the artist must make a conscious effort to be useful, to be the hammer and not the glass, to advocate for collective global action on emissions management and to warn of the dangers of failing to act.
And so artists—with plenty of support from arts and other organisations around the world—are increasingly looking to new methods of performance that prioritise community participation and aim to shift cultural attitudes.
Best Festival Ever
The Best Festival Ever
This seems to be the motivating impulse behind a short program of events curated by Arts House and presented as part of the 2016 Performance Studies International Conference at the University of Melbourne.
In an attempt to convince audiences of the everyday utility of the interdisciplinary field of systems science, David Finnigan, Nathan Harrison, Nikki Kennedy, Rachel Roberts and David Shaw (going under the name Boho Interactive) have created a participatory performance event based on a series of tabletop games.
In Best Festival Ever, audience members play the role of music festival organiser, following a kind of choose-your-own-adventure storyline inspired by some of the great music festival disasters, including the floods at the infamous 2005 Glastonbury Festival. All the while Boho Interactive cannily sneaks in quick lessons on the basic principles of systemology.
The set-up is very attractive. We sit at a long table covered in green cloth with a model stage at one end and a serpentine strip of blue running down the centre representing a creek at the festival location. The games involve coloured building blocks, dice, toy quadbikes and lots of negotiations. There's a charming homemade quality to the props, but it all works smoothly and the evening hums along. The apt use of Captain Planet figurines gives me a special sentimental thrill.
It is hard to judge the pedagogical value of the show. If it's any measure of success or failure, I'm not sure that I gleaned enough to go out myself and preach the importance of tipping points or hysteresis or whatever. However, as a social event, it is brilliant fun and consistently involving. It's no surprise that Best Festival Ever has had success as a team-building exercise with corporate clients both in Australia and in England.
The show has an optimistic spirit and an ultimately comforting message, reassuring us that science provides the conceptual tools needed to manage environmental disasters, even those of immense complexity, as long as there are enough people at the table.
In Enfold, a meditative installation and dance piece by Ria Soemardjo, Jade Dewi Tyas Tunggal and Paula Van Beek, we shift to a different model of participation. If there is a sort of creeping philistinism about Best Festival Ever in the way it reduces art to mere communication, Enfold heads in the other direction, insisting on the connection between art and the sacred.
Enfold attempts to engineer a sense of participation and flow by moving the audience around the space as the performance shifts from one corner to another, using a few small props to indicate a shifting shoreline. At different points we are given small cup-like structures made from a kind of crude felt, about the size and shape of an oyster shell. With these we are invited to carry water with us while we watch.
Vocalist Soemardjo sings a brief but haunting arietta that sounds like a disappearing lullaby while Tyas Tunggal improvises from fragments of traditional Javanese dance, undulant and slowly vibrating. The two performers, who previously collaborated on the very impressive and highly atmospheric Opal Vapour (2012), often touch throughout early parts of the performance, resting on one another, as if connected by a shared breath. Later, Soemardjo accompanies herself with a single-string Brazilian percussion instrument called a berimbau while Tyas Tunggal cruises around the space wearing a small square of plastic tarpaulin as a wrap. Much of this work feels like the eroded remnant of some larger symbolism.
The show is performed in a small room upstairs at the North Melbourne Town Hall. It's such a stripped down presentation that I had a strong feeling that we really were in an out-of-the-way place, caught on the inside of a fold. The narrow dimensions, hard walls and the absence of furnishings in the room give Soemardjo's voice a pleasing fullness and depth.
The idea is to create a mobile ceremony that can be adapted to different kinds of venue. Rituals require that participants understand the steps, or are initiated; here there always seemed to be some confusion about where to stand and when to move, which prevented our complete immersion in the experience. There were lots of nods and puzzled smiles and misunderstandings as Janette Hoe, a dance artist in her own right but here playing a kind of usher, attempted to shepherd audience members around the space.
And the earth sighed, Josephine Starrs, Leon Cmielewski
and the earth sighed
A large video installation, titled and the earth sighed, represents a more confrontational and in many ways problematic approach to the performance of climate. It features footage of Australian landscapes and seascapes recorded by drones and underwater cameras projected onto the floor of the main performance space at the North Melbourne Town Hall. Entering the space from above, via a scaffold platform, we stare down as the land is subjected to post-production manipulations, showing encroaching sea water and desertification.
And there is text, too, digitally scrawled across the land, erasing the kangaroo tracks and wild flowers. In a brief catalogue essay, Fiona McGregor asks how one can empathise with an environment. Josephine Starrs and Leon Cmielewski seem to suggest that the way to do this is to subject the environment to a recognisably human torture. Their defacement of the desert echoes the punishment described by Kafka in a short story, "In the Penal Colony," in which prisoners' sentences are carved onto their bodies. It's as if humanity is a machine with which to judge and then destroy the Earth.
Even without these dynamic manipulations, the work manages to create an atmosphere of menace. With the camera looking down, the shadow of the quadcopter drone is always visible, gliding over the landscape. It looks like crosshairs and feels like the artists are targeting the Earth. The projections are arranged so that the audience can wander across the images, as if traversing the land; but when I visited, no one seemed game, preferring to observe from a safe distance. Who would willingly place themselves in the crosshairs, especially when the pilot seems so callow and unstable?
In contrast to other pieces in the Performing Climates program, which includes Marrugeku's Cut the Sky, this is a work that seems to encourage a kind of inhibitory fear of the new climatic regime. And the earth sighed suggests that the threat is ineluctable and that action is pointless: all that we can do is record our doom-struck fascination with the planet's coming transformation.
Performing Climates, Arts House, North Melbourne Town Hall; 6-10 July
RealTime issue #133 June-July 2016
© Andrew Fuhrmann; for permission to reproduce apply to realtime@realtimearts.net


text:
Rainer Mertens (* 5. Mai 1961 in Nürnberg) ist ein deutscher Historiker sowie verantwortlicher Leiter der Sammlungen und Ausstellungen der Deutschen Bahn.

Leben

Beruflicher Werdegang
Mertens studierte in den 1980er Jahren Geologie, Neuere Geschichte, Politologie und Volkswirtschaft an der Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Sein Studium schloss er 1987 mit dem Grad eines Magister Artium ab. Von 1990 bis 1997 arbeitete Mertens als Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter bei Geschichte Für Alle – Institut für Regionalgeschichte in Nürnberg und wirkte bei vielen Publikationen und Ausstellungen zur Nürnberger Regionalgeschichte mit und führte eigene historische Forschungen durch. 1996 promovierte er unter Rudolf Endres mit seiner Arbeit über Johannes Scharrer. 1994 war er Mitgründer des Sandberg-Verlages in Nürnberg und bis 2000 auch Gesellschafter.

Seit April 1997 arbeitet Mertens als Leiter der Abteilung Ausstellungen und Sammlungen im DB Museum Nürnberg. Als Kurator und Projektleiter organisierte er in dieser Zeit über ein dutzend Ausstellungen zur Geschichte der Deutschen Bahn und ihrer Vorgänger. 2005 schrieb er das Drehbuch für den Kurzfilm Unterwegs mit dem Adler, der in der Dauerausstellung des Museums die Entstehung der deutschen Eisenbahn skizziert.

Privates
Mertens ist Keyboarder und gehört zu den Gründungsmitgliedern der Rockband Shiny Gnomes, die 1988 bis 1991 bei PolyGram unter Vertrag standen, internationale Auftritte absolvierten und zahlreiche Tonträger veröffentlichten. Er ist verheiratet und hat zwei Kinder.

Würdigungen
Mertens ist für sein kulturelles Engagement 1987 als Gründer und Mitglied der Band Shiny Gnomes und 1994 als Gründer und hauptamtlicher Mitarbeiter für Geschichte für alle mit dem Kulturförderpreis der Stadt Nürnberg ausgezeichnet worden.

Publikationen (Auswahl)
als Autor
 Nürnberg, die Entdeckung Amerikas und die Folgen, Ein kolonialer Stadtrundgang, Sandberg Verlag, Nürnberg 1992.
 Johannes Scharrer. Profil eines Reformers in Nürnberg zwischen Aufklärung und Romantik. Nürnberger Werkstücke zur Stadt- und Landesgeschichte Bd. 57. Korn und Berg, Nürnberg 1996, ISBN 3-87432-134-7.
 Deutsche Bahn (Hrsg.): Die direkte Bahn München – Nürnberg ist das erste Bedürfnis, München 2002.
 DB Station & Service AG (Hrsg.): 160 Jahre Hauptbahnhof München. Eine Reise durch die Zeit, Berlin 2009.
als Mitautor

 Jenseits des Weißen Turms. Geschichte und Geschichten aus dem Jakober Viertel, Sandberg-Verlag, Nürnberg 1997.
 Was ist was (Jugendbuchreihe) Band 54: Die Eisenbahn, Tessloff-Verlag, Nürnberg 2001, ISBN 978-3788602949.
 DB Museum (Hrsg.): Auf getrennten Gleisen. Reichsbahn und Bundesbahn 1945–1989 (Band 3), Nürnberg 2001, ISBN 978-3980765213.
 DB Museum (Hrsg.): Im Dienst von Demokratie und Diktatur. Die Reichsbahn 1920–1945 (Band 2), Nürnberg 2002, ISBN 978-3980765220.
 DB Museum (Hrsg.): Ein Jahrhundert unter Dampf. Die Eisenbahn in Deutschland 1835–1919. (Band 1), Nürnberg 2005, ISBN 978-3980765237.
 DB Museum (Hrsg.): Go easy Go Bahn. 200 Jahre Eisenbahn und Werbung, Begleitband zur gleichnamigen Ausstellung im DB Museum, Nürnberg 2008, ISBN 978-3980765299.

Weblinks

 Rainer Mertens auf der Seite der Deutschen Bahn

Technikhistoriker
Person (Nürnberg)
Deutscher
Geboren 1961
Mann
Keyboarder

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


The Port of Camas-Washougal offers 77 hangars and 14 tie-downs for lease. A 2-month minimum lease period is required, and month-to-month thereafter. The commission reviews hangar and tie-down rates annually, with any adjustments effective the following January 1.
To learn more about leasing a hangar or tie-down, please call the port office (360) 835-2196 ext. 103 during regular business hours.


I'm going to start by saying that for a month filled with so much change, September has been a really great month. Between moving, starting a new job, and trying to find my way around a new there are lots of new favorites to have.
For starters, I'd say change would need to be a favorite. I've been so happy in Birmingham so far and am really excited about this new "chapter" of life. I am loving my house, roommate, and job and am excited to start making more friends and explore different parts of Birmingham. While I definitely like routine, I'd like to think that change in some capacity isn't something I am super resistant to. I am definitely feeling at peace with my decision to move away from teaching and take a risk moving some place new especially since I have been so happy here.
I know I mentioned these on Monday, but honestly, I could write a whole post on my love of Perfect Bars. I love that they are refrigerated, have tons of protein but don't taste like protein if you're familiar with that distinct taste, and come in a variety of flavors. Since I work longish hours Monday-Thursday, it's nice to have a filling snack in the afternoon that isn't unhealthy as I've been trying to go and workout after I leave. I love these bars so much that I've gotten to the point where I buy an entire display box of 8 bars off of Trader Joe's shelf.
At work, I am on the computer a lot and have found my eyes feeling a little bit strained. This was the perfect reminder for me to bring the blue light glasses I have to work to make the light from the computer a little less intense on my eyes during the day. I'm thinking about ordering another pair to keep at home since I've found how much this help.
Another work related favorite, legal pads have become my go-to for writing things down. I use them to brainstorm blog posts, work instagrams, as well as write to-do list, and any messages from customer calls. I like that they have lines to keep things nice and neat but are also easy to tear pages off of once I'm finished with a previous page. Nell used these a lot in college for studying, and I can definitely see their appeal for that as well.
Because I am sent stuff try out on occasion, I realized during my move just how much stuff I have. Although I donated a lot of it, I tried to come up with ways that I could use some of the things I had been gifted while still simplifying my life. One of the items I had 2 of was a hair dryer. I had been sent this Panasonic hair dryer for a campaign in the spring and decided that between the 2 I had, it was my favorite. I decided to take the other one to my parent's house so that when I packed to come home, I wouldn't have to pack a hair dryer. Since I went home before moving to Birmingham where this new hair dryer was, I kind of forgot about how great it is. Something about how powerful it is combined with the fact that it's relatively quiet and shoots cold hair at the same time as hot air to smooth your hair makes it magical.
Sticking to the topic of hair, I have been using the Amica Straightening Brush this summer and am truly impressed. This brush is meant to replace a straightener since it has the same sort of hot plate but also has bristles so that as you brush, it straightens. I love that I don't feel like I'm suffocating my hair between two hot plates when using this and that it helps to keep some natural volume. I've found that using this instead of a straightener in the morning saves some time which is a major win.
My skin has been all over the place this month with breakouts and then feeling super dry. I've had my eyes on this mask for the longest time but never wanted to bite the bullet due to price. When I was especially fed up with my skin this month, I decided it was time to give it a try. Although I really wouldn't consider it a mask (it's much more of a heavy lotion), it's amazing how hydrating this has been for my skin. Lately, I've been using it once a day because of how dry my skin felt, but once that's under control using it a couple times a week will continue to help hydrate my skin without using so much of the product at once.
I know, I know, I am so late on the podcast game. Everyone has been obsessed with podcasts for so long and I'm only just beginning that fascination. I listen to them some at work and have gotten through a couple really great true crime podcasts that friends had suggested. So far I've listened to Serial (Season 1), S-Town, Dirty John, and Up and Vanished (Season 1). Y'all gave me so many more great recommendations on instagram (that I'll also share in a blog post too) that I'm looking forward to listening to as well.
One thing I've really missed since being in such a consistent routine from last school year was my morning quiet time. I try to allow myself 15-25 minutes in the morning to get back in bed while still in pajamas to drink my coffee, eat my oatmeal, and use my 5 Minute Journal and do some reading. I recently started New Morning Mercies after hearing so many good things about it and am glad I did. I have been through Jesus Calling a few times, and while I love it, I wanted something new. There's a specific message on each page, so it's a relatively quick read and has been such a great way to start my mornings.
I'd love to know more about your experience wearing blue light glasses, Dorothy. Been thinking of getting myself a pair for the longest time but haven't been able to find much about them!
I've heard great things about New Morning Mercies! My hair dresser actually used a straightening brush on my hair a few weeks ago and now one is on my list.


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Taiwan's Tai Tzu-ying beat her Chinese rival in two straight games Saturday to advance to the women's singles final of the BLIBLI Indonesia Open 2018 in Jakarta.
Currently ranked World No. 1, Tai fought off the challenge from 8th-ranked He Bingjiao 21-13, 21-18 in a match that lasted just 31 minutes.
The victory brought her winning streak in major tournaments to 28 matches in a row, a career high.
She will next play World No. 5 Chen Yufei of China, who defeated Sung Ji Hyun of South Korea 21-23, 21-18 and 23-21 that day in the semifinals.


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Reflections From A Watery World
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In this age of rapid music consumption, everyone wants to label music, as well as the bands performing it. But how do you label a band whose music has been called 'jazz', but is not – 'rock'n'roll' and 'sixties psychedelia', yet is both and neither? Instrumental music, performed solely on drums and Hammond organ; melodic yet monotonous, sometimes smooth and melancholic, sometimes exploding and intensely groovy? Their music is inspired by the 60's Swedish duo Hansson & Karlsson, who also used the same instrumentation to achieve a similar sound. View wiki
In this age of rapid music consumption, everyone wants to label music, as well as the bands performing it. But how do you label a band whose music has been called 'jazz', but is not – 'rock… read more
In this age of rapid music consumption, everyone wants to label music, as well as the bands performing it. But how do you label a band whose music has been called 'jazz', but is not – 'rock'n'roll' and 'sixties psychedelia', yet is bot… read more
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Q: Function with guards: syntax error when using "where" MWE:
import Control.Monad.State.Lazy

fibStep :: State (Integer, Integer) ()
fibStep = state $ \(a, b) -> ((), (b, a + b))

execStateN :: Int -> State s a -> s -> s
execStateN n m s
  | n == 1 = execState m s
  | n > 1 = let s' = execState m s in
              execStateN (n - 1) m s'
  -- | n > 1 = execStateN (n - 1) m s' where s' = execState m s
  | otherwise = error "undefined behaviour"

It works, but as soon as I uncomment where variant and comment the let one, it gives syntax error:

error: parse error on input '|'

I checked the indents, they are fine. What's wrong?

A: The where is scoped over all the guards, so you put it at the end of the guards, like:
execStateN :: Int -> State s a -> s -> s
execStateN n m s
  | n == 1 = execState m s
  | n > 1 = execStateN (n - 1) m s'
  | otherwise = error "undefined behaviour"
  where s' = execState m s

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Last time I was planning to write I wanted to tell about the spaghetti with mushroom cream that I've made. I had crazy craving for it, and it turned out to be delicious. I enjoy cooking without recipes a whole lot. I sliced some mushrooms and buttered them with salt and herbs. Then I poured heavy cream into the pan with Parmesan and pepper and let it bubble.
We went on a vacation this past weekend and ate a lot, especially junk food. It was awesome.


text:
When Architectural History Meets Personal History
Writer Eva Hagberg and I have known each other for a long time. Way back, in a year I can't remember, I assigned her one of her first magazine assignments. Literally dozens of other assignments followed. So it was with some anticipation, and a bit of surprise, that I received her new book, When Eero Met His Match: Aline Louchheim Saarinen and the Making of an Architect (Princeton University Press), an intriguing hybrid text, one part Aline and Eero biography, one part memoir of Hagberg's experiences as a design writer and publicist. (I am briefly mentioned in the book.) The book's main argument is that Aline Saarinen largely invented the role of the architectural publicist. Recently I traveled out to the Brooklyn Navy Yard to talk to a very pregnant Eva about the impetus for her new book, its dual structure, and the journalistic ethics of Aline Saarinen.
MCP: Martin C. Pedersen
EH: Eva Hagberg
MCP:
So I knew of the thesis, but I didn't know of the book. Tell me about the backstory and how that happened.
EH:
So I want to say up front: The book is not my dissertation, though it departs from research I did as part of my dissertation. The project started as an interest that I developed while I was writing a thesis about Angelo Dongia in the architecture department. I was killing time and it was February, around Valentine's Day. And I saw something on the internet: look at the love letters between Eero Saarinen and Aline Saarinen. I had vaguely heard of Eero Saarinen, and I had never heard of Aline Saarinen. I started reading these love letters and thought, "This would be so fun to think about. Unfortunately, I'm gonna do a Ph.D. about science fiction movies and dystopia, too bad." Anyway, I just followed a little bit of the trail and saw that the Smithsonian Archives of American Art had the full Eero and Aline Saarinen papers, fully digitized, just waiting to be read by somebody.
And when was this?
This was 2012. So I was in the architecture department at UC Berkeley, and eventually realized that I wanted to leave the department and do my own self-directed interdisciplinary Ph.D. program. To qualify, I needed a project that would be interdisciplinary. I went back to these letters. So the letters were occupying one part of my brain. And then in the other part, I noticed that all these architectural historians were taking the media, I thought, as an inaccurate archive. They were treating the media as though it had just emerged from nowhere and was an impenetrable monolith that had nothing to do with personal relationships. I remember so clearly in an architectural history seminar, this colleague gave a presentation about the Ambani residence in Mumbai, the most expensive private house ever designed. She made this entire presentation on the fact that there was only one image that she could find. Everybody in the room was buying that the release of one image was indicative of some complicated thing. I knew that it was just embargoed, and then sure enough, it was published in the New Yorker or the New York Times a couple weeks later.
A fairly simple explanation, if you know how these things work.
Right. And I thought: Does no one know how this works? And then I started paying attention to how historians treated the media. It seemed to me that there was no understanding of the fact that it was an ecosystem, in which publicists played a pivotal and creative role. I began reading deeper and saw that Aline, then Aline Louchheim, was actually inventing this position and pitching it to Eero, and to paraphrase: "If we get married, I can move to Bloomfield Hills and I can manage your press. I can really help you."
The book evolved out of those two simultaneous interests. One, the relationship between them, how people organize themselves and love, how people organize themselves and work, the intimate scale of the story. And then the other track is an exploration into what it's like to be in the design media industry. I worked as a journalist and as a publicist, as you may know.
I didn't know the extent of your PR work.
Which was on purpose.
It was like you had a secret life, with actual employees and a payroll.
It's funny because one of my friends just thought I had a trust fund because I would publish a story in a magazine once every six months. And actually I'm sitting here juggling two full-time employees, plus me, 11 clients, placing stories all over the world.
You had 11 clients.
At one harrowing point, I had 11 clients.
And what's the right number for a firm that size?
Four. That's what I have now, and that feels good. I don't have employees anymore, it's just me. So I have a handle on everybody. I know where everybody is. By the end of my V1 publicist career, I had hired somebody solely to tell me what to do and then make me do it.
Envelope containing a letter written by Aline Louchheim, Box 2, Folder 15, Eero and Aline Saarinen Papers, 1906-1977, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
OK, so the argument you make in the book is: Aline is almost the founder of architectural PR.
Yes. I trace a little bit of the history of publicity, which many say started with Edward Bernays in the 1920s, where he was promoting industry. Publicity already existed as a field.
But not for that long—20 or 30 years.
Exactly. Artists had publicists, but architects really didn't. They also weren't allowed to advertise. What was so interesting about looking at this period when Aline was working—the 1950s—was that the big architectural magazines were changing how they did their business, which kind of opened up the need for somebody to manage this stuff: who's going to get the exclusive, who's going to pick the photographer. This was an ideal circumstance for Aline, who was able to use her experiences as a journalist and easily transform it into being a publicist. So, yes, she was the first, I argue.
What was it about the letters that struck you the first time?
A big part of it was where I was in my life. I think I was on my fourth serious romantic relationship in my life and was really hype about it. I had been with an artist a few years earlier, where I sort of tried to do a little bit of what Aline had done, but very unsuccessfully. So I was really interested at the time in questions like: How do we tell somebody that we're interested in them? What are the mechanisms of romantic progress? I was really interested in the difference between having a romantic experience and romantic conversation and then writing down ways that you feel. How writing about a relationship could become in a way having the relationship.
They were writing the letters, in part, because they weren't in the same place. And they were courting heavily.
Pretty much almost exclusively via the letters. They make references to phone calls that they had, they saw each other, but it was really in letters. What was so enthralling about them was how direct they were about what they were codifying. They have all these language games. They had this phrase called the clauses of caution. He was married. But they would have these conversations and she would say something like, "Within the clauses of caution when we're married," so they developed this parallel internal future that they would describe in language, but then they would put formal brackets around it and say "brackets on, brackets off" to indicate if they were talking about something they weren't maybe supposed to be talking about. I just thought that level of linguistic play, while creating this romantic relationship together solely in writing, was fascinating.
She kind of moves around within the letters, trying out different roles, from dutiful wife to PR guru to soulmate.
The shifting between the personal, the professional, the romantic, and the collaborative, was so interesting. She would go from basically overt sexting, to "here's what you should say about your chapel project," to "I really think that you should divorce your wife as soon as possible." She fluidly switches among them.
How long was the process of reading all of the letters?
All the letters? Oh, god. Years. I started reading them in 2012 and was still reading them when I was putting the finishing touches on the book in 2021. So I remember at one point I had just moved back to New York, and the book had just been contracted by the press, and it was a snowy night, and there was some fast-moving traffic. And I thought: If I get hit by a car, this knowledge dies with me. I'm the one person on the planet who knows more about these letters than anybody else, which now hopefully is no longer true.
Obviously you took parts of your dissertation, but how did you come by the blend of your story and a readable version of your dissertation?
Well, I'm glad it's readable. There's a nice compliment in your question. I know whenever people hear "dissertation," they think it's going to be a nightmare. But I was a writer before I was a scholar. And so even the dissertation version was pretty readable.
Ingalls Rink, Yale University, New Haven CT, Architect: Eero Saarinen. Photo: Esto.
Probably too readable.
I had to find a very supportive committee who were OK with my interest in narrative and storytelling. And the word that I heard most frequently in grad school was that my work was "refreshing." And I would think: It doesn't have to be boring to be serious. So it was already readable, but I massively rewrote it for publication, especially the historical sections. There was a whole chapter that was just so in the weeds, and it was cut in the process of peer review. At first I missed it, and I think now that was the right decision. I read it recently, and my eyes were bleeding with the specificity of this analysis, which was appropriate for a scholarly project, but not for a book like this.
And the personal parts came in because early in the project I had this preface, which said: Some of my evidence will appear a little bit circumstantial, but I hope that I've done a good job in painting a portrait; I worked as a design journalist and as a publicist, so I have some familiarity with this field. … So trust me. One of my readers said, "I would like to hear more about this work that you did as a publicist." But I'd been so trained in grad school that writing about myself was just inappropriate.
You had a draft where you weren't part of the story?
I wasn't in there at all.
It was just a straight Aline biography?
Straight Eero and Aline for hundreds of pages. I talked to my editor, Michelle Komie, a phenomenal editor. I'd just gotten my reader's reports. The first report said, this is great. The second one was a "revise and resubmit." They thought it would be interesting if I incorporated more of my experiences. But I just didn't know if Princeton University Press would let me do that. I remember having this call with Michelle, and she asked me, "What book would you write if you were completely free, totally unshackled?" I said, "Oh, I would write this hybrid project. I would definitely write about myself." She said, "Great. Write the book that you really want to write, without any fear." She gave me total license, and then I wasn't sure how to structure it. Should it be half and half? And then I realized that these themes would emerge in every chapter about Aline, that were reflected in some way in my own life. So my chapters are shorter. They're interstitial, like sorbet courses between dinner. But there's a lot in them.
I wanted more.
Yeah? That's good to know. I don't know why there isn't more. I think I was sensitive to the fact that I was writing about people who are real, who are still alive. I felt like the majority of the story was really about Aline and Eero. And I also learned so much by copying her methods.
That's a theme in the book that comes through clearly.
That's how it became personal. It's been interesting to see people's reactions to the inclusion of the personal and how there are some people that have a devotion to this idea of "pure" ideas in some way, or something being a "pure" work of history. And as I said at my launch event, my position is that you can be a historian of 19th century sheep enclosures in France and you're still writing about your mom.
You're writing about your interpretation of 19th century sheep enclosures.
Exactly. This was my great struggle in academia, feeling surrounded by people who were all sharing what I thought was a fiction, which is that there's some way of engaging with ideas, as almost pure abstractions. I don't think that's possible. So I'm writing about myself and about my love life and about my fuckups and hiccups and successes, because that is how history is created, by individuals acting out of a combination of self-interest, fear, and delusions of grandeur. And Aline very helpfully wrote all of that down for us. And so did Eero.
Let me put a different hat on. I'm gonna play a journalistic ethicist. At what point was Aline way too far in with Eero to write a profile in the New York Times?
The day she met him.
To set the scene: The year is 1953. He's living in Bloomfield Hills, she's living in New York. Her editor at the New York Times Magazine offers the assignment to John McAndrew, who had been her professor at Vassar. For some reason, McAndrew doesn't do it. The assignment goes to Aline. She flies to Bloomfield Hills. She gets there and the archive of letters written later show that they pretty quickly hooked up, for want of a better term. She flies back to New York and drafts the piece and sends it to him for comment, which if you're a journalist, it makes your blood cold. And if you've ever written for the New York Times, it makes your blood even colder, because the Times is very particular about influence.
He has multiple comments for revision, which are interspersed with very flirtatious talk. At one point he tells her she's got something wrong, and that's going to cost her "two spanks." Which was just delightful. So they're openly flirting and he's correcting things. Not even correcting facts, but instead indicating, "Oh, I'd rather you position me like this." There's a line in the final published New York Times profile where she describes his wife, Lily Swann Saarinen, a brilliant sculptor, and Aline very subtly reinforces that Eero is really devoted to his art, not to his family. The implication is that he has a wife, but is she really the best wife for him? It's kind of cold. She stayed at the Times for another year or so. Then someone asked her to write about Saarinen again, and she wrote back something to the effect of, "Well, we are to be married on Tuesday. I don't think I should write about him." So she came around.
Featured image: TWA Terminal at Idlewild Airport, now JFK Airport, New York, NY. Architect: Eero Saarinen. Photo by Wayne Andrews/Esto.
Aline Lourchheim Saarinen
architectural PR
design media
When Eero Met His Match
Martin C. Pedersen is executive director of the Common Edge Collaborative. A writer, editor and critic, he served as executive editor at Metropolis magazine for nearly fifteen years.


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Every episode is broken into three parts – drinks, dinner, and late night. Each featured single is always different – older, younger, female, male, gay, straight, employed, unemployed – it truly represents so many different backgrounds and is extremely compelling. It pretty much highlights that the awkward woes of dating are universal. Just ten minutes in, you will see yourself (shout out to Sarah in episode 5 who shares her true love for 'Gansett).
See all the dating magic in the trailer below, and happy binge-watching!


text:
Lincolnshire's Haunted Airfields
October 15, 2016 February 16, 2019 MJ Wayland haunted airfield, weird world war
A faint throb of a Lancaster returning in the morning mist, a light flickers in a disused control tower and a roar of laughter comes from the derelict pilot's quarters. The ghosts of Britain's abandoned airfields have intrigued investigators for years. These ghostly tales are from people who have experienced a close brush with the supernatural in some of Britain's most eeriest places.
There are at least eight books that detail the appearances and habits of ghosts at Lincolnshire's airfields, whether derelict or not. What attracts people to read these books is the reality behind the stories, often very sad or heart-warming but most of all chilling.
Waltham's Ghostly Airman
The Royal Air Force quickly abandoned many airfields after war, RAF Waltham, near Grimsby is one such airfield.
RAF Waltham was opened as a heavy-bomber station with squadrons of Wellington Bombers stationed there. While stationed at Waltham, No. 100 squadron attacked targets across Germany and the occupied countries of Europe. In 1945 the station closed and the No.35 maintenance unit used the airfield for storage but this wasn't for long and they too left.
According Bruce Halpenny in "Ghost Stations" late in 1969, Susan Burchell lived on the perimeter of the airfield, and her house was built on the foundations of old wartime huts. One night, Susan awoke to see in the gloom, somebody standing at the foot of her bed. She switched on her bedside lamp and clearly saw the figure of a young ginger haired airman in uniform, with one sleeve pinned to his shoulder.
The phantom airman continued to stare at Burchell before moving slowly towards her wardrobe and disappearing into it.
Susan began to scream and awoke her parents. They began to search the house and garden, including the wardrobe but found nothing. Although the airman never appeared again, the family soon moved out.
Local folklore claims that the hut which Burchell's house was built over was destroyed when an ex-crew member who had done many missions, and been declared unfit for flying, due to injuries caused in an attack, killed himself with an hand-grenade.
Other airmen have been seen walking around the airstrip, once a popular area for courting couples. In 1982, a phantom airman was seen walking up and down before vanishing into the darkness. A memorial for the No.100 squadron situated on a nearby road also has a phantom airman who appears regularly.
RAF Metheringham's Phantom Lady
Although little remains of RAF Metheringham, its ghost continues to remind people that it played an important role in World War 2.
A young lady, in her late teens is often spotted standing at the side of the road between 9:30 and 10:00pm. She stands on what was once part of the airfield and wears a pale green coat with a grey scarf. Pinned to her lapel is a RAF wings badge. The ghost has stopped cyclists, motorists and pedestrians, asking for help, telling whoever she stops that her fiancé has skidded riding his motorcycle and is lying injured nearby. The ghost appears quite real rather than the ethereal. As with most road ghosts, there is a sinister side to the sighting. On her sudden disappearance, the witness is stricken with inexplicable fear, panic and sense of unreality. The ghost leaves behind a powerful odour of putrefaction. One witness who met the lady said, "I could not see her eyes, or horribly, no eyes in the sockets at all, the frontal skull orbits were empty!"
Halpenny claims that the young lady was killed near the end of World War 2 when her fiancé crashed his bike, throwing her off it, and breaking her neck and causing terrible head injuries. The two were due to be married and she had just ordered her wedding gown.
The Most Haunted Airfield?
RAF Elsham Wold opened in July 1941; similar to Waltham, as a heavy bomber station and from the outset it held Wellingtons, Halifaxes and finally Lancaster Bombers. Elsham Wold is a cold bleak site and the squadrons based there had many losses and accidents caused by ice and freezing fog.
In January 1945, Corporal Hilary, took a van across the far side of the airfield, due to the thick fog, Hilary had to drive with the van lights full on. It was midday and Hilary became lost out on the airfield. She stepped out of the van to try and locate her position, when she saw coming out of the fog into the van headlights three aircrew in full flying kit. She asked them for directions but they just walked past and disappeared into the fog. That day no flying took place because of the fog and aircrew would not have walked across the field. Did Hilary see a phantom crew?
The airfield closed in 1947 and a new road cuts through the airfield. For many years the Gregory family lived in the wartime control tower at Elsham Wold. They often heard mysterious morse code messages and saw phantom airmen walking around their home.
Their first experiences came as soon as they moved into the tower. A tapping noise could be heard on one of the walls, the noise continued for months and the Gregorys realised that there was a pattern to the tapping. When ex-servicemen visited the tower, they told the Gregory's that it was in fact morse code.
As with most haunted airfields, a phantom airman kept the family spooked. The airman would appear at the bottom of Mr and Mrs Gregory's bed, smile and then disappear. One night he was seen by Mr Gregory sitting in one of their chairs smiling once again, when Gregory moved, the airman stood up and disappeared.
Another incident involved the Gregory's son, Paul. One night, Mrs Gregory heard her son screaming in the middle of the night.
"When I went in his room, he was sitting up in bed screaming his head off," she said. "He said 'Can't you hear that plane? It's talking off and it's not coming back.
Paul described in great detail a four-engined aircraft and its seven-man crew he had seen taking off from the old main runaway, which is less than 100 yards from his bedroom window in the control tower.
Today, the tower no longer exists, demolished to make way for a new road from the M180 and the Humber Bridge. The road also follows the line of one of Elsham Wold's runways – so one foggy night you might meet one of its phantom aircrews.
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