text:
Central Military Commission (China)
For Central Military Commission of China under the Kuomintang, see Military Affairs Commission.
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The Central Military Commission (CMC) refers to the parallel national defense organizations of the Communist Party of China and the People's Republic of China: the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China, a Party organ under the CPC Central Committee, and the Central Military Commission of the People's Republic of China, a central state organ under the National People's Congress, being the military branch of the national government.
Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China
中国共产党中央军事委员会
Zhōngguó Gòngchǎndǎng Zhōngyāng Jūnshì Wěiyuánhuì
The emblem of the Communist Party of China
Preceding agency
People's Revolutionary Military Committee of the Central People's Government
People's Liberation Army, People's Armed Police, and China Militia
August 1st Building, Beijing
Agency executives
Xi Jinping, Chairman
Air Force General Xu Qiliang
General Zhang Youxia, Vice-Chairmen
CPC Central Committee
Central Military Commission of the People's Republic of China
中华人民共和国中央军事委员会
Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó Zhōngyāng Jūnshì Wěiyuánhuì
National Emblem of the People's Republic of China
People's Liberation Army, People's Armed Police and China Militia
GOV.CN Ministry of National Defense
中央军事委员会
中央軍事委員會
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin
Zhōngyāng Jūnshì Wěiyuánhuì
ㄓㄨㄥ ㄧㄤ ㄐㄩㄣ ㄕ` ㄨㄟˇ ㄩㄢ´ ㄏㄨㄟ`
other Mandarin
Xiao'erjing
ﺟْﻮ ﻳْﺎ کٌ شِ وِ ﻳُﻮًا ﺧُﻮِ
Tûng-ông kiûn-sṳ ve yèn fi
Yue: Cantonese
Jyutping
zung1joeng1gwan1si6wai2jyun4wui2
other Yue
Taishanese
Jüng-yëng gün-xù Vī-yõn-vòi
Southern Min
Hokkien POJ
Tiong-ng kun-sū úi ôan hōe
Eastern Min
Fuzhou BUC
Dṳ̆ng iŏng gŭng-sê̤ṳ ūi uòng huôi
Pu-Xian Min
Hinghwa BUC
De̤ng ng geong seō ûi é̤ng hōi
中國共產黨中央軍事委員會
zung1gwok3gung6caan2dong2zung1joeng1gwan1si6wai2jyun4wui2
中華人民共和國中央軍事委員會
zung1waa4jan4man4gung6wo4gwok3zung1joeng1gwan1si6wai2jyun4wui2
The command and control of the People's Liberation Army, the People's Armed Police and the Militia is exercised in name by the State CMC, supervised by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress. The State CMC is nominally considered the supreme military policy-making body and its chairman, elected by the National People's Congress, is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. In reality, command and control of the PLA, however, still resides with the Central Military Commission of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee—the Party CMC.
Both commissions are identical in membership, thus actually forming one identical institution under two different names (called 一个机构两块牌子; yígè jīgòu liǎngkuài páizi), in order to fit in both state government and party systems. Both commissions are currently chaired by Xi Jinping, who is the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China as well as Paramount leader. The 11-man commission issues directives relating to the PLA, including senior appointments, troop deployments and arms spending. Almost all the members are senior generals, but the most important posts have always been held by the party's most senior leaders to ensure absolute loyalty of the armed forces and to ensure the survival of the regime.[1] CMC has control over 6.8 million personnel.
The CMC is housed in the Ministry of National Defense compound ("August 1st Building") in western Beijing.
See also: History of the People's Liberation Army
The Party military committee dates back to October 1925, and while operating under various degrees of authority and responsibility, was consistently named the CPC Central Military Commission (Chinese: 中共中央軍事委員會; pinyin: Zhōnggòng Zhōngyāng Jūnshì Wěiyuánhuì). Among Western commentators, "Affairs" is frequently dropped from the title.[2] As a commission, it ranks higher in the party hierarchy than departments such as the Organization or United Front Departments. In 1937 the CPC Crntral Revolutionary Military Commission (Chinese: 中共中央革命軍事委員會; pinyin: Zhōnggòng Zhōngyāng Gémìng Jūnshì Wěiyuánhuì) was created after the Chinese Soviet Republic's Chinese Red Army were integrated into the Kuomintang's army for the anti-Japanese war, and it later evolved into the Central Military Commission after the Party's 7th Congress in 1945. In this period, the Committee was always chaired by Mao Zedong.
In the September 1949 reorganization, military leadership was transferred to a government body, the People's Revolutionary Military Commission of the Central People's Government (traditional Chinese: 中央人民政府人民革命軍事委員會, Zhōngyāng Rénmín Zhèngfǔ Rénmín Gémìng Jūnshì Wěiyuánhuì). The final coexistence of two military committees was set in 1954, as the CPC Central Military Commission was re-established, while state military authority rested into a National Defense Council of the People's Republic of China (simplified Chinese: 中华人民共和国国防委员会, Zhōnghuá Rénmín Gònghéguó Guófáng Wěiyuánhuì) chaired by the President in keeping with the 1954 Constitution.
As Mao Zedong was also the Chairman of the Communist Party of China and led military affairs as a whole, the CMC and NDC's day-to-day work was carried out by its first-ranking vice-chairman, a post which was occupied by Lin Biao until his death in 1971, then by Ye Jianying. As a consequence of the Cultural Revolution, the Party CMC became the sole military overseeing body, and the National Defence Council was abolished in 1975.
Deng Xiaoping's efforts to institutionally separate the Party and the state led to the establishment of today's State CMC, which was created in 1982 by the Constitution of China in order to formalize the role of the military within the government structure. Both the National Defense Commission and State CMC have been described as 'consultative' bodies.[2] Contrarily to the National Defense Commission, however, the Party and state CMCs are almost identical in leadership, composition, and powers.
The Commission included the post of secretary-general until 1992. This post was held by Yang Shangkun (1945–1954), Huang Kecheng (1954–1959), Luo Ruiqing (1959–1966), Ye Jianying (1966–1977), Luo Ruiqing (1977–1979), Geng Biao (1979–1981), Yang Shangkun (1981–1989), Yang Baibing (1989–1992).
In 2016, the 4 traditional general departments were dissolved by order of Chairman Xi Jinping, and in their place 15 new departments were created as part of the ongoing modernization of the PLA.
Command structureEdit
Unlike in most countries, the Central Military Commission is not considered as just another ministry. Although China does have a Ministry of National Defense, headed by a Minister of National Defense, it exists solely for liaison with foreign militaries and does not have command authority.
The most important chain of command runs from the CMC to the four General Headquarters (Joint Staff Department, Political Works Department, Logistic Support Department, Equipments Development Department) and, in turn, to each of the service branches (ground, navy and air forces) . In addition, the CMC also has direct control over the Rocket Forces, Strategic Support Forces, the National Defense University, and the Academy of Military Sciences. As stipulated in the 1997 National Defense Law, the CMC also controls the paramilitary People's Armed Police (PAP), who have the politically sensitive role of guarding key government buildings (including the main leadership compound of Zhongnanhai in Beijing) and enforcing the law all around China. The CMC shared command authority over the PAP with of the State Council mostly via the Ministry of Public Security; from 2018 the PAP is under the sole control of the CMC.
Although in theory the CMC has the highest military command authority, in reality the ultimate decision making power concerning war, armed forces, and national defense resides with the Communist Party's Politburo. The CMC is usually chaired by the General Secretary of the Communist Party, who is supported by two to three Vice-Chairmen, sometimes, but not currently, including the Defense Minister. Members of the CMC used to include the heads of the PLA's four general departments and the Commanders of the Ground Force, Air Force, Navy and Rocket Force; but after the recent reform only Minister of National Defense, Chief of Joint Staff, Director of Political Work, and Secretary of Discipline Inspection are included.
Political structureEdit
The armed forces of China also have Joint Staff Department, the Political Work Department, the Logistics Support Department and the Equipment Development Department , which implements the directives of the Central Military Commission. Along with the General Secretary of the Communist Party and Premier of the State Council, the Chairman of the Central Military Commission have consistently been one of the most powerful political leaders in China.
The Chairman of the CMC was twice in its history held by a senior official who had given up his other posts: by Deng in the late 1980s, and by Jiang in the early 2000s. In the case of Deng Xiaoping, because of his prestige, he was able to exercise considerable power after his retirement, in part due to his holding the position of CMC Chairman. There was speculation that Jiang Zemin would have been able to retain similar authority after his retirement from the positions of General Secretary and President, but ultimately Jiang was unable to do so. One major factor is that, in contrast to Deng Xiaoping, who always had close relations with the People's Liberation Army, Jiang had no military background. In addition, with the promotion of the fourth generation of Chinese leaders to lead the civilian party, there was also a corresponding promotion of military leaders. All the military members of the CMC come from Hu Jintao's generation rather than from Jiang's, and at the time of the leadership transition, there appeared some very sharp editorials from military officers suggesting that the military would have strong objections to Jiang attempting to exercise power behind the scenes.
Jiang Zemin relinquished his post as Chairman of the party's Central Military Commission in September 2004 to Hu Jintao, and from the state commission in March 2005, which appeared to solidify Hu's position as paramount leader. However, Jiang had appointed two generals who maintained good relations with him, Xu Caihou, and Guo Boxiong, to the Vice-Chairman positions, and continued to wield influence through them at the expense of Hu.[3] Unlike Deng and Jiang, Hu relinquished his CMC post along with his remaining leadership offices in favour of his successor Xi Jinping.
In China's state-party-military tripartite political system, the CMC itself is a decision-making body whose day-to-day affairs are not nearly as transparent as that of the Central Committee or the State Council. As one of China's three main decision making bodies the relative influence of the CMC can vary depending on the time period and the leaders. In the event of war or political crisis, for example, the CMC may well function as a de facto executive for the country's daily affairs.
The Tiananmen Protests of 1989 illustrates how the Central Military Commission functions. CMC Chairman Deng Xiaoping proposed the imposition martial law and the use of armed soldiers to suppress unarmed demonstrations in Beijing.
The Library of Congress says of the two CMCs: "The state Central Military Commission was the state's decision-making body in military affairs and directed and commanded the armed forces. The state Central Military Commission consisted of the chairman, who was commander in chief of the armed forces, an executive vice chairman, two vice chairmen, and four other members. Because the PLA has been under party control since its inception, the leadership of the party over the military did not change with the establishment of the state Central Military Commission. Although parallel leadership blurred the distinction between the two groups, the party Central Military Commission retained its traditional, preeminent position in charge of military affairs."
Election of membersEdit
Theoretically, the CPC (Party) CMC is elected by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and is subordinate to the Politburo and the Politburo Standing Committee (PBSC). In practice, membership is very closely controlled by the PBSC.
Similarly, the State CMC is nominally elected by the National People's Congress and theoretically reports to the Congress, but is in practice indistinguishable from the CPC CMC. This difference in elections also results in the only difference in membership between the two bodies, as party organs, such as the party congress and the Central Committee assemble at different times than the National People's Congress. For example, some were elected into the party CMC in the Sixteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China in November 2002, but they entered the State CMC in March 2003, when the 10th National People's Congress convened.
The members are generally uniformed military commanders, except for the chairman and first vice-chairman, who have both been drawn from the Politburo in recent years. The military members are generally members of neither the Politburo Standing Committee nor the State Council outside of the Minister of National Defense, although they all tend to be members of the Communist Party and are members of the Central Committee. The military members are apparently chosen with regular promotion procedures from within the PLA.
MembersEdit
The make-up of the current Central Military Commission of the Communist Party was determined at the 19th Party Congress held in October 2017; the state commission awaits confirmation at the 2018 National People's Congress.[4]
Xi Jinping, also General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, President of the People's Republic of China, and Leader of the CMC Leading Group for National Defence and Military Reform
Vice Chairmen (2)
Air Force General Xu Qiliang, Member of the 19th Politburo, Executive Deputy Leader of the CMC Leading Group for National Defence and Military Reform
General Zhang Youxia[5], Member of the 19th Politburo, Deputy Leader of the CMC Leading Group for National Defence and Military Reform
General Wei Fenghe, State Councilor and Minister of National Defense
General Li Zuocheng, Chief of Joint Staff
Admiral Miao Hua, Director of the CMC Political Work Department
General Zhang Shengmin, Secretary of the CMC Commission for Discipline Inspection, also a Deputy Secretary of the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection
OrganizationEdit
The exact internal organisation of the CMC is highly secretive. However, until 2015 it is known that the CMC contained least five key departments. The Joint Staff Department is the nerve center of the entire Chinese military command and control system, responsible for daily administrative duties of the CMC. The General Office processes all CMC communications and documents, coordinate meetings, and convey orders and directives to other subordinate organs.
During the 2015 military reform, by order of Chairman Xi Jinping, 15 departments were created to replace the 5 organs, which were disbanded. The new 15 departments are:[6]
General Office (办公厅)
Joint Staff Department (联合参谋部)
Political Work Department (政治工作部)
Logistic Support Department (后勤保障部)
Equipment Development Department (装备发展部)
Training and Administration Department (训练管理部)
National Defense Mobilization Department (国防动员部)
Discipline Inspection Commission (纪律检查委员会)
Politics and Legal Affairs Commission (政法委员会)
Science and Technology Commission (科学技术委员会)
Office for Strategic Planning (战略规划办公室)
Office for Reform and Organizational Structure (改革和编制办公室)
Office for International Military Cooperation (国际军事合作办公室)
Audit Office (审计署)
Agency for Offices Administration (机关事务管理总局)
^ BBC, "How China is Ruled: Military Affairs Commission", accessed 05-6-2010
^ a b The Pinnacle of the Pyramid: The Central Military Commission, Chapter 3, p. 97 archive
^ "少将踢爆徐才厚郭伯雄卖官 大军区司令二千万元". Boxun. 2015-03-10.
^ "新一届中央军委委员中3位是从战火中走出的将军". Sina. 2017-10-27.
^ Chan, Minnie (2017-10-25). "General Zhang Youxia: Xi Jinping's 'sworn brother' now his deputy on China's top military body". South China Morning Post. Retrieved 2017-10-26.
^ "国防部新闻事务局官微发布中央军委机关英文译名". People's Daily Online. Retrieved 2016-01-15.
"Central Military Commission". SinoDefence.com. Archived from the original (ASP) on 2007-11-09. Retrieved 2007-11-21.
"Chinese parliament approves premier, CMC vice-chairmen". news.xinhuanet.com/english. Retrieved 2008-03-16.
Military portal
Leader of the Communist Party of China
Ministry of National Defense of the People's Republic of China
2015 People's Republic of China military reform
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Central_Military_Commission_(China)&oldid=903756733"


Women's soccer falls 1-0 in the National Title game.
Kirk Meyer looks ahead at the ACC Tournament after a dominant run through the regular season by the Tar Heels.
After six games, where do the strengths and weaknesses of 2018's women's soccer team lie?
Women's soccer struggled to score, but found themself defensively in their second week of play.
Kirk Meyer breaks down the highlights of women's soccer's opening week of the 2018 season, including an impressive milestone for the long tenured helmsman of the program, Anson Dorrance.
Tar Heels blank Colorado to advance.
Women's soccer puts up 7 in a shutout of Syracuse.
Cook with Carolina women's soccer in this new YouTube series.
Jessie Scarpa's overtime goal sealed a Tar Heel win over Duke.
Annie Kingman prepares for her final season in Carolina blue.


Regular super files, ensure that common properties and aggregates are propagated to the top-level so they can be accessed by querying the superfile.
For inline temporary superfiles this isn't happening.
Also the file kind (e.g. whether it is a "key" or not) was not being propagated.


Here is an example of our 3D Visualization service.
This Eames chair was modeled, textured, lit, and shot - all from the comfort of my computer (and my small, but significant render farm).
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A cultural entity is a powerful energetic source that causes an entrainment of the atmosphere. Cultures around the world experience enslavement caused from an influential powerful energetic source. Cultures are formed and molded throughout generations creating energetic-fields of consciousness; the configuration of a culture occurs in the spirit world. The lower entities of the spirit world extract needed energy from negative rules and regulations that produce negative behavioral attitudes. A predominant focus of the molding process is religious idolatrous worship that causes cultural enslavement.
Strong attachments keep people bonded to the culture entity that creates a positionality of nationalism, ethnic strife, and religious division. Each culture appends emotional baggage onto each individual that formulates the inner core. The majorities are subjected to automatic behaviors based on cultural dogma according to the directives of the culture. Henceforth, spiritual judgment upon an individual is irrelevant because of the dominating cultural entity, except for willful behaviors causing injury on thy fellow citizen.
Judgment within context of cultural behavior is void because of the automatic behaviors stemming from the directives, yet karmic bonds still apply. Each person lives within their culture and ascertains within the each experience. The next life they will live within a different culture and discover a variety of experiences. Spiritual growth accelerates through the experience of multiple lives within different cultures.
Different countries, cities, towns, and villages experience contrasting cultural rules and regulations.
The rebirth cycle is beyond the comprehension of the majority, even though, spiritually advanced individuals around the world comprehend the context. The context of the human cycle is dubiously misplaced within the educational process of most cultures. Understanding the truth of the rebirth cycle will breakdown mass confusion within the deeper subjects of reality and cause the core detachment from the deception of the cultural education.
Identifying our subjective inner spirit of awareness can assist to detach and release the congested emotional baggage of the in-bred cultural entrainment that stores within the subconscious emotional reality. Equality and subjectivity are rooted within the oneness of consciousness. Therefore, surrendering the positioned attachment of worldly dualism will facilitate the raising of your personal level of consciousness.


text:
OUR says it saved JPS customers over 9 billion
Loop News Created : 17 July 2017 Jamaica News
The Office of Utilities Regulation (OUR) has said it saved electricity consumers over $9 billion on their Jamaica Public Service Company (JPS) bills.
In a statement late last week, the OUR said the massive savings resulted from its successful defence of a claim by the JPS for it to recover from the consumers, the cost of a 2008 reclassification of certain positions at the power company.
A long legal battle ended with a judgment on July 6, in which the United Kingdom Privy Council rejected an appeal from the JPS to bill its customer for the cost of the reclassification exercise.
The JPS had first filed a claim with the OUR on March 11, 2009, seeking approval to recover $4.27 billion that was incurred for salary payments to employees and related taxes, via a tariff adjustment using the Z-factor provision in its licence.
But the OUR rejected the application, which the JPS then took progressively to the All-island Electricity Appeal Tribunal, the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal, which all rejected the claim.
The JPS then sought leave to appeal to the Privy Council, which also dismissed the claim.
In its statement, the OUR outlined that if the JPS had been successful in its appeal to the Privy Council, its customers would have had to repay the $4.27 billion, plus interest of 12.56 per cent per annum from 2010 to 2017, amounting to an estimated $9.78 billion to to date.
Office of Utilities Regulation
Jamaica Public Service
JPS to pass on fuel tax increase to the customers - Tomblin
JPS loses bid for $4.3 billion 'tax' on its customers
Ardenne High turns to solar and cuts JPS bill by 30%
MEDS: Itopia Life offers style, personality …and very good ganja

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The unsung hero is a common figure in sports. The basketball player whose position on the court is not noted by anyone except the defender who must change position to cover him, and leaves open the small space through which the ball carrier drives to the basket. The offensive lineman whose role is not noted by anyone except the player across the line who never, never gets through to ruin the ball carrier's day. The ball carriers know who these heroes are, but they seldom get press coverage.
If the infantry is the ball carrier of the battlefield, then one of its unsung heroes is the rifled 4.2-inch chemical mortar. It was the M2A1 in World War II, it was the M30 in Korea and in Viet Nam, and today it's the 107 mm mortar called the "infantryman's artillery" or, more commonly, the "four deuce". By all these names, the original 4.2 and its descendants have been muscled out of the limelight by the more identifiable artillery, and confused with the smaller 60- and 81-mm smoothbore weapons, which inhabit the battlefield in greater numbers.
In every major action for half a century, the unsung contribution of the 4.2 has been measured by the numbers of U.S. infantrymen who came home alive because the men who planned to kill them died first. The would-be killers protected themselves from smaller mortars by distance and by fortification, and from artillery by terrain which blocked flat trajectory, high-velocity fire. Carefully protected, they fell in thousands to 4.2 shells which dropped high explosive and searing white phosphorous nearly straight down into their midst with a suddenness that left survivors confused and demoralized.
Those U.S. infantrymen owe their lives to a little known unit of the Chemical Warfare Service which in July 1943 took the 4.2-inch mortar into combat for the first time over the beaches of the island which lies like a football at the toe of the Italian "boot" – Sicily. They were the Second Separate Chemical Battalion (Motorized) and they called their untried, unknown weapon the "Goon Gun." Long after they did their job on Sicily, when War Department plans for assaulting the Japanese homeland called for 32 such battalions, they were re-designated the Second Chemical Mortar Battalion.
The Battalion traces its heritage, and its weapon, directly from the 1st Gas Regiment which fired the British 4 inch Stokes mortar for the American Expeditionary Force during World War I. Once chemical warfare was initiated in that war, both sides sought a better attack method than the use of cylinders, which relied on wind to drive the cloud over enemy lines. High velocity shells from breech-loading artillery proved to carry a relatively low gas payload that allowed the enemy time to don protective gear before a high concentration built up. The 4-inch mortar, muzzle-loaded, achieved more than ten times the rate of chemical delivery.
Between the wars, the fledgling Chemical Warfare Service tested designs with improved range, endurance and accuracy. By December 1941 the standard Chemical Warfare Service weapon was the M2A1 mortar, rifled to a 4.2-inch diameter and with startling accuracy at ranges up to 2400 yards. The M5 powder charge to increase the range to 3200 yards was under test. Problems with flight stability of gas or liquid filled chemical shells had been resolved.
Despite its promise, manufacture of the 4.2 had been suspended in 1936, and its future was in serious doubt, because it was a chemical weapon. President Roosevelt had made very clear that the U.S. would abide by the restriction on use of gas until somebody else violated it. The U.S. military was in the midst of an eruption that would take if from the 19th-rated power in the world, right behind Portugal, to the ability to field 12 million armed men.
Every planner and every troop commander knew that there were not enough tanks, guns, ships, planes, ammunition, or enough men to use them. There was no support for setting aside a large body of men and equipment in the form of a Chemical Warfare Service that might never see active use. More artillery was critical – let them be prepared to fire gas shells if the time came. More infantry were needed – give them a little training so they could fire gas from their 81- millimeter mortars if need be. If all else failed, let the engineers do it!
In the midst of this argument, MG William N. Porter became Chief of the Chemical Warfare Service on 31 May 1941. He had graduated from the Naval Academy in 1902, joined the Coastal Artillery Corps 1910, and 1921 went to the CWS as a major. The official U.S. Army history describes Porter as affable, diplomatic, and able to get high performance from subordinates by helpful criticism toward tough goals which he encouraged men to believe they could meet if they tried hard enough.
With his peers, he operated by the method we call networking today. He knew what was happening in his own command and in others as well, so could respond quickly to setbacks and to opportunities. Robert W. Breaks, West Point Class of 1936, described Porter to me on a more personal basis. As a mounted infantry captain, Breaks saw a chemical company training with 4.2s in Hawaii, became intrigued with the weapon, and got himself transferred to the CWS where he was assigned to Porter's staff.
As Chief of CWS, Porter was personally responsible for providing the U.S. with the ability to wage chemical warfare on a meaningful scale. He believed that to create the illusion of chemical capability under one of the other service branches would be to invite an enemy to undertake chemical warfare who might otherwise have been deterred. Porter knew that none of the other branches really wanted to be burdened with chemical capability – they were stretched to the limit procuring and deploying conventional weapons.
He also knew that the Army Chief of Staff, George C. Marshall, was a forward thinker who was open to new ideas. Touching all the bases with those who might argue against him, Porter worked his way up to a conference with Marshall in February 1943. His proposal was straightforward: a large chemical branch would not be wasted if, in the absence of gas warfare, it was employed at the front to provide fire support with conventional munitions. A high explosive, fragmenting 4.2 shell for this use had already been designed and tested. All that remained was to authorize its production and use, and to establish doctrine, the written procedures and techniques by which the supported units would call on the chemical mortars for fire against the enemy.
Marshall and his assistants knew their business, and they expected Porter to know his. Wasn't this 4.2 idea just a duplication of the artillery mission? No, argued Porter. While the 4.2 did not have the artillery's range (12,000 yards for the 105mm howitzer) its higher rate of fire (12 rounds per minute) gave it a payload-on-target rate 4.5 times greater than the 105 could achieve at the same range. The mortar weighed 305 pounds, the 105 weighed over 2 tons. The mortar required much less transport and less than half the crew support. It could be dug in and camouflaged in sheltered locations, protected from enemy fire, which the artillery could not get to or occupy. For intensive fire against enemy position close to the front lines, it did a job the artillery could not match.
What did these mortars offer that wasn't provided by the 81-mm that were already integral equipment in every infantry unit? Their range was the same as the 4.2. Porter had an answer for that one, too. The smaller mortars used simple fire control methods suitable for an infantry squad, but they were far less accurate, especially when a remote observer directed fire. The 81-mm shell was closer in firepower to a rifle grenade than it was to the 25-pound 4.2 shell that carried the same HE payload as the 105.
Porter's argument carried the day. On 19 March 1943, the War Department authorized the combat use of high explosive shell for the 4.2 mortar and directed that Field Manual 100-5 be revised to train infantry commanders in the use of the 4.2 for close support.
Porter knew that he had earned an opportunity that could still slip away from him. Getting the HE shell into production would be a task, but it could be managed. The real problems was that the divisions soon to go into combat had been in training for a year, and were long past the stage when they read FM100-5 to find out what to do. What would convince invasion planners and troop commanders, hard pressed by a shortage of time and shipping, to include in their order of battle a unit and a weapon which was completely untried in the role for which it was now to be recommended to them?
The next "big push," whenever and wherever it would be, had to end with infantry commanders clamoring and fighting among themselves for access to 4.2 mortar support. Otherwise the weapon, and the units that used it, and Porter's ability to deter the use of chemical weapons in this war, would quickly die as its men and priorities were gobbled up by other hungry service branches.
Early in 1942 Porter had formed six battalions to equip and train with the 4.2 mortar. As Bob Breaks related it to me, in 1995, "One day Bill Porter called me in and said, 'Bob, I'm forming the Second Chemical Battalion up at Edgewood. Would you like to have it?'" Breaks knew that Porter viewed the performance of the chemical mortars as crucial, and he believed Porter was right. He took the job.
The Second had been reconstituted in 1935 at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland, from the personnel of the 1st Gas Regiment, as A Company and a Headquarters detachment. In January 1942, it moved to Fort Bragg NC for training. It was authorized an expanded organization of a full headquarters company and four weapons companies. A, B, C, and D Companies each totaled eight officers and 143 enlisted men to support 12 guns. A 105mm artillery battery of 12 guns would have required 12 officers and 325 enlisted men.
Beginning in the fall of 1942 the four weapons companies rotated one at a time, to Camp Gordon Johnson at Carabelle, Florida, for amphibious training. When the unit moved to Camp Picket, Virginia, in February 1943, Breaks arranged for his men to carry out joint training and field exercises with the 45th Infantry division, and later with an engineer battalion and even a paratrooper regiment.
The Third Separate Chemical Battalion had also activated in January and the 83rd and 84th in April. When these four battalions went to the Mediterranean for the invasion of Sicily, only the Second was fully trained in amphibious assault. Only the Second had trained in the field with the infantry units it was to support in combat. Even so, when it hit the beach, the battalion had fired no more than thirty live HE rounds per gun in training.
A lot of the training was sheer physical endurance. An early lesson with the 45th Division was that motor transport would not get the guns into the forward positions where they were needed to support the combat infantry. Instead, teams of men pulled carts equipped with pull bars and chains, rolling on two wheels a little thicker than a standard bicycle. A cart loaded with one mortar or twelve rounds of ammunition plus assorted tools and personal gear weighed between five and six hundred pounds.
"We would start out in the morning and pull those guns up the Blue Ridge Mountains all day long, then bring them back down. Even coming down we were pulling them uphill so they wouldn't get away from us" recalled Carl Poulsen, a squad leader in Company A. "The longest one-day run that sticks in my mind is 17 miles. The day after a hike like that, half my squad would be on sick call for aches and pains and pulled muscles." It didn't help to come back into camp past men from other units who made hee-haw noises and cracked jokes about jackasses pulling carts.
Dave Goodell, a lieutenant with A Company, got separated from his platoon shortly after landing, so he made radio contact with them and walked with the forward elements of the 179th infantry. From there he called in firing instructions almost as soon as the infantry officers could identify them. "We were trained to calculate elevations, azimuths, and powder charges from the forward positions." Artillery observers needed a fire direction center to make these calculations, and in the confusion of the landing it took a long time to set them up.
Further to the east, the 180th Infantry and D Company were also doing what they could in a chaotic situation. The 4.2 squads suppressed defensive positions that were blocking the infantry advance near the little town of Biscari. In the evening, the Germans hit the 1st Battalion of the 180th with a counter attack of 11 tanks and supporting infantry, designed to protect the Biscari airfield.
D Company's 1st platoon fired 60 rounds and knocked out three of the tanks, but the infantry had to move back to keep from being over run. The platoon took up new gun positions and fired harassing rounds throughout the night. Forward infantry positions reported that 4.2 shells falling in the midst of German troops in their assembly area had broken up at least one counter-attack. It's typical of the unsung role of the 4.2s that the official Army history records only that the 171st Field Artillery Battalion supported the 180th Infantry this day.
The next day the 2nd Battalion of the 180th suffered a similar counterattack, but this time the infantry was overrun and fell back to reorganize. There were no friendly troops left between the Germans and the 4.2 gun positions of D Company's 2nd platoon.
From his position at D Company headquarters, Lt. Baglietto, the platoon leader, jumped into the cab of the first convenient truck. Privates Amos Grizzard and Bob Davis and PFC Lorenzo Poin leaped on board as he drove past the infantry officers and troops that were frantically getting themselves assembled into the proper units and digging in. Baglietto gunned the truck through artillery and machine gun fire for 500 yards until they reached the guns. With a few of the gun crew, they piled the 350-pound mortars into the truck bed and roared back. The guns were back in action before night fell.
By July 13, the 179th infantry had advanced just south of Gramichele. Patrols observed German infantry and armor in the terrain ahead, and several civilians provided information that suggested a counter attack was likely. During the night a German tank fired repeatedly from a position a few hundred yards ahead of the lines, and an infantry captain came over to ask A Company if they could do something about it.
Dave Goodell went with his CO, Captain Kuiper, and a BAR man out into the darkness with a radio. They worked their way over the stony ground to a point where they could estimate the tank's position. Captain Kuiper got under a map with a flashlight and worked out the orders to the guns. Then it was Dave's turn under the raincoat to check the captain's figures, and they called in the first round. There was a flash and a WHOOMP! and the sound of small debris coming down around them. The shell had impacted just about fifty yards to their right. They sent in corrections and a volley of four rounds came in near the tank's position. They heard its engine rev up and it began to move off, so they guessed at a new correction and four more rounds came in. There was silence for a long time, and they crept back through the infantry positions.
At dawn, the 179th was hit by 30 German tanks and 500 supporting infantry. The artillery could not fire effectively because they had moved into positions after dark and had not fired registration rounds to establish their coordinates. The 4.2s of A Company's first platoon were only a few hundred yards behind the lines, and four guns were firing within minutes.
The tanks continued to advance, but the supporting infantry was forced to take cover by the shells landing in their midst at the rate of thirty or forty per minute. Without them, the tanks were open to rifle grenades and bazooka fire, and four were destroyed. This slowed the attack so that the divisional artillery had time to register, and under the weight of its barrage the attackers withdrew. There was no question that without the 4.2s the lead battalion of the 179th would have been over-run.
At this point there was a lull in the Sicilian campaign for the U.S. Seventh Army. British Eighth Army General Montgomery had decided, without authorization and without even informing his Allies, to route the 1st Canadian Division up Highway 124, directly across the front of the advancing 45th Division. In retrospect, this move appears to have prolonged the campaign by as much as two weeks. Its immediate effect was to send the 45th Division all the way back to the beaches, around the rear of the American 1st Division. It resumed its position in the line several days later.
This period was also the last of combat for the other two Chemical Mortar Battalions in Sicily. The 83rd Chemical Battalion was reattached to the 82nd airborne to clear western Sicily of resistance, but the Germans had withdrawn their defending units to the east and there were virtually no targets. The 3rd Division had been in North Africa since November of 1942, and they really didn't know what a 4.2 mortar was for. Within a few days of landing they had released the 3rd Chemical Battalion to II Corps reserve, and its men were put to work guarding POW camp and supply points.
The Germans made few active attempts to slow the 45th's advance. Blown bridges and mines, which were hard to detect on the volcanic soil, would give them plenty of time to prepare the position to the east where they would make a series of delaying stands. There were a few well-chosen roadblocks where a small number of weapons firing at a column on an exposed road could cause trouble all out of proportion to their numbers.
A squad of B Company hauls an ammunition cart up a slope.
One of these was just south of Caltinisetta. Most of the German fire seemed to be coming from a wheat field on a slope ahead of the column, but the exact strong points could not be identified. Lieutenant Colonel Murphy, of the 1st Battalion of the 157th, called on the 4.2s of C Company. The guns were setup with the crews under machine gun fire, ammunition was prepared, and Lieutenant Zeus called in firing directions from a temporary observation post. Four white phosphorous shells came down in a spread, and within a few minutes the entire field was in flames. The smoke was too thick to observe any Germans withdrawing from the field, but the shooting stopped.
Reaching the north coast, the 45th Division turned east in the famous race for Messina. Suddenly it was a different war. The Germans held prepared positions that looked directly out on the coastal road, and the shoulders and ravines and slopes off the road were heavily mined. The "goon guns" on their carts were hauled along the same trails and ridges that the infantry scrambled over.
After a week of grinding east, the 45th Division was pulled out of the line and relieved by the 3rd Division. Patton confided to Omar Bradley, II Corps Commander, that the 45th was tired, and its attacks were losing energy. On the night of 31 July, the men in the 4.2 gun positions watched as the soldiers of the 3rd Division moved forward and those of the 45th moved back. The next morning they got their own orders to move east, with the 3rd Division. They would not be relieved.
The 2nd Chemical officers soon realized how lucky they had been to be in combat with the same infantry units they had known in training. Officers of the 3rd Division had no idea of the combat role of the 4.2. They associated chemical units with gas masks and clothing impregnated with funny-smelling protective compounds.
Division Hq told Captain McConohie of Company C he would be attached to the 30th infantry regiment. When he reported to their CP, he was told to sit tight until further notice. Checking further, he found that his mortars had not even been assigned a radio frequency. Finally he was told to take his unit down the road and set up a bivouac – in a location which had not yet been cleared by the infantry! In the other companies, officers found they were ordered to report to CPs and liaison posts of uncertain location, in the dark, over mined terrain that had not been cleared, and without guides provided by the infantry. Colonel Breaks and the company commanders had their hands full with an on-the-job educational program about what 4.2 chemical mortars were for.
The 3rd had other lessons to learn. Up to this point in Sicily they were used to advancing rapidly, enveloping and overwhelming defenders that were primarily Italians, and a few Germans in mobile units. On the north coast, where steep ridges and deep ravines crossed the single road, this was a recipe for disaster. Repeatedly the lead infantry battalion came under observed fire, and found their artillery support too far to the rear, or not yet emplaced, or unable to reach the German guns on the reverse slopes. Flanking movements were not a matter of hours, but of days spent in scaling cliffs and edging along narrow trails, often under fire. And repeatedly the commander of the leading battalion found a chemical officer at his elbow, map in hand, explaining how soon his guns could block German observation with smoke and drop high explosive into their gun emplacements and pillboxes. It didn't make the infantry's job easy, by any means, but some days it made it barely possible.
On August 4, the 3rd Division prepared to cross the Furiano River and assault a high, rocky feature called the San Fratello Ridge. Planned for a single day, the assault would prove to end on the fifth day, which was the day the Germans evacuated their positions as planned more than a week before. On that first morning, the artillery had not yet registered, so the support for the crossing fell entirely to three companies of the Second Chemical.
A and D Company fired high explosive at probable gun emplacements, while B Company fired smoke to screen observation. Each fired more than a thousand rounds in barrages rolling forward with the infantry from 1,000 to 3,500 yard range. The assault battalions were slowed by mines, wire and automatic weapons with interlocked fields of fire on the open bed of the dry river, and were forced to return. On August 5, a battalion of the 30th infantry made a smaller flanking attack and gained some high ground southwest of the main ridge, but the open slope below had yet to be traversed.
By the morning of the 6th, artillery had been carefully laid in and the attack was preceded by a 30 minute barrage from the equivalent of nine battalions of medium and heavy artillery. The 2nd Chemical provided smoke for this assault in a pattern similar to the one fired two days before. By this time the Germans knew the general location of the mortars, and almost every platoon was forced out of its position by hits directly within the gun positions. In one platoon four of six guns were knocked out. Two other platoons were faced with reduced fire capacity when shells exploded their ammunition supply. Telephone wire to the OP's was knocked out repeatedly and men were wounded going out to find and splice the breaks.
The assaulting infantry, two battalions of the 15th Infantry, made it part way up to San Fratello Ridge, known by now as "Million Dollar Hill" because of the number of shells expended on its slopes. As they advanced they got closer to the observers and closer to the hidden guns, and finally were unable to advance further or to withdraw without exposing themselves to massive casualties. In mid afternoon the commander of the 15th infantry called Lt Col Breaks to his CP and explained the situation.
Breaks returned to his officers, and Captain Lowell Thompson volunteered his D Company for the mission. He decided that contrary to usual practice, he himself would call the orders from the OP. This left his experienced platoon commanders available to supervise the gun crews directly.
Paul Eldredge, executive officer, detailed Lt. Baglietto's second platoon to return to the gun position they had just been forced to leave. He told Baglietto to strip the guns to minimum crews. The screen would require about one shell per minute from each gun, so instead of passing the shell down a line under normal procedure, the men would stay in their holes with shells prepared to fire, then race for the guns, fire, and dive back. It was Russian roulette, but it would get the screen started immediately.
Eldredge directed Lt. Young's first platoon to a new gun position. It was rocky and uneven and made for lousy emplacement, but it was sheltered behind a low rise. Captain Kuiper of A Company had one platoon re-emplace its guns at a former position, in case D Company went completely out of action. The platoons headed for their positions while Eldredge organized the rest of the company to transport ammunition to the guns.
Soon, second platoon's shells were bursting just uphill from where the 15th Infantry was hugging rocks and tree roots, and clouds of thick, white opaque, smoke rolled up and blended into an impenetrable shield between them and the probing eyes only a few yards away. Forward on his small hill, Captain Thompson watched the rounds landing in regular patterns, and called in adjustments to individual guns to fill thin spots caused by shifts in the afternoon breeze from the sea only a mile or two away.
Mortar crews raced to and from their shallow holes one and two at a time to adjust the guns and fire the rounds, but within a couple of hours the position was taking concentrated fire and it was only a matter of time before men would be dying in their trenches.
By now, the first platoon had dug out rocks and sandbagged their guns so that they were stable enough to use. They took over the mission as the second platoon, spattered by dirt and rock chips from near misses, went around the nose of a small ridge to shelter. Shells fell in searching patterns around first platoon's position and cleared the low rise to scream over their heads, but they continued the screen until full dark at 10:15, when the 15th infantry crawled back down the slope and over the river bed.
The next night, August the 7th, a battalion of the 30th infantry landed east of San Fratello Ridge in the first of Patton's famous "amphibious end runs". The Germans, already evacuating the ridge, were caught on the highway in a confused fight but escaped to the east. There would be another ten days of grinding pursuit through minefields, blown bridges, and ambushes before the Seventh Army finished its race to Messina. The 2nd Chemical Battalion would fire many more missions during those nine days, but it would never again have to explain to the 3rd Division what a 4.2 mortar was for.
There was no question that General Porter had won his fight for a combat role for chemical troops. About 35,000 4.2 rounds were fired in Sicily, about two thirds of them by the Second Chemical. The echoes of those first shots in anger were heard in every theater of the war.
General Truscott, the 3rd Division commander, issued a formal commendation to the unit for the action at San Fratello Ridge. Within six months General Gruenther, chief of staff of the Fifth Army in Italy, made the public statement that he would not commit a division to combat without a chemical mortar battalion attached. When the U.S. Third Army became operational in France a year later, Patton's second operational order stated that no division was ever to be committed to combat without a chemical mortar battalion attached, and further that no regiment was ever to be committed without a chemical mortar company attached.
In the Pacific, they were often the first heavy weapons on a hostile beach, long before conventional artillery could set up, and on a few occasions, 4.2s even fired from landing craft on the way in to the beaches. Plans for the invasion of Japan called for no less than thirty-two chemical mortar battalions, nearly as many as the number of infantry and armored divisions expected to be on the ground.
Throughout the war chemical mortars fired many of their most effective missions on direct request from the company or even the platoon level of the units they supported, eliminating the need to route requests through regimental and division levels of communication. The 4.2s remained nearly invisible to officers at division and corps levels, who often did not even know the missions had been fired. And so when the histories were written, their missions were often referred to as anonymous "mortar fire," a divisions "heavy mortars" or even attributed to the artillery.
Epilogue: The M30 model of the 4.2 was standardized in 1945. It was designed with a circular base plate for 360-degree traverse and a range of 6,000 yards. Some M2A1's continued in service through the Korean War. In Viet Nam the standard infantry heavy weapons company carried 4.2 mortars mounted in mobile tracked vehicles. 1990 the U.S. Army decided to phase out the 4.2 and replace it with a 120-mm mortar of Israeli design. The replacement has been gradual, and the M30 model of the 4.2 was still an active weapon in 1998 when U.S. forces re-deployed to the Gulf of Persia for a second time.


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The engineering engagement landscape
Science capital
Engineering engagement strategy
What approaches are working?
Working together - practical steps workshop and reflections
The first session of the day was introduced by Dr Rhys Morgan, Director of Education and Engineering at the Academy, and focused on the current engineering engagement landscape, making clear the need for high standard public engagement with underserved communities, but also for greater alignment between activities.
There are currently 6 million engineers and technicians in the UK
Every year in the UK, there is a shortfall of 59,000 people going into engineering careers
Women make up just 12% of the profession
People from BAME backgrounds make up less than 8% of the profession
The skills gap in engineering is not a new problem, and signs show it may get worse
The problem has persisted despite the many efforts made to engage young people with engineering
A crowded landscape
In 2016, the Academy published a report – The UK STEM Education Landscape – that found that more than 600 organisations were running efforts to involve young people in engineering.
This includes a lot of programmes and initiatives that have been successful and very well delivered – whether by engineering employers, professional science and engineering institutions, or smaller independent providers of engagement projects.
The Academy has of course been one of the many organisations delivering initiatives – both within and beyond the classroom. We have tried to ensure that these deliver new insights or plug gaps rather than replicate what is already being done.
The Academy's biggest education programme, the Connecting STEM teachers programme, aims to create a national network of support for teachers across all STEM subjects, ensuring they have the knowledge and confidence to engage a greater number and wider spectrum of school students with STEM.
For more than ten years now, the Academy has also been running Ingenious, the only grant scheme focused exclusively on supporting projects that engage the public with engineering.
A persistent problem
The fact that the skills supply is proving hard to improve however cannot be avoided. A few years ago, we set out to do something different to change this, and our first step was to make sure that our approach was rooted in audience research.
A whole host of research had already been carried out into STEM engagement and participation. But we needed to top it up with something that told us specifically:
How teenagers make career choices
What they (and their parents) thought of engineering as a career choice
Key changes required
The resulting qualitative research didn't – unfortunately – give us a silver bullet. But it did illustrate the shifts we needed to make:
From an environment where young people define themselves as STEM or Non-STEM early on and think that being technically/scientifically-minded and being artistic don't mix, to defining a middle ground where engineering offers them the opportunity to be both technical and creative
From the narrow stereotype of engineering as manual or civil, focused on constructing and building things, to painting a picture of the huge variety the profession offers
From a vacuum of relatable role models in engineering who teens want to aspire to be like, to a means of introducing them to real young engineers from all backgrounds with inspiring stories to tell
What already appeals?
There was good news in the research too – a lot of what young people say they look for in a career, is what a career in engineering offers. This is what got them excited:
Bringing design to life/ideas into reality
These findings led to the development of our This is Engineering campaign, launched in January 2018 to encourage more young people from all backgrounds to explore careers in engineering. The campaign took a new approach for the profession: using digital marketing to reach teenagers where they already are, talk to them about topics they are already interested in, such as sport, tech, music, and the environment, and show them that they can follow those things they love into a fulfilling career in engineering.
In its first year, the campaign films were viewed 28 million times, and consideration among teens of engineering as a career increased from 39% to 72% among those who had seen the campaign. In 2019, we will work with partners across the profession to open up the campaign so that it supports other STEM engagement activities, and reaches more young people and their parents.


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Two good questions in my inbox this morning, so we all get a new edition of reader Q&A. Have a question you'd like to see answered on this blog? Give me a shout.
Q: How do I view my Facebook page's newsfeed?
There are a few reason's you might like to do this, chief among them the ability to like, comment, and generally spread goodwill through the mouthpiece that is your Facebook page. The way to set this up is a little tough to find, but once you get it set up it's no different than using Facebook as you would for your own personal purposes, just under a different title.
So here's the setup:
Go to the page in question. Since you're already an admin, you'll see the admin panel. From there, select the "use facebook as" option from the "edit page" drop down menu, like so:
Once you're that far, you'll notice that the icon where your name usually is has changed to the name/profile pic of the page in question. Click "home", and you've made it to your newsfeed, which may look a little lean at first.
Your newsfeed should start to fill up as you interact with more pages on behalf of your page. When in this mode on Facebook, you can "like" other pages as your page, leave comments, and share content to the the walls of other pages.
Q: What's the easiest way to set pixel width for a given picture (on WordPress)
There are two answers to this, depending on the situation. Those situations are:
You require an exact width for a picture, no more, no less.
It just needs to look good on a blog page. Exact width is not essential.
In either situation, odds are you're looking for a picture width somewhere between the 400px and 200 px range. Larger than that will pretty much take up the full page on your standard "blog plus sidebar" layout, smaller and we're drifting into thumbnail territory. But let's take this one step at a time shall we?
If you're looking for an exact width, say 300px, the best way to go is to crop/re-size the picture before uploading it. I'll use MS Paint to accomplish this if I need to do it quick, GIMP if MS Paint isn't up to the task. It is possible to re-size images in WordPress as well, though it gums up the works with unnecessary copies of an image that is probably larger than it needs to be, so I recommend doing the re-size prior to upload.
For most purposes, however, option two is the easiest and most straightforward way to go. Here it is:
When you hit "add media" and drop your image in, you'll swiftly find yourself with a few options before hitting "insert". Below options to fill in the caption, alt text, and description, you'll find an area that looks like this:
Selecting "medium" width usually default to somewhere in the right range. 300px is plenty wide for a blog with text wrapped around it. 200px is fine too. If you find that the medium option is giving you a width slightly larger than you're shooting for, you can always hit insert, click on the icon that appears in the upper left when you select the inserted shot and edit the size down to a better size like this:
The caveat here is that while this method is quick and easy, if the picture you're uploading is wider than 600 px, most often that's just too wide and will slow down load times to your site even if you only paste the medium, 300px image into your blog post, so generally I use a combination of the two methods to achieve the desired result without uploading too much data.
If you found these answers helpful, I'd love to hear about it in the comments. If you need further clarification, I'd love to hear about it as well. Thanks for reading!


The origins of life was the subject of discussion on a summer day when six scientific pioneers convened at Eastover Farm in Connecticut. The physicist and scientific theorist Freeman Dyson formulated the theme, "Life" What a Concept!" An ironic slogan for what is perhaps the most complex problem we are faced with, one which Seth Lloyd, a quantum physicist at MIT, summed up when he remarked that scientists now know everything about the origin of the Universe and virtually nothing about the origin of life. Without this knowledge, scientists are poking around on the brink of a new age in Biology that remains largely in the dark. And without this knowledge, it is difficult to deal with the new vision of the world that taking shape there.
The group convened at the invitation of specialized literary agent John Brockman. The circle is distinguished enough for such a theme. Eastover Farm sits in the region in Connecticut where those among the rich and famous of New York who find the beach resorts of the Hamptons too loud and pretentious establish themselves. Here the scientific luminaries sit at long tables in the shade of the rustling leaves of maple trees, deep in discussion about the origins and future of life, from which they break just once to serve themselves from a salad buffet up at the farmhouse.
The day remained absolutely on topic, as Brockman had invited only half a dozen journalists. The thinkers were not to deal at length with amateurish questions; instead the objective was to collectively arrive at new ideas in the manner of a salon. This is of course of equal interest to a layperson because in Dyson, Lloyd, the genetic engineer George Church, the chemist Robert Shapiro, as well as the astronomer Dimitar Sasselov and the biologist and decoder of the genome J. Craig Venter, six men came together, each of whom had made enormous contributions in science, and all of whom work in very different fields so that it was impossible for them to retreat into their individual disciplines. And at moments the layperson was made to feel like an outsider, such as when Robert Shapiro cracked a joke about RNA that was met with great laughter from the scientists.
Freeman Dyson, a fragile gentleman of 84 years, opened the morning with his legendary provocation that Darwinian evolution represents only a short phase of three billion years in the life of this planet. A phase that will soon reach its end. According to this view, life began in primeval times with a haphazard assemblage of cells, RNA-driven organisms ensued, which, in the third phase of terrestrial life would have learned to function together. Reproduction appeared on the scene in the fourth phase, multicellular beings and the principle of death appeared in the fifth phase.
We belong to the sixth phase of evolution, which progresses very slowly by way of Darwinian natural selection. This will soon come to an end, however, because in the next five to ten years men like George Church and J. Craig Venter are expected to succeed not only in reading the genome, but also in writing new genomes. This would constitute so to speak the ultimate "Intelligent Design". Where this could lead is still difficult to anticipate. Yet Freeman Dyson finds a meaningful illustration. He spent the early nineteenfifties at Princeton, with mathematician John von Neuman, who designed one of the earliest programmable computers. When asked how many computers might be in demand, von Neumann assured him that 18 would be sufficient meet the demand of a nation like the United States. Now, 55 years later, we in the middle of a new age in physics where computers play an integral role in modern life and culture.
Today we are entering a new age of biology. Soon genetic engineering will shape our daily life to the same extent that computers do today. This sounds like science fiction, but it is already reality in science. Thus genetic engineer George Church talks about the biological building blocks that he is able to synthetically manufacture, and it is only a matter of time until we will be able to manufacture organisms that can self-reproduce. Most notably J. Craig Venter succeeded in introducing a copy of a DNA-based chromosome into a cell, which from then on was controlled by that strand of DNA.
Venter, a suntanned giant with the build of a surfer and the hunting instinct of a captain of industry, understands the magnitude of this feat in microbiology. And he understands the potential his research has to create biofuel from bacteria. He doesn't vocalize it, but he cuts a similar figure in the new age in biology to Bill Gates in the age of physics. And he also understands the moral implications. He approached the bioethicist Art Kaplan in the nineties and asked him to do a study on whether in designing a new genome he would raise ethical or religious objections. Not a single religious leaders or philosopher involved in the study could find a problem there.
You can draw whatever conclusions you like from such studies. Here at Eastover Farm, the scientists dream of a glorious future. But because every scientific breakthrough can be applied for good or for bad, there is no getting around considerable moral questioning.
The sun is already turning pink behind the treetops as the Bulgarian astronomer from Harvard, Dimitar Sasselov, once more reminds us how unique and at the same time how unstable the balance of our terrestrial life is. In our galaxy, astronomers have found roughly one hundred million planets that could theoretically harbor organic life. Not only does Earth not have the best conditions among them; it is actually at the very edge of the spectrum. "Earth is not particularly inhabitable," he says, wrapping up his talk. Here J. Craig Venter cannot help but remark as an idealist, "But it is always getting better".


The Los Angeles Food and Wine Festival has quickly become one of the city's most prominent food and wine events; it is a big deal – you probably saw the billboards scattered around town leading up to the festival. This event recently celebrated it's 5th year in a row with three nights of culinary excellence combined with world class wine.
Each day features a number of events including cooking demonstrations by celebrated chefs (this year a number well-known chefs were on hand including Thomas Keller, Michael Chiarello, Tyler Florence and Curtis Stone), lunches and dinners and various food & wine pairings. Tickets are sold separately for each event.
We have attended a number of chef led demonstrations over the years in which food is paired with wine – but never with beer. Belgian-born Master Chef Daniel Joly and International Chef Grant MacPherson led this unique tasting. They created a number of small bites to go with various completely different tasting beers. Ever had a lite beer with fresh peaches? It is not a bad pairing – with the fresh peaches sourced that morning from the Santa Monica Farmer's Market.
Later we stopped in to see the very personable and at times humorous Alex Guarnaschelli of the Food Network cooking in one of the side rooms in the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Culinary demonstration events such as this are fairly small and there are plenty of opportunities to ask the chef questions.
The festival this year culminated in a multi block 'party' titled, "Lexus Live on Grand" in which Grand Avenue closed to traffic for several blocks and 30 chefs and 100 wineries featured their products. The architectural backdrop contrasting with the red carpet is impressive; the buildings of Downtown to the west tower above the action as well as the new Broad Museum and the always impressive Disney Concert Hall (both on Grand Ave).
One highlight (also represented by one of the longest lines) was Joe's Stone Crab of Miami Beach – featuring their Sandwich Cubano warmed by actual irons and some of the best popcorn we have tasted, flavored with Tequila Lime. Oh and this vendor was also popular for hosting eclectic drinks consumed simultaneously by multiple participants.
Another culinary highlight included the small BBQ dish prepared by Tim Byres, chef of SMOKE in Dallas. There was a good representation from local restaurants as well as select restaurants from across the country. And the evening was topped off by one of our favorite Ice cream producers, McConnell's, just up the road in Santa Barbara.
Drink highlights included Hendricks Gin (from Scotland) pouring a smooth cucumber flavored Gin & Tonic and Infuse Vodka (where they made sure to tell us you could find some of their vodka at your friendly Gelson Markets).
And it was nice to see some premium Napa wineries make the trek down including Barnett Vineyards, Chappellet, Cultivar, Hope & Grace, Silver Oak, Priest Ranch & a new producer, Nellcôte.


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Hong Kong residents gather to express reverence to Chinese national emblem, flag
Source:Xinhua Published: 2019/8/9 17:07:52
A group of Hong Kong residents gathered on Thursday morning at a pier of the Victoria Harbor to express their reverence to the Chinese national emblem and flag.
To the music of "Ode to the Motherland," they unfurled several Chinese national flags and waved banners that read "safeguarding the national dignity."
Later, they sang the national anthem of China in unison, drawing attention and acclaim from a large crowd of passers-by in a luxury shopping district in Tsim Sha Tsui of the Kowloon Peninsula.
"As Chinese, we were all saddened by recent acts of insulting the national emblem and flag," said the organizer of the gathering, who only gave his surname Lim. "We won't allow anyone to tarnish our national image."
Over the past several days, radical protesters twice removed the Chinese national flags from the flagpole at the pier and flung the flags into the water.
"A national flag represents the dignity of a country. These insulting acts drew an outpouring of anger from all Chinese," said an elderly participant named Hsui Kit Fan.
During a demonstration in July, some radical protesters besieged the building of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and defaced the national emblem.
"We were all furious over the recent incidents of insulting our national emblem and flag. These kinds of acts should never be tolerated," said another participant surnamed Wong.
Wong said many of her family members are working in the police force and she felt heartsore to see them work day and night to keep public order.
"I hope the chaotic situation will subside and we can get back to our normal days as soon as possible," she said.
In a statement issued by the participants, they called on the law enforcement agencies of Hong Kong to swiftly bring the perpetrators who insulted the national emblem and flag to justice.
"The perpetrators must face severe punishment. This is the only way to prevent the situation from getting worse," said the statement.
Over the past two months, protests in Hong Kong have escalated into a spate of violent incidents, threatening social order and endangering public safety.
Hong Kong is facing the most severe situation since its return to the motherland, said Zhang Xiaoming, director of the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council, on Wednesday.
"The most pressing and overriding task at present is to stop violence, end the chaos and restore order, so as to safeguard our homeland and prevent Hong Kong from sinking into an abyss," Zhang said.
Posted in: SOCIETY


text:
3Other national traditions
Art song in the classical music tradition
"Lieder" redirects here. For the name, see Lieder (surname). For other uses, see Lied (disambiguation).
In Western classical music tradition, Lied (/liːd, liːt/, plural Lieder /ˈliːdər/;[1][2][3] German pronunciation: [liːt], plural [ˈliːdɐ], lit. 'song') is a term for setting poetry to classical music to create a piece of polyphonic music.[4] The term is used for any kind of song in contemporary German, but among English and French speakers, lied is often used interchangeably with "art song" to encompass works that the tradition has inspired in other languages as well. The poems that have been made into lieder often center on pastoral themes or themes of romantic love.[5]
The earliest lied date from the late fourteenth or early fifteenth centuries, and can even refer to Minnesang from as early as the 12th and 13th centuries.[6] It later came especially to refer to settings of Romantic poetry during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and into the early twentieth century. Examples include settings by Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Hugo Wolf, Gustav Mahler or Richard Strauss.
Further information: Liederhandschrift
For German speakers, the term "Lied" has a long history ranging from twelfth-century troubadour songs (Minnesang) via folk songs (Volkslieder) and church hymns (Kirchenlieder) to twentieth-century workers' songs (Arbeiterlieder) or protest songs (Kabarettlieder, Protestlieder).[citation needed]
The German word Lied for "song" (cognate with the English dialectal leed) first came into general use in German during the early fifteenth century, largely displacing the earlier word gesang. The poet and composer Oswald von Wolkenstein is sometimes claimed to be the creator of the lied because of his innovations in combining words and music.[7] The late-fourteenth-century composer known as the Monk of Salzburg wrote six two-part lieder which are older still, but Oswald's songs (about half of which actually borrow their music from other composers) far surpass the Monk of Salzburg in both number (about 120 lieder) and quality.[4] From the 15th century come three large song collections compiled in Germany: the Lochamer Liederbuch, the Schedelsches Liederbuch, and the Glogauer Liederbuch.[8]
The scholar Konrad Celtis (1459 – 1508), the Arch-Humanist of German Renaissance, taught his students to compose Latin poems using the metric patterns following the model of the Horatian odes. These poems were subsequently "set to simple, four-part music, incorporate the shifting accenmal patterns of the French vers mesurée". The composers of this style included Heinrich Finck, Paul Hofhaimer, and Ludwig Senfl. The style also became imbued into the new German humanist dramas, thus contributing to the development of Protestanthymnody. The style is present in the earliest German secular polyphony collections such as Johann Ott'S Mehrstimmiges Deutsches Liederbuch (1534) and Georg Forster's Frisclw tentsche Lieder (about 1540 onwards). According to Chester Lee Alwes, Heinrich Isaac's popular song Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen "became the gold standard of the Lied genre".[9]
In Germany, the great age of song came in the nineteenth century. German and Austrian composers had written music for voice with keyboard before this time, but it was with the flowering of German literature in the Classical and Romantic eras that composers found inspiration in poetry that sparked the genre known as the lied.[citation needed] The beginnings of this tradition are seen in the songs of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, but it was with Schubert that a new balance was found between words and music, a new expression of the sense of the words in and through the music. Schubert wrote over 600 songs, some of them in sequences or song cycles that relate an adventure of the soul rather than the body. The tradition was continued by Schumann, Brahms, and Wolf, and on into the 20th century by Richard Strauss, Mahler, and Pfitzner. Composers of atonal music, such as Arnold Schoenberg,[10] Alban Berg and Anton Webern, also composed lieder.
Typically, Lieder are arranged for a single singer and piano, Lieder with orchestral accompaniment being a later development. Some of the most famous examples of Lieder are Schubert's Erlkönig, Der Tod und das Mädchen ("Death and the Maiden"), Gretchen am Spinnrade, and Der Doppelgänger. Sometimes, lieder are composed in a song cycle (German Liederzyklus or Liederkreis), a series of songs (generally three or more) tied by a single narrative or theme, such as Schubert's Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, or Robert Schumann's Frauen-Liebe und Leben and Dichterliebe. Schubert and Schumann are most closely associated with this genre, mainly developed in the Romantic era.[11][12]
Other national traditions[edit]
The Lied tradition is closely linked with the German language, but there are parallels elsewhere, notably in France, with the mélodies of such composers as Berlioz, Fauré, Debussy, and Poulenc, and in Russia, with the songs of Mussorgsky and Rachmaninoff in particular. England too had a flowering of song, more closely associated, however, with folk songs than with art songs, as represented by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Benjamin Britten, Ivor Gurney, and Gerald Finzi.[citation needed]
^ "lied". CollinsDictionary.com. HarperCollins. Retrieved 17 November 2020.
^ "Lied". Random House Unabridged Dictionary. New York: Random House, Inc. 1997. Retrieved 17 November 2020 – via Infoplease.
^ "lied". The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th ed.). HarperCollins.
^ a b Böker-Heil, Norbert; Fallows, David; Baron, John H.; Parsons, James; Sams, Eric; Johnson, Graham; Griffiths, Paul (2001). "Lied". Grove Music Online (8th ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.16611. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0.
^ "Lieder". GCSE Bitesize. BBC Schools. Archived from the original on 4 March 2015.
^ Lied at the Encyclopædia Britannica
^ Orrey, Leslie; Warrack, John (2002). "Lied". In Latham, Alison (ed.). The Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-866212-9.
^ Arnold, Devis (1984). The New Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford University Press. p. 1065. ISBN 0-19-311316-3.
^ Alwes, Chester Lee (2015). A History of Western Choral Music. Oxford University Press. p. 66. ISBN 978-0-19-936193-9. Retrieved 10 December 2022.
^ Gramit, David (2004). "The Circulation of the Lied: The Double Life of an Art Form". In Parsons, James (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to the Lied. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 311. ISBN 978-0-521-80471-4.
^ Deaville, James (2004). "A Multitude of Voices: The Lied at Mid Century". In Parsons, James (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to the Lied. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 143. ISBN 978-0-521-80471-4.
^ Thyme, Jürgen (2005). "Schubert's Strategies in Setting Free Verse". In Lodato, Suzanne M.; Urrows, David Francis (eds.). Word and Music Studies: Essays on Music and the Spoken Word and on Surveying the Field: Essays from the Fourth International Conference in Word and Music Studies, Berlin, 2003. Amsterdam and New York: Editions Rodopi. p. 90. ISBN 978-90-420-1897-6.
Hallmark, Rufus, ed. (1996). German Lieder in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Schirmer Books. ISBN 978-0-02-870845-4.
Parsons, James (2004). The Cambridge Companion to the Lied. Cambridge Companions to Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-80027-3.
Lieder line by line
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lieder.
Look up lied in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
The LiederNet Archive, texts and translations
The Lieder Sound Archive
The OpenScore Lieder Corpus, public domain transcriptions to play or download
The Art Song Project
"Life On the Other Side – 1971 Darüber...", Aubrey Pankey, an African-American lieder singer
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lied&oldid=1126586322"
German music history
Song forms
Songs in classical music
Medieval music genres
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Use dmy dates from September 2020


text:
News 13 August 2020, at 10:43
Belarusians defied a harsh crackdown in a fourth day of protests on August 12 that spilled into the night as pressure mounts on President Alyaksandr Lukashenka over a weekend vote the opposition says was rigged to extend the strongman's 26-year rule.
Thousands of protesters hit the streets in Minsk and elsewhere across the Eastern European nation, braving the threat of beating and detention as Belarusian authorities admitted on August 12 to using live ammunition against protesters and news emerged that a second person had died in the unrest.
The spontaneous protests took many forms and came as riot police since the August 9 disputed election have used tear gas, rubber bullets, and stun grenades to disperse protesters in the capital and other cities.
In an interview with RFE/RL during a visit to Prague, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that "we've watched the violence and the aftermath, peaceful protesters being treated in ways that are inconsistent with how they should be treated."
Pompeo said that the United States had not yet settled on the appropriate response, but would work with Washington's European partners to determine what action to take.
EU foreign ministers are expected to meet on August 14 to discuss imposing sanctions on Belarus, which were previously lifted in 2016.
In several parts of Minsk on August 12, groups of hundreds of people formed human chains to protest as people in cars honked horns and slowed to a crawl to block police vehicles. Similar protests were held in at least five other cities, according to the Belarusian rights NGO Vyasna (Spring).
More than 130 doctors took part in an action against violence in Minsk, gathering in white coats on Dzerzhinsky Avenue near the medical university with flowers and posters. According to the doctors, they came out to show that "we are all together."
On Dzerzhinsky Avenue, people stood on balconies, clapping in an expression of support for protesters. A group of riot police arrived and fired rubber bullets.
In Minsk and other towns, women dressed in white joined hands to form a human chain to protest the postelection crackdown.
The latest protests came as authorities said more than 6,000 people have been detained and hundreds injured in protests since the August 9 vote, which the electoral body said Lukashenka won with 80 percent of the vote while the official tally for his main rival, Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, was less than 10 percent. Tsikhanouskaya has left the country and is now in Lithuania.
Hundreds of relatives of detained people gathered in front of the central detention center in Minsk on August 12, trying to get information about their loved ones.
Human rights activists say detention centers, police stations, and jails across the country are overcrowded.
Earlier on August 12, the Belarusian Interior Ministry said that a man was wounded in the western city of Brest overnight after law enforcement opened fire at a group of people who, police said, attacked them with iron bars.
It was the first such admittal by Belarusian authorities that live ammunition had been used against protesters.
The Investigative Committee also admitted a 25-year-old man detained at a street protest in Gomel died after being transferred to a prison and then a hospital, making him the second person killed in the unrest.
The victim's mother told RFE/RL that her son had not participated in protests and was going to see his girlfriend when he was rounded up by police. She said her son had heart problems and believed he had been beaten.
Meanwhile, an RFE/RL journalist and his wife were stopped by police in Minsk as they were driving. Vitaly Tsyhankov was pulled from the car by police, beaten, and thrown to the ground, before being detained, his wife said. She was also detained.
The assault on the RFE/RL journalist came as the Belarusian Association of Journalists issued a statement on August 12 calling on the authorities to stop targeted violence against media representatives.
The journalist group said security forces have deliberately used violence against the media, intentionally damaged their equipment, and detained at least 12 journalists covering the unrest.
Belarusian Nobel Prize-winning writer Svetlana Alexievich condemned the police violence against protesters, telling RFE/RL that "authorities have declared war on their people" and Lukashenka should step down to prevent a bloody civil war.
"Leave before it's too late, before you have plunged the people into a terrible abyss, into the abyss of civil war," the 72-year-old author said in her first remarks since the election. "Nobody wants blood. Only you want power. And it's your desire for power that requires blood."
https://www.rferl.org/
21 Dec Local roads bring greater connectivity and support to rural communities in Moldova
08 Dec The biggest surprise of the elections is the Alliance for Romanian Unity (AUR)
04 Dec Moldova: Statement by the Spokesperson on the latest legislative proposals
02 Dec Moldova's new president calls for Russian troops to withdraw from territory
23 Nov 7 dead in Russia for drinking hand sanitizer after running out of liquor — reports
Politics 1 July 2020, ora: 10:19


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Many women suffer from mental ill health during pregnancy and/or after the birth of their baby. Unfortunately, our understanding of how these problems develop, and how they can best be prevented or treated are currently limited. Routinely collected data has great research potential in this area, however, there are considerable challenges. For example, some women might not want to disclose their mental ill health, and some data systems might not capture the information in a way that is usable for research. That means that we can't rely on the data collected to provide a full picture of women's experiences.
Identifying the processes and pathways used by health professionals to identify and treat mental ill health. It will also identify data sources for CMDs and SMIs and issues surrounding data capture that require further exploration.
A review of the literature to identify the healthcare and human factors that could influence the recording of mental ill health data in electronic medical records in order to categorise the factors that might need to be considered when decontextualized electronic medical records data are analysed.
Interviews with women and health professionals to explore the barriers and enablers to identifying perinatal mental ill health, and capturing this information on the relevant routine data systems.
We will then develop methods to deal with the missingness in data to allow us to analyse the data in a more meaningful way. At the same time we will develop recommendations to health services and data system developers based on our findings so that they can improve their services and enhance identification and capture of mental ill health.


and what is the amount of score we get ( For Rank Bar ) with Score Multiplier Passes?
For killing 1 tank you get 10 exp points.
With 30% SMP you'll receive 13 points, with 50% SMP you'll receive 15 points and with 100% SMP you'll receive 20 exp points.


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I've had 100Mbps service for 2 1/2 months now. I've regularly checked the speed of my service using speedtest.net and the TWC version of speed test. I have never gotten 100 Mpbs. I'm usually in the mid to high 80s. I follow the directions correctly. What can I do to get the advertised speed? I download large files for work and am often up against my speed cap, so a boost would certainly help.
Plan speeds are NOT guaranteed, they are '"up to".
If you were getting half your plan speed, then you'd have good reason to complain.
If you are testing through wireless that might be normal. could you check it wired if you haven't yet?
I was not complaining. I was asking how I might get the advertised speed. I think there's a big difference. I see people routinely say they get speeds in excess of the advertised numbers, so I was hoping I could get at least what is advertised.
Regardless, if you have any help I'm all ears. If not, that's fine.
to be honest I would be asking as well.
I asked this question on our team chat room once, about if we were supposed to have the quoted bandwidth or not and when it should be considered "service impacting".
My department (which isn't necessarily the same as other departments in other markets) uses the general rule-of-thumb that if it's more than 20% off, (less than 80% of what it normally should be), for either upstream and/or downstream, then we should consider that service impacting. Typically if it's going that low, there's other issues anyways (i.e.: packet loss) than can be identified. But not always. Sometimes is issues with certain IXPs connecting TWC's hub in your area to other IXPs.
Also, do NOT trust certain speed tests. Sony's Playstation and the XBox's speeds test are notoriously inaccurate. Not only that, many people don't understand that the NIC can have a major role, or that WiFi HSD speed isn't guaranteed by TWC because we simply cannot control environmental factors (such as EMI from neighbor's WiFi's jamming your because they're overlapping the 2.4 GHz channel you're broadcasting on). There are several of factors to consider, and not all of those TWC can really do much about.
Remember, we actually provision modems for MORE speed than what we quote in sales, to act as an engineered buffer.
Check speed without the router, turn off all cloud type garbage.
I've regularly checked the speed of my service using speedtest.net and the TWC version of speed test.
Both should give you good data, so you're doing good on that front. Did you run your speed tests when only a single device was using the service, and that device was a wired device with a Gigabit Ethernet port? If not, try that and see if the results are better. If so, then your previous results were likely skewed by traffic from other devices. All speed tests show you the "remaining" speed, so if you have other devices that are consistently taking 10-15 Mbps, you'll see results in the mid to high 80s.
If the results still suggest the TWC can't supply you with 100/10 service, you might consider dropping to the 50/5 tier and saving $10 per month on your bill (assuming that you are paying retail rates, if you are on a promotional plan you probably don't want to change it until the plan expires). Or switch to another Internet provider, if another is available to you. Or live with download speeds in the mid to high 80s.
Thanks for all the input. I am on a wired, Gigabit NIC connection.
I had not considered this before, but I'm using a several year old Netgear WNR2000 router. It looks like the ethernet ports on it are 10/100. Would that likely be the issue? I can get another router, if so.
I have been testing the speeds with only one device using the network and making sure there's nothing else using bandwidth when I do the test.
Yes, if the router has a high packet switching overhead, that could eat up 10% or so of your bandwidth. An easy test would be to temporarily remove the router, connect directly to the cable modem (remember to power cycle the cable modem) and see if you get full speed. If so, buy a new router with Gigabit WAN/LAN ports (plenty to choose from).


Installing concealed hinges can be a pretty simple process, even using a hand held drill, with the help of a jig. The Concealed Hinge JIG works really well at positioning the Forstner bit, as well as holding it square to the door frame surface and finally controlling the depth of the hole. Of course, if you have a drill press with a good fence and large enough table then that will work just as well.
Dovetail jigs can be as simple or as sophisticated as you like. It all depends on serious you are about your dovetail jig and how often you are going to use it. Some dovetail jigs are designed to cut all kinds of joints and some jigs are designed to cut only one or two types of joints. Dovetail joints are very strong joints that are able to withstand plenty of pressure. This makes them ideal for cabinet and drawer work.
Improve your woodworking at home with these woodworking instructions on how to build this simple jig. The most common cut is a straight cut. The straight cut jig is the one we will be working with today, and with this jig every straight cut will be exactly where you intend for it to be.
Every woodworker uses jigs regularly. Marking gauges, combination squares, the rip fence on a table saw, and router bits with ball-bearing pilots are all jigs that are taken for granted. And who hasn't, at one time or another, made a simple thingamajig on the spur of the moment to help get a certain job done?


text:
UK confirms mobile voice coverage commitments
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UK regulator Ofcom has imposed a 90 percent voice coverage obligation across the country's four mobile operators, with plans to look at the licence fees for 900MHz and 1800MHz bands.
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The obligation must be met by the end of 2017 and follows an agreement signed in December between mobile operators and the UK government. Operators had been threatened with the prospect of sharing networks if they could not improve coverage.
Ofcom said it will now work on a consultation on what operators pay for the 900MHz and 1800MHz spectrum, following the completion of the 4G auction two years ago. Operators use the bands for 2G, 3G and some 4G services.
The UK government said the deal will cut the number of "not-spots" – areas where there is no mobile coverage – by two thirds. Operators will spend a total of £5 billion on improving their networks, with an obligation to offer full coverage to 2017 of geographical areas by 2017, up from 69 percent today.
Culture Secretary Sajid Javid said: "For far too long, too many parts of the UK have regularly suffered from poor mobile coverage leaving them unable to make calls or send texts. Now at last we have progress that will give the UK the world-class mobile phone coverage it needs and deserves.
"The deal will also bring £5bn investment by the mobile networks into the UK's infrastructure, which will help drive this Government's long-term economic plan."
The UK market is set for a considerable shake-up with BT in talks with EE to acquire the operator and Three owner Hutchison Whampoa set to create the UK's biggest player if negotiations with O2 are successful.
Ofcom sets out plans to support UK in IoT era
Ofcom starts prepping for 5G in the UK
LTE	Spectrum