Bhubaneswar: Three descendants of royal families in Odisha are prone to make an electoral debut this time. Well-educated and good, the royal scions are already in movement in the segments from the place they want to contest.
Arkesh Singhdeo, 32, grandson of former leader minister Rajendra Narayan Singhdeo and son of former minister and BJD veteran A U Singhdeo, is keen to battle from Balangir meeting phase. The young scion was hoping for a price ticket in 2014, however BJD fielded his father. But, the senior Singhdeo misplaced to Narasingha Mishra (Congress), who is now chief of opposition.
"I have been operating hard at the grassroots-level for the past six years. I have reinforced the celebration organization. I'm additionally in touch with the people of my area," Arkesh, who has performed BA in historical past honours from Sunrise University, Rajasthan, informed TOI. He is an alumni of Doon School, Dehradun. "I'm currently pursuing my masters degree via correspondence from the University of London," he mentioned.
Arkesh's elder brother Kalikesh Narayan Singhdeo is a sitting MP from Balangir. He had taken the plunge into electoral politics in 2004 and received from Saintala meeting seat. After Saintala was abolished in 2009 delimitation, Kalikesh switched over to Balangir parliamentary phase.
Kalahandi MP Arka Keshari Deo's spouse Malavika Devi will likely be entering the fray for the first time. She is hoping to get a BJD price ticket from her husband's seat or Junagarh meeting phase. Malavika, who is an MBA, had campaigned with her husband in 2014 election. She could also be a social worker. "I'm to battle the election and serve other people as their consultant. It is up to the celebration from which position it fields me as a candidate," she mentioned.
This election will even witness a royal scion from Gajapati district entering the fray. Kalyani Devi, the great granddaughter of erstwhile king of Paralakhemundi Maharaja Krushna Chandra Gajapati, not too long ago joined BJD and met leader minister Naveen Patnaik. She is the daughter of Gopinath Gajapati, who was Congress' MP from Berhampur two times from 1989-1991 and 1991-1996.
Kalyani is an alumnus of Christ College, Bengaluru. She was earlier staying in Chennai. "I come from a political circle of relatives. It is up to the chief minister to take a decision on my candidature," she mentioned.


text:
FILM REEL
Jordan Rader is the owner of Rader Film. She is a passionate filmmaker who has been making movies dating back to early childhood. Graduating film school with honors, she then joined the Directors Guild of America (DGA) Training Program furthering her career in the entertainment industry. Currently, she is a DGA Assistant Director. She has worked with Production Companies Netflix, Lionsgate, 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Sony Pictures Entertainment, ABC Studios, CBS, FX Network, Spike, Apple, and TV Land.
She is an award winning filmmaker as her film "You Can Run" has won: Best Music Video, Best Directing, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography (Womens Independent Film Festival, 2016), and Best Music Video (Los Angeles Movie Awards, 2015). And her film "Crimson's Kiss" has won: Best Student Film (Los Angeles International Underground Film Festival, 2013), Best Editing (Women's Independent Film Festival, 2013), 2nd Place Student Film (Sunset Film Festival), and Award of Merit (Best Shorts Competition, 2014).
BEST DIRECTING
Women's Independent Film Festival
BEST MUSIC VIDEO
BEST SHORT FILM
Best Shorts Competition
RADER FILM
© 2019 Rader Film. All rights reserved.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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For my next review, we will be dissecting our beloved Shana Nendoroid.
I only received her last week, but I was glad to finally get the legitimate version and not the bootleg I have been holding onto for the last seven or more months (more on that later).
So, on to the in-depth review to a great figure!
As per usual, the sculpt on this figure is outstanding, with no unnecessary bulges or excess PVC. The individual areas of this figure are so expertly crafted and the usual attention to detail inherit in 99% of GSC figures is evident in the hair, face and clothing of Shana here. The fit of the sword in particular into her hand is something to take exception to, since it's a perfect fit and makes you smile when you get it into the hand without a problem. She sits nicely in the base and all parts (head, arms, legs, sword, Cotycus and cloak) all fit without need to grit your teeth trying to pull out, or to hurt yourself trying to put back in.
The joints are able to hold fine, and the biggest plus is that they aren't as stuck in there as later Nendos. This allows you to place them in various positions to enable your Shana to perform great feats of daring and malicious intent! I was glad of this, as some Nendoroids are a pain to fix for this problem, but this one had no problems in this department.
Standard affair with the usual utilitarian flair. This base will never win awards, but the high point of said base is the fact that Shana is allowed to sit so well, and sturdy is the best description to be applied to her. If you receive a copy like mine, then be assured that when you put her firmly into her base, you can pick her up by her head and she'll remain in the base - it's that sturdy.
The lower score is from how plain the base is, but it still remains high for the facts listed above.
This is the standard style of box that all earlier Nendoroids received. Cute poses and faces abound, and the colour scheme is excellent. The lower score is based on the fact that it's not as good as the newer boxes, which have a better tab system and tray. But what it has going for it is worth the chance to have even just the box. I am proud to have it on the shelf.
The tray is still the type with the tabbed edges to hold the indented parts together, thus keeping the accessories in place. This was a nice touch they had added from somewhere in the #30's until around the #90's I believe - it adds to the score, either way.
As the page for Shana #47a attests, she has a bootleg. I was perhaps (?) unfortunate to buy one of these some many months ago from eBootleg, but held onto her for the sole purpose of showing her together with the legit Shana, as I took the photo of them here. As you can see, the bootleg Shana is not nice at all - she has a terrible paint job, weak joints that don't sit right, and the face is 'sun-burned' of all things. Her clothing isn't sculpted right, and the joints are full of extra bits not scraped off the edges.
The paint stinks, which is why I coined her "Smelly". And it's far too glossy, as all bootlegs seem to be. They seem to have used wood paint for the figure, and the face's decals (these are the eyes, in case you were wondering what I meant by 'decals') are a poor rendition of what we really get with the legitimate figure. Her Cotycus is ridiculous; the wire loops through the jewel rather than coming out of it, and the ends of the wire are badly hooked together (and easily come apart), unlike the loop that is created in the legit one.
I tell you all this about the fake in this review, only because it heightens the near-perfection of the legitimate version of said figure that much more believably. Comparing the two makes the real one that much more special, as the fake shows us how much better the real can be in anything. Bootlegs are just a waste of precious PVC and money, and buying the real one gives much more credence to the original sculptor and the company who produced it. And so I am glad that I could have the fake, if only to show off the beauty of the real in it's glory.
Tarkana2Nice review. I was eyeing her up at the last con I was at, but all the seller's products turned out to be bootlegs.
Nice review. I was eyeing her up at the last con I was at, but all the seller's products turned out to be bootlegs.


Puccini's beloved La Bohème relates the loves and trials of a group of impoverished artists in mid-19th century Paris. It deeply expresses human experiences scene after scene periodically clothed in rapturously beautiful music. The opera focuses on a love relationship between Rodolfo, a poet, and Mimi, his seamstress neighbor. Rodolfo shares his humble attic room with Marcello, a painter, and two other friends, Colline, a philosopher, and Schaunard, a musician, who live nearby. Also included are Musetta, Marcello's sometime lover, and her current beau who is the wealthy and elderly Alcinidoro.
The first act depicts a frigid apartment scene followed by Rodolfo's first encounter with Mimi in the adjacent hallway. In Act II the scene changes to a Christmas Eve celebration at the lively Café Momus with large on-stage groups of revelers. In the final act when Mimi is ill and dying the ensemble reaches an emotional and musical height.
Giacomo Puccini composed La Bohème in 1896, followed in 1900 by Tosca and Madama Butterfly in 1904. These three masterpieces headline the offerings of opera houses worldwide. Puccini was a master dramatist musician who instinctively wedded sublime sound to his operas… and audiences the world over continue to respond.
Connecticut Lyric Opera and the Connecticut Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra present a new fully staged production with orchestra conducted by maestro Adrian Sylveen. Sung in Italian with English subtitles projected above the stage.


text:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using Ivony.Html;
using System.IO;

namespace Ivony.Html.Client
{
  public class HtmlSiteDownloader : IDisposable
  {

    public HtmlSiteDownloader() : this( new HtmlClient() ) { }

    public HtmlSiteDownloader( HtmlClient client )
    {
      Client = client;
    }

    public HtmlClient Client
    {
      get;
      private set;
    }

    private HashSet<string> siteLinks = new HashSet<string>();
    private HashSet<string> tracedLinks = new HashSet<string>();

    private object sync = new object();

    public Task<IHtmlDocument[]> RetrieveAllPages( string entryUri )
    {
      return RetrieveAllPagesCore( new Uri( entryUri ) );
    }

    public Task<IHtmlDocument[]> RetrieveAllPages( Uri entryUri )
    {
      return RetrieveAllPagesCore( entryUri );
    }

    protected async Task<IHtmlDocument[]> RetrieveAllPagesCore( Uri entryUri )
    {

      var document = await Client.Get( entryUri );
      if ( document == null )
        return new IHtmlDocument[0];

      lock ( sync )
      {
        siteLinks.UnionWith( FindLinks( document ) );
      }

      if ( IsObjective( document ) )
        Save( document );

      List<IHtmlDocument> result = new List<IHtmlDocument>();

      string[] allLinks;
      lock ( sync )
      {
        allLinks = siteLinks.Except( tracedLinks ).ToArray();
      }

      foreach ( var link in allLinks )
      {
        var traceUri = new Uri( entryUri, link );
        if ( Tracable( entryUri, traceUri ) )
        {
          lock ( sync )
          {
            var traceLink = traceUri.AbsoluteUri;
            if ( tracedLinks.Contains( traceLink ) )
              continue;

            tracedLinks.Add( traceLink );
          }

          result.AddRange( await RetrieveAllPagesCore( traceUri ) );
        }
      }

      return result.ToArray();

    }

    /// <summary>
    /// 判断指定文档是否为目标文档
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="document">要判断的文档</param>
    /// <returns>是否为要保存的目标文档</returns>
    protected virtual bool IsObjective( IHtmlDocument document )
    {
      return true;
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// 保存指定文档
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="document">要保存的文档</param>
    protected virtual void Save( IHtmlDocument document )
    {
      var filename = Guid.NewGuid().ToString( "N" ) + ".html";
      using ( var stream = File.OpenWrite( Path.Combine( @"C:\Temp", filename ) ) )
      {
        document.Render( stream, Encoding.UTF8 );
      }
    }

    /// <summary>
    /// 判断指定 URI 地址是否可以进行追踪
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="refer">引用来源</param>
    /// <param name="traceUri">需要判断的 URI 地址</param>
    /// <returns>是否可以进行追踪</returns>
    protected virtual bool Tracable( Uri refer, Uri traceUri )
    {
      return refer.Host == traceUri.Host;
    }

    protected virtual IEnumerable<string> FindLinks( IHtmlDocument document )
    {

      document.ResolveUriToAbsoluate();

      foreach ( var href in document.Find( "a[href]" ).Select( element => element.Attribute( "href" ).Value() ) )
      {
        var uri = new UriBuilder( new Uri( document.DocumentUri, href ) );
        uri.Fragment = null;
        yield return uri.Uri.AbsoluteUri;
      }

    }

    public void Dispose()
    {
      Client.Dispose();
    }

  }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Ronald Pisani
January 22, 1933 ~ November 6, 2018 (age 85)
Ron Pisani, loving husband and father of two, passed away at the age of 85, the evening of Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018 in Elkhart.
Born Jan. 22, 1933, in Youngstown, OH, Ron was the youngest of seven children born to Ferdinand and Anna (Lanotte) Pisani. Ron grew up in Youngstown graduating from Rayen High school and after serving four years in the Navy he attended and graduated with a B.A. and B.S. from Youngstown University (YU). While at YU he was a brother and president of the Sigma Kappa Sigma fraternity. In later years he became a lifetime member of the Masons and Shriners.
Ron enjoyed singing from his glee club days at Hayes Jr. High to his barbershop singing with the South Bend Valleyaires in his adult years in Michiana as a baritone. He went on to Northbrook barbershop chorus where they won the national championships. He was also a very talented artist. He created several pen and ink art works and even painted a mural in a friends' home.
Ron took up skiing again in 1979 and traveled out West and yearly traveled for Thanksgiving to his favorite ski resort, Vail, CO. He and his wife enjoyed traveling the world after his retirement.
Ron spent most of his working life as a salesman, mostly in the RV and van industry. Two notable places of employment being Parr Ind. Where he was a general manager and Paramont Plastics in which he held the position as a sales representative.
Ron is survived by his lovely wife Sandra (Voelker) Pisani, the love of his life, who he married Oct 21, 1989; brother, Fred Pisani of Youngstown, OH., and children, Rhonda (Pisani) Shank (Randall) of Elkhart, Kevin Pisani (Michelle) of Edwardsburg, MI, and three grandchildren, Kaleb Shank, Brennan Shank, and Vinnie Pisani, along with his honorary son, Cody Trotter.
Visitation will be held on Friday, Nov. 16 from 5-7 pm at Stemm-Lawson-Peterson Funeral Home, where a masonic service will be held at 7 pm. Services will be held on Saturday, Nov. 17 at 10:30 am. Military honors will conclude the service by the U.S. Navy Honor Guard and the D.A.V. #19.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions are preferred to United Cancer Services. Online condolences may be shared with the family at www.stemmlawsonpeterson.com.
Elkhart IN


text:
Q: Live, evolving, dynamic wallpaper (desktop) on a Mac Should it be possible to develop a dynamic desktop for the Mac? By "dynamic," I mean a desktop whose images take system parameters, such as the time and job information, and use this information to update the image. Information about image states would also be preserved between sessions. I'm not talking about a movie or a stochastic but autonomous screen saver. Is there any reason a user couldn't develop such a thing? (I'd like to ask how but am trying to keep the question constrained.)
I'm not new to programming but have no sense how Macs work. I'd like to know if there's some fatal flaw in my goal before I start digging in. Thanks in advance for any pointers.
Update: Wikipedia implies there's no direct way to do what I want to do--Mac desktop wallpaper must come from a folder of static images or a screen saver. The only viable approach I see at the moment would be to generate images periodically for such a screen saver (e.g., by adapting this Python script). If this is stupid or a slicker method might exist, would love to hear it.

A: Very late response but I only stumbled across the question and noticed some recent interest...
Aren't you looking for something like GeekTool ?

A: This seems to have been implemented in the latest version of Mac OS X: Mojave.
This article has some tips on how to make your own, towards the bottom: https://www.howtogeek.com/369645/download-more-dynamic-wallpapers-for-mojave-or-make-your-own/

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


This project, located in Tianjin in a metropolis in northern China and one of the five national central cities of the People's Republic of China. The project has a total area of 293 ha which was included in our masterplan scope of works and 19 ha which was designed for landscaped high class residential villas. 10 public themed parks and American Style residential villa gardens were proposed as further options which the Client introduced as a marketing strategy. The main water body covers about 31 ha and will help to bring more comfortable living space. The design created a natural water edge which provides different experiences and pedestrian and activity space with sense of privacy. Plants and landscape structures help reduce vehicle noise and bring decorative aesthetics to villa areas.


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It is this lack of self-control in people that earns lotteries around the world, a bad reputation. The government has strict laws governing the lottery business in every country, and with the advent of cheap internet, it is no wonder then that this business is booming like never. Another, reason why it is gaining so much following, is because these lottery companies are coming up with innovative and interesting features to engage their customers.
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Organic Series Kiln Formed Cast Glass Textures are designed and manufactured by Nathan Allan Glass Studios. View our phenomenal Organic Kiln Formed Cast Glass Textures below. We have a wide variety of textures to choose from. All of our architectural glass is produced in our factory located in Vancouver, British Columbia Canada. Contact Us today to learn more.
Nathan Allan produces 150+ unique and exclusive glass textures and designs. We offer the largest assembly of hand crafted Architectural Glass products. Created for the A&D community, our Kiln Formed Cast Glass Textures are often used in wall partitions and dividers. As well, our glass is used in doors, storefront and facades. Nathan Allan has also designed 2 exclusive products for Glass Flooring and Glass Stair Tread applications. Each of these products is designed with our Glass Sandpaper safety finish, an incredibly durable and effective safety finish.
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IT'S LIKE A LIMOUSINE RIDE FOR YOUR GEAR.
Yakima's racks are the best way to get your stuff out into the great outdoors. Now your gear can arrive in as much style as you do. Enter the Yakima Gear Giveaway for a chance to win a new Yakima rack.
One first prize winner will receive a Yakima base rack with two HighRoller bike mounts. One second prize winner will receive a HighLite 2 back-of-car rack. Final rack configuration and value will be dependent on the exact model designed to fit the winner's vehicle.
No purchase necessary to enter or win. A purchase will not improve your chances of winning. Void where prohibited. Sweepstakes begins at 12:01 am EST on April 15, 2011 and ends at 11:59 pm EST on June 15, 2011. Must be a 18 years or older and a resident of 49 US States or DC to enter. Click here for official rules. Rodale, Inc., 33 E. Minor Street, Emmaus, PA 18098 and Yakima Products, 15025 SW Koll Parkway, Beaverton, OR, 97006 are the sponsors of the sweepstakes.


text:
Remembering Merritt Butrick of "Square Pegs"
— Merritt Butrick (September 3, 1959 – March 17, 1989) was an actor who died of AIDS in Los Angeles. He was 29 years old. . In the week before his death, Butrick received a spinal tap/lumbar puncture to help relieve cranial pressure as he was suffering from toxoplasma of the brain — an AIDS defining illness. He also had pneumonia. . Merritt who died alone in his apartment on Hollywood Boulevard, was cremated and his ashes were given to his family in Lake Oswego, Oregon . Born in Gainesville, Florida, Merritt was an only child. In 1977, he graduated from Tamalpais High School, Mill Valley, California. He later attended @calarts but was dismissed having been told by his teachers that he did not have the skills required to make it as an actor. . Merritt first screen role was in two episodes of Hill Street Blues in 1981. In 1982, he was cast to play John "Johnny Slash" Ulasewicz, in the sitcom Square Pegs alongside @sarahjessicaparker. . Butrick went on to play David Marcus, the son of James T. Kirk in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984). His other film credit's include Zapped! (1982) and Fright Night Part 2 (1988). He also had numerous guest roles on television shows including Chips, Jake and the Fatman and Beauty and the Beast. . Butrick's final acting role was in the play Kingfish at the Los Angeles Theatre Center in October 1988. . #whatisrememberedlives #theaidsmemorial #aidsmemorial #neverforget #endaids
A post shared by THE AIDS MEMORIAL (@theaidsmemorial) on Mar 18, 2019 at 12:18pm PDT
posted by Kenneth M. Walsh at 1:32 PM


Beautiful home with master suite down and two bedrooms up. High ceilings in Den and formal dining room.Brand new carpet throughout the home. Neutral paint color throughout. Tile in entry, kitchen, breakfast room and all baths. Lots of windows and storage areas. Close to fitness club, restaurants, schools and shopping. Schedule your appointment today!


Homeowners prepared to sacrifice to afford rising energy bills | Belvoir!
The second round of price rises from British Gas and Scottish Power are due to hit this month and, according to research from MoneySuperMarket, half of Brits will change the way they use their energy this winter as a direct result.
The research found that between December and March, the UK sees a staggering 9,7003 deaths due to cold conditions inside the home. With energy bills continuing to rise – the average annual Big Six standard variable tariff is £1,224, over £70 more expensive than this time last year – the research suggests large portions of the population will be making real sacrifices to ensure they can afford to heat their homes.
35% of Brits will reduce consumption by being conservative in the way they will use their energy, paying more attention to turning lights off and unplugging appliances to combat increased bills. The research also shows 19% will have fewer meals or takeaways; 14% will dip into savings; 12% will go on fewer nights out with friends and a further 12% will take a packed lunch to work to save money. 7% admit they'll even go into their overdraft just to cover the cost of their energy bill.
When mapping sentiment across the country, those in Wrexham (71%) are the most likely to make sacrifices to pay for their energy bill this winter, followed closely by Portsmouth (68%), Bristol (68%) and Swansea (67%). York, London and Edinburgh are also among the top ten cities making sacrifices.
The research also reveals that October 11th is the date Brits are most likely to turn the heating on regularly to combat the colder weather.
Stephen Murray, energy expert at MoneySuperMarket, said: "Most of the price rises from the Big Six and emerging suppliers were announced after the winter months, once the heating was already switched off, so it's only really now that households will start to suffer the impact as temperatures start to drop and the thermostat gets turned up.
Driven largely by wholesale costs, a normal household on an expensive standard variable tariff is paying £73 more this winter compared to last, with the average bill now standing at £1,224. To protect yourself from any more price hikes, it's worth shopping around and switching to a fixed rate tariff to lock in the amount you pay for the next couple of winters. You could save up to £250 by doing so.


by Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate. Icon Books, UK. Pages 176. £ 9.99.
despair, anxiety, the absurd, nothingness and so on. But Hamlet's "problem of being" does not of course make him an existentialist. Besides, he is a fictional character and his speech comes as an ironic intimation of that. Richard Appignanesi and Oscar Zarate explores the nature of such problems.
condemned by the gods to roll a stone endlessly up a hill, only to have it roll back and to start his task all over again.
By 1942, Camus and others were questioning why one did not commit suicide since life was discovered to be completely devoid of meaning. However, to commit suicide has less to do with the anguish of living; rather, it implies the human will to overcome the eternal fear of death. When the fear of dying is conquered, the mind will no longer search for meaning in life, or lament about the apparent meaninglessness. "With the possible 'death of death' there is no need for meaning at all."
choice to the one who ends his life, allowing him or her to have control over the indefiniteness of life. It is thus that the existentialists would claim that meaning can be derived from nothingness.
accepts this and "says yes to his task", when he himself chooses to continue the torture which has been imposed on him. He becomes master of his own fate. The absence of any controlling force in the universe (or "essence") thus becomes a positive factor. Sisyphus is the perfect symbolic hero in that he attempts to save mankind from death which in its very incomprehensibility, is also a kind of pointlessness.
ideology on its margin". Sartre had spent a year in Berlin studying Husserl and existentialism's chief technical philosopher, Heidegger. Husserl, following quantum theory, interrogated how any proposition offered by science could be objectively true. Like Descartes, Husserl too leans towards reductionism in giving certainty to consciousness ("I think, therefore I am").
had already imbibed from his training. That is how his version of "cognito" came into being. But where cognito was the thinking individual for Descartes, for Husserl it is consciousness of the world which constitutes being. In Husserl's thought, only consciousness is certain, which, on its part, is connected with the world through "intentionality".
age. For Heidegger, the relationship of existence to essence may be related to the bigger issue of being. Neither Kant nor Kierkegaard look at being as ontological.
artist, Oscar Zarate, is seen accompanying Husserl and Heidegger on most pages of the book. Sartre uses the Heideggerian notion and posits that the human self has existence but no essence. He takes up Hegel's ideas of "being-in-itself" and "being-for-itself". The former implied a kind of "is-ness"; the latter indicates what one "has to be". Sartre's hero, Roquentin (nausea), comes to this realisation as he rides in a streetcar in Bouville: "This thing I'm sitting on, leaning my hand on, is called a seat. They made it purposely for people to sit on, they took leather, springs and cloth, they went to work with the idea of making a seat and when they finished, that was what they had made."
Roquentin surmises that things as they are have no relationship with what is attributed to them or the names that we give them. The world is too full of words and explanations, essences, reasons and truths that determine the nature of things or being. That the streetcar's seat is a seat is only one interpretation. Since essences hardly fit existence, Sartre/Roquentin is faced by nausea at the world. Everything around is nothing and yet something at the same time. Suffocated, Roquentin jumps off the streetcar and sits on a bench in a park where he sees the exposed roots of a chestnut tree: "Never until these last few days had I understood the meaning of 'existence' . . . and then, all of a sudden, there it was clear as day."
Sartre's famous chestnut tree vision indicates how there is complete lack of reason and rationality in the being of all things in this world. Nothing is necessary or desirable. This is Sartre's view of the absurd and the end of Roquentin's nausea.
This visionary experience spells out the end of God and the Cartesian thinking individual, all of which are essences created to approximate to the self. Descartes claimed that every time one was conscious of thinking, one confirmed that one existed. But Sartre reworks Descartes and says that consciousness is empty. To think, for the consciousness, is an act of essentialism. We think only when an object imposes itself upon the consciousness.
that it brings about an alienation from consensus and the majority. This choice also involves the freedom not to choose. Hence, Sisyphus will not choose a life without torture that all of us undoubtedly will. And thus Hamlet will always procrastinate between being and not being.
that many might have purchased this book for origins and definitions of a complex concept. Instead of taking the reader to the deep end, I would advocate a simpler understanding of the concept derived, perhaps, from Fuller who writes: "Their major and differentiating thesis is the metaphysical pronouncement that 'existence is prior to essence.' What this means for the existentialist is that human nature is determined by the course of life rather than life by human nature."


text:
Indexer
Publishing consultant
Tag: Accessibility
Hands—and book announcement
Time flies when you're living in a slow-motion apocalypse! I can hardly believe it, but I posted my first cartoon about editing and publishing ten years ago.
To celebrate a decade of esoteric absurdity, I've compiled my archive into a print book.
Continue reading "Hands—and book announcement"
Author Iva CheungPosted on January 1, 2023 January 29, 2023 Format ImageCategories Book publishing, Books, Editing, WritingTags Accessibility, Cartooning, Comics, self-publishing5 Comments on Hands—and book announcement
Plain language and health literacy series
WordRake invited me to contribute four articles about plain language and health literacy to their Guest Author Series, and the final article was posted today. Here are links to all four posts in case you're interested:
Part 1: Power Dynamics and Plain Language in Healthcare
Part 2: Co-Creating Plain Language Health Information
Part 3: Gained in Translation: Making Health Information Plain Across Languages
Part 4: Plain Language Health Communication and the Myth of Universal Design
I want to thank WordRake for the opportunity! In addition to their editing software, WordRake offers a wealth of resources about writing in plain language from experts with a variety of professional backgrounds.
Author Iva CheungPosted on November 15, 2022 November 15, 2022 Categories Editing, Plain language, WritingTags Accessibility, Translation, User testing7 Comments on Plain language and health literacy series
Four levels to accessible communications
I presented this four-level accessibility framework at a few academic conferences this year, and some people have requested a non-academic summary, so here it is. I'll leave out the methodology details, but if you're curious about them, please get in touch!
Is your communication accessible? This question can be tricky to answer, because access means different things to different people. By analyzing the themes in a series of articles about accessibility, I've found that most definitions of access fit under four main categories, and I've organized these into a framework I use as a checklist of sorts when I create communications (pamphlets, books, videos, podcasts, webinars, etc.) for the general public. I hope you'll find it helpful, and I welcome suggestions to make it better.
The four levels are:
discovery—can users find your communication?
acquisition—can users get your communication?
use—can users use your communication?
comprehension—can users understand your communication?
Continue reading "Four levels to accessible communications"
Author Iva CheungPosted on September 17, 2016 September 19, 2016 Categories Consulting, Knowledge translation, Plain languageTags Accessibility, Data visualization, Open access, User testing7 Comments on Four levels to accessible communications
Collapsing the dimensions of communication space
In June, I was lucky enough to attend Information+, a phenomenal data visualization and information design conference at Emily Carr University. One of the keynote speakers was Colin Ware, renowned for his pioneering work on visual thinking and cognitive processing. At the end of Ware's talk, Yanni Loukissas, assistant professor of digital media at Georgia Tech, asked him: "Don't we have an ethical obligation to consider people who have colourblindness or stereoblindness in our visualizations?"
Ware responded, "As a designer, I always want to use of all of design space," suggesting that limiting the palette only to the colours that people with colourblindness can discern, for example, would be too restrictive.
I'll come back to Ware's comment in a bit, but first I want to focus on the concept of design space, which refers to the universe of choices—media, typeface, type size, colour, and so on—available to the designer. The metaphor doesn't tend to be used outside of design, which is a pity, because it's handy. I've found it useful to think of design space as a subset of communication space, which itself is a subset of creation space. Continue reading "Collapsing the dimensions of communication space"
Author Iva CheungPosted on August 13, 2016 August 15, 2016 Categories Language, Plain languageTags Accessibility, Communication space, Data visualization, Inclusive language2 Comments on Collapsing the dimensions of communication space
Cheryl Stephens—Audience awareness (Communication Convergence 2015)
Who are we writing for when our audience is the general public? "The general public is an amorphous concept," said plain language champion Cheryl Stephens in her talk at Communication Convergence. "I wrote 20 years ago that there was no such reading audience as the 'general public,'" she wrote in a handout. "I said that any organization would have gathered data about their customers, clients, patients, or participants through their marketing or client-service research. They would share this information with their communication consultant."
"But I've come to see that this does not happen or does not solve the problem," she continued. "Too many of my clients were not collecting the sort of information needed for better communication."
What Stephens proposes is an approach to understanding who might be in your general reading public so that you can take steps to make communication more universally effective. First, we must try to overcome the curse of knowledge—"when better-informed people find it extremely difficult to think about problems from the perspective of lesser-informed people." We also have to acknowledge that people from different cultures think and see things differently. Most importantly, we need to consider some of the hidden reasons our communication may not get through as intended.
Cognitive biases
Cognitive biases arise from information-processing shortcuts, the mind's limited information-processing capacity, emotional and moral motivations, and social influence, among other sources. They're good for evolution because the shortcuts let us process information in less time, but they can lead our thinking astray and cause inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretations, and irrationality. A person's construction of social reality—not objective input—determines behaviour. When you put together your communications, ask yourself, "How are people going to misunderstand?"
Stress interferes with our capacity to focus, process information, and think clearly. Stress can arise from any number of sources—harassment or abuse, physical or mental health problems, personal or work problems, poverty, fear, and even exposure to excessive noise, just to name a few. Post-traumatic stress disorder and grief also interfere with comprehension. Stress can be transient and situation specific, or it can be chronic.
Aphasia, autism, dementia, head injury, neurological diseases, and hearing impairment can all affect language comprehension. And Canada, being a country of immigrants, has a large proportion of people learning English as a second language. Images can be a huge help: people process images instantaneously, and with a different part of the brain.
Invisible illnesses
These illnesses can be mild, hidden, undiagnosed, or unrecognized. "If it's hidden from you, it may be hidden from the person who has it." Stephens said she could tell us first-hand that diabetes interferes with thinking. Mood disorders like depression can also affect how well a person thinks. Patients who have chronic complex diseases have six or more diagnoses and are typically on several medications at a time. Whether from the diseases or as side effects of the drugs, disabling fatigue and difficulty thinking and remembering are characteristic of this group. Many of them are also in severe pain. They would not have the patience for material that takes too long to read.
Invisible disabilities
Ontario defines "disability" as follows:
(a) any degree of physical disability, infirmity, malformation or disfigurement that is caused by bodily injury, birth defect or illness and, without limiting the generality of the foregoing, includes diabetes mellitus, epilepsy, a brain injury, any degree of paralysis, amputation, lack of physical co-ordination, blindness or visual impediment, deafness or hearing impediment, muteness or speech impediment, or physical reliance on a guide dog or other animal or on a wheelchair or other remedial appliance or device,
(b) a condition of mental impairment or a developmental disability,
(c) a learning disability, or a dysfunction in one or more of the processes involved in understanding or using symbols or spoken language,
(d) a mental disorder, or
(e) an injury or disability for which benefits were claimed or received under the insurance plan established under the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act, 1997; ("handicap")
(From the Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2001)
Disabilities may be
visible or invisible
congenital or acquired
mental or psychiatric
mobility-related
intellectual or developmental
For example, said Stephens, one out of twelve people have some degree of colourblindness, and often the only clue that something is a link, for example, is the colour.
The Association of Registered Graphic Designers' guide, Access Ability, offers strategies for maximizing the accessibility of your print and online documents.
Literacy challenges
Forty-two percent of working-age adults have low literacy skills (level 1 or 2 as defined by the International Adult Literacy and Skills Survey). They have limited vocabulary and lack the skill to parse sentences and so can't draw intended meaning from text. Some readers may have emotional or psychological problems that interfere with comprehension or may lack knowledge of the content.
"The legal system discriminates against people," said Stephens. She said that the Supreme Court of Canada recognizes differences that are disabling because of external barriers or stigma imposed by societal norms, procedures, and institutions. In other words, discrimination is socially constructed, and it can lead to functional limitations, real or perceived.
"Everybody appreciates material that's simple, clear, and well designed," she said. As communicators, we should acknowledge that people with reading difficulties aren't a separate target group—they are all of us, at some point in our lives. By considering these invisible impediments to comprehension, we can better empathize with our readers and be sensitive to their needs.
Stephens has written a paper that explores these concepts in much more detail. Contact her to get a copy.
Author Iva CheungPosted on November 2, 2015 Categories Design, Plain languageTags Accessibility, Communication Convergence, Literacy2 Comments on Cheryl Stephens—Audience awareness (Communication Convergence 2015)
Accessible documents for people with print disabilities
In prepping a PubPro 2015 talk about editorial and production considerations when creating accessible documents, I ran into information about both the Centre for Equitable Library Access (CELA) and the National Network for Equitable Library Service (NNELS). Confused about the differences between them, I emailed NNELS for clarification, and librarian Sabina Iseli-Otto wrote back: "Would it be alright to call you? I know it's getting late in the day but 5 minutes on the phone would save 20 minutes of typing (seriously)."
That five-minute chat turned into an impromptu phone interview, and Iseli-Otto gave me permission to share with you what I've learned. (The information in most of this post I got from her, but I'm also including a bit of what I found through my own research for my talk.)
Print disabilities and copyright
Print disabilities include:
blindness or visual impairments,
physical impairments that prevent a person from holding or manipulating print materials, and
cognitive impairments, like ADHD, dyslexia, or learning or memory problems due to a brain injury, that impede reading and understanding.
Although colourblindness isn't considered a print disability, documents should be created with colourblindness in mind.
About 10 percent (a conservative estimate) of Canadians have a print disability, but only about 5 percent of published works are accessible. Most people with print disabilities aren't using public libraries.
Section 32(1) of Canada's Copyright Act spells out an exception to copyright that lets people with print disabilities, and those acting on their behalf, create and use alternate formats of copyrighted print materials (with the exception of large-print books and commercially available titles).
The following are some of the accessible formats for people with print disabilities:
E-text: plain text (.txt), rich text (.rtf), Word (.docx)
EPUB 2 & 3
Accessible PDFs
large-print
E-text, EPUB, and accessible PDFs can be read by screen readers such as JAWS and VoiceOver. Not all PDFs are accessible—Adobe offers a way to check a document's accessibility and has guidelines for creating accessible PDFs.
CELA formed about a year ago following a change to the funding structure at CNIB (formerly the Canadian National Institute for the Blind). CNIB had, over the past hundred years, amassed Canada's largest collection of alternate-format books in its library, and CELA, with the support of the Canadian Urban Libraries Council, took over administrating this collection. The CNIB library still offers services to existing clients but will refer new clients to their local public library to access CELA's services.
The shift of oversight from CNIB to CELA will hopefully allow more people to discover and use this extensive collection. Although it was always available to everyone with print disabilities, given that it was under the purview of CNIB, people who didn't have visual impairments may not have realized that they could access it.
CELA has also partnered with Bookshare, an American online library for people with print disabilities. Rather than owning its content, Bookshare operates on more of a licensing model, controlling pricing and the licensing fees.
NNELS
NNELS is also about a year old, with a lean staff of only four people, and, unlike CELA and Bookshare, is funded exclusively by provincial governments, which gives it more transparency. It has a much smaller collection but owns perpetual rights to everything in it. NNELS takes patron requests and works directly with publishers to add to their collection. Nova Scotia helped negotiate a fixed rate for NNELS with publishers in the Atlantic provinces, and Saskatchewan has funded an initiative to create accessible EPUBs for all Saskatchewan books, which will be added to the NNELS collection. Whereas CELA focuses on partnerships with public libraries, NNELS also works with public schools and universities—for example, it has a content-exchange agreement with the Crane Library at UBC .
Recent policy changes relevant to people with print disabilities
Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act
According to the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA),
Organizations will have to…provide accessible formats and communications supports as quickly as possible and at no additional cost when a person with a disability asks for them.
The law was enacted in 2005, but the regulations for information and communications didn't come into effect until 2012, when all sectors had to make all emergency procedures and public safety information accessible upon request. For other types of communications, the AODA requirements were phased in beginning in 2013 for the public sector and beginning in 2013 and 2015 for private and non-profit sectors. (Respectively, I think? The website doesn't make that bit clear.) If you work with Ontario businesses, you may be called on to provide accessible communications.
The Marrakesh Treaty
The Marrakesh Treaty to Facilitate Access to Published Works by Visually Impaired Persons and Persons with Print Disabilities laid out exceptions to copyright so that signatories could freely import and export accessible content, obviating the need to duplicate efforts to convert works to accessible formats in different countries. Although Canada was instrumental in writing the treaty, it hasn't ratified or signed it. However, in its 2015 budget, unveiled last week, the Government of Canada announced that it would accede to the treaty, meaning that people with print disabilities could soon have access to a lot more content.
Publishers and accessible content
I asked Sabina Iseli-Otto how publishers can make her job easier.
"We'd prefer to get EPUB files or accessible PDFs directly from the publisher. Actually, I've been really, pleasantly surprised at how often publishers will say yes when we ask for them. I mean, they can always say no—they're doing it out of the goodness of their hearts—but it saves public funds if they send us those files directly."
If a publisher refuses to provide accessible files, the copyright exception still applies, which means that NNELS would still be able to create an accessible format, but it would have to:
acquire a hard copy,
scan in the pages,
run optical character recognition (OCR) on the scans,
clean up the text file (e.g., deleting running headers and footers),
proof the text.
"More than anything," Iseli-Otto said, "we want to hear back quickly" from publishers, regardless of what they decide.
I asked if the files NNELS provides to patrons have digital right management (DRM) on them. "No," she said, "but we make it very clear to them that if they abuse them that they're putting our whole operation in jeopardy. Some of them appreciate having the access so much that they're actually quite protective of their files."
Our conversation had focused on books. What about periodicals and grey literature? "There's certainly demand for it," said Iseli-Otto. "We'd love to do more of that. And I'd like to turn your question around: what can we do for publishers to make it easier to collaborate with us? I'm not sure how to build those relationships."
(Can you guess who I've invited to PubPro 2016?)
Publishers who've been in business for longer than a decade will recognize the steps NNELS has to take to create accessible formats from a print-only book: they're identical to what publishers have to do if they want to reissue a backlist title that has no retrievable digital files. Could Canadian publishers partner with an organization dedicated to creating accessible formats so that, in exchange for digitizing the backlist for publishers, the organization could add those files to its collection at no additional cost?
Editorial, design, and production considerations for creating accessible files
In my PubPro 2015 talk, I mentioned a few things publishers should keep in mind through the editorial and production process so that the output will be accessible—especially since having to retrofit an existing document to adhere to accessibility standards is more labour intensive and expensive than producing an accessible file from the outset. I focused mostly on the effect of editing and production on screen readers.
Style considerations
Screen readers will not always read all symbols. The Deque Blog has a summary of how three of the most popular screen readers interpret different symbols. (It's a bit out of date but still a good place to start; thanks to Ashley Bischoff for that link.) Testing on VoiceOver, I found that although the screen reader is smart enough to read "Henry VIII" as "Henry the eighth," "Chapter VIII" as "chapter eight," and "World War II" and "World War two," it reads each letter in "WWII" as if it were an initialism. And it reads 12,000 as "twelve thousand" but "12 000" as "twelve zero zero zero." I also found that it doesn't read the en dash before a numeral if the dash is used as a minus sign, saying "thirty-four degrees" for "–34°." It's best to use the actual minus sign symbol − (U+2112), which my version of VoiceOver reads as "minus sign." The same goes for the letter x used in place of the real multiplication symbol × (U+00D7). My version of VoiceOver doesn't read a tilde before a numeral, so ~8 mL would be "eight millilitres" instead of the intended "approximately eight millilitres."
In any case, if you're editing and deciding between styles, why not choose the most accessible?
Language considerations
Plain language best practices apply here:
chunk text and use heading styles,
break up long, complex sentences, and
aim for a natural, conversational style.
Headings and short chunks of text offer context and digestible content to the listener. Screen readers are actually already quite adept at putting the stress on the right syllables depending on whether a word like reject is used as a verb or noun—when the word is in a short sentence. It can get confused in longer sentences.
Image concerns
Offer alt text—text that is rendered if the image cannot be seen—for substantive images but not decorative ones. (Add an alt attribute in the code, but leave it blank—i.e., alt = ""—or the screen reader will read the filename. You can add alt text directly in InDesign.)
Don't use colour as the only way to convey information. Make sure colours you choose to distinguish between two lines on a graphs, say, will not occupy the same grey space when converted to greyscale. Alternatively, use different styles for those lines or label them clearly directly on the graph.
Don't turn text into an image to fix its appearance. We often see this practice with equations. Screen readers do not read LaTeX. If you have equations or mathematical expressions, convert them to MathML or offer alt text using the Nemeth MathSpeak system.
In essence, because ebooks are like websites, applying the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 will ensure that your ebook will be accessible. The BC Open Textbook Accessibility Toolkit also has useful guidelines for publishers. I would recommend at least spot checking a document with a screen reader to uncover possible ambiguities or reasons for misapprehension.
Huge thanks to Sabina Iseli-Otto for her eye-opening insights!
Author Iva CheungPosted on April 27, 2015 April 30, 2015 Categories Editing, Plain languageTags Accessibility, Copyright11 Comments on Accessible documents for people with print disabilities
Open textbooks and the BC Open Textbook Accessibility Toolkit (webinar)
In fall 2012, the BC Open Textbook Project was launched to reduce the financial burden on post-secondary students, who spend an average of $1,200 per year on textbooks. As part of Open Education Week, BCcampus hosted a webinar about the project as well as the associated BC Open Textbook Accessibility Toolkit, created to help people who develop learning resources to make them as accessible as possible from the outset.
Open Textbook Project (presented by Amanda Coolidge)
In 2012, the BC Open Textbook Project received a grant of $1 million to develop open textbooks for the top-forty enrolled subject areas. It received another $1 million in 2014 to create resources for skills and trades training. BC has now committed to working together with Alberta and Saskatchewan to develop and share open textbooks.
Many people think open textbooks are e-textbooks, but what makes them open is their Creative Commons (CC) license: they can be copied, modified, and redistributed for no charge. Instructors can therefore change open textbooks to suit their courses, and students are able to get these books for free. In two years the project has saved more than five thousand students over $700,000 in textbook costs.
BCcampus carried out the Open Textbook Project in three phases:
First, they collected existing textbooks with CC licenses and asked faculty to review them.
Second, they modified these books based on faculty reviews. At the end of this process, they had covered thirty-six of the top-forty subject areas.
Finally, they funded the creation of four textbooks from scratch.
Open textbooks are now being used in fourteen post-secondary institutions across the province, and BCcampus has eighty-one textbooks in its collection. To create these materials, they use Pressbooks, a plugin that lets you write once and publish to many different formats.
Accessibility testing (presented by Tara Robertson)
Tara Robertson helps run CAPER-BC, which provides alternate formats of learning materials to twenty institutions across the province. They specialize in accommodations, including remediating textbooks for people with print disabilities. One reason the Open Textbook Project is exciting, said Robertson, is that instead of taking something broken and fixing it, she now has the opportunity to make the textbooks accessible from the start.
Seven students with special needs volunteered to test the open textbook resources for accessibility, reading selected chapters from textbooks in five subject areas and offering feedback on their usability. Robertson also ran a focus group with five students. She found recruiting testers challenging, and she acknowledges that the students who participated in the focus group, all of whom had visual impairments, were not representative of the many students that had other print disabilities. Still, the testers offered a lot of constructive feedback.
The chapters the students reviewed each had features that might interfere with assistive technology like text-to-speech software: formatted poetry, tables, images, quizzes, and so on. Testing revealed that the software would skip over embedded YouTube videos, so the textbooks would have to include URLs; formatted poems were problematic when enlarged because readers would have to scroll to read each line; and layout sometimes led to a confused reading order.
Robertson sees the accessibility consultation with students as an ongoing process to refine accessibility best practices.
BC Open Textbook Accessibility Toolkit (presented by Sue Doner)
BCcampus has just launched an accessibility toolkit for faculty, content creators, instructional designers, and others who "don't know what they don't know about accessible design." Their aim is to build faculty capacity for universal design and to highlight the distinctions between accommodations and accessibility. Accommodations involve individualizing resources and providing alternative learning options for students who identify as having a disability. If we were proactive about creating materials that were accessible from day one, we'd have no need for accommodations.
Universal design recognizes that different students learn differently—some prefer visual materials, whereas others prefer text, for example. It offers students multiple access points to the content, and it's better for all students, not just those who register with their disability resource centre. For example, aging students may appreciate being able to enlarge text, and international students may benefit from captions to visual material.
The toolkit offers plain language guidelines for creating different types of textbook content with a student-centred focus, using user personas to inform key design concepts and best practices. It asks content developers to think about what assumptions they're making of the end users and how those assumptions might affect the way they present the material.
It might take a bit of time for creators of some types of content to catch up with all accessibility features—for example, video and audio should, as a rule, come with transcripts, but a lot of YouTube content doesn't, and you may run into copyright issues if you try to offer material in different formats.
The next steps for BCcampus are to incorporate the toolkit into the development process for all new open textbooks they create, to modify existing textbooks for accessibility, and to encourage the province's post-secondary community to formally adopt these guidelines. The toolkit, like the open textbooks, are available under a CC license and can be thought of as a living document that will change and grow as different types of content (e.g., math) becomes amenable to accessible design.
Doner sees these steps as "an opportunity to create a community of practice—a new literacy skill."
This webinar (along with others offered during Open Education Week) is archived on the BCcampus site.
Author Iva CheungPosted on March 17, 2015 November 5, 2015 Categories Academic publishing, Book publishing, Books, Plain languageTags Accessibility, Copyright, Open access, Textbooks, User testing2 Comments on Open textbooks and the BC Open Textbook Accessibility Toolkit (webinar)
Access to information: The role of editors (EAC-BC meeting)
At the November EAC-BC meeting, Shana Johnstone, principal of Uncover Editorial + Design, moderated a panel discussion that offered rich and diverse perspectives on accessibility. (She deftly kept the conversation flowing with thematic questions, so although her words don't show up much in my summary here, she was critical to the evening's success.)
Panel members included:
William Booth, Literacy Outreach Coordinator in the Downtown Eastside and clinical instructor in HIV/AIDS prevention and care at UBC;
Sheryl Gray, a communications consultant, formerly with Fraser Health and now at TransLink, and an advocate for children with Down syndrome; and
Heidi Nygard, the alternate format collections coordinator at UBC's Crane Library.
The Crane Library, Nygard explained, is named after Charles Crane, who in 1931 became the first deafblind student to attend university in Canada. Over his life he accumulated ten thousand volumes of works in Braille, and when he died, his family donated the collection to the Vancouver Public Library, which then donated it to UBC. Paul Thiele, a visually impaired doctoral student, and his wife, Judith, who was the first blind library student (and later the first blind librarian) in Canada, helped set up the space for the Crane Library, including a Braille card catalogue and Braille spine labels so that students could find materials on their own. Today the Crane Library is part of Access and Diversity at UBC and offers exam accommodations, narration services (it has an eight-booth recording studio to record readings of print materials), and materials in a variety of formats, including PDF, e-text, and Braille.
Gray, who has a background in recreational therapy, used to work with people who had brain injuries, and for her, it was "a trial-and-error process to communicate with them just to do my job," she said. Through that work she developed communication strategies that take into account not only the language but also formats that will most likely appeal to her audience. To reach a community, Gray said, it's important to understand its language and conventions. "It's about getting off on the right foot with people. If you turn people off with a phrase that is outside their community, they stop reading." It's also important to know who in a community is doing the reading. In the Down syndrome community, she said, "people are still writing as if the caregivers are the ones reading" even though more people with developmental disability are now reading for themselves.
Booth works with forty-five groups (such as the Writers' Exchange) that provide literacy support in the Downtown Eastside, which he emphasized is "a neighbourhood, not a pejorative." He defined literacy as the "knowledge, skills, and confidence to participate fully in life," and he told us that "There is more stigma around illiteracy than there is around addiction."
Busting misconceptions
Within the Downtown Eastside, said Booth, there are "multiple populations with multiple challenges and multiple experiences—sometimes bad—with learning." Residents may be reluctant to get involved with structured educational opportunities, and so they rely on community organizations to reach out to them. The media does the Downtown Eastside a disservice by portraying it as the "poorest postal code in Canada," Booth says. To him, all of his clients, regardless of their background, bring skills and experience to the table.
Gray agreed, adding that it's easy to make judgments based on appearance. She knows that her three-year-old son, who has Down syndrome, is taking in more than he's putting back out. The same holds for people who have had strokes or people with cerebral palsy. Some people may not speak well, but they may read and understand well. She acknowledges that we all bring preconceptions to every interaction, but it's important to set them aside and ask questions to get to know your audience.
"What do we think of, when we think of a person with a disability?" said Nygard. "Not all disabilities are visible." People assume that text-to-speech services are just for the visually impaired, but often they are for students with learning disabilities who prefer human voice narration. The students who use the Crane Library's services are simply university students who need a little more support to be able to do certain academic activities. They are people with access to resources and technology that will help them get a university education.
People also assume that technology has solved the accessibility problem. Although a lot of accessibility features are now built into our technology, like VoiceOver for Macs and Ease of Access on Windows, computers aren't the answer for everyone. For some people, technology hasn't obviated Braille.
Their work—The specifics
Gray said that although she works primarily with print materials, she's started writing as though the text would destined for the web. "I'm no longer assuming that people are reading entire chunks of material. I'm not assuming they're following along from beginning to end or reading the whole thing. I'm using a lot more headings to break up the material and am continually giving people context. I'm not assuming people remember the topic, so I'm constantly reintroducing it." People with Down syndrome have poor short-term memory, she said, so she never assumes that a reader will refer to earlier text where a concept was first introduced. "Don't dumb it down," she said, "but use plain language. Keep it simple and to the point." Some writers enjoy adding variety to their writing to spice things up, she said. "Take the spice out. Keep to the facts."
That said, editors also have to keep in mind that when people read, they're not just absorbing facts; they're approaching the material with a host of emotions. For people who have children with Down syndrome, she said, "everything they're reading is judging them as a parent."
"We don't know where people are at and where their heads are when they're taking the materials in," Gray said.
To connect with the audience, said Booth, listening is a vital skill to develop. "Storytelling is a really important art form. Everybody has a story, and everybody will tell you their story if you give them the opportunity."
Nygard compares her work to directing traffic—making sure resources flow to to people who need them. She explained the process of creating alternate formats: students have to buy a new textbook and give Nygard the receipt, at which point she can request a PDF from the publisher. But is it fair, she asked, to make these students buy the book at full price when their classmates can get a used copy for a discount? Another inequity is in the license agreement; often they allow students to use the PDF for the duration for the course only, when other students can keep their books for future reference. Image-only or locked PDFs are problematic because text-to-speech software like JAWS can't read it.
For books that exist only in print, the conversion process involves cutting out the pages and manually scanning them to PDF, then running them through an OCR program to create a rough Word document. These documents then get sent to student assistants who clean them up for text-to-speech software. Otherwise, columns, running heads, footnotes, and other design features can lead to confusing results. We get a lot of context from the way text is laid out and organized on the page, said Nygard, but that context is lost when the text is read aloud.
Editors as advocates
Gray said she'd never considered herself an advocate per se. "I do think it's part of my role to advise clients about the level of content and the way it's presented. We need to make sure we can reach the audience."
When we make decisions, said Nygard, we have to look out for people in the margins that we might not be addressing.
Booth said, "We're all very privileged in this room. We have a responsibility to be advocates. Our tool is language." As he spoke he passed out copies of Decoda Literacy Manifesto to each member of the audience.
Resources on accessibility
Nygard suggested we check out the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act. Ontario has been a leader in this arena. She also mentioned the National Network for Equitable Library Service (NNELS), which allows collection sharing between various libraries. Many public libraries don't find out about the Crane Library's services, because it's at an academic institution, but its collection is available to the general public. The NNELS site also has a section of tutorials for creating alternate-format materials. SNOW, the Inclusive Design Centre at OCAD, also has some excellent resources.
Compared with Ontario, said Nygard, BC lags behind in its commitment to accessibility. The BC government released Accessibility 2024, a ten-year plan to make the province the most progressive within Canada. But both Nygard and Booth call it "embarrassing." "How they've set their priorities is a horror show," said Nygard. One of the benchmarks for success in this accessibility plan, for example, is to have government websites be accessible by 2016, without addressing the concerns of whether people with disabilities have the skills, literacy, or access to technology to use that information. Meanwhile, disability rates haven't gone up since 2007.
Booth agreed. The province has cut funding for high-school equivalency programs (GED), ESL, literacy, and adult basic education, choosing instead to focus on "job creation in extractive industries and training people to do specific jobs. What's going to happen in a decade from now for people who don't have education?"
In response to a question from the audience, Nygard acknowledged that Project Gutenberg and Project Gutenberg Canada are great for accessible text of works in the public domain. She also mentioned that LibriVox has public domain audiobooks.
Author Iva CheungPosted on November 25, 2014 November 25, 2014 Categories Editing, Editors Canada (formerly Editors' Association of Canada), Plain languageTags AccessibilityLeave a comment on Access to information: The role of editors (EAC-BC meeting)
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Home » Health & Medicine » THE ULTIMATE STRESS-RELEASING FOOD
THE ULTIMATE STRESS-RELEASING FOOD
2:55 PM Health & Medicine No comments
Research studies at the University of South Australia published in journal Nutrients revealed that intake of walnuts helps gain improved mental health, release mental stress and also lowers the academic brain stress. Walnuts contain sufficient quantity of polyunsaturated fats which are better for body as compared to unsaturated fats. Walnuts are also naturally enriched with omega-3 fatty acids, melatonin, antioxidants, poly
phenols, vitamin E, folate and other essential nutrients important for healthy brain functioning. Previous studies have shown that intake of walnuts imposes a positive effect on mental health. Also, consumption of walnuts helps lower LDL (bad cholesterol) as well as lowers cholesterol overall.
In the trial study, the researchers Ph.D student Mautriz Herselman and Associate professor Larisa Bobrovskaya resulted in the evidence of improved mental health of students by walnut consumption.
"Students experience academic stress throughout their studies, which has a negative effect on their mental health, and they are particularly vulnerable during exam periods," said Herselman.
Walnuts offer numerous health benefits ranging from stress management and weight management to cancer prevention.
Researchers conducted a study on university students, as poor mental health is common in undergraduate students. Both the groups were studied clinically in 3 intervals i.e. during 13 weeks semester, during exams and 2 weeks after exams. They divided 80 students into two groups i.e. treatment group and control group. The students included in the treatment group were provided walnuts to eat daily for 16 weeks.
Explaining the results, the researchers said, "We found that those who consumed about half a cup of walnuts every day showed improvements in self-reported mental health indicators."
Researchers suggested the students to add walnuts to their daily diet especially during exams. They could get a lot of benefit from walnuts.
"Walnut consumers also showed improved metabolic biomarkers and overall sleep quality in the longer term." added the researchers.
On the other hand, students in control group were affected with increased rate of stress and depression which kept increasing till exams while students consuming walnuts didn't face such problems.
Associate Professor Larisa Bobrovskaya further elaborated, "We have shown that consuming walnuts during stressful periods can improve mental health and general wellbeing in university students, as well as being a healthy and delicious snack and a versatile ingredient in many recipes, to fight some negative effects of academic stress"
Mental health problems are very common in university students adversely affecting students' academic performance and long-term physical health.
"The World Health Organization has recently stated that at least 75 percent of mental health disorders affect people under the age of 24 years, making undergraduate students particularly vulnerable to mental health problems," said Herselman.
An ounce of walnuts provide you with upto 3% of daily recommended amount of calcium, upto 10% of daily iron, upto 5% of daily potassium, upto 14% of daily magnesium, and upto 7% of daily folate.
Consuming walnuts has a positive and protective effect against stress and other negative impacts of academic stress. Summarizing the study, Professor Borovskaya explained, "We have shown that consuming walnuts during stressful periods can improve mental health and general well-being in university students, as well as being a healthy and delicious snack and a versatile ingredient in many recipes, to fight some negative effects of academic stress."


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5 Benefits and Uses of Frankincense — And 7 Myths
Written by Alina Petre, MS, RD (CA) on December 19, 2018
Frankincense, also known as olibanum, is made from the resin of the Boswellia tree. It typically grows in the dry, mountainous regions of India, Africa and the Middle East.
Frankincense has a woody, spicy smell and can be inhaled, absorbed through the skin, steeped into a tea or taken as a supplement.
Used in Ayurvedic medicine for hundreds of years, frankincense appears to offer certain health benefits, from improved arthritis and digestion to reduced asthma and better oral health. It may even help fight certain types of cancer.
Here are 5 science-backed benefits of frankincense — as well as 7 myths.
1. May Reduce Arthritis
Frankincense has anti-inflammatory effects that may help reduce joint inflammation caused by osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.
Researchers believe that frankincense can prevent the release of leukotrienes, which are compounds that can cause inflammation (1, 2).
Terpenes and boswellic acids appear to be the strongest anti-inflammatory compounds in frankincense (3, 4).
Test-tube and animal studies note that boswellic acids may be as effective as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) — with fewer negative side effects (5).
In humans, frankincense extracts may help reduce symptoms of osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis (6).
In one recent review, frankincense was consistently more effective than a placebo at reducing pain and improving mobility (7).
In one study, participants given 1 gram per day of frankincense extract for eight weeks reported less joint swelling and pain than those given a placebo. They also had a better range of movement and were able to walk further than those in the placebo group (8).
In another study, boswellia helped reduce morning stiffness and the amount of NSAID medication needed in people with rheumatoid arthritis (9).
That said, not all studies agree and more research is needed (6, 10).
Summary Frankincense's anti-inflammatory effects may help reduce symptoms of osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. However more high-quality studies are needed to confirm these effects.
2. May Improve Gut Function
Frankincense's anti-inflammatory properties may also help your gut function properly.
This resin appears particularly effective at reducing symptoms of Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, two inflammatory gut diseases.
In one small study in people with Crohn's disease, frankincense extract was as effective as the pharmaceutical drug mesalazine at reducing symptoms (11).
Another study gave people with chronic diarrhea 1,200 mg of boswellia — the tree resin frankincense is made from — or a placebo each day. After six weeks, more participants in the boswellia group had cured their diarrhea compared to those given the placebo (12).
What's more, 900–1,050 mg of frankincense daily for six weeks proved as effective as a pharmaceutical in treating chronic ulcerative colitis — and with very few side effects (13, 14).
However, most studies were small or poorly designed. Therefore, more research is needed before strong conclusions can be made.
Summary Frankincense may help reduce symptoms of Crohn's and ulcerative colitis by reducing inflammation in your gut. However, more research is needed.
3. Improves Asthma
Traditional medicine has used frankincense to treat bronchitis and asthma for centuries.
Research suggests that its compounds may prevent the production of leukotrienes, which cause your bronchial muscles to constrict in asthma (5).
In one small study in people with asthma, 70% of participants reported improvements in symptoms, such as shortness of breath and wheezing, after receiving 300 mg of frankincense three times daily for six weeks (15).
Similarly, a daily frankincense dose of 1.4 mg per pound of body weight (3 mg per kg) improved lung capacity and helped reduce asthma attacks in people with chronic asthma (16).
Lastly, when researchers gave people 200 mg of a supplement made from frankincense and the South Asian fruit bael (Aegle marmelos), they found that the supplement was more effective than a placebo at reducing asthma symptoms (17).
Summary Frankincense may help reduce the likelihood of asthma attacks in susceptible people. It may also relieve asthma symptoms, such as shortness of breath and wheezing.
4. Maintains Oral Health
Frankincense may help prevent bad breath, toothaches, cavities and mouth sores.
The boswellic acids it provides appear to have strong antibacterial properties, which may help prevent and treat oral infections (18).
In one test-tube study, frankincense extract was effective against Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans, a bacteria which causes aggressive gum disease (19).
In another study, high school students with gingivitis chewed a gum containing either 100 mg of frankincense extract or 200 mg of frankincense powder for two weeks. Both gums were more effective than a placebo at reducing gingivitis (20).
However, more human studies are needed to confirm these results.
Summary Frankincense extract or powder may help fight gum disease and maintain oral health. However, more studies are needed.
5. May Fight Certain Cancers
Frankincense may also help fight certain cancers.
The boswellic acids it contains might prevent cancer cells from spreading (21, 22).
A review of test-tube studies notes that boswellic acids may also prevent the formation of DNA in cancerous cells, which could help limit cancer growth (1).
Moreover, some test-tube research shows that frankincense oil may be able to distinguish cancer cells from normal ones, killing only the cancerous ones (23).
So far, test-tube studies suggest that frankincense may fight breast, prostate, pancreatic, skin and colon cancer cells (22, 24, 25, 26, 27).
One small study indicates that it may also help reduce side effects of cancer.
When people getting treated for brain tumors took 4.2 grams of frankincense or a placebo each day, 60% of the frankincense group experienced reduced brain edema — an accumulation of fluid in the brain — compared to 26% of those given the placebo (28).
However, more research in humans is needed.
Summary Compounds in frankincense may help kill cancer cells and prevent tumors from spreading. However, more human research is needed.
Although frankincense is praised for multiple health benefits, not all of them are backed by science.
The 7 following claims have very little evidence behind them:
Helps prevent diabetes: Some small studies report that frankincense may help lower blood sugar levels in people with diabetes. However, recent high-quality studies found no effect (29, 30).
Reduces stress, anxiety and depression: Frankincense may reduce depressive behavior in mice, but no studies in humans have been done. Studies on stress or anxiety are also lacking (31).
Prevents heart disease: Frankincense has anti-inflammatory effects which may help reduce the type of inflammation common in heart disease. However, no direct studies in humans exist (32).
Promotes smooth skin: Frankincense oil is touted as an effective natural anti-acne and anti-wrinkle remedy. However, no studies exist to support these claims.
Improves memory: Studies show that large doses of frankincense may help boost memory in rats. However, no studies have been done in humans (33, 34, 35).
Balances hormones and reduces symptoms of PMS: Frankincense is said to delay menopause and reduce menstrual cramping, nausea, headaches and mood swings. No research confirms this.
Enhances fertility: Frankincense supplements increased fertility in rats, but no human research is available (32).
While very little research exists to support these claims, very little exists to deny them, either.
However, until more studies are done, these claims can be considered myths.
Summary Frankincense is used as an alternative remedy for a wide array of conditions. However, many of its uses are not supported by research.
Effective Dosage
As frankincense can be consumed in a variety of ways, its optimal dosage is not understood. The current dosage recommendations are based on doses used in scientific studies.
Most studies use frankincense supplements in tablet form. The following dosages were reported as most effective (5):
Asthma: 300–400 mg, three times per day
Crohn's disease: 1,200 mg, three times per day
Osteoarthritis: 200 mg, three times per day
Rheumatoid arthritis: 200–400 mg, three times per day
Ulcerative colitis: 350–400 mg, three times per day
Gingivitis: 100–200 mg, three times per day
Aside from tablets, studies have also used frankincense in gum — for gingivitis — and creams — for arthritis. That said, no dosage information for creams is available (20, 36).
If you're considering supplementing with frankincense, talk to your doctor about a recommended dosage.
Summary Frankincense dosage depends on the condition you're trying to treat. The most effective dosages range from 300–400 mg taken three times per day.
Frankincense is considered safe for most people.
It has been used as a remedy for thousands of years without any severe side effects, and the resin has a low toxicity (32).
Doses above 900 mg per pound of body weight (2 grams per kg) were found to be toxic in rats and mice. However, toxic doses haven't been studied in humans (37).
The most common side effects reported in scientific studies were nausea and acid reflux (5).
Some research reports that frankincense may increase the risk of miscarriage in pregnancy, so pregnant women may want to avoid it (5).
Frankincense may also interact with some medications, particularly anti-inflammatory drugs, blood thinners and cholesterol-lowering pills (5).
If you're taking any of these medicines, make sure to discuss frankincense with your healthcare provider before using it.
Summary Frankincense is considered safe for most people. However, pregnant women and those taking certain types of medication may want to avoid it.
Frankincense is used in traditional medicine to treat a wide variety of medical conditions.
This resin may benefit asthma and arthritis, as well as gut and oral health. It may even have cancer-fighting properties.
While it has few side effects, pregnant women and people taking prescription medications may want to talk to their doctor before taking frankincense.
If you're curious about this aromatic product, you'll find that it's widely available and easy to try.
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Career Felon Killed In Shootout By 13-Year-Old During Home Invasion
December 30, 2016, 3:11 pm 52 Views
Law abiding citizens using guns in self defense is no myth, contrary to liberal belief.
Many in the gun rights community believe that a privately owned gun is used in legitimate self-defense over 2 million times a year in America. This figure arose initially from the survey work done in 1993 by Florida State University criminologists Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz.
That study, known as the National Self-Defense Survey (NSDS), involved conducting nearly 5,000 interviews by phone in 48 states, anonymously, with phone numbers randomly generated. The respondents were asked if over the past five years they had used a gun—even if not fired—for self-protection or protection of property at work, home, or elsewhere. They were asked to exclude any use in miitary, police, or security work, if applicable, and asked whether the gun use was against an animal or a person.
Even if the margin of error on that study was 50%, that still means a million self defensive uses of firearms a year – far eclipsing the number of crimes committed with them. And here's jsut one of those stories, courtesy of US Army 4 Life:
A 13-year-old South Carolina boy fatally shot one burglary suspect and scared off a second with his mother's gun, police said.
The unidentified teenager told the Charleston County Sheriff's Office that he was alone on Tuesday afternoon in his family's home, north of North Charleston, when someone tried to break in, according to NBC affiliate WCBD.
The boy grabbed his mother's gun, and then waited at the back door of the home, the station reported. Police say the boy fired repeatedly through the door, and someone outside shot back.
The suspect was hit three times, and a getaway driver rushed him to a hospital in Charleston, where he died of his gunshot wounds, according to an affidavit. A gray Chevy Sonic used in the incident was found with bullet holes, and a gun was retrieved from the home's backyard, the affidavit said.
Serves them right!
Guns make it so easy for law abiding citizens to protect themselves, that even a 13 year old can do it!
Via Freedom Daily
2nd AmendmentfelonsGun rightshome invadersinstant justicepro-gun
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