South Asia: Emergence of 'new psychoactive substances' raises alarm bells

Designer drugs, herbal highs, legal highs, bath salts - the rapid emergence of 'new highs' is a cause for grave concern, also in South Asia.  These so-called 'new psychoactive substances' (NPS) are chemically and physically similar to well-known illicit drugs, but are synthesized in such a manner that they do not fall under international control.

When consumed, they are known to often have serious effects like kidney failure, seizures, hallucinations, hypertension and loss of memory. The rapid proliferation of NPS has raised alarm bells the world over. In 2009, there were 166 known NPS. In 2013, the number has more than doubled. New substances are emerging almost daily with few data available on their use.

Some of the known NPS include synthetic cathinones popularly known as 'plant food' and 'bath salts' which are similar to amphetamine and methamphetamine. They are mostly ingested. Ketamine, popularly known as 'kit kat' and 'super k' is often sold as ecstasy, while 'benny bear' and 'flying angel' are piperazines which are orally ingested.

NPS are usually produced in clandestine laboratories or diverted by licensed manufactures. The lack of control and data on these substances makes it challenging for law enforcement to clamp down on the manufacture, trafficking and distribution of NPS.

Owing to this rising concern, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the Australian Customs and Border Protection Services and the Indian Customs organized a three-day South Asian Regional Integration Seminar (SARIS) on new psychoactive substances and drug precursors. The seminar offered customs officials from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka a platform to share their experience of and expertise in dealing with NPS and precursor chemicals.

There was a general consensus that in the region diversion of precursors /controlled substances which are used for the production of NPS, happens more domestically than through international borders. Participants also discussed the rise in addiction of pharmaceutical preparations; and the diversion of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, which are precursor chemicals used for illicit drug production. Seizure data suggests that large quantities of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are diverted from the thriving pharmaceutical industry in the region.

Experts from the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service and Indian Government representatives shared some good practices in responding to the threats posed by NPS and precursors. Key to addressing these new challenges is a multi-faceted balanced approach including (i) the establishment of effective data collection and analysis mechanisms, (ii) the implementation of an effective early warning system and (iii) developing unambiguous legislation which helps law enforcement and criminal justice officers to effectively prosecute and sentence traffickers.

The seminar helped raise awareness on the risks of NPS. Participants agreed to continue to exchange information and ideas in tackling NPS and to use existing UNODC tools to sensitise their fellow officers.

The workshop was organized jointly by the Australian Customs and Border Protection Services, the Indian Customs and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime thanks to financial contribution from the Government of Australia.


data.edit.mentor.generate.spikefilter generates segments that represent detected spikes in data. The parameters used to detect them are defined by a spikefilter.conf.

Command Line Usage

data.segmentation.spikefilter [--type=type] [--feedback]
                              configFile station start end

The spikefilter.conf file to read the filters to apply from.

start and end

The time specifiers to calculate data on. Start is inclusive while end is exclusive, so all edits intersecting within the half open interval [start,end) will be returned. Any convertible time format is accepted. These are required even if input is being read from standard input (for the neph errors segmentation lookup).

Select the source archive to request data from, defaulting to raw.

Enable progress feedback on standard error.

Output is a series of detected spike segments on standard output of the form:

start and end

The start and end of this edit in epoch time.

The type specified in the configuration file followed by all records defined as being affected by the filter series that detected this spike.

The list of variables that the spike applies to. This may include more than the variable(s) that actually spiked if the filter was defined as being applied to all variables in a set (for example a neph backscatter spike may apply to all neph wavelengths and total scattering).

An automatically generated comment about what caused the spike. This is a list of the sub-filters that are included in this spike segment.

Example Usage

data.segmentation.spikefilter /aer/db/etc/spikefilter.conf sgp 2008:290 2008:300


582.4 #362 (DL Qual #604

Sep 30, 2012 10:43 AM  Games Land
***DO NOT POST IN HUB*** Once Upon A Time Meetup tonight at 8pm!!! Post your thoughts, predictions, ideas, etc. here!!!

was that a dementor? O.o - MEHlanie_Mouse  1116.2 #171 8:11PM
I said the same thing!!! - LisaMouse7531  410.1 #560 8:11PM
i did say that to myself. lol - veronica619  517.7 #424 8:12PM
That's what I first thought - MarshaMouse  5036.1 #27 8:12PM
Soul sucker. AKA, Dementor. =) - MousekaNinja  422.4 #543 8:20PM
I thought the same thing. - Krismiss  304.9 #914 8:20PM
Pretty much a dementor - MarshaMouse  5036.1 #27 8:22PM
Anyone catch Aurora give Mulan the stink eye? lol - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 8:28PM
Yep! - DisneyFanZoe  1249.3 #143 8:32PM
Mulan is pretty, duh of course she would - MarshaMouse  5036.1 #27 8:33PM
She's jelly!! What about Shangz!?? 😄 - DisneyFanZoe  1249.3 #143 8:45PM
You were so good sue she loves him! - MarshaMouse  5036.1 #27 8:45PM
I don't know what the hell is going on. Poor Henry! But yay...he isn't stuck with Regina. Grandpa to the rescue - veronica619  517.7 #424 8:56PM
Whoa! Regina's dress is amazing! - KissDclown  1089.1 #177 12:07PM
i don't know how i feel about her braid though. - nicoleface  1752.7 #101 2:23PM
I think it's because we know she has short hair so it looks odd. I kind of like it though lol - KissDclown  1089.1 #177 3:03PM
Ugh!!!! I cant comment. I can only reply. I've deleted and reinstalled twice. Which means ill either lurk or only reply to comments - KissDclown  1089.1 #177 7:50PM
i'm so not used to seeing emma in a "princess" dress. just her leather jacket and boots. i have no predictions! haha - nicoleface  1752.7 #101 2:24PM
I predict it's going to be amazing!!! LOL - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 7:05PM
Oh gosh it's the recap and I'm already crying!!! - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 7:58PM
These costumes make me want to run to my sewing machine! Gorgeous! - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 3:46PM
They look amazing!!! - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 6:58PM
Sending you my measurements now!! Haha! - Gia  802.0 #238 7:24PM
I'd much rather wear Regina's Queen costume to Friday's Halloween Party than the oh-so-familiar Wicked Queen costume I already have. - Gia  802.0 #238 7:24PM
I want her body. I used to have that body, minus the boobs.lol - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 7:33PM
Believe me if I had her body i all I would wear are the leather pants she wore a few episodes ago!!! - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 7:36PM
I used to have that body...with the boobs. - Gia  802.0 #238 7:41PM
I never had the body, with the boobs. - DisneyFanZoe  1249.3 #143 7:55PM
So excited its starting!!!! - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 8:02PM
Sleeping Beauty!!! - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 8:03PM
My favorite princess, yay!!! - DisneyFanZoe  1249.3 #143 8:04PM
2 more minutes...ahhhhh!!! :) - veronica619  517.7 #424 7:58PM
And I can't comment only reply! Grrrrr - KissDclown  1089.1 #177 8:01PM
Sleeping beauty?!?!? - KissDclown  1089.1 #177 8:02PM
i switched to my laptop because of that. :( - veronica619  517.7 #424 8:02PM
Sleeping Beauty!!! :D - MEHlanie_Mouse  1116.2 #171 8:03PM
I can't comment either! - LisaMouse7531  410.1 #560 8:04PM
On my laptop I can't see replies!!! - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 8:09PM
sleeping beauty. hello there prince Philip - veronica619  517.7 #424 8:03PM
These princes are yummy - KissDclown  1089.1 #177 8:05PM
Oh yes...he's yum... - DisneyFanZoe  1249.3 #143 8:07PM
The desses are killing me - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 8:05PM
awww....tears. geez...not even 5 minutes in. lol. - veronica619  517.7 #424 8:06PM
Same here! Gennifer Goodwin is just so good as Snow, I totally started crying when she hugged Emma. - LisaMouse7531  410.1 #560 8:08PM
I've been bawling!!! - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 8:08PM
That was a gross kiss lol - KissDclown  1089.1 #177 8:10PM
Is that Mulan? She looked Asian - KissDclown  1089.1 #177 8:11PM
i hope she got paid extra ewww - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 8:11PM
That has to be Mulan! - LisaMouse7531  410.1 #560 8:12PM
I'm crying too. - Krismiss  304.9 #914 8:14PM
That kiss was even worse!!! - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 8:28PM
ok. what the hell was that? - veronica619  517.7 #424 8:11PM
Mulan? Looked female and asian - KissDclown  1089.1 #177 8:12PM
My iPad is not posting comments ..agh - HollyGolightlyPrincess  406.5 #569 8:13PM
probably. that looks like the asian soldier look. - veronica619  517.7 #424 8:14PM
i had to switch to my computer. i hate my computer. - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 8:15PM
I just did that! Thanks Sue! - HollyGolightlyPrincess  406.5 #569 8:16PM
If its Mulan I hope that means her story is next!!! - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 8:18PM
;) - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 8:18PM
Tell us Rumple!!! - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 8:19PM
MULAN is here!!! - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 8:19PM
so it is a death eater. lol - veronica619  517.7 #424 8:21PM
whats a death eater? - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 8:23PM
@sue they are from Harry Potter, worked for the Dark Lord (voldermort). They would prey on their victims by stealing their souls, literally sucking them out. - LisaMouse7531  410.1 #560 8:28PM
she's powerless. does that mean only mr. gold has power? - veronica619  517.7 #424 8:16PM
That's what it looks like 😁 - HollyGolightlyPrincess  406.5 #569 8:24PM
Heck no! I say burn the witch..lol jk - HollyGolightlyPrincess  406.5 #569 8:18PM
Torture her! - MarshaMouse  5036.1 #27 8:23PM
lol - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 8:24PM
Then we will be missing out on all of her cool costumes!!! - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 8:24PM
oooh. that's a good question. which curse is worse? - veronica619  517.7 #424 8:27PM
That tore at my heart strings - MarshaMouse  5036.1 #27 8:33PM
They Still wouldn't have been together.. - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 8:35PM
me too - veronica619  517.7 #424 8:35PM
Snow and Emma's story is breaking my heart😢 - HollyGolightlyPrincess  406.5 #569 8:28PM
hey...they changed the jacket color. boo - veronica619  517.7 #424 8:30PM
He probably brought malificent to get Regina for getting rid of her before! - HollyGolightlyPrincess  406.5 #569 8:33PM
Yup, totally a dementor... - MEHlanie_Mouse  1116.2 #171 8:37PM
Yeah...wth?? - DisneyFanZoe  1249.3 #143 8:40PM
Wraith ;-) before dementors - KissDclown  1089.1 #177 8:40PM
That's what my husband said kissdclown! I had to google it lol. - LisaMouse7531  410.1 #560 8:43PM
Same basic idea as a dementor. Rowling just renamed them is all - KissDclown  1089.1 #177 8:48PM
damn - veronica619  517.7 #424 8:37PM
Fighting scenes are getting better. Interesting they brought in a wraith - KissDclown  1089.1 #177 8:39PM
oh em gee. total ghostbusters 2 scene coming up lol. - veronica619  517.7 #424 8:39PM
I ain't afraid of no ghost!!!👻 - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 8:40PM
Lol - HollyGolightlyPrincess  406.5 #569 8:40PM
lmao - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 8:40PM
Do....Ray...Charming... lol - veronica619  517.7 #424 8:41PM
So shes sending it to wonderland? - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 8:42PM
i think she said she is sending it back to their world. - veronica619  517.7 #424 8:43PM
Back to their land - MarshaMouse  5036.1 #27 8:43PM
ohhhhh thanx - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 8:44PM
Ohhhhhhh what a twist! - KissDclown  1089.1 #177 8:49PM
NOOOO!!!! Not prince Philip!!!! :[ - MEHlanie_Mouse  1116.2 #171 8:47PM
I was thinking the same thing. - Krismiss  304.9 #914 8:48PM
me too - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 8:49PM
But his soul went in the talisman. I bet if its broken it comes back. - KissDclown  1089.1 #177 8:51PM
I hope they break it then... lol - MEHlanie_Mouse  1116.2 #171 8:53PM
OH EM GEE - veronica619  517.7 #424 8:48PM
Omg!!! - MarshaMouse  5036.1 #27 8:48PM
😱😂😂 - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 8:49PM
What the heck?! - Krismiss  304.9 #914 8:49PM
😱 - HollyGolightlyPrincess  406.5 #569 8:49PM
😁 - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 8:51PM
WTHeck??? - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 8:49PM
i'm getting dizzy - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 8:51PM
Ok I'm thinking we need a fb page just incase MW is down. This isn't fun only replying lol - KissDclown  1089.1 #177 8:52PM
go on your computer - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 8:53PM
@Kiss I was going to suggest it because this is driving me nuts!!! - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 8:54PM
I like the FB idea. I can only comment in reply - Krismiss  304.9 #914 8:55PM
plus we wouldnt have to refresh constantly - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 8:57PM
Ok who has the most friends on here...I only have a few of you guys on FB - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 8:57PM
FB page is a good idea. It takes so long to load on my comp and sometimes all the comments won't load. =( - MousekaNinja  422.4 #543 8:58PM
I agree fb page for sure!! - LisaMouse7531  410.1 #560 8:59PM
Even though this drove us crazy it was an awesome meetup!!! Thank you all for coming!!! - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 9:00PM
How about I work on it tomorrow and add a few of you guys as the moderators so we can all be there just in case MW is still down next week - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 9:02PM
Yes! FB page is awesome idea. - HollyGolightlyPrincess  406.5 #569 9:02PM
FB group sounds good! Im really glad i came in. it was so much fun to share. my husband wont watch. thanx for having these MozPrincess - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 9:06PM
So awesome! Im so glad I got to join in on the discussion! I'm Lisa Crain on fb, please add me to the group! - LisaMouse7531  410.1 #560 9:12PM
I had fun. This was my first time doing this. Thanks MozPrincess. - Krismiss  304.9 #914 9:12PM
I am a meeting stalker. I don't watch it with you because I'm in a different time zone, but I do like lurking after the episode airs in Ca. If you do a fb page, can I still lurk? :) - dhBelle04  286.6 #1034 9:15PM
Yes!! Start a FB page for this!!!! - caramiapoohluvsbb8  4484.9 #32 9:41PM
I wanna join the FB group too!!! - MousekaNinja  422.4 #543 9:48PM
Captain Hook didn't look too bad either.. - MEHlanie_Mouse  1116.2 #171 9:00PM
Captain Hook looked handsome. Lance-a-lot is coming too huh? So will we see the Lady of the Lake now and Guinevere? Maybe some Sword in the Stone? - KissDclown  1089.1 #177 9:02PM
I honestly don't know what lance-a-lot is from.. but the guy that's playing him is from Teen Wolf. :] lol - MEHlanie_Mouse  1116.2 #171 9:04PM
Lancelot is from Camelot. He's the knight that stole Guinevere from Kng Arthur. - Gia  802.0 #238 9:27PM
^thanks gia! :] - MEHlanie_Mouse  1116.2 #171 10:16PM
oh my!!! What a season premiere. so many questions? can't wait for next week. - veronica619  517.7 #424 9:01PM
I'm going to start some reading!!! - MozPrincess  582.4 #362 9:04PM
THAT WAS AWESOME!!! - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 9:02PM
Yes!! Great show! - HollyGolightlyPrincess  406.5 #569 9:04PM
I agree! I know we'll be talking about it tomorrow at work. I can't wait for next week - Krismiss  304.9 #914 9:04PM
I normally don't get to watch this show, I only saw a couple episodes last year because of my work schedule. So glad I got to watch it tonight! Luckily I caught some of the recap too which helped! Do you guys come here every week while watching it?? - MousekaNinja  422.4 #543 9:09PM
Yes, we do! - Gia  802.0 #238 9:11PM
yes its a weekly thing. this was my first time. how fun! - SueBayou  2019.0 #85 9:12PM
Late to the party...I like to skip through commercials....but WOW! I love this show! - Gia  802.0 #238 9:11PM
It was great! It took me a while to catch up also. I hope to join in next Sunday. - Boundin  778.3 #253 9:24PM
O man I missed it! I'm heading back home from the parks. Why o why 😢 hope my DVD was set. - adventurerEnDisneylandia {AED}  1143.9 #167 9:21PM
I couldn't make it to this meetup but I watched the episode and omg! so glad its back and boy was that one awesome premiere into the season!! - SammyJo  348.7 #706 9:22PM
loved it! - madsdad  1868.2 #98 9:44PM
I was on the road coming back from Monterey and recorded it I'm watching now and sure do with I could chat with people and help me figure this all out lol - lisaw  177.6 #2327 2:43PM
Alright so since the season premiere I've been trying to guess who the Heck Dr. Whale!?! I honesty want to believe he is Monstro! But a more realistic guess maybe King Arthur? They did reaveal that they have a Lancelot character and Dr. Whale did say to Charming he's "no prince of his" any thoughts??? - sleepyhead_CM  596.5 #355 4:54PM

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w Royal Opera House

Elektra the opera at Royal Opera House in London is one of Strauss’s most dramatic works. Tickets to Elektra the opera at Royal Opera House in London can be booked here!

The political and social fractures in early 20th-century Europe, and emerging concepts of psychology, provide a rich subtext in Charles Edwards’s production. The set and costumes allude to Classical and early 20th-century art and architecture, and highlight the moral decay at the heart of Klytämnestra’s kingdom. Strauss’s richly-orchestrated score takes the principal singers to their vocal limits. It is characterized by dramatic musical motifs, including the distinctive ‘Agamemnon’ motif, used to represent Elektra’s obsessive thoughts of revenge. This highly dramatic opera also contains passages of great vocal beauty, including Elektra’s rapturous recognition of her brother Orest, returned to avenge his father.

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graphics vs text

Database Performance Monitoring an Analysis

Compare a statspack report (above left) to an Average Active Sessions graph with a break down by top SQL , Event and Session (in DB Optimizer). The statspack report, viewed at this size, is impossible to read. Sure,  if I had the report itself , I could say some things pretty fast because I've seen 100s if not 1000s of statspacks type reports (remember utlbstat/estat? plus I had my own statspack before statspack  - it's out there on the internet somewhere I'm sure) but imagine explaining this to a new user. Now look at the graph on the right. I can say what's happening faster and understand what's happeing in a way that is not even possible with statspack plus I can explain it in minutes to a brand new user.  I can see 4  spike areas (big blue, no pun intended on the left, then a dark brown/red in the middle, then a green one, then a red one on the far right)  - the big blue is an I/O bottleneck and  the big green is a CPU bottleneck. The other two smaller areas are some other waits. I can see that all the IO came from basically one query - because I cans see in the top sql to the bottom left of the graph, that the first query in the list has the biggest blue bar of all the queries. In the next table to the right of TOP SQL is TOP EVENTS.  In TOP EVENTS I can see that most of time is spent on CPU though good bit is spent on IO (as seen in the middle bottom - green CPU is the biggest event followed by blue - IO). All other waits are relatively minor percent (except at the spikes). I can see load is spread evenly over the users (bottom right).  Also super handy is the MAX CPU line. The Max CPU line is the number CPUs on the machine. Whenever load goes above this there is a bottleneck.

For more info on the history and ideas of  Average Active Sessions and the load chart see

SQL Tuning and Execution Paths

The above image shows the comparison of two alternative execution plans on a SQL statement. The text version on the left is the classic "explain plan" compared side by side. The right side is the same information but shown graphically. The Green Arrow labeled "1" is where the plan starts, followed by 2 then ending at 3. The joins are labeled "HJ" for hash join and "MJ" for merge join. The tables are ordered not by  execution but by their relationship to each other, with details  tables located above masters, thus no matter the order of execution the tables will always be in the same position making comparison easy.  The most important information is the join order. Of secondary interest is the join type, merge join, hash join or nested loops.

 Compare the textual explain to the graphic one. The graphic is so much easier. At the font size the text version is impossible to read. Even if it was big enough, the text would still take longer and more brain CPU cycles to understand. The graphic on the right tells me the most important information to optimally execute the query. The query will be optimally executed by starting on Orders, since it is the only table with a filter. The filter represented by both the little green F. The filter ratio is indicated in yellow highlight below the table. (we will increase the size of the F in the next version of DB Optimizer to make it more obvious) The highlighted value says "0.72". The value "0.72" is the filter ratio, or the fraction of rows returned after applying the query filters on this table). The filter "0.72" is the only filter ratio in the diagram, but if there was another filter ratio, we would pick the most selective one as the table to start are query, but in this case there is only one filter. From that filter we always join down into master tables (master tables have the cross end of the join line - the crows feet represents detail table). By joining into a master table we keeps the same size of the "running row set" . The "running row set" the internal number of rows that are carried from one join to another as we join into each table in the execution plan. Can you imagine having carry boxes to 3 people in the office but depending on the order you visited the 3 people you either got to drop off boxes or you had to pick up boxes. Then the easiest most effortless path would be the path where you got rid of the  most boxes first and picked up the least number of extra boxes along the way. The number of boxes you have to carry is  equivalent to the running row set. For example in the above executions paths that are being compared, the one on the left does a join between ORDER_ITEMS and CUSTOMERS but there is no join so instead of getting rid of boxes we multiply - we do a Cartesian join. Thus this plan is not worth pursuing. The second plan is not worth pursuing because it joins from a master into a detail again increasing running row count prematurely - not as bad as a Cartesian but still worse than joining down to the master.

We can extend the graphic with other relevant info such as "io" for index only access "i" for index access, no value for "full table scan"
Red highlighted numbers are the two table join sizes including filters, ie the run row count over the indicated two table join.
The green highlighted number is the table size:

Not only does the diagram give me all the information I want to see the optimal path but I can compare this path with any other path side by side and see clearly and quickly the differences.

For More info on graphic SQL see:

Graphics by themselves without a proper approach lack much value

For example, here is graphical representation of the execution paths for for the same query shown above, but the graphics add little value to the problem of understanding the execution plan or the differences between the two plans

For the example of Database Performance Monitoring, here are a couple of examples that show a lot of information about the database operation but fail to clearly elucidate the main questions about the database - how is it performing? what is the load? where is the load coming from ? and are there any bottlenecks:


Support Crosscut

The U.S. Constitution: time for a rewrite?

U.S. Capitol Building

Individual senators block votes on nomination after nomination.  Commentators measure the two major parties’ political power in terms of their relative wealth, their “war chests.”  There are no other major parties because congressional seats are awarded on a winner-take-all basis, rather than by proportional representation.  We are one party away from being a one-party state. Et cetera.

In 1994, Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America” sought to legislate a presidential right to a line-item veto, to name one of the most conspicuous of those deficiencies. It was one of the few components of the Contract that survived the legislative process and received President Bill Clinton’s signature. West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd led the opposition to the measure, asserting that it violated the constitution.

The matter ultimately went into the courts, and Byrd’s viewpoint prevailed. The issue then faded from view — remarkably enough, since some states have long had line-item-veto provisions in their constitutions, and amending the federal constitution to include such a provision seems a political slam-dunk.

The bicameralism (two legislative chambers) of the U.S. system, for example, seems less an expression of federalism (the unity of constituent states that retain significant sovereignty) than a holdover from the days when a legislature’s lower house was seen as needing the coolness and wisdom, to use Madison’s words, of a more august upper house that bent less to public sentiment. Today the obdurate political confrontation that the Senate’s proceedings have become seems to have betrayed Madison’s hope, and the net benefit of bicameralism seems to have vanished. Moreover, many of the world’s most successful democracies have unicameral legislatures (as does Nebraska). The process of legislating unicamerally is vastly simpler than in Washington, D.C., where two houses, sometimes with different political parties controlling them, must both pass identical bills before they can reach the president.

Many people in countries with parliamentary governments, in which the legislative branch acts in much greater concert with the executive, which represents the legislative majority, wag their heads in disbelief at what we call “the gridlock in Washington”: the political stagnation that prevails when power is shared by two political parties that seem to hate each other more with each passing day. The 1787 constitution did not anticipate this unproductive partisan tension, and does not provide a means of accommodating or eliminating it.

One reason for our chariness about comprehensive constitutional reform is clear — the fear, among apologists for one side or the other, that writing a new basic law would threaten established conceptions of personal liberties. The second amendment provides the best case in point. Whatever their dissatisfaction with the right-to-bear-arms amendment, neither gun-rights nor gun-control advocates seem prepared to risk replacing it with the devil they don’t know.

The fear is legitimate, on both sides, but shouldn’t we also fear continuing with what we now have? Wouldn’t it be nobler to see our political establishment devoting its energies, not to the battle du jour over an appointment to some little-known agency, but to our underlying constitutional challenges?

I do not seriously expect such nobility of purpose tomorrow, or next year, or in my lifetime. The Founding Fathers, and much of their wisdom, are dead and gone. Still, it leaves me breathless to think that their spirit could rise again.

Support Crosscut


Researchers Engineer Graphene Nanostructures from Bottom up

The single-atom tip of the noncontact atomic force microscope “feels” changes in the strength of electronic forces as it moves across the surface at a constant height. Resulting movements of the stylus are detected by a laser beam to compute images.

Graphene nanostructures from the bottom up

Graphene nanostructures can form the transistors, logic gates, and other elements of exquisitely tiny electronic devices, but to become practical they will have to be mass produced with atomic precision. Hit-or-miss, top-down techniques, such as exfoliating graphite or unzipping carbon nanotubes, can’t do the job.

Fischer and his colleagues set out to engineer graphene nanostructures from the bottom up, by converting linear chains of carbon atoms into extended hexagonal sheets (polyaromatic hydrocarbons), using a reaction originally discovered by UC Berkeley professor Robert Bergman. The first requirement was to perform the reactions under controlled conditions.

“In solution, more than a dozen compounds could be the products of the reaction we were using, and characterizing the results would be difficult,” Fischer says. “Instead of a 3D solution we created a 2D system. We put our starting molecule” – a structure called oligo-enediyne, composed of three benzene rings linked by carbon atoms – “on a silver surface, and then induced reactions by heating it.”

Fischer’s group collaborated with microscopy expert Crommie to devise the best possible view. The first attempt to track the reactions used a scanning tunneling microscope (STM), which senses electronic states when brought within a few billionths of a meter (nanometers) of the surface of the sample. But the image resolution of the tiny molecule and its products – each only about one nanometer across – wasn’t good enough to reliably identify the molecular structures.

The collaborators then turned to a technique called noncontact atomic force microscopy (nc-AFM), which probes the surface with a sharp tip. The tip is mechanically deflected by electronic forces very close to the sample, moving like a phonograph needle in a groove.

“A carbon monoxide molecule adsorbed onto the tip of the AFM ‘needle’ leaves a single oxygen atom as the probe,” Fischer explains. “Moving this ‘atomic finger’ back and forth over the silver surface is like reading Braille, as if we were feeling the small atomic-scale bumps made by the atoms.” Fischer notes that high-resolution AFM imaging was first performed by Gerhard Meyer’s group at IBM Zurich, “but here we are using it to understand the results of a fundamental chemical reaction.”

The single-atom moving finger of the nc-AFM could feel not only the individual atoms but the forces representing the bonds formed by the electrons shared between them. The resulting images bore a startling resemblance to diagrams from a textbook or on the blackboard, used to teach chemistry, except here no imagination is required.

A chemical bond is not as simple a concept as it may appear, however. From the dozens of possibilities, the starting molecule’s reaction did not yield what had intuitively seemed to Fischer and his colleagues the most likely products. Instead, the reaction produced two different molecules. The flat silver surface had rendered the reaction visible but also shaped it in unexpected ways.

The nc-AFM microscopy provided striking visual confirmation of the mechanisms that underlie these synthetic organic chemical reactions, and the unexpected results reinforced the promise of this powerful new method for building advanced nanoscale electronic devices from the bottom up.

Before much more complex graphitic nanostructures can result from this unique approach, says Fischer, “Large discoveries lie ahead.”

This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and the European Research Council.

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Distance Between Truckee, CA and Monterey, CA

How many miles? 285 Miles / 459 Km

How many times? 4 hours 25 mins

Distance, Gas Consumption and Emission Notes

Distance from Truckee, CA to Monterey, CA is 285Miles or 459 Km. You can get this distance about 4 hours 25 mins. If you want to planning travel with plane for 211 Miles or 339 Km, You can get this distance about 57 mins .

A car with an average MPG will needs 13.19 gallons of gas to get the route between these points.

The estimated cost of gas to get between Truckee, CA and Monterey, CA is $29.94.

During the route, an average car will release 258.42 pounds of CO2 to the atmosphere. Your carbon footprint is 0.91 pounds of CO2 per mile.

* Average US MPG used for calculations is 21.6 MPG.
* Coordinates of Truckee, CA is 39.3282466, -120.183173 and coordinates of Monterey, CA is 36.6003142, -121.8949412


Philippines to build elephant monument from destroyed ivory

The Philippines is to build an elephant monument from the ashes of seized tusks it destroyed in a landmark action against the ivory trade, an official said Thursday.

The ash will be mixed with concrete to build a giant sculpture of a mother elephant protecting her calf, said Josie de Leon, chief of the environment ministry's wildlife division.

"It is a reminder to everyone about the Philippines' historical action regarding the destruction of ivory," she told AFP.

The sculpture will stand about four metres (13 feet) tall when completed later this year at the same Manila park where the tusks were destroyed, de Leon said.

The Philippines crushed five tonnes of elephant tusks with a backhoe in June last year, becoming the first Asian country and the first country without native elephants to destroy illegal, confiscated ivory.

The crushed tusks were later burned in an animal crematorium in a demonstration of the country's determination to shed its image as one of the world's worst hotspots for illegal African ivory trading.

The Philippines took the landmark step three months after it was named by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) as one of eight nations that was failing to do enough to tackle the illegal trade in elephant ivory.

The United Nations and conservation groups have warned the demand for ivory is leading to the slaughter of thousands of African elephants each year, possibly leading to their extinction.


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Connect to Windsurfing/Wind & Waves

The most famous winds of the world

Wind: cold, dry or warm, it is always blowing

Brickfielder: a hot and dry wind that blows in the desert of Southern Australia, during summer season.
Calima: a dust wind originating in the Sahara which blows through the Canary Islands, in winter.

What is wind? How wind is formed?

Windsurfing and kiteboarding are wind-powered water sports. Wind is the soul of sailing, but where does wind come from?

All sailing crafts depend on the strength and direction of the wind. Sails and kites are driven by the power of winds.

Wind is responsible for the creation of waves. As wind touches the surface of the oceans, it helps the formation of swell, sometimes far away from continental shores.

It is quite easy to understand how wind is formed. The atmosphere and its four layers rise more than 100 kilometres above the crust of the Earth.

In this aerial region - troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere and termosphere - there are several gases flowing around which, for example, help give the blue tone to our skies.

Wind is simply the result of the differences of pressure in the atmosphere. A baloon loses its air because the higher inside pressure finds less pressure on the outside and flows off.

Global surface winds: polar easterlies, westerlies and trade winds

There are three types of wind, when it comes to the duration of the blow. Short strong winds are usually called gusts. Termed squalls are intermediate strong winds and durable strong winds may be a typhoon, hurricane, storm, gale or breeze.

Physical forces such as the rotation of the Earth, Coriolis effect, geomorphology of the planet's surface, solar energy and gravity are responsible for the distribution of multiple wind systems over the globe.

The strongest wind gust ever was registered in the automatic weather station of Barrow Island, Australia, on the 10th April 1996. The local anemometer marked 408 km/h (220 knots, 253 mph) and was mounted 10 meters above sea level.

The windiest region in the world is Cape Farewell, in Greenland. Planes only flew over this Antarctica spot, for the first time, in 2008, because of the strong blows that inhabit the place.

Global mean wind speed: wind blows differently on planet Earth

Wind can blow anywhere, anytime and in any direction. The official measurement format for grading the power of winds are knots.

If you want to measure wind speed, it is important to use an accurate digital anemometer. There are several portable anemometers in the market.

Learn how waves are formed, here.
Check the Wind Speed Direction and Forecast for your region, here.

How is a wave formed? Understanding Swell and Surf Forecasts

Low Pressure Systems | Good Waves for Surfing

From Ocean Waves to Surfing Waves | Sea Floor and Swell Obstacles

Bathymetry: deep water regions deliver bigger surfable waves

Sand Banks | Increasing the Wave Crest

Learn what is wind and how wind is formed.
Now, check the wave height forecast for your local spot.

Surf Forecasting: Wind and Wave Truths

1. Long-period waves tend to be larger and stronger
2. Short-period waves are smaller and less energetic
3. Wave period is the time between successive crests
5. Large waves move quickly
6. Small waves move slowly
7. Low pressure systems create a powerful swell
10. Deep water coastlines deliver bigger waves
11. Tsunamis cannot be surfed

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How Far is Your City on the Road to Becoming a Great City?

Imagine interdisciplinary teams–park planners, traffic engineers, economic development experts–working together with local residents to realize a vision for the key places in their communities. Then imagine that process happening across multiple neighborhoods in your city. Strategically implemented, the cumulative effect of such a program would be enormous.

“Many local governments have a lot of barriers between departments. One of the most important things PPS did was to break down and eliminate those barriers. It was a total team.”
— Gil Penalosa
Strategic Leader, Planning and Building, Mississauga

That’s the crux of the Great Cities Initiative, PPS’s new program that applies our 30+ years of experience in improving transportation, parks, public markets and buildings to the wider mission of creating livelier neighborhoods, towns, cities, and regions.

The Great Cities Initiative expands our Placemaking techniques into a comprehensive yet flexible process cities can use to improve themselves, place by place, neighborhood by neighborhood.

And the Great Cities Initiative is not just about improving places. Using our New York City Campaign as a model, PPS is taking this initiative a step further–into city-wide advocacy. By building awareness, we help city agencies and local organizations representing many groups and platforms work together to achieve policy improvements on behalf of residents, with the overarching goal of creating better places to live.

If you are a mayor, community foundation, parks department commissioner or even a local citizen eager to implement the Great Cities Initiative in your town, city or region, call Ethan Kent at (212) 620 5660 or e-mail ekent@pps.org.

Initiative: Great Cities was last modified: March 6th, 2012 by Project for Public Spaces
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Monday, April 19, 2004 - 09:33

Reviewed by
Steven Bruhm
Mount St. Vincent University

What follows from this hypothesis is a remarkable exercise in new historicist criticism.  Hogle devotes the first half of the book to historicizing Leroux's original novel of 1910, establishing its ghostly precursors in the Romantic Gothic as well as the cultural politics of Paris in the late nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries.  He emphasizes the history and architecture of the Paris Opera House, shooting this history through with reflections on the role of carnival in nineteenth-century France, the recurrence of the danse macabre in French art history, and the rise of psychology, sexology, and most particularly, psychoanalysis as a group of "human sciences" that configure the "human" at the fin de siècle.  By placing Leroux's Erik within and against these discourses--where the Phantom produces another set of the continuities and discontinuities I noted above--Hogle demarcates a truly overdetermined figure who registers the fantasies and fears of a burgeoning middle class.  Erik comes not just to represent but to embody and perform transgressions of boundaries regarding class, gender, sexuality, place, and episteme.  Most importantly, Erik foregrounds what has now become Hogle's oft-cited "ghost of the counterfeit," a proto-modernist signifier that points to nothing but other signifiers, thus opening up a gothic abyss of meaning at its center.  (More on this in a moment.)  Yet, unlike so many other new historicist studies, Hogle is always careful not to claim too much or to let his enthusiasm for Erik's disruptiveness run away with him.  He repeatedly reminds us that while the novel may present myriad threats to the stability of bourgeois identity, it "also finds ways, especially in its manner of reportage, to settle and seem to contain" these threats through self-conscious fictionality (36).  As Hogle says, "the original phantom is an announcement of these anomalies [of middle-class ontology] in a way that makes them 'safe'" (75).

The second half of the book exports this pointedly French figure into the cultural politics and practices of twentieth-century Anglo-American phantomizing.  (And the degree to which the book leaves behind twentieth-century France is quite startling.  After the painstaking historicizing of its first half, Hogle's study leaves me wondering what sort of progeny France itself has bred.)  Hogle takes us from the first film adaptation, the 1924-25 silent film starring Lon Cheney, through the 1943 remake, versions of the tale in the 1960s and 70s, and into the famous 1986 musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber.  Throughout this half of the book Hogle again demonstrates his acumen in what is surely the book's greatest strength: an analysis of the politics of simulacra, whether that politics is located in the rise of industrial capitalism in the film industry (a phenomenon crucial to the 1925 film), Hollywood's reinvention of stage opera during the Second World War when only the most tired chestnuts could be imported from war-torn Europe (a difficulty that is central to the 1943 remake), Roe vs. Wade and the abortion debate in America (crucial for understanding the near-aborted title character in the 1987 Phantom), queer visibility and celebrity as they come to inform Michael Jackson's Ghosts (1996), and so on.  In each case Hogle analyzes deftly how revisions to the early Leroux novel effectively mute (but do not silence) fundamental anxieties regarding middle-class life and entertainment, thus engaging The Phantom of the Opera and its audiences in a repetition compulsion that operatically proclaims its centrality as one of our dominant fictions.

While The Undergrounds is unabashedly materialist in its analysis, Hogle is particularly interested in what he calls the "psychoanalytic veneer" that envelops the novel and its filmic revisions through the twentieth century.  After all, you don't need to be Freud to wonder about the psychological significance of a malign "underground" force who draws his decorating scheme from his mother's bedroom--and its proximity to her death chamber--so that he (Erik) can seduce a maternally suggestive and socially proper young woman into its corrupting orbit; nor about this virginal young woman who finds herself attracted to Erik because he reminds her of her own father.  Hogle wants to take these psychoanalytic moments seriously and to use them as the central sub-argument of his book.  Hence the psychologically inflected question that runs throughout this study: "Whatare the cultural or even political imperatives in the virtually simultaneous rise and development of psychoanalysis and The Phantom of the Opera in Western thinking, especially in Europe around the turn of the nineteenth into the twentieth century?  What ideological and social purposes are served by both the psychoanalytic scheme and its use in Leroux's Fantôme?" (37).

Historicizing the psychoanalytic in The Phantom offers Hogle his richest opportunity for elaborating a theory of gothic "sublimation," a term crucial to his subtitle.  He centers on concepts such as "tender" (32 ff) and "debt" (115), drawing their emotional and affective connotations into their financial ones.  By emphasizing the "debt" which the Paris Opera owes to the very forces it abjects--including the maternal, the low-class, the racially other--Hogle spins the site of the Opera and its phantasmatic inhabitant through Jean Baudrillard's theory of sublimation, in which the Freudian concept of sublimating desire melds with Baudrillard's post-structuralist theory of simulation.  Simulation, the ubiquitous fact of counterfeit tender and empty signification, becomes the spectacle of repression's return (and here "repression" must be considered in both its social and its psychological aspects).  What Hogle produces from this monstrous marriage is a theory that extends far beyond The Phantom of the Opera and its progeny and into the gothicisim of (post)modernity itself.  As Hogle's own debts to Kristeva, Lacan, and Zízek make clear, Erik and his sons are avatars that allegorize the impossibility of subjectivity as it is constructed--and deconstructed--within capitalist models of exchange.

Readers of a certain bent may find themselves resisting Hogle in his relentless subordinating (sublimating?) of psychoanalysis to social materialism.  For example, let's consider the status that "family" holds in Leroux's Phantom. Hogle smartly argues that the desired closeness between Christine and her father is the desire for a return to the pastoral, a pre-industrial France nostalgically invented by these post-Romantic visionaries.  Such a move is symptomatic of the book's overall take on psychoanalysis: "Leroux's Fantôme . . . employs psychoanalytic motifs especially about father-daughter and mother-son relationships . . . but the novel does so in a way that reveals such notions as consequences of the cultural and ideological construction of the bourgeois family" (160-61).  This is no doubt true, and such a constructionism aligns the novel with its Romantic precursors in convincing ways, but it does not explain why Christine and her father should want that closeness in the first place, why they need to imagine a space that will permit it.  In other words, it does not explain the intensity of father-daughter desire that grounds its bourgeois fantasies.  We could bring the same questions to Erik and his absent mother--indeed, Hogle often does, in his drawing on Kristeva as a primary theoretical model.  One might easily argue here that the more oedipal desires between father and daughter or mother and son precede the fantasized social space (Christine's Eden, Erik's bedroom) that will allow those desires to be realized, rather than the other way around.  Thus, when Hogle warns us against taking the energies of the novel "in a narrowly Freudian direction . . . if the reader chooses to stay at a 'mental' or just 'familiar' level" (100), we might push harder on what that "just 'familiar'" might be made to mean in this narrative.

While one might want to quibble with the psychoanalytic temporalities as they are represented in Leroux's novel, Hogle's study capitalizes on all those psychoanalytically based desires in his study of Leroux's progeny.  Indeed, the book is brilliant in its suturing of the material and the psychological at particularly moments in twentieth-century Anglo-American history.  In this way The Undergrounds of The Phantom of the Opera will be important not only as the definitive analysis of the cultural phenomenon that just won't seem to die, but as a model for scholars and students on the sophisticated ways that psychoanalysis can be historicized and history can be psychoanalyzed.


Maintain RPI - head statistician

Pensioners have been given some welcome news after the UK's top statistician said a key measure of inflation linked to retirement income and a raft of other investments and services should remain unchanged.

Jil Matheson, the national statistician, said that while the calculations used behind the RPI (Retail Prices Index) do not meet international standards, the index should be maintained due to its "significant value" to index-linked bond markets.

She recommended that a new index should be created from March, called RPIJ, which would use a different way of calculating the prices of goods and be closer aligned to the UK's benchmark level of inflation, the CPI (Consumer Prices Index).

There had been fears that changes to RPI calculations would see the index rise at a slower pace, which would have far-reaching implications as the index is linked to a wide variety of services and investments, from water bills and rail fares to pensions and even national debt.

There were concerns in particular for pensioners, as many annuities are linked to RPI and even a small percentage change could knock thousands of pounds off a typical 20-year retirement income. Many private pensioners also have their annual increases linked to RPI, while returns for investors with index-linked bonds and savings certificates are likewise based on the index.

The RPI review had also attracted controversy, as any change prompting a fall in the index would have provided a boost to Chancellor George Osborne and his debt-busting plans, saving the Treasury billions of pounds a year in interest on Government bonds.

Pensions expert Ros Altmann, director-general of Saga, said the decision not to alter RPI was "excellent news". She added: "To have radically changed the traditional inflation measure, on which many people's incomes depend, could have jeopardised the inflation protection inherent in many people's income arrangements."

While there was relief from pensioners and savers at her decision, it came as a surprise to many experts who had expected a radical change.

Philip Shaw, economist at Investec Securities, said: "We are surprised that the ONS has rejected the opportunity to fix the well-discussed flaws in the RPI and are a little dismayed that we will have yet another measure of inflation to contend with."

He said it was also surprising, given that the ONS has in the past made noticeable changes to the rate of inflation, such as the way clothing prices are calculated in 2010, which was a major reason behind the leap in the formula effect gap.


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Her Hopeless Military Situation

Had Hitler succeeded in his plan to invade Britain the world would now be a very different place. The United States would probably have remained neutral, leaving Germany, Italy and Russia to carve up Europe between them. There was just the small matter of destroying the Royal Air Force...

By July 1940, German forces had occupied France, Belgium, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands. Hitler’s troops now stood a mere 21 miles from the English coast and had direct access to the Atlantic Ocean for their submarines to prey on British merchant shipping vital to the island’s survival.

Hitler assumed that with the defeat of her mainland allies, Britain could not continue to fight and would sue for peace. He is said to have had some admiration for Britain and her Empire and made several peace overtures to the British government. When these were rejected he ordered Admiral Raeder, head of the Kriegsmarine, to formulate plans for an invasion. Unlike the earlier successes on the mainland however, this invasion would need to be seaborne and the German navy set out a number of prerequisites necessary to success.

These were the sealing off of all Royal Navy forces from the landing area and the destruction of the Royal Air Force, the clearing of all mines at the crossing points and the Straits of Dover to be blocked at both ends by German mines. The Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe had both drawn up plans in anticipation of the invasion, with neither of them being very confident of a successful outcome.  Herman Goering, head of the Luftwaffe noted that, “a combined operation, having the objective of landing in England must be rejected. It could only be the final act of an already victorious war against Britain as otherwise the preconditions for success would not be met”.

Nevertheless, on the 16th of July 1940, Hitler issued Directive no 16, setting in motion plans for invading Britain, codename “Operation Sea Lion”.  He prefaced the order by stating, “As England, despite her hopeless military situation, still shows no signs of coming to terms, I have decided to carry out a landing operation against her. The aim of the operation is to eliminate the English Motherland as a base from which the war against Germany can be continued and, if necessary, to occupy the country completely”.

This was the moment when Britain truly stood alone. Western Europe had been overrun by the Germans and it was only two months since Britain had managed to extricate the remnants of her retreating forces from Dunkirk. Some 330,000 British and Allied soldiers had been lifted from the French beaches, leaving behind huge stores of equipment, trucks and weapons. The army desperately needed time to regroup and rearm. Only the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force were in any condition to oppose an invasion. The RAF fighter strength at the outbreak of war was around 675 aircraft against Germany’s 2000. Despite losses, by August the RAF had 615 Hurricanes and 326 Spitfires in operation as Britain geared up fully for war production.

The ultimate responsibility for Sea Lion was given to Raeder and Goering, neither of whom had much enthusiasm for the task. The Luftwaffe had so far, been fairly ineffective against naval targets, as witnessed in the Norwegian Campaign where, despite air superiority, they managed to sink only two British destroyers. They had not been trained for sea warfare and lacked armour piercing bombs and aerial torpedoes, essential when attacking large warships.

The Kriegsmarine had also suffered heavy losses in this campaign. Two cruisers and ten destroyers had been sunk and others damaged by the British, these being the very ships most suited to protect the invasion forces in the narrow and relatively shallow waters of the English Channel. The heavier battleships and battle cruisers of the German navy had been deployed into the North Atlantic as raiders and would not be available for the operation.

The British navy, despite having much of the fleet engaged in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, still had superiority in numbers over their foes, particularly in small fast Motor Torpedo Boats which, if allowed, could wreak havoc among the landing barges and escorting warships. Britain had over 700 of these vessels, making them a critical threat if the Luftwaffe could not neutralise them. Tellingly, throughout the war, only nine MTBs were lost to air attack out of the 115 total losses and in the whole of 1940, only nine British destroyers were sunk out the 100 stationed in home waters at the time, five of these being sunk while withdrawing troops from Dunkirk.

It was quite clear to the German High Command that the RAF would have to be neutralised before any landing could be considered and from the middle of July through to August 11th, the first phase of the battle, called Kanalkampf (Channel Battle) by the Germans, opened with German bombers, with fighter escorts, attacking British convoys in the English Channel. The need for constant air patrols over the convoys put severe strain on both pilots and machines of the RAF and, being outnumbered, suffered heavy losses as did the Germans. During this phase of the battle, the RAF suffered losses of 148, while the Luftwaffe lost 248. The fighting did however, give both sides some experience of air to air combat and also confirmed that certain aircraft such as the British Bolton Paul Defiant and the German Bf 110 were unsuitable for intense dogfighting and were withdrawn.

The second phase, codenamed Adlerangriff (Eagle Day) by the Germans, began on the 12th of August when a specialist fighter bomber unit attacked four British radar stations in an attempt to “blind” Fighter Command. They failed to follow up the attack however and the stations were back on line within six hours. If they had persisted in their attacks on these stations or the infrastructure that supported them, the outcome might have been very different.

The next day started with major attacks on coastal airfields used by the RAF as forward landing grounds and on satellite airfields such as Manston and Hawkinge. An indication of the scale of the fighting can be gleaned from the events of the 13th of August when the Luftwaffe flew 1485 sorties, losing 39 planes against British losses of 15. The attacks continued throughout the week, steadily moving inland to airfields around London. The 15th of August saw what the Germans called “The Greatest Day” and launched over 1,000 bombers against England, attacking both the South of England and the North where it was thought English defences were weaker. Although much damage was caused, the attackers suffered heavy losses, particularly in the North where the raiding force of 65 Heinkel 111s, escorted by 35 Bf110s were badly mauled by the fighters. Total German losses for the day were 76 against a British loss of 35 fighters.


The Usage of Landscape in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Heather Mah

When reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, I was struck by how Mary makes use of the landscape to parallel Victor Frankenstein's shifting mental condition. In the story, Victor Frankenstein is an overly ambitious scientist whose curious tinkling with alchemy leads him to create a giant monster and ultimately compromised Frankenstein's own destruction. After Frankenstein created his monster and witnessed the horror that was his own making, he is traumatized in a "painful state of mind," which leads him to isolate himself from the outside world. Frankenstein's power to create life from dead body parts proves to be so extreme and so immoral that nothing in society seems to be able to encompass such an enormous feat, not even Frankenstein himself after he finished his creation. Thus, because of his inability to accept the fact that he has successfully brought something so grotesque to life, Frankenstein takes his dark secret and retreats within himself. Frankenstein's self-discovered power is so great that it successfully disassociates him from all the things he has once held dear in his life, such as family and the beautiful familiar landscapes. From here on, Frankenstein can only identify with big, immense, sublime landscapes because these are the only landscapes extreme enough to communicate what Victor is feeling inside.

From the time Frankenstein created his monster, he finds little comfort in the beauty of nature. One passage that I find particularly striking was when Victor exclaimed, "Dear mountains! My own beautiful lake! How do you welcome your wanderer? Your summits are clear; the sky and lake are blue and placid. Is this to prognosticate peace, or to mock at my unhappiness?" (106). It is as if Victor is offended by the beauty and calmness of the landscape simply because it conflicts with the inner turmoil he is feeling inside. He continues through the story to "pass through many beautiful and majestic scenes [with] eyes fixed and unobserving" and "shunn[ing] the face of man; all sounds of joy or complacency [being] torturous to [him]; solitude [being his] only consolation -- deep, dark, death-like solitude" (210). One probable reason why he finds beautiful, peaceful scenes offensive can be found in the passage where Victor laments, "Nothing is more painful to the human mind, than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows, and deprives the soul both of hope and fear" (127). This passage seems to suggest to me that the reason why Victor cannot enjoy picturesque landscapes is because the unmoving calmness of the landscape does not speak to Victor's tormented soul nor does it give off any feelings of absolute hope or fear. To be more specific, the calmness of the scenery only gives off possible feelings for the observer, allowing the observer to freely feel and respond to the scenery however he or she feels at the time. This does not help Victor's trouble state because he is already drowning in his own misery. Thus what Victor needs is sublime, ever-changing landscapes that would forcefully guide his awareness away from his troubles in order to feel alive again.

Such sublime landscapes can be found in a thunderstorm that Victor encounters during his journey back to Geneva after learning about his brother, William's, murder. The thunder is described as "burst[ing] with a terrific crash over [Victor's] head. It [is] echoed from Saleve, the Juras, and the Alps of Savoy; vivid flashes of lightning dazzled [his] eyes, illuminating the lake, making it appear like a vast sheet of fire; then for an instant every thing seemed of a pitchy darkness, until the eye recovered itself from the preceding flash" (107). Thus, Victor finds the dynamic, chaotic, ever-changing movements of the storm to be "so beautiful yet terrific" and credits this "noble war in the sky" for "elevat[ing] [his] spirits" (107). The same can be said for such sceneries as the Arveiron and Montavert, which also generate a positive response from Victor. During Victor's family trip to the Arveiron, the "sublime and magnificent scenes afforded [Victor with] the greatest consolation that [he is] capable of receiving. They elevated [him] from all littleness of feeling; and although they did not remove [his] grief, they subdued and tranquillized it" (132). Similarly, Victor remembers "the effect that the view of [Montanvert's] tremendous and ever-moving glacier had filled [him] with a sublime ecstasy that gave wings to the soul, and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy" (135). For Victor, "the sight of the awful and majestic in nature had indeed always the effect of solemnizing [his] mind, and causing [him] to forget the passing cares of life" (136). Therefore, only these sublime, extreme landscapes are powerful enough to offer Victor a moment of comfort, however brief the moment of comfort is before the reappearance of his creature has Victor submerged within his own misery once again.

In conclusion, Mary Shelley made use of the landscape to communicate Victor's fluctuating mentality. Because he has successfully cross over the boundary separating God from man to bring something inanimate to life, Victor has removed himself far from ordinary human-kind. He now possessed an unearthly power that sets him apart from his fellow human beings. Thus, unlike ordinary humans who find picturesque landscapes awe-inspiring, Victor finds such landscapes indifferent and incapable of curing his troubled mind. Rather he can only identify with enormous, sublime landscapes because these are the only landscapes great and powerful enough to take his mind away from his problems and to offer him some sort of comfort in his present unstable state.

Works Cited

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein 2nd edition. Ed. D.L. MacDonald & Kathleen Scherf. Canada: Broadview Press Ltd, 2001.


Tags » Porphyria

Porphyria Symptoms, Causes, Diagnosis, Complications, Prevention And Treatment

Porphyria is the umbrella term for a group of uncommon disorders that include a specific particle called “heme” or ‘haem’. Heme contains press and is utilized as a part of metabolic procedures all through the body. 419 more words

Better bring a good umbrella

Ocean Falls, B.C. averages 330 days of rain per year. The low availability of sunlight has prompted a South African family with pophyria to move to the area. 25 more words

The Hunt

So here’s something that never quite happened before. I had an idea for a short story and decided to render it as a poem instead. But the poem quickly grew unwieldy and so I had to pare it back to the point where the plot of the story got lost. 200 more words

Supplements, Dietary and Otherwise

Attacks in the acute porphyrias can often make it very difficult to take in enough food to satisfy a person’s nutritional needs. When that happens, some people will try to make up for their lost nutrition by taking in large numbers or amounts of dietary supplements. 525 more words

The Highest Distinction

“You are the only person I know that has handled this much of their own urine. I’m not sure whether to be impressed with your perseverance with this or be repulsed by the fact that you stored your own urine in your fridge hahahaha then again, what do I know [?] I have a dead fox in my parents freezer.” 471 more words

What Do You Know About Porphyria Disease?

Porphyria is a gathering of disorders that can bring about nerve or skin issues. A porphyria that affects the skin is called Cutaneous Porphyria. A porphyria that influences the sensory system is called intense porphyria. 343 more words

Acute Intermittent Porphyria


Mount and Sync Network Shares Using Smb4K

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Finding and Mounting Shared Folders

Finding and mounting shared folders is Smb4K's primary use, and one it does very well. The interface is simple and easy to use. An icon resides in the system tray for easy access. If you have a share bookmarked you can right-click the icon and select the appropriate one to mount it. If not, left-clicking on the icon will load the main program.

Smb4K presents a two pane interface. The left pane contains two tabs. The default is the Network Browser and it works exactly as you'd expect. It queries the network for available shares and displays them in a tree view. Selecting one of the shares mounts it and causes an icon to display in the right pane.

The second tab is the Search Dialog. I don't use it much on my home network because I set up all of the shares and know where they are, but I can see it being useful on a larger network where finding a share is much less intuitive.

The right pane contains icons representing all of the mounted shares and gives you the ability to browse, syncronize, or unmount any of then.

Syncronizing Shared Folders

Once a share has been mounted it's available for syncronizing. To trigger a syncronization either right-click on a mounted share in Smb4K and select Syncronize; or right-click on the system tray icon, highlight Mount Shares, and expand the menus until Syncronize is listed. It's possible to designate either the local or the remote drive as the source.

One key item of note is that you have to select directories, it doesn't support individual files. The best use is when you create specific folders that you want to keep synced between a couple systems. I use it for my family photos. My editing and tagging is done using Digikam on my laptop, but I keep a copy of all of the files on a home server. Using Smb4K's syncronize command is an easy way to update any changes once I am done.

When setting up the folder paths the source will default to the mapped drive. If you want to change the source to be the destination, as I do, the swap path button makes it simple to reverse directions.

My final item of note is that a directory will be created at the destination location that matches the source folder. This means that when syncronizing a share called Pictures that maps to a folder of the same name, I cannot select my local folder called Pictures as the source. A subfolder must be selected because the entire folder will be copied and not just the files within. If you don't you'll end up with one Pictures directory inside another.

Smb4K serves as a convenient syncronization tool, but it's not for everyone. If you are looking for a way to syncronize on a schedule, or automatically based on an action or system state, another app will be needed. But if all you need is a quick sync that you will manually trigger, it's a very useful tool.


Called the root-lesion nematode, the transparent, eel-shaped roundworm lives in the soil and feeds on the roots of wheat, barley, oats and many other crops. This limits the crops' ability to take up nutrients and water, leaving plants with smaller heads and yellowed leaves.

"The presence of nematodes is usually confused with root rot, viruses or lack of nutrition because the effect on crops looks the same," said Dick Smiley, a plant pathologist at OSU's Columbia Basin Agricultural Research Center in Pendleton. “But nematodes often go undetected because they're not well-known, and they're transparent and thinner than a human hair.”

Researchers have detected the root-lesion nematode in about 90 percent of fields sampled in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington, according to Smiley, who has studied the pest since 1999. Population densities of nematodes high enough to reduce yields have been detected in 60 percent of fields sampled in Oregon and Washington. The roundworm wreaks the most havoc in drier areas where wheat and barley grow.

Most nematodes are beneficial to agriculture by helping decompose organic matter. Some, however, are parasitic to plants or animals. They spread easily, hitchhiking to new locations via the wind, animals, farm equipment and boots. It's nearly impossible to eradicate them once they're established.

Another harmful roundworm, the cereal cyst nematode, is also damaging wheat, barley and oats in the Pacific Northwest. First identified in western Oregon in 1974, it is now found in eight western states.

Wheat farmers in Idaho, Oregon and Washington are estimated to lose $3.4 million in revenue each year to cereal cyst nematodes, according to OSU calculations. Researchers arrived at the figure by considering a range of factors, including the percentage of fields infested with damaging densities of nematodes, as well as the yields and farmgate value for crops in these infested areas.

OSU scientists are studying crop management strategies to mitigate the worms' impact. The most effective tactic they've found is a three-year crop rotation where farmers skip two years between wheat plantings.

Rotations vary depending upon which nematode is causing problems. Root-lesion nematodes are well-managed by planting winter wheat the first year and spring barley the second year and then letting the field go fallow the third year. Cereal cyst nematodes are best-managed by rotating wheat or barley with broadleaf crops.

Crop damage can also be alleviated to a limited extent by applying extra fertilizer and water. There are no chemicals legally available for wheat and barley growers to kill the two types of nematodes.

OSU researchers have also tested more than 20 wheat, barley and oat cultivars to determine how badly yields are reduced. Most Pacific Northwest wheat varieties don't resist harmful nematodes.

In OSU's tests, nearly every variety suffered severe root injury. Only the hard red spring wheat WB-Rockland prevented cereal cyst nematodes from reproducing while also maintaining consistent yields. UI Stone, a soft white spring wheat, and Buck Pronto, a hard red spring wheat, allowed nematode populations to thrive but still produced a steady crop.

Generic OSU


Strenger Than Fiction Why Israel Keeps Moving Right

Israel has been sliding into ever greater isolation in recent years. Since Benjamin Netanayhu returned to power in 2009 this process has accelerated. The international community has been put off by his tactics: Whenever the question of Israel’s settlement policy comes up, he diverts attention to the Iranian nuclear threat. He argues that the world is facing a situation similar to 1938, and that its reaction is that of Chamberlain trying to appease Hitler. The world doesn’t buy Netanyahu’s rhetoric; his policy of stalling the peace process is perceived as a cynical ploy hiding Israel’s true intent of holding on to the territories.

This explanation fails to take into account that Netanyahu’s rhetoric reflects the paradoxical state of mind of the Israeli electorate. Polls show that a consistent 70 percent of Israelis favor a two-state solution. So why has Israel’s electorate been moving consistently to the right in the last decade? Why is Netanyahu’s popularity in Israel so high? And why is Israel’s public less willing than ever to listen to criticism of Israeli policies?

This development can be elucidated by a universal tendency of the human psyche uncovered by existential psychology in the last two decades. When under threat, particularly mortal threat, humans tend to react psychologically by entrenching their worldviews. These views, which include identity narratives of righteousness, become ever more rigid under these circumstances, leading to growing distrust, hatred and negative prejudice against out-groups. Criticism of the in-group and its worldview is rejected categorically.

This theory predicts that Israel’s move to the right reflects a sense of existential threat. To outside observers this may seem absurd, given that Israel is a regional superpower generally assumed to have a substantial nuclear arsenal, whereas the Palestinians don’t even have a standing army. Nevertheless all polls show that Israel suffers from deep anxiety about its viability.

Part of the explanation is quite concrete: Two realistic threats have indeed emerged in the last years. The first is the possibility that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons, a threat that most Israelis see as catastrophic. The second is from groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, which have moved from suicide terrorism to rocket attacks on Israel. Israel, for the first time since 1973, is faced with security threats to which it has no clear-cut answer. As a result Israel launched massive attacks in Lebanon in 2006 and against Gaza in 2008/9 under the assumption that the price of rocket attacks must be destruction on a substantial scale. This has pushed Israel into unprecedented international isolation.

The result is a vicious circle in which Israel feels that its existential fears are not taken seriously. Israel’s electorate moves towards leaders who address but also keep reinforcing its fears. International opinion becomes ever more negative, which in turn reinforces Israel’s isolation which in turn raises existential fears.

This has one, very unfortunate, consequence. Israel’s best chance of minimizing the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah and minimizing Iranian influence in the Middle East is to engage with the Arab League peace initiative. If Israel were to normalize relations with all of the Arab and most of the Islamic world, particularly Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas would be isolated to the point of having to move towards abandoning violence and recognizing Israel’s legitimacy.

Are there any ways to get Israel out of its growing distrust of the outside world? Experimental existential psychology suggests two main means: one is, obviously, lowering the real or perceived mortal threat. The other is to decrease the sense of isolation.

The Obama administration has addressed both issues lately. It is stepping up security cooperation with Israel, and increasing its military aid to Israel, particularly to allow Israel to complete the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system developed to provide an answer to the short range rockets used by Hezbollah and Hamas. Obama has also changed course in that he has given Netanyahu a warm welcome after more than a year of giving him the cold shoulder. This, as most commentators assume, does not reflect a policy change: Obama is adamant about implementing the two-state solution, but he has come to the conclusion that embracing Israel is a more effective way of getting there than to isolate it.

The big question is whether this will in any way influence Netanyahu’s overall security conception, that Israel must retain control over certain areas in the West Bank to have an effective answer to any future attack from the east. Since this does not allow for territorial contiguity of a future Palestinian State, it will be unacceptable to Palestinians and the international community.

Nobody knows what Netanyahu’s long-term strategy is exactly – sometimes I doubt that he knows. But there is a simple way of gauging whether he is about the change course. Tensions between Netanyahu and his foreign minister, extreme rightist Avigdor Lieberman have been mounting lately. The day Netanyahu changes his coalition by ousting Lieberman’s hawkish Yisrael Beiteinu party and replacing it with Tzipi Livni’s centrist Kadima, we will have a strong indication that he is moving towards genuine progress with the Palestinians.


California Lizardfish

California Lizardfish, Synodus lucioceps

The California Lizardfish, Synodus lucioceps, whose common Spanish name is chile lucio, is a species in the family Synodontidae, the Lizardfishes, known as chilies in Mexico. Globally, there are thirty seven species in the genus Synodus, of which eleven are found in Mexican waters, six in the Atlantic and five in the Pacific.

The California Lizardfish have elongated tubular robust bodies with a depth that are 11 – 15% of standard length. They are brown color overall, which is cream and gray dorsally and abruptly pale ventrally. They have a subtle row of approximately eight irregular dark blotches along their mid-flank. Their gill membranes and pelvic fins are yellowish; their adipose fin, caudal fin, and pectoral fins are dark; and their anal and dorsal fins are transparent with dark rays. Their head is wide and medium-sized (22-24% of standard length) and features a long pointed snout, large eyes, and a slightly oblique mouth. Their mouth is large and extends well past the eyes; it opens at the front and is equipped with many rows of fine pointed teeth. They have a straight lateral line. Their anal fin has a long base that is equal in length to their dorsal fin base; their caudal fin is forked; their dorsal fin is mid-body and originates closer to their adipose fin than their snout tip; their small adipose fin is above their anal fin; and their pelvic fins are large and found behind their pectoral fins. Their fins are spineless.

The California Lizardfish are found on the bottom (demersal) within and over sandy and muddy bottoms at depths between 5 and 750 feet. They reach a maximum length of 64 cm (25.2 inches). They are voracious ambush predators feeding primarily on small fish, krill, squid, and shrimp. They in turn are preyed on by sea lions. They have a limited distribution and are found along both coasts of Baja; they are absent from water adjacent to the mainland. They are a poorly studied species and very little is known about their behavioral patterns.

The California Lizardfish can be confused with the Iguana Lizardfish, Synodus sechurae (short pectoral fins, white spots along the lateral line), and the Lance Lizardfish, Synodus scituliceps (short head, uniform body coloration).

The California Lizardfish are viewed by local fishermen as a by-catch of no value. Furthermore, their small mouths require small hooks for success. They are strictly a “catch-and-release” that can become pests to recreational anglers.

California Lizardfish (1)

F093-California Lizardfish (2)
California Lizardfish, Synodus lucioceps. Caught off the pier at Puerto Adolfo Lopez Mateos, Baja California Sur, April 2016. Length: 26 cm (10 inches).


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The Child Labor Amendment

One of the most powerful trends in modern constitutional law is the decline of texualism.  I am not referring to judicial interpretation, although you can make a good case on that score.  I’m talking about the lack of interest in creating new constitutional commands through the Article Five process. Prior to the 1920s, it is fair to say that most people thought that major changes should be put into formal text. The Founding Fathers obviously believed that.  Reconstruction Republicans took that view.  And so did the Progressives of the 1910s.  But since then constitutional amendments have been about specific items (imposing a term limit on the President, giving some voting rights to the District of Columbia, repealing the poll tax in federal elections), while the general and powerful principles (like the right to privacy) are articulated by the courts.  What accounts for the growth of this unwritten constitution?

The obvious answer is the New Deal, which created a powerful precedent for transforming the Constitution through judicial appointments and broad statutes.  This begs an important question though.  Why did that generation break with tradition?  My research, which I’m hoping to turn into an article, indicates that the failure of the Child Labor Amendment in the 1920s and 1930s was a watershed event because its opponents figured out how to beat textual changes in the states.

Let me give you the highlights.  The Child Labor Amendment was the first one passed by Congress but defeated in the state legislatures in over a century, unless you count the 1861 proposal to make slavery permanent that collapsed once the Civil War began.  That was accomplished through a mass media campaign, which drew on popular anger at the effects of Prohibition and fears of socialism, and by extensive lobbying efforts from business groups.

This defeat had at least two major consequences.  First, when Congress passed the Twenty-First Amendment in 1933 (to repeal Prohibition) they provided, for the only time in our history, that the amendment be passed by state conventions where special interests would be less able to block the proposal.  More important, FDR was strongly influenced by this episode when he reached his conclusion that Court-packing was a preferable strategy to an amendment.

Anyway, it’s an interesting story that I’ll hopefully get to tell soon.

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