Hank Aaron Biography

Ralph Abernathy Biography

Civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy was the best friend and close assistant of Martin Luther King Jr. (1929–1968).

Bella Abzug Biography

Bella Abzug worked for civil and women's rights as a lawyer and as a politician. Throughout her long political career, she used her sharp tongue and unusual style to advance the issues that were her deepest concern.

Chinua Achebe Biography

Abigail Adams Biography

Though she believed her main role in life to be wife and mother, Abigail Adams also was a behind-the-scenes stateswoman. She used her talents to maintain her family during the many absences of her husband, John Adams, the second president of the United States, and to advise her husband about women's rights and slavery.

Ansel Adams Biography

Ansel Adams was a masterful photographer and a lifelong conservationist (a person who works to preserve and protect the environment) who encouraged understanding of, and respect for, the natural environment. Although he spent a large part of his career in commercial photography, he is best known for his photographs of landscapes.

John Adams Biography

Samuel Adams Biography

The colonial leader Samuel Adams was an influential figure in the years leading up to the American Revolution (1775–83). His newspaper articles and organizational activities helped inspire American colonists to rebel against the British government.

Joy Adamson Biography

Naturalist and wildlife preservationist Joy Adamson is best known for the books and films depicting her work in Africa, especially her inspirational book Born Free. Adamson spent almost forty years living on game reserves in Kenya, and became heavily involved in wildlife preservation activities.

Jane Addams Biography

Alfred Adler Biography

Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler was credited with developing several important theories on the motivation of human behavior. He founded the school of individual psychology, a comprehensive "science of living" that focuses on the uniqueness of the individual and a person's relationships with society.

Aeschylus Biography

The Greek playwright Aeschylus was the first European dramatist whose plays were preserved. He was also the earliest of the great Greek tragedians (writers of serious drama involving disastrous events), and was concerned with the common connection between man and the gods more than any of the other tragedians.

Spiro Agnew Biography

Between the time of his nomination as Richard Nixon's running mate in August 1968 and his resignation in October 1973, Vice President Spiro Agnew was a leading spokesman for "The Silent Majority," a term used by Nixon to describe conservative, middle-class, white American voters. After being found guilty of tax evasion, Agnew became the second United States vice president to resign from office.

Alvin Ailey Biography

Madeleine Albright Biography

On January 23, 1997, when Madeleine Albright was sworn in as the United States secretary of state, she became the first woman to hold this position. Albright's impressive career highlights a combination of scholarly research and political activity.

Louisa May Alcott Biography

Louisa May Alcott is one of America's best-known writers of juvenile (intended for young people) fiction. Reproduced by permission of Archive Photos, Inc.

Alexander II Biography

Alexander II was emperor of Russia from 1855 to 1881. He is called the "czar liberator" because he freed the serfs (poor peasants who lived on land owned by nobles) in 1861.

Alexander the Great Biography

Muhammad Ali Biography

Woody Allen Biography

Woody Allen is one of America's most prominent filmmakers. He has made many comedies and serious films that deal with subjects that have always interested him—the relationships of men and women, death, and the meaning of life.

Isabel Allende Biography

The author of several novels and a collection of short fiction, as well as plays and stories for children, Chilean author Isabel Allende has received international praise for her writing. Many of her books are noted for their feminine point of view and dramatic qualities of romance and struggle.

Julia Alvarez Biography

American Horse Biography

American Horse was a Sioux chief during the Lakota Wars of the 1860s and 1870s. His capture and death was one in a series of defeats for the Sioux after the historic Battle of the Little Bighorn (1876).

Idi Amin Biography

As president of Uganda from 1971 to 1979, Idi Amin (c. 1925–) became well known for his terrible violations of human rights, for causing the collapse of the country's economy, and for causing social disorganization.

Hans Christian Andersen Biography

Carl David Anderson Biography

The American physicist Carl David Anderson opened up the entire field of particle physics, the study of the atom, the smallest unit of matter. Because of his discoveries of the positron (positive electron) and the meson (similar to the negative electron), two particles that make up the atom, Anderson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1936.

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Biography

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was the first woman officially approved to practice medicine in Great Britain, and was a pioneer in opening education in medicine to women. She made great sacrifices and struggled to create new pathways for women in British medicine.

Marian Anderson Biography

Marian Anderson is remembered as one of the best American contraltos (women with lower singing voices) of all time. She was the first African American singer to perform at the White House and the first African American to sing with New York's Metropolitan Opera.


Zel Allen

Kohlrabi Strives for a Comeback

purple kohlrabi

Contributed by Zel Allen. Kohlrabi, once the favored vegetable of European nobles and peasants alike, has fallen off the veggie pop charts. However, we predict a comeback for this neglected member of the Brassica oleracea family, more commonly called the cabbage family. Some people have mistakenly labeled kohlrabi a cross between a cabbage and a turnip. This is understandable, since both are members of the brassica family, but they are not of the same variety. more→

Pear and Walnut Compote with Choco-Wafers

Pear and Walnut Compot with Choco-wafers

Spiced Cranberry Nog

Spiced Cranberry Nog zel allen vegan for the holidaysA knock-your-socks-off festive holiday beverage, this unique take-off on eggnog lights up with a tangy edge and an inviting powder puff pink color thanks to the season’s bountiful cranberry harvest. The nog is quickly assembled in the blender, but you may want to plan ahead for multiple batches when serving a crowd. Recipe and photo contributed by Zel Allen, from Vegans for the Holidays.*

Sweet Potato Waldorf Salad

Sweet Potato Waldorf Salad recipe

Thanksgiving Torte

Thanksgiving Torte recipe by Zel Allen

The torte makes the ideal vegan Thanksgiving dish with its varied textures and savory flavors from the combination of wild rice, mushrooms, nuts, and sage. Served with a robust Mushroom Sauce on the side, this makes a hearty main dish and goes well with all the typical side dishes like cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, chestnut stuffing, and a few veggie combinations. more→

Cranberry Walnut Pie with Nutty Wheat Pie Crust

Fresh cranberries in a bowl

Toss showy cranberries, walnuts, and raisins into a pie crust and the result is a stunning dessert that features a zippy sweet-and-tart ﬂavor. This tantalizing treat is an ideal, easy-to-prepare, make-ahead holiday dessert. Contributed by Zel Allen from The Nut Gourmet: Delicioius Plant-Based Recipes* (reprinted by permission of the author). more→

Nutty No-Bake Pie Crust

Nutty no-bake pie crust

For pies that require no baking, rely on this recipe for a pie crust that magically comes together with only three ingredients. This crust plays a dual role. In addition to creating a base for a pie filing, it actually contributes nutty texture, flavor, and sweetness to the pie. Contributed by Zel Allen, reprinted from  The Nut Gourmet.* Photos by Hannah Kaminsky. more→

Cheezy Tofu Spread with Pine Nuts

Cheezy tofu spread with pine nuts

This creamy spread is adaptable enough to serve at any meal. To prepare an open-faced sandwich for breakfast, spread a generous layer on whole grain bread, top with sliced tomatoes and vegan cheese, and melt it under the broiler. For a lunchtime sandwich, apply the spread generously to two slices of bread and add sliced tomato, onion, cucumber, avocado, lettuce, and sprouts. Include some pungent herbs like basil, arugula, or mint leaves for extra zest. For dinner, use it in place of ricotta for lasagne, stuffed pasta shells, and stuffed eggplant roll-ups. Recipe contributed by Zel Allen, from The Nut Gourmet. more→


Title: An icy view of ULIRGs Henrik Spoon Kapteyn Institute, Groningen, The Netherlands Abstract: Ultra-Luminous InfraRed Galaxies (ULIRGs) are mergers of gas rich disk galaxies, with infrared luminosities exceeding 10^12 solar luminosities. Responsible for this huge luminosity is a combination of vigorous star formation and AGN activity, both of which are fueled by an enormous concentration of molecular gas in the central region. The question as to what power source dominates, on average, the luminosity of ULIRGs has been a matter of intense debate. Depending on the wavelength range used to probe the nuclear power sources, a different conclusion may be reached. With the advent of ISO, powerful mid-infrared spectroscopic tools have become available to probe the conditions of dust and gas in these nuclei. These conditions are distinctly different for both environments, leading to spectral characteristics which can be easily discerned. A mid-infrared starburst spectrum is dominated by PAH emission features and shows low-ionization fine structure lines on a continuum which rises steeply beyond 10 microns. In contrast, a mid-infrared AGN spectrum shows high-ionization fine structure lines and, depending on whether there is a clear line of sight to AGN-heated hot dust, a strong, slowly rising, hot dust continuum. These mid-infrared spectral characteristics have been exploited in several studies to determine the dominant power source in ULIRGs. Recently, we have detected the 6.0 micron absorption band of water ice in the ISO spectra of 18 (ultra-)luminous infrared galaxies. The detection of water ice confirms that cold molecular gas is able to survive in these highly active power houses. Among the three main galaxy types in my galaxy sample, the incidence of water ice is highest in ULIRGs. We also obtained high resolution M-band spectra of the nucleus of the nearby starburst/seyfert-2 galaxy NGC4945 and detected `XCN' and CO ice, for the first time outside our Galaxy. The presence of `XCN' ice and the shape of the CO ice profile provide a tell-tale story of the interaction of newly formed stars with their environment.


Top 5: Beatles albums

Wednesday is the 50th anniversary of The Beatles first session at Abbey Road Studios. Of the four songs recorded that day, only their performances of “Besame Mucho” and “Love Me Do” survive. Early takes of “PS I Love You” and “Ask Me Why” have been lost to history.

Marking that anniversary, here are five of the Fab Four’s most successful albums in the United Kingdom in terms of sales.

1. “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (1967)
2. “Abbey Road” (1969)
3. “With The Beatles” (1963)
4. “Revolver” (1966)
5. “The Beatles” (1968)


-Rou, what a sad story.

-Ok, so the combination of a caramel brulee latte and roaming around Target is LETHAL. I had six items on my list and came out with... well, let's just say WAY more than that. I did finally find some pretty mercury glass votive holders for my mantel, score!

-White corn meal, I found you!! I was beginning to worry.

-Totally loving our reusable napkins, they're so cute! I've got to learn to sew and make my own.


Ward Room
Covering Chicago's nine political influencers

Ill. Supreme Court Upholds Abortion Parental Notification Law

    The Illinois Supreme Court Thursday ended a long fought debate over the unenforced abortion parental notification law, allowing the state to require doctors to notify a girl’s parents 48 hours before an abortion.

    The Illinois Supreme Court upheld a circuit court’s previous dismissal of a case challenging the parental notification measure filed by the Hope Clinic for Women and ruled the law must be enforced unless the U.S. Supreme Court determines otherwise.

    Chicago Reacts to Concealed Carry Bill

    [CHI] Chicago Reacts to Concealed Carry Bill

    Under the 1995 law, which was never enforced because of legal challenges, doctors are required to notify the parents of girls 17 and under that their child is seeking an abortion 48 hours prior to the procedure. A girl can get permission from a judge to waive the notification requirement if the judge determines notification is against her best interest, including in cases of sexual abuse.

    “The state has an interest in ensuring that a minor is sufficiently mature and well-informed to make the difficult decision whether to have an abortion,” Justice Anne Burke wrote in the court’s majority opinion.

    Emanuel Reacts to Conceal Carry Law

    [CHI] Emanuel Reacts to Conceal Carry Law

    Burke justified the court’s reasoning after citing several U.S. Supreme Court cases from across the country allowing parental notification.

    “We are persuaded by the reasoning contained in the Supreme Court cases which have found parental notification statutes constitutional under federal substantive due process and equal protection law,” Burke wrote.

    Abortion-rights advocates claimed women should have the right to make decisions involving their bodies and were “disappointed” by the Supreme Court’s ruling.

    “Planned Parenthood agrees that in an ideal world, parents would be involved in their teens’ health care and engaged in healthy dialogue around responsible decision making. But in some cases, safe and open communication is not possible,” the company said in a statement. “While we believe the Illinois Parental Notice of Abortion Act puts the health and safety of teens at unnecessary risk, Planned Parenthood of Illinois is committed to doing everything we can to make this new process as easy as possible for teens if the law goes into effect.”

    Abortion opponents argue that parents have a right to know whether their child is obtaining an abortion.


The perfect Thanksgiving pairing (has everything and nothing to do with the wine)

My favorite Thanksgiving pairings are pinot noir with Burgundian leanings and sparkling brut rosé. (I’m not aiming for points on originality here). Since I’m a member of the drink-American-on-Thanksgiving club, the pinot noir is likely to lean Burgundy without actually being so in the form of an Oregon pinot noir that remembers that Oregon isn’t California. The sparkling is likely to be Schramsberg if I can get it and Ch. Ste. Michelle if I have to share. That being out of the way, my favorite Thanksgiving pairings have everything and nothing to do with what’s in the bottle.

Growing up, dinner came in two general forms. “Dinner” was eating. I was sometimes allowed to bring a book to the table (don’t judge), my parents talked about business or watched the evening news, and we didn’t have wine. “Nice dinner” was dining. We lit candles. We had wine. The conversations were longer, more thoughtful and, silly or serious, involved more stories. “Dinner” could be over in 45 minutes. “Nice dinners” sometimes took three hours. I blame the wine.

Thanksgiving (and Christmas) was the paragon “nice dinner:” just the three of us, the nice plates, and a meal that took most of the day and a spreadsheet to prepare — because what is Thanksgiving but an excuse for excessively social cooking for a family that doesn’t watch football and does own three mortar-and-pestle sets? And definitely wine. We sometimes thought about a movie afterwards, but as often as not we just talked and listened to music until everyone was warm and sleepy and full of pumpkin pie and single malt and ready for bed. Again, I blame the wine. And the single malt, but mostly the wine.

Thanksgiving and nice dinners have everything to do with science and science communication. I remember the evening when my father first explained color spaces (a fundamental element of color theory) to me. I was somewhere in the second half of my teens and I’m pretty sure the bottle on the table was a Dr. Frank merlot from New York’s Finger Lakes, because that was our house red at the time. We talked about F-stops or the zone system, how sub-woofers work, the finer points of gardening or birdwatching. Later, we talked about my research and I practiced science communication on my father, for whom “cell” was more likely to refer to a battery than a bacterium. Sometimes we were mundane and just rehashed old stories. We always talked about the wine at least a little.

I’m sure that I would have been interested in science and communication and maybe even in wine without those dinners. But “nice dinners,” and holidays especially, were the crystalline form of the stuff that taught me to be inquisitive, to value good conversation (and to hold up my end), and to understand why wine isn’t just about flavor and definitely doesn’t need to be about prestige. Good wine meant good conversation, and good conversation means everything.

I’m all in favor of thoughtful wine and food pairings that reveal exquisite and otherwise-unseen elements of each, or even simply pairings that taste good. But the absolute best pairing with Thanksgiving is just wine, whatever wine makes space for conversation, whether at a quiet table for three or a potluck affair for thirty. Because that, not an exquisite flavor experience, is the wine’s real job.

Why thinking of wine as food solves the natural wine debate

Wine is a food. A surprising number of people are surprised when I say this. It seems obvious: wine is nourishment. Nourishment with specific effects, yes, but all foods have some kind of effect on us, if some more profound than others.

Saying that wine is food isn’t the same as saying that wine is harmless. Nearly every food will cause you some sort of harm if eaten in inappropriate quantity, and any amount of some foods are bad for some people. Jack Sprat and his wife are really caricatures of all of us: some people are happiest and healthiest as vegetarians and some really live best with meat, some feel their best eating dairy-free and some can’t digest soy, some thrive on lots of carbs and some on more protein, some need to avoid salt and some don’t. Guidelines apply, sure, but setting down universal rules about what’s healthy for everyone just doesn’t work. Alcoholic beverages are food, dangerous for nearly everyone in large quantities (allowing that what qualifies as large varies from person to person), not tolerated by some, and healthy and useful for many.

Remembering that wine is food fundamentally solves the debate about whether or not wine must be “natural” in order to be valid. The short answer is no. The slightly longer answer is still no, but with some elaboration.

The reality about food in our post-Wonder Bread, post-Michael Pollan, post-Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall world is that we* near-universally know that locally-grown, minimally-produced, food with clearly identifiable ingredients that came out of the ground, off a tree, or from a recognizable piece of a pastured or wild animal represent “real food” and the ideal of what we should be eating. On the other hand, anonymous food processed out of recognition in large factories, wrapped in plastic and trucked about the country feeds most people most days. This is not ideal, but it’s the situation we have. Wine is the same. Boutique, caringly-crafted, often minimally messed-with wines are the ideals much lauded by our leaders. Still, Gallo and Yellow Tail and their ilk are still responsible for most bottles (and boxes, and jugs) on most tables most of the time. This is also not ideal.

The conundrum: while real food — including wine, and meaning ingredient-focused, sustainably grown, minimally processed, and preferably local — is ideal, it’s usually more expensive and sometimes unavailable. Especially in economically impoverished urban areas (and even very rural ones sometimes, perversely), wholesome fresh food sometimes is simply unavailable. Some people don’t have the know-how or time to prepare fresh food well. Even if just about everyone knows that eating mostly out of packages is bad, many still do so for a variety of reasons that may or may not be their “fault.” My husband once said that if the United States wanted to create an effective and complete anti-hunger program, the government should contract McDonalds to administer it. Neither of us voluntarily chooses to eat fast food. But you can’t deny McDonald’s expertise in delivering enormous quantities of consistently edible food to essentially every corner of the nation. When it comes to hunger, food is better than no food, even if the food is a mass-produced hamburger. Even though wine isn’t a basic necessity, mass production of what the natural folk would call fake wine makes wine accessible to people who would otherwise not be able to afford or access it at all. And much as I spurn the capitalist-driven food production system, I have to give credit where it’s due. We have industrialization to thank for safer food supplies and clean, well-made (as in not overtly faulty) wine. Understanding the benefits science and technology can bring, our task now is to undo the additive-filled and soulless damage we did to what nourishes us in figuring all of that out.

We can and should put community gardens into empty city lots, teach children how to grow their own radishes and encourage them to tear up the grass in the yard to do it, support fresh food markets in food deserts, make food production and cooking classes part of the school curriculum, and design economic policies to support local and organic food production. How to do this stuff is complicated. People specialize in economics and food policy. I’m not one of them. I’m not going to pretend that I know how to make these changes happen. I don’t believe that we need GMOs and factory food to provide enough food to feed the world, but I recognize that as a belief based on gut feeling and emotion and philosophy because I haven’t worked through all of the data. I’m consistent, though, in believing that the entire world could and should have access to real, honest, well-crafted wine if we changed the infrastructure surrounding how wine is produced and distributed. And we should.

So, the obvious conclusion. Appreciate mass-produced wine for providing volume and access while actively working toward making real wine — defined the same way we define real food — available to as many people as possible. Those of us with the money and education to buy real wine should, something we pretty much do already for cultural reasons, but perhaps without seeing the connection to the local and real food movements. Realizing this connection is important: it brings into focus the privilege inherent in preferring real wine and, in tandem, should help motivate us to work for change in both spheres. Think of real wine as part of real food, prefer both if you have the resources to do so, and think about what you can do to support its production and improve access. The Michael Pollans and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstalls of wine have yet to step up in terms of consumer education at least in the United States, hardly surprising considering our short history and present state of wine education, but something toward which to look forward nevertheless.

Now, what we define as “natural wine,” as in where we set the line between wine that’s allowed to carry that distinction or to show up at The Real Wine Fair — that’s a different question, and a semantic and philosophic more than a practical one. So is what we call “authentic wine,” and the issue of drinking local versus global is an entirely different discussion. More on those another day.

Incidentally, if we’re post Michael Pollan, I’d say that fermentation revivalist Sandor Ellix Katz (upon whom I’m inclined to wax poetic) is the prophet of our future food revival. Does that mean that I love quirky “natural” wines? You bet.

*I may be defining “we” rather narrowly as reasonably well-educated Westerners, but I doubt it. I haven’t surveyed people shopping for packaged foodstuffs with food stamps, but I know that my friends who fall into that category know what healthy food looks like and aren’t choosing it for a variety of reasons. Less well-educated folk may not know who Michael Pollan is, but the collective media we has achieved pretty high penetration if not on his message, than on the message of fruit and veg and whole grains good, processed foods and added sugar and salt and fats bad.

Waiheke Island and why I’ll probably never be an entrepreneur

Vines at Te Moto, Waiheke Island

Vines at Te Moto, Waiheke Island

Te Moto’s tiny winery/restaurant/tasting room complex


Indonesia: USCIRF Recommendations to President Obama

March 17, 2010

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom sent the following letter to President Obama regarding his visit to Indonesia.

March 5, 2010

The President
The White House
Washington, D.C.

Dear President Obama:

On behalf of all the Members of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, allow me to wish you a safe and pleasant visit to Indonesia. Though I am sure the press of business will be quite substantial while there, I hope you can find some time to reflect on the experiences you had while living there.

As you prepare for this important trip, we hope you will consider using the visit to Jakarta as a unique opportunity to deliver a major address reaffirming that religious freedom is pivotal to a free and peaceful society. Your visit also offers an opportunity to advance the ideals set forth in your June 4, 2009 Cairo speech, where you said, “People in every country should be free to choose and live their faith based upon the persuasion of the mind and the heart and the soul. This tolerance is essential for religion to thrive, but it is being challenged in many different ways.”

We believe it would be important to elaborate further on the subject of the Cairo speech by discussing in greater detail some of the specific challenges or cases of violation you referenced, and offer some ways to address and overcome them in the larger context of the Muslim world. You could also speak of religious freedom, particularly as it relates to the rule of law, its critical element of bilateral relations, and highlight the fact that this issue is a prominent feature of the U.S.-Indonesia Comprehensive Partnership.

As you have said, Indonesia is one model of religious tolerance, but the country has not been immune to radicalism and extremism, which has led to terrorist activity, sectarian violence, religious freedom violations, and other human rights abuses. While Indonesians have rejected extremism at the polls, it often goes unchallenged by many political, civic, and religious leaders. The government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has taken positive steps to address terrorism and past sectarian violence, to bring peace to the region of Aceh, and to build popular support for democracy. However, during his presidency, there has also been a troubling number of instances of sectarian violence, the forcible closures of places of worship belonging to religious minorities, the existence of local perda syariah laws restricting the rights of women and some non-Muslims, human rights abuses perpetuated by the military in Papua, and the harassment and arrest of individuals considered religiously “deviant” under Indonesian law. Moreover, various segments of the Indonesian government sometimes tolerate discrimination and abuse of religious minorities by extremist groups.

We hope you will urge Indonesian government leaders to repeal the ministerial decree curtailing the religious activities of the Ahmadiyah community, repeal Article 156 and other local laws in Aceh and elsewhere that infringe on the freedom of religion and expression protected in Indonesia’s Constitution, protect religious and ethnic minorities from violence perpetuated by extremist groups or by the country’s security forces, and prosecute fully those who undertake sectarian violence and human rights abuses. Your experience living in Indonesia and your family connections offer a unique perspective on the challenges faced by the Indonesian people and provide credibility to frankly discuss, in a spirit of friendship and better relations, problems that weaken Indonesia’s democratic foundations and undermine its reputation for religious tolerance and pluralism.

Indonesia, in our estimation, is an ideal place from which you can expand on the ideals set forth in your Cairo speech. In your bilateral discussions with the Indonesian President, you can use the U.S.-Indonesia Comprehensive Partnership as a model for the broader Muslim world, in order to develop strategies and policies that expand democracy, prosperity, peace, and the rights of women and religious minorities. We believe that promoting and protecting religious freedom and engaging religious communities are important elements to help further these goals. Robust religious freedom diplomacy, in Indonesia and elsewhere, is intertwined deeply with future U.S. security, economic, and political interests and it is critical to the advancement of democracy.

The late Indonesian President Abdurahim Wahid believed that democracy and stability in the Muslim world needed to be built on the pillars of religious freedom, equal treatment of citizens before the law, and protection of ethnic and religious minorities. Fortunately, there are already many individuals and organizations working in Indonesia to advance these goals. As part of the U.S.-Indonesia Comprehensive Partnership, the Administration should consider providing material support and building institutional capacity for those working to promote religious freedom, counter extremism, teach tolerance and human rights, and build interfaith alliances to deal with pressing social, economic, and environmental concerns. We hope the Administration will work with Indonesia’s vibrant civil society, including religious organizations and communities, to advance the goals of peace, justice, and freedom. Developing such partnerships would be important, not only for welfare of the Indonesian people, but as creative models for other parts of the world.

Your visit to Indonesia also provides an opportunity to clarify one element of the Cairo address that has been the subject of some confusion and misunderstanding. Namely, the Cairo speech’s emphasis on the importance of dialogue has been taken by some to diminish in importance a rights-based framework for addressing issues of religious freedom as well as related freedoms. We very much doubt that this was intended in light of the United States’ longstanding commitment to the Helsinki Accords, affirming that rights concerns are not internal affairs but rather matters of international concern.

Emphasis on universal rights and freedoms should be a central part of a growing relationship with Indonesia and other parts of the Muslim world. Future cooperation and assistance should target concrete improvements in religious freedom and related human rights as well as create new partnerships that will have a profound effect, both within Indonesia and beyond.

Sincerely yours,
Leonard Leo

cc: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton

Click here to view the pdf version of the letter.


qr code

Three out for Glovers

Yeovil, Latest news update:

Yeovil manager Terry Skiverton is still without a trio of players for the short trip to Bournemouth.

Defender Kerrea Gilbert and midfielders Paul Wotton and Ed Upson are all on the sidelines through suspension.
Gilbert serves the final game of a three-match ban after his sending off against Rochdale on December 17, while Wotton and Upson complete their respected two-match punishments following their accumulation of 10 yellow cards.
Midfielder Conor Clifford was replaced after just 40 minutes against Bournemouth on Saturday and may drop to the bench, with his replacement Steven MacLean possibly earning a promotion to the starting line-up.
Striker Gavin Massey was a second-half substitute against the Cherries and may be given the nod to face Paul Tisdale's side.

Yeovil archives


Hi, I have an application that uses JDBC, derby among one of the supported databases (I apologize that this is not 100% specific to derby!!). We use apache commons "GenericObjectPool" to pool our connections, hence they persist for a period of time. I want to add support for temporary tables into our persistence layer, but I'm getting stuck because of our pooling. We use a combination of transactional and auto-commit db accesses, so using "ON COMMIT DELETE ROWS" isn't really practical for the temp tables as the data won't be there if we're in auto-commit. Is there some way to issue a command to derby to "flush" its temp tables? Does anyone know of similar commands on other db's? I don't see how I can get this to work unless I simply use a random temporary table name for creation and then hope all the sessions eventually flush out (otherwise they may not ever get cleaned up and just accumulate forever...). The tables must be cleaned or guaranteed to not exist, otherwise subsequent borrowed sessions MAY have had that same table created before and still have old data. If anyone has thoughts or pointers on this subject I'd be very interested - a found a few threads on the subject: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.databases.informix/browse_thread/thr ead/159846150631624e http://osdir.com/ml/db.mysql.java/2003-10/msg00117.html Which seem to indicate my only recourse is to track connectionid->temptablelist and purge/truncate/drop the tables when I return the connection to the pool. I guess this will work but it seems laborious. Thanks for any help in advance!! Bob


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You are what you read and there's space on my shelves

A glance at other people's bookshelves can sometime be very informative. What do they keep close at hand when working?

Many contractual disputes involve looking at standard forms of contract, such as those produced by the Joint Contracts Tribunal (JCT). But when the files are first sent to the lawyers after a dispute has arisen, there is often no copy of the standard form with them. This is sometimes because the parties appear never to have actually owned a copy, despite having agreed that the form would apply. Since it is tricky to advise on a contract unless you know what it says, copies of standard forms have to be kept close by.

Rather than trying to maintain a library of standard forms (an onerous task, not least because most disputes call for a form that is now out of date), we tend to turn to a useful publication called Emden's Construction Law. It contains the text of most of the popular standard forms, including subcontracts, and helpfully identifies which bits have been amended, and when.

Being a loose-leaf work, it is updated regularly - invaluable when you urgently need a copy of DSC/C (JCT domestic subcontract), IFC 98 (JCT intermediate form of contract) or DOM/1 (Construction Confederation domestic subcontract).

Jostling for space next to Emden on the shelf is the new copy of the Architect's Legal Handbook, now in its eighth edition. Written specifically for architects, it covers a huge range of topics that might be encountered by architects in practice, each dealt with by an expert in that field. It covers things as diverse as planning, employment, negligence and party walls.

For the lawyer delving into unfamiliar areas of law, it can provide a useful and focused starting point, the copyright chapter being a particularly noteworthy example.

As for the practising architects at whom the book is aimed, editor Anthony Speight QC makes some key observations in his preface to the new edition. First is the importance of architects being able to recognise when they need legal help. To do that, what is needed is sufficient knowledge of the legal issues that are encountered in architectural practice so that alarm bells sound at the appropriate moment and help can be summoned. Failing to take advice at the right time can be disastrous. In West Faulkner v London Borough of Newham (1994), the architect was empowered under JCT 63 to serve a notice of default on the contractor for failing to proceed regularly and diligently. The architect did not serve a notice because it thought that, for a notice to be proper, the contractor had to have failed to proceed regularly and failed to proceed diligently. The Court of Appeal decided that the architect's construction of the clause was wrong, and held that it should have taken legal advice about what the clause meant. That failure to have sought legal advice was negligent.

Secondly, in recent years there have been significant changes, many brought about by the advent of the Housing Grants Construction and Regeneration Act payment and adjudication procedures. It is essential that architects are up to speed with the law as it now stands. By way of example, Speight refers to the need to serve the 'requisite pieces of paper' (perhaps we should refer to them as RPPs? ), a reference to withholding notices. Regular readers of this column will know that in 2003 the Court of Appeal, in Rupert Morgan v David Jervis, said that failing to tell a client that a withholding notice is needed may amount to negligence (AJ 15.1.04).

The changes wrought by adjudication, and the apparently increasing need to be aware of various dispute resolution methods - including alternative dispute resolution - have led to the introduction of a discrete section of the book to deal with these topics. Litigation, arbitration, adjudication and mediation are addressed.

Incidentally, the new chapter about the adjudication process is a shortened version of Andrew Bartlett QC's highly regarded, and much referred to, adjudication chapter in Emden, which in itself earns Emden a place on the shelf of many construction lawyers.

Meanwhile, there appears to be a gap waiting for a good and up-to-date dictionary of abbreviations geared towards the construction industry.

Does anyone know of one?

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Omnivest_1-4-10 by pragcap

									Understanding the Myth of the Lost Decade
January 4, 2010

Tom Sowanick
Co-President Chief Investment Officer Tel: +1 609 921 7939

A lot has been written with more to come about the lost decade for equity investors. While it is true that the S&P 500 lost about 10.0% and the government bond market gained 81.82% from 2000 through 2009, the performance profile is lopsided and understates larger discrepancies occurring in other asset classes. However, before looking at the bigger picture, it is important to break down the returns of the past decade into two time periods: 2000 through 2002, and 2003 through 2009. During the first period, equities lost 37.59% while the bond market gained 35.0%. The strong performance from the government bond market was largely due to the flight to quality following the collapse of the dotcom bubble and the 9/11 terrorist attack in the US. These events forced the Federal Reserve to push the Federal Funds rate down to 1 percent. During the following seven years, equities and government bonds gained 42.9% and 34.7% respectively. Importantly, during this period, the total return from the bond market was entirely due to interest income. Government bonds were actually down 1% in price over the same period. Conversely, the price return generated from the equity market was 24.5% over this period. The biggest story about the lost decade is the complete dominance of emerging market equities. The MSCI emerging market index gained 102.4% during this past decade, a significant difference compared to the 10% loss by the S&P 500 over the same period. The absolute outperformance of emerging market equities over domestic US equities is a continuation of the outperformance from the preceding decade, when the MSCI emerging market index gained 2,408% versus a respectable gain of 432% for the S&P 500. During the 1990s, the government bond market produced a total return of 105.3%, of which only 2.1% was earned from capital appreciation. Over the entire 20 year period (1989 - 2009), emerging market equities produced an annualized return of 21.7% compared to just 8.1% annualized for the S&P 500. The bond market returned 6.8% annually over this same period of which a very meager 0.70% was attributed to price improvement. Clearly a key take-away from the return data is that, over long periods of time, returns from the bond market are generally produced from the compounding of interest income rather than from price appreciation.

This report was prepared by Omnivest Research. This material reflects the current opinion of the firm based on sources deemed reliable, but we do not guarantee its accuracy or completeness.

The discussion over the lost decade of equity returns should not center upon how US stocks have underperformed the US bond market; rather, it should focus on how the S&P 500 underperformed emerging market equities over not just the last 10 years, but over the past 20. The highlight of the last 20 years has been the emergence of emerging market equities as a viable asset class. Moreover, the impressive return of emerging market equities happens to correlate with the near 13-fold increase in China’s GDP from $343.9 billion in 1989 to $4,326 billion in 2008. China is now the third largest economy in the world and its GDP is less than $500 billion away from becoming the world’s second largest economy. By comparison, the US economy has expanded by just 2.6 times over the past 20 years. Brazil’s economy expanded from $425.6 billion in 1989 to $1,612.5 billion by the end of 2008. Meanwhile, Germany’s economy expanded 2.7 times while India’s GDP more than quadrupled from a GDP of $292.9 billion to $1,217.5 billion over the same time period. Over the past 10 years, emerging economies have recorded explosive growth as compared to their developed counterparts. For example, for the decade just ending, Japan expanded by $541 billion, Germany by $1,509 billion, and the US by $4,988 billion. Collectively, the three largest economies of the past decade have expanded by $7,038 billion. Conversely, the economies comprising the BRIC countries have nearly equaled the expansion of the three largest developed economies by adding $6,448 billion of economic wealth in total. Even more impressive is the fact that the combined GDP gap between the top three developed economies (US, Japan and Germany) and the BRIC economies has shrunk from 6.8 times to only 2.6 times today. The narrowing of the economic divide between developed and developing countries helps to explain the outperformance of emerging market equities versus the S&P 500 over the past 10 and 20 year periods. More broadly, emerging market equities have also outperformed all developed markets over the past 10 and 20 year periods. In summary, analysis of the lost decade needs to move away from simply looking at relative US-centric market performance and focus on the more significant trend - the rapid convergence of emerging market economies towards the fully developed ones. It was truly impressive to watch China’s GDP leap ahead of Germany, France and the UK over the last 10 years. With little effort, China will move ahead of Japan to become the second largest economy in the world and will somehow still be considered an “emerging economy.”

Government Bond Market S&P 500 MSCI Developed MSCI Emerging
Source: Bloomberg

Total Returns 12/31/89 - 12/31/99 12/31/99 - 12/31/09 12/31/89 - 12/31/09 (%) (%) (%) 105.3 81.8 273.33 432.0 -10.0 374.38 141.2 -25.4 79.82 2408.6 102.4 4977.6

The expected returns for the next decade will likely be determined by whether the GDP gap between developed and emerging countries continues to narrow. It is our view that during the next 5 years, China will surpass Japan to become the second largest economy in the world. The continued growth of a larger middle class in developing regions combined with the further penetration of electronic communications will allow emerging markets to outpace the developed markets, once again, in the years to come.

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Game Theory and Economic Analysis Business by P-TaylorFrancis

Game Theory and Economic Analysis presents the wide range of current contributions of game theory to economics. The chaptersve fall broadly into two categories. Some lay out in a jargon-free manner a particular branch of the theory, the evolution of one of its concepts, or a problem, that runs through its development. Others are original pieces of work that are significant to game theory as a whole.After taking the reader through a concise history of game theory, the contributors discuss such topics as:*the connections between Von Neumann's mathematical game theory and the domain assigned to it today since Nash*the strategic use of information by game players*the problem of the coordination of strategic choices between independent players in non-cooperative games*cooperative games and their place within the literature of games*incentive and the implementation of a collective decision in game-theoretic modeling*team games and the implications for firms' managementThe nature of the subject and the angle from which it is examined will ensure that GAme Theory and Economic Analysis reaches a wide readership. As an established scholar in the area of game theory, Christian Schmidt has produced an authoritative book with contributions from economists of the very highest rank and profile, some of them well known beyond the boundaries of the game-theoretic community.

More Info
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Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Chocolate Espresso Roll

Chocolate Espresso Roll
This recipe is divine. There really are not too many adjectives to describe this dessert. I have kept this recipe a secret and all to myself (and my mom) for a year and a half and thought I'd share it with you. Believe me, when this goodness enters your mouth, YOU WILL THANK ME!

Makes one roll and serves 8-10 slices.*Cake Ingredients
4 eggs, separated - reserve two egg yolks
1 cup white sugar
1/4 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup gluten free flour **see below (or all-purpose flour)
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
*Filling Ingredients
1/4 cup powdered sugar for sprinkling
2Tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder for sprinkling
8oz cream cheese, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
6 Tbsp butter, softened
2 Tbsp instant espresso or instant coffee granules mixed with 1 Tbsp water

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a parchment lined 17x11 inch jelly roll pan with non-stick cooking spray. Set aside.
Beat egg whites in a large bowl at high speed until stiff peaks form. Set aside.
Combine 2 egg yolks, sugar, butter, and vanilla in a large bowl and beat until well mixed and creamy. Reduce speed to low and add all remaining cake ingredients and beat until well mixed. Gently fold in egg whites until thoroughly combined.

Pour into your prepared pan and spread evenly, making sure all corners have even amounts of cake and the middle of the pan is even as well. Bake 15-20 minutes for gluten free flour and 10-15 minutes for wheat flour. It is done baking when the center slightly bounces back after touching it. Remove from oven and run a knife around the edges of the pan immediately. Let the cake cool 20 minutes in the pan.
After cooling, invert the cake onto a smooth dish towel (do not use terry cloth) sprinkled generously with powdered sugar and cocoa powder (see photo).

Carefully, remove the parchment paper off the cake and turn it over clean side down and roll the cake, parchment paper and towel together slowly. Cool completely, seem side down. Approximately 30 minutes.
Dissolve instant espresso in water in a small bowl and set aside. Beat cream cheese and butter together until smooth. Add powdered sugar and finally the espresso and beat until completely combined.

Carefully unroll the cake and remove the parchment paper. Evenly spread filling over cake. Roll the cake by carefully lifting the towel and rolling with fingers, ending with the seam side down.

Roll in plastic wrap and freeze for 1-2 hours. Remove and slice and consume as quickly as possible. Don't share, this is too good to let others have any :)

**Gluten Free Flour Blend:
Makes approximately 3 cups
1-1/4 brown rice flour
3/4 cups sorghum flour or millet flour
2/3 cups cornstarch
1/4 cup tapioca starch
1tsp xanthan gum
Thoroughly mix all ingredients together and store in an airtight container.

Eat and enjoy!

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Very Decadent Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Cookies

Very Decadent Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Cookies

Is anyone else out there a chocolate fiend like me? I love anything chocolate. Cookies, cakes, pies, muffins, brownies, ice cream, fudge.. the list could go on for eternity. I have always been a chocolate lover and appreciate trying all sorts of different recipes so when I came up with this one, it just made my heart sing. Truly. It did.
I have been primarily gluten free for the past 1.5 years but occasionally I'll eat gluten; but whether or not you eat wheat or are gluten free, these cookies should be made at least once in your house. I have a wheat version and a gluten free version for you. Aren't I so sweet?

Plop those bad boys onto a baking sheet
Ingredients:Yields approximately 36 cookies
3 sticks of butter, softened
2 eggs
1Tbsp. pure vanilla extract
2 cups sugar
*2 cups gluten free flour blend (See below) *or* 2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup cocoa powder
1-1/2tsp (one and one half tsp) baking soda
1/2tsp sea salt or 1tsp regular salt
1 cup dark chocolate chips
1-1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Look at the delicious babies!
Preheat oven to 350 degrees after the batter has chilled in the refrigerator at least one hour.
Mix the softened butter and sugar until creamed then add the vanilla and eggs - one at a time until nice and smooth. Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt and then slowly incorporate that into the wet ingredients. Scrape the bowl and make sure everything is mixed well. Next add the chocolate chips. Refrigerate at least 1 hour then bake at 350 degrees on a parchment lined cookie sheet for 11 minutes. The cookies will continue to cook while they are cooling on the cookie sheet. Remove from the oven and let cool on the baking sheet for 3-5 minutes. Once cooled, move to a cooling rack and cool completely.

Serve with a glass of milk if you're so inclined
*Gluten free flour blend:
Makes approximately 3 cups
1-1/4 brown rice flour
3/4 cups sorghum flour or millet flour
2/3 cups cornstarch
1/4 cup tapioca starch
1tsp xanthan gum
Thoroughly mix all ingredients together and store in an airtight container.

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Bacon and Egg Morning Cups

Bacon and Egg Morning Cups
Well, hey there! How are you? Do you need an awesome breakfast, snack or super fast meal idea? You've come to the right place then because this one is loaded with delicious protein and carbs and is sure to keep your taste buds happy and belly full. I won't lie, I've seen photos on pinterest with something similar but have truly never looked at a recipe. Why? Because I wanted to make my very own and deliver it to you!
You're welcome.

So, it's pretty simple and you can make you own version with different meats, or leave the meat out if you don't have anything on hand. What I'm giving you is a recipe that makes exactly 12 morning cups and I will give you instructions on how to refrigerate/reheat and freeze/reheat. Again... you're welcome.
Top with avocado slices or salsa or both and enjoy a very delicious paleo and gluten free meal.
(Recipe makes 12 regular sized muffin cups)
12 slices of bacon. I use the pre-cooked but use your paleo version if you like
6 whole eggs
1/2 cup liquid egg whites
1/4cup chopped turkey meat - I use deli meat so find a paleo version if you'd like *Sub any cooked/chopped meat if you prefer another over turkey*1/2 bell pepper, chopped. I like red, orange or yellow *Make it spicy with a jalapeno!*
1 cup chopped spinach
Salt and Pepper to taste
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Line a regular sized muffin tin with precooked bacon. If you are going to use raw bacon, precook it in a skillet or in the oven until it is almost all the way cooked. It needs to be pliable enough to put in the muffin tin.
In a bowl, scramble the eggs and egg whites together with the salt and pepper. Add the remaining chopped ingredients and stir to combine.
Using 1/4cup measurement or an ice cream scoop (which is my preferred method), pour one scoop of the egg mixture into each cup. You may have a little left over in the bowl so make sure you put all of that goodness into a cup that may not have gotten enough.

Bake at 400 degrees for 25-30 minutes, or until the eggs have cooked entirely through. My cooking time is somewhere between 23-25 minutes so keep an eye on them.
These will puff up in the oven and then will deflate just a little bit so don't be too disappointed when they come out. It's suppose to happen this way.

When you refrigerate these and are ready to reheat, you can pop them into the microwave for a minute or back into a 400 degree oven for 10-15 minutes and they will be perfect.

For freezing, place on a plastic-wrap lined cookie sheet and freeze for about an hour then transfer to a freezer safe container. When ready to reheat, place the amount you want to serve on a cookie sheet and preheat the oven to 400 degrees. By the time your oven reaches temperature, it should have been given enough time to thaw out a little. Bake 25-30 minutes to reheat.

Serve and enjoy!
(This recipe was taken from my other blog The Girl Who Went Paleo)

Friday, November 16, 2012

Thanksgiving Meal Ideas

Thanksgiving Meal Ideas
If you're like me, you're already planning for Christmas before Thanksgiving even arrives. Well, I wanted to make your life a little easier and give you a list of delicious Thanksgiving proteins, sides and gravy to make your tummy scream THANK YOU!
So, here's a list of what will be on our dinner table this year along with some extra goodies. Enjoy!
Chicken, or turkey! No Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner is complete unless there's a bird involved. My husband loves turkey and I love chicken so please use this recipe on either birds and enjoy because it is just so juicy and moist!

Then there's the gravy. This is honestly the easiest and most full-proof method I've been able to follow. Making the gravy nice and dark cooks out the flour taste and gives it a rich deliciousness that you need to smother the chicken with.

Hey you paleo and gluten free people.. I know corn starch isn't exactly paleo but substitute equal parts corn starch for the flour and you'll have an excellent gravy. You might try it with arrowroot flour but I've never had good luck with that for some reason. Corn starch is easier on my tummy.
The next item of business is a green vegetable. No matter how you cook your green beans, you need to try this blanching method before cooking. It truly makes life a lot easier. Give it a shot!
Hey, how about some dessert? Tired of the same old pumpkin pie every year? Okay, maybe not but if you are, give this delicious Sweet Potato Pie a try. It's so sweet and creamy. I love how it tastes right out of the oven but it's even better after it's been refrigerated!
Here's a paleo recipe for it, too.

Last, but certainly not least is sweet potato souffle. This is, by far, the best thing at our Thanksgiving and Christmas meals. Always good hot and/or cold and if I make a paleo/gluten free recipe, I'll be sure to post it.
There are a lot of other delicious meals so look at the search bar on the top right side of my page and type in an ingredient and I'm sure you'll find some great recipes there. If you have any questions or need any help with preparing a meal, feel free to leave me a comment below or shoot me an email at
Here's to a THANKFUL holiday season this year.

Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Stuffed Bell Peppers

Stuffed Bell Peppers
I haven't posted a recipe on this blog in a while because I have been working hard on my other two websites (The Girl Who Went Paleo and Angela's Gluten-Free Bakery) and I've been super busy preparing for our local farmer's market that I sell my gluten-free baked goods at. Thanksgiving is also around the corner and I've had to mentally prepare for that.

Other things I'm thinking about lately is opening up a food truck business (Paleo and GF items only), writing an e-book, and selling to one of our local mom&pop shops.

Life is busy, isn't it? Phew!
Well, here's a delicious paleo and/or primal meal all in one. It has the carbs, proteins and fats all in one pretty little package. Now, this recipe does include cheese so if you don't eat cheese, leave it out. Just add some salt and pepper and you're good to go!
Serves 2
2 green bell peppers
1/2 - 3/4 pounds ground meat. beef, chicken, turkey, sausage.. whatever you like
3/4cup crushed tomatoes
1/2cup onion, diced
1/4cup bell pepper, diced (see notes below)
S&P (salt and pepper) to taste
1/4cup cheese, shredded
Preheat oven to 375 degrees and preheat a skillet over medium heat.
Slice off the tops of the bell peppers and reserve them for future use. Remove the seeds/ribs on the inside and discard. Using a knife, remove the stem from the tops of the bell peppers you just sliced and dice into bite sized pieces.
In a medium skillet, add the ground meat, onions and bell peppers and cook thoroughly (about 8-10 minutes) and season with salt and pepper. Drain the excess fat and place back in the skillet or clean bowl. Add the crushed tomatoes and stir thoroughly. Scoop the mixture into the bell peppers and top with cheese.

In an oven-safe dish, add a tiny bit of water - about 1/4 cup - and place the bell peppers inside and then bake about 40-45 minutes until the peppers have softened.

*Tip* If you want to make a lot of these and freeze them, make it all the way up to where you stuff the peppers then freeze them. When you want to bake these, transfer to an oven-safe dish and immediately bake. Do not defrost these. Baking times will be longer since it's frozen.
Eat and enjoy!

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Sweet Potato Pie

Sweet Potato Pie
I really enjoy baking in the fall. Summertime baking is fun, but baking those fall desserts really makes me happy. I love it!

My mom has a great sweet potato pie recipe and I asked her for it. Hope it's okay to share mom! I made a paleo version of it so if you'd like that recipe, check it out at my other blog "The Girl Who Went Paleo." So here is the sugary version made with a wheat crust. It's just so delicious! I love this pie warm but it's even better after it's been refrigerated over night. Can't wait to make this again so I can eat the whole thing!

I'm the only one here who will eat it. SCORE!
Makes 2 pies
4oz. unsalted butter, softened (1/2 stick)
2cups cooked and mashed sweet potatoes
2cups granulated sugar
1 - 5oz. can of evaporated milk (1/2cup + 2Tbsp)
1tsp vanilla
3 eggs, beaten
1 1/2tsp cinnamon
Preheat oven to 350degrees.
In a large bowl, mix the butter, potatoes, sugar and milk until well blended. Add vanilla, eggs and cinnamon and mix well. Pour into the unbaked pie shells and bake for 1 hour or until set.
Tip: If you'd like, you can assemble the pie and freeze it, un-cooked. When you're ready to bake it, let it thaw out completely and bake accordingly.
Also, if you bake this pie and want to freeze it, cut the remainder of the pie into slices and wrap individually in plastic wrap. Freeze. When ready to eat, thaw at room temperature or microwave it for 15-20 seconds until thawed. It's delicious warm or cold.


Black Swan

Black Swan

The black swan was first described by English naturalist John Latham in 1790. It was formerly placed into a monotypic genus, Chenopis.

Swan’ is the common gender term, but ‘cob’ for a male and ‘pen’ for a female are also used, as is ‘cygnet’ for the young. Collective nouns include a ‘bank’ (on the ground) and a ‘wedge’ (in flight). Black Swans can be found singly, or in loose companies numbering into the hundreds or even thousands.

A mature Black Swan measures between 110 and 142 cm (43-56 in) in length and weighs 3.7-9 kg (8.1-20 lbs). Its wing span is between 1.6 and 2 metres (5.3-6.5 ft). The neck is long (relatively the longest neck among the swans) and curved in an "S".

The Black Swan is unlike any other Australian bird, although in poor light and at long range it may be confused with a magpie-goose in flight. However, the black swan can be distinguished by its much longer neck and slower wing beat.

The species has a large range, with figures between one to ten million km² given as the extent of occurrence. The current global population is estimated to be up to 500,000 individuals. No threat of extinction, or significant decline in population has been identified in this numerous and widespread bird.

The Black Swan’s preferred habitat extends across fresh, brackish and salt water lakes, swamps and rivers with underwater and emergent vegetation for food and nesting materials. Permanent wetlands are preferred, including ornamental lakes, but black swans can also be found in flooded pastures and tidal mudflats, and occasionally on the open sea near islands or the shore.

Black Swans were once thought to be sedentary, but the species is now known to be highly nomadic. There is no set migratory pattern, but rather opportunistic responses to either rainfall or drought. In high rainfall years, emigration occurs from the south west and south east into the interior, with a reverse immigration to these heartlands in drier years. When rain does fall in the arid central regions, black swans will migrate to these areas to nest and raise their young. However, should dry conditions return before the young have been raised, the adult birds will abandon the nests and their eggs or cygnets and return to wetter areas.

Introduced populations

Before the arrival of the Māori in New Zealand, a sub-species of the Black Swan known as the New Zealand swan had developed in the islands, but was apparently hunted to extinction. In 1864, the Australian Black Swan was introduced to New Zealand as an ornamental waterfowl, and populations are now common on larger coastal or inland lakes, especially Rotorua Lakes, Lake Wairarapa and Lake Ellesmere, and the Chatham Islands. Black Swans have also naturally flown to New Zealand, leading some people to consider them a native rather than exotic species, although the present population appears to be largely descended from deliberate introductions.

The Black Swan is also very popular as an ornamental waterbird in Western Europe, especially Britain, and escapes are commonly reported. As yet the population in Britain is not considered to be self-sustaining and so the species is not afforded admission to the official British List, but the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust have recorded a maximum of nine breeding pairs in the UK in 2001, with an estimate of 43 feral birds in 2003/04 (though that is undoubtedly an under-estimate given the level of monitoring undertaken).

When swimming, black swans hold their necks arched or erect, and often carry their feathers or wings raised in an aggressive display. In flight, a wedge of black swans will form as a line or a V, with the individual birds flying strongly with undulating long necks, making whistling sounds with their wings and baying, bugling or trumpeting calls.

Generally, black swans nest in the wetter winter months (February to September), occasionally in large colonies. A typical clutch contains 4 to 8 greenish-white eggs that are incubated for about 35-40 days. After hatching, the cygnets are tended by the parents for about 6 months until fledging, and may ride on their parent's back for longer trips into deeper water.

A Black Swan nest is essentially a large heap or mound of reeds, grasses and weeds between 1 and 1.5 metres (3-4½ feet) in diameter and up to 1 metre high, in shallow water or on islands. A nest is reused every year, restored or rebuilt as needed. Both parents share the care of the nest. Like other swans, the black swan is largely monogamous, pairing for life (about 6% divorce rate). Recent studies have shown that around a third of all broods exhibit extra-pair paternity.

A recent (2007) exhibition at the University of Oslo Natural History Museum in Norway called Against Nature? explored homosexual behaviours in a number of species, including black swans. Several swan species exhibit lifelong homosocial behaviours, and the same phenomenon can also be found in a number of other water-birds, notably geese and flamingos, where it serves as a flexible life strategy.

In swans, the pair is the central social unit. The birds reinforce the unit with frequent preening and sex. Should one die, the other will usually live out the remainder of its life alone. The pair builds nests, raise cygnets and defends a territory. Two cobs, being bigger and stronger than a cob and a pen, can hold down a larger territory, and provide their cygnets with more to eat.

Such same-sex pairs represent a major fitness bonus to a pen, and pens without partners will seek out these couples, have sex with one or other of the cobs and lay eggs in their nest. She is then chased off, not being a part of the pair, and the cobs raise the cygnets themselves. Having access to more food the brood have up to ten times the survival rate of a brood with a heterosexual swan couple. From an evolutionary point of view, this is a very rewarding strategy for the cobs as well.

This situation only holds true as long as a nest and a territory is in short supply. The two males will have a fitness loss in that they (1) have no guarantee they are the actual fathers of the cygnets (not being bonded with the female) and (2) will anyway have to split reproduction between them.

A same-sex lifestyle will be advantageous in some situations, but not in others. However, having a partner is a requisite for building a nest and keeping a territory, and an opposite-sex partner may not always be available when forming pairs. Thus, the ability to form a male pair is a normal part of the black swan’s social behaviour and an example of a flexible life strategy in the species.

Australian culture

The Black Swan was a literary or artistic image, even before the discovery of Cygnus atratus. Cultural reference has been based on symbolic contrast and as a distinctive motif.

The Black Swan's role in Australian heraldry and culture extends to the first founding of the colonies in the eighteenth century. It has often been equated with antipodean identity, the contrast to the white swan of the northern hemisphere indicating 'Australianess'. The Black Swan is featured on the flag, and is both the state and bird emblem, of Western Australia; it also appears in the Coat of Arms and other iconography of the state's institutions.

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Everybody loves a freebie

2009, the second year of Noori Records existence, is actually the first "complete" year of Noori Records activities. We know that everybody loves a freebie, and with that in mind, we've setted up a free compilation album called "Noori Records 2009 sampler". Here, you'll be able to listen to some track from the four Noori Records public releases that were made during this year.

Click on the cover image to listen or download the album!

Noori Records 2009 sampler

Here's more info:

=== Noori Records 2009 sampler ===

1) NR005 * Merankorii - April in Portugal 4:07
2) NR007 * Betray-ed - Forgotten Landscape 3:00
3) NR007 * Betray-ed - My Impervious Homeland 3:23
4) NR010 * +ko+ko+ - Dark Swan 8:11
5) NR010 * +ko+ko+ - Little Harbour 7:46
6) NR011 * Ambiansu - The Train's Bar 5:23
7) NR011 * Ambiansu - Clearing 10:51
Total: 42:41

# NR005 - 02/04/2009 - V/A - April in Jazz
# NR007 - 20/07/2009 - Betray-Ed - Haunting Memories
# NR010 - 24/11/2009 - +ko+ko+ - What Are You Gonna Do?
# NR011 - 24/11/2009 - Ambiansu - Tagebuch

This is a free promotional compilation regarding Noori Records' public releases in 2009. Feel free to know more about each of them at http://noorirecords.ning.com . Also, here are the links for the bands' websites, send your love to them!

Merankorii - http://www.reverbnation.com/merankorii
Betray-Ed - http://www.last.fm/music/Betray-Ed
+ko+ko+ - http://www.reverbnation.com/pluskopluskoplus
Ambiansu - http://www.myspace.com/ambiansu

The author of the picture used on the cover is pa1nt, and is covered by a CC-BY license.
Check out his pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/pa1nt/

Ambiansu - Tagebuch

Many of you know that I have a one-man-band called Merankorii, but only a few know that I also have another musical project, called Ambiansu.

After interviewing M., the person behind the one-man-band "Ambience", whose latest album "As Dez Esperas" I considered one of the 10 best albums of 2007, we kept contact, and one thing leading to another made us want to try something different. The result, Ambiansu is more or less what you could expect from a fusion of Merankorii and Ambience styles (and something that people are generally describing as better than any of those two projects alone, but I'll leave that for you to decide).

Almost two years later, we had a musical project with one album released: "Tagebuch".

Ambiansu - Tagebuch (cover picture)

Tagebuch is an opus of 5 pieces, a mix of what's classical with what's disruptive, and what's traditional with what's unconvencional. Instead of entering into much details, I'll instead ask you to listen. It was released in a 500 copies limited edition CD in cardbox, and it costs only 8€ (postage included). And the best part of it? If you buy it until the end of the year, for each CD you buy, I'll offer one to a library.

Before you ask: no, we don't intend to have the album for sale in digital form. On the other hand, it costs less than your thypical mp3 album, I'll offer one to a library with each purchase, and you can allways rip it to your favourite format and give the CD to a friend (yes, this is a promise that we won't charge you for "piracy" or any other of those silly things).

So, what are you waiting for? ;-)


Review: Mikal Cronin – MCII

Earlier last week I randomly rediscovered Ty Segall’s Twins, the third in his parade of full-lengths from last year. Coincidentally, MCII, the sophomore LP of Segall’s buddy bandmate Mikal Cronin, was also released around that time. I’m sure Cronin has gotten has gotten tired of continuously being labeled as Segall’s bandmate, but the connection really bleeds through and makes sense. Both are raw in their composition, honest with their words and generous with their enveloping layers.

What’s refreshing about MCII is the wide range of styles that Cronin is capable of on each track, which are all glued together with a single lyrical narrative. The first half of album opener “Weight” isn’t the most attention-grabbing hook you’ve heard in your life. Yet, Cronin immediately thickens what seems like a piano pop tune into a garage revival number. The same thing happens on the following “Shout It Out.” The two make a solid block to warm up to Cronin’s poppy tunes made over garage rock and self-doubting lyrics.

“See It My Way” is when things get interesting. Addictive snare pickups kick off the track, which indulges in blues rock-tinged riffs that complement Cronin’s wails of “dying to get along with you / trying to show you through.” It’s times like these where you can clearly hear his work with Segall bleeding through with raucous chords that are still carefully crafted.

Even on softer, acoustic numbers, Cronin packs a punch or two with his delivery. “Don’t Let Me Go,” which sounds like it was recorded in one go in a live session, is bare and stripped-down, beautifully placed smack dab in the middle of a sandwich of two hard-hitting numbers. Furthermore, “Turn Away” has an engaging orchestral structure that contrasts its heavy garage pop delivery, a combination that Cronin seems to have mastered by the end of the MCII.

The album closer, “Piano Mantra,” is an amalgamation of the entire album, transforming a piano ballad into a swelling opus. The semi-existential questions still circle as Cronin repeats, “Can you hear me or is it in my mind?” But just as the entire album is formulated on a series of tugging dissonance, “Piano Mantra” ends on a hopeful resolution: “The open arms are giving me hope.” Not only do Cronin’s final words create a sense of completion, but the marriage of the orchestral lines and the full band also creates a sense of balance.

What did you think?
 16  6  3  3

Hot Chip

jamie xx in colour

chance the rapper

blur the magic whip

braids deep in the iris-min

Bat For Lashes

sia big girls cry-min

giorgio deja vu


Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in Children

+ -Text Size

What Is Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma In Children? TOPICS

What is non-Hodgkin lymphoma in children?

  • Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL)

These types of lymphomas behave, spread, and respond to treatment differently, so it is important to tell them apart.

Both types of lymphoma are more common in adults, but they can also occur in children and teens. Among this younger age group, NHL tends to occur in younger children, while Hodgkin disease is more likely to affect older children and teens.

Hodgkin disease is very similar in adults and children, and treatment is the same for both. For more information on this disease, see our document Hodgkin Disease.

The rest of this document is only about non-Hodgkin lymphoma in children.

The lymph system and lymphoid tissue

To understand NHL, it helps to know about the body’s lymph system.

Lymphoid tissue is made up mainly of cells called lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell. The 2 main types of lymphocytes are B lymphocytes (B cells) and T lymphocytes (T cells). Normal B cells and T cells do different jobs.

Both types of lymphocytes can develop into lymphoma cells, but B-cell lymphomas are much more common in the United States than T-cell lymphomas. Different types of lymphoma can develop from both B and T lymphocytes, based on how mature the cells are when they become cancerous and other factors.

Treatment for lymphoma depends on which type it is, so determining the exact type of lymphoma is important.

Organs that have lymphoid tissue

The major sites of lymphoid tissue are:

Lymph nodes: Lymph nodes are bean-sized collections of lymphocytes and other immune cells throughout the body. They can sometimes be felt under the skin in the neck, under the arms, and in the groin. Lymph nodes are connected to each other by a system of lymphatic vessels.

Lymph nodes get bigger when they fight infection. Lymph nodes that grow because of infection are called reactive nodes or hyperplastic nodes and are often painful when they are touched. An enlarged lymph node in a child is not usually a sign of a serious problem. Lymph nodes in the neck are often enlarged in children with sore throats or colds. But a large lymph node is also the most common sign of lymphoma. Lymph node enlargement is discussed more in “Signs and symptoms of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in children.”

Thymus: The thymus is a small organ behind the upper part of the breast bone and in front of the heart. Before birth, the thymus plays a vital role in development of T lymphocytes. The thymus shrinks and becomes less important as people get older, but it continues to play a role in immune system function.

Digestive tract: Lymphoid tissue is also in the stomach and intestines, as well as many other organs.

Bone marrow: The bone marrow (the soft inner part of certain bones) makes red blood cells, blood platelets, and white blood cells. Red blood cells carry oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body. Platelets help control bleeding by plugging up small holes in blood vessels. White blood cells fight infections. The main types of white blood cells are granulocytes and lymphocytes. Bone marrow lymphocytes are mainly B cells. Lymphomas sometimes start from bone marrow lymphocytes.

Last Medical Review: 03/07/2014
Last Revised: 01/06/2015


Estimate the force with which a karate master
strikes a board if the hand’s speed at time of
impact is 13.7 m/s , decreasing to 0.832 m/s
during a constant time of 0.00119 s with the
board. The mass of coordinated hand and
arm is 1.15 kg .
Answer in units of N

Detailed answers to tough
homework problems


New study suggests we may see ice-free Arctic in our lifetime

May 11, 2013

A new study suggests the Arctic could be ice free within our lifetime.

A new study published in the current issue of Science suggests that an ice-free Arctic may very well become a reality in the near future.

The research team set out to study Lake El’gygytgyn, “Lake E” for short, which was formed 3.6 million years ago when a meteorite hit earth. Because it has not been eroded by continental ice sheets, which is rare in the Arctic, it has an undisturbed sediment record that the team wanted to examine. The sediment samples examined were collected in 2009 from Lake E, and enabled the scientists to look back in time 2.2 to 3.6 million years ago.

The research team discovered that “[e]vidence from Lake El’gygytgyn, NE Arctic Russia, shows that 3.6-3.4 million years ago, summer temperatures were ~8°C warmer than today when pCO2 was ~400 ppm,” the article summary explains. Essentially, the summer temperatures were about 14 degrees warmer than current temperatures in the Arctic, significant because of the relatively small difference.

“There was probably no sea ice, and the whole Arctic was pretty well forested, so it was a very different world,” lead author of the study Julie Brigham-Grette told LiveScience. “So, how did we go from that to the tundra that we have today, and what does this tell us about the future?”

By examining the sediment pulled from Lake E, researchers were able to determine that both Hemlock and Douglas Fir trees were present. “Hemlock and Douglas fir can tolerate cold and relatively humid conditions but thrive best in relatively moist cool temperate areas with high rainfall, cool summers, and little or no water stress” Brigham-Grette writes. Discovery of the presence of these two trees and subsequent analysis allowed scientists a key look at the impact of the climate on the region.

“We can see that the Arctic is quite sensitive to CO2 changes, and levels in the Pliocene were thought to be similar to today,” Brigham-Grette explained to LiveScience. “Some of the changes we see going on now — sea ice melting, tree lines migrating and glaciers with tremendous ablation rate — suggest that we’re heading back to the Pliocene.” She continued to explain that this information is particularly vital in determining if there is a tipping point that we need to be aware of—the point of no return, so to speak.

Were the ice sheet to disappear, it would mean cascading and catastrophic effects throughout the Arctic food chain, from plankton to polar bears, USA Today predicts. And the effects are not just limited to the Arctic itself. Geopolitical fighting over navigation and mining rights have already begun due to concerns about landslides and other effects caused by melting permafrost.


Unistrut Metal Framing CAD Files

After you copy the folder to your hard drive, select the ZIP file and expand the archive using the Windows File... Expand command. This will create a folder(s) of drawings.

For example (assume you have selected DWG format):

DWG Format
DXF Format
1 1-4 Framing System
DWG 3.2kb]
DXF [2.9kb]

1 5-8 Channel
DWG [2.9kb]
DXF [2.7kb]

13-16 Framing System
DWG [3.5kb]
DXF [3.0kb]

Concrete Inserts
DWG [2.9kb]
DXF [2.7kb]

Electrical Fittings
DWG [3.8kb]
DXF [3.2kb]

General Fittings
DWG [5.5kb]
DXF [4.3kb]

Nuts - Hardware
DWG [3.1kb]
DXF [2.9kb]

Pipe-Conduit Support
DWG [7.7kb]
DXF [4.1kb]

DWG [2.4kb]
DXF [2.4kb]

Entire CAD Library
DWG [16.1kb]
DXF [11.6kb]

Unistrut Service Company

Offers Unistrut Framing Channel and Fittings, design, engineering, fabrication, and installation of UNISTRUT products.

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I'm a fairly heavy chat user - and I think for new users sometimes it's best to direct them to a room related to their question, whereby details can be thrashed out (avoiding a long stream of comments). Thereby, getting a question back into shape and answerable - possibly even answered and posted back to the main site.

I understand why the restriction exists, but I don't see why it shouldn't be able to be "over-ruled" by the ROs - upvoting a question just because it's enough to put them to the threshold to "talk" to them is not the way we need to be doing this.

I propose that when a Room Owner grants write-access it's accepted for users < 20 rep

The access can easily be revoked later if it turns out a nuisance, but from my experience that's generally not from < 20 rep users.

The limit makes sense so new users don't dump all their questions into chat "because it's easier". Also, imagine question-banned users with 1 rep. Do you really want them to chat? But besides that, I like your proposal. Room owners should be able to override the rep minimum. –  ThiefMaster Jun 1 '14 at 21:22
@bjb568: If high-rep users want to take a noisy conversation off the main site to help someone regardless of their reputation, I say more power to them. –  Robert Harvey Jun 1 '14 at 22:59
@bjb568 what's more productive than reducing noise and helping someone learn the ropes as it were? The room I'm frequently in is more than willing to do so if needs be, it's just we can't... Be it on a rooms' head if they wish to, but it's a choice which ROs don't have at the moment... I'm not proposing that the entire chat system changes. –  Jon Clements Jun 2 '14 at 5:30
@bjb568 It's up to each individual to choose how he or she spends their time. If I choose to improve the resource we know as StackOverflow by editing or commenting on a question, then that's my choice. If I choose to engage with an individual who is asking a question with the goal of helping them to improve that question, then everybody wins. Perhaps it is you who "should do something more productive" by encouraging people to direct their energies where they will have a positive effect instead of attempting to tell other people what they can or cannot do? –  ClickRick Jun 2 '14 at 12:28
The real problem, in my view, is that when I'm trying to have an extended conversation with a questioner, SO offers to move the discussion into chat even though the questioner is not allowed into chat because his rep is too low. (I think I'm right in my recollection that this is what happens.) It is right to offer me this option only if the option is possible. –  matt Jun 2 '14 at 15:34
@bjb568 "Doing whatever you want" is not at all what ClickRick is saying and you (should) know it. Just because you can't fathom a way to productively help a user in chat doesn't mean it's not possible. It's a lot easier for someone to improve when they're talking to a human and receiving feedback in a format they understand than it is to see your questions downvoted and closed and try to guess at why. –  TylerH Jun 2 '14 at 17:16
@bjb568 It's not against the rules to help people in a chat room, and help in general should always be encouraged. Note that there are different forms of help; simply giving someone an answer isn't usually the best form of help, but responding a call for help with a nudge toward a useful doc or a helpful tutorial will go a long way and should never be discouraged. Again, just because you hide behind averages as an excuse to not help someone doesn't mean you should pressure others into behaving the same way. –  TylerH Jun 2 '14 at 18:23
@bjb568 I think your opinion of 20-rep users is incredibly jaded and inaccurate. –  TylerH Jun 2 '14 at 19:15
@bjb568 how on earth is "please join me in chat so that we can work together on improving your question" encouraging bad questions? –  Zero Piraeus Jun 3 '14 at 2:25
@bjb568 Having a low reputation does not mean that a user's questions are "crap". It just means they're new to the site. There's a difference. –  duskwuff Jun 3 '14 at 6:15
@bjb568 No, we are not assuming that the question is crap. We are in fact assuming that it is not crap, and that an experienced member of the community sees value in improving it further (and thereby improving Stack Overflow as a whole) – but is currently obstructed from inviting the user to discuss such improvements in a more convenient (and less distracting to others) environment. –  Zero Piraeus Jun 3 '14 at 16:38
@bjb568 you know the chat system well enough to know that we (the JavaScript room) do not tolerate help vamps. Sending low users to chat is easily controllable, and revoking access is just as easy. Also, NEVER TRUST REPUATION. I've seen 1 rep users blow my answers out of the water, and I've seen 100k rep users post the worst answers I've ever seen. Rep doesn't determine the ability to ask a good question and give a good answer. There's a correlation, but it's not always true. –  Sterling Archer Jun 3 '14 at 19:31
Beginners are some of the most enthusiastic programmers I've met. –  SomeKittens Jun 3 '14 at 19:44
"Helping them in general makes them feel welcome when that is not the impression that we want to give." wait what? dude, what the hell? we are no longer supposed to make users feel welcomed? –  rlemon Jun 3 '14 at 20:36
@bjb568 We're not making them feel good for doing bad things. Helping someone improve their question isn't making them feel good about doing bad things. The fact that they want to go to chat shows that they care about their question and more importantly the site, and maybe they'll stick around if they see people being helpful. –  justcool393 Jun 3 '14 at 23:45

4 Answers 4

Case in point: the question

In python, can you pick arguments of functions to add to arguments of other functions?

is an obvious candidate to be closed as "unclear what you're asking", but it's far from the torrent of "gimme teh codez" crap we see every day: OP is genuinely thinking about how to use the language, although obviously at an early stage in their study of it.

That's exactly the kind of user I'd like to be able to invite to chat, so that we could discuss what they're actually getting at, and help them to reformulate their question into one that can be answered.

... except that this user hasn't responded to any comments thus far, and is thus also unlikely to have promptly responded to an invitation to chat. IMO this request is for long comment streams to lead the asker in the right direction, which isn't present here. –  Dukeling Jun 2 '14 at 13:08
@Dukeling in fairness, they haven't been on SO at all in the nine hours since my last comment. Some people do sleep :-) –  Zero Piraeus Jun 2 '14 at 13:11
Well, there isn't much evidence here to indicate that it will turn into a long comment stream, so it's not a great example (and it really isn't too much to ask to not have people post questions less than 30 minutes before going to bed). –  Dukeling Jun 2 '14 at 13:18
@Dukeling, I would often post a question if I hit a brick wall just before going home from work, as I don't wish to miss the USA by waiting until the start of the next day. –  Ian Ringrose Jun 2 '14 at 15:09
@Dukeling A user may intend to check back in on the question after they post it but outside events may prevent them from checking back until the next work day and others would have no way of knowing what the reason for the lack of a quick response is caused by. –  Joe W Jun 2 '14 at 15:16
@IanRingrose Stack Overflow is fast-moving. Posting a question right before intending to go offline for a few hours is quite frankly extremely disrespectful IMO. –  Dukeling Jun 2 '14 at 15:17
@JoeW Yes, there are certainly events outside of one's control that may prevent one from checking in, but these should be very rare (or you have an inability to plan ahead ... or some people in your life like to be spontaneous a bit too much) (what's wrong with waiting until you get home to post the question, or staying at work for 20 minutes longer?). –  Dukeling Jun 2 '14 at 15:20
@Dukeling So if you run into a brick wall where you need to post for help and it is at the end of the day you would not post until the following day? –  Joe W Jun 2 '14 at 15:21
@Dukeling, So should I then post the question before spending the time on Google, as there is a limited amount of time in a working day and most problems are not discovered at the start of the day. (The USA also sleeps for half of our working days) –  Ian Ringrose Jun 2 '14 at 15:24
@IanRingrose You keep saying USA, but I'm not sure how that's particularly relevant - Stack Overflow is global - there are plenty of people online 24/7. Lack of research effort is similarly disrespectful. –  Dukeling Jun 2 '14 at 15:26
@JoeW If I don't have internet at home (or it is not unlikely that it will take me longer than 20 minutes to get there, in which case I'll probably post from home instead) and I can't stay longer, then yes, I'll probably wait until the following day. –  Dukeling Jun 2 '14 at 15:27
@Dukeling 1. Not everyone will have the ability to post from home 2. Not everyone can stay at work an extra 20 minutes for many reasons. It isn't fair to judge what other people can do based on what you can do. –  Joe W Jun 2 '14 at 15:28
@JoeW (1) Hitting a brick wall (2) with nothing else to do (3) less than 20 minutes before the end of the work day (4) being unable to stay at work any longer (5) without having internet at home (6) with a complex enough issue that will take a few hours to get an answer (posting the question first-thing when getting to work and getting an answer within 20 minutes doesn't seem particularly bad - you may even come in 20 minutes earlier) (7) but you still manage to phrase your question clear enough so clarification isn't required, seems about as likely as seeing a unicorn riding a flying pig. –  Dukeling Jun 2 '14 at 15:42
@Dukeling RE: your first comment here, see my answer as well with this question linked as my example. –  Adam Smith Jun 2 '14 at 16:48
@Dukeling, it's worked for me. Usually I've been working on a question for a while, and writing it while I still research (so I can show my effort) and then submit when heading home and I know I can't afford to spend another day at work looking. –  ArtB Jun 4 '14 at 18:53

STRONGLY in favor of this feature request. I understand it's been said before that new users should stick to asking and answering questions to get a "feel" for the site as opposed to flooding chat with silly questions that cannot be fully answered there, but this

While loop ignores my if statement

Is a specific incident where the user is trying to figure out how to better design their program, but doesn't have a question specific enough to get a good answer. I tried to engage them in chat, mistakenly believing that if I was the room owner and gave them explicit write privileges that it would override the "too low rep" restriction.

Not to mince words: There was a user here that I was capable of helping, deserved help, and whom I wanted to help, and I was unable to because of a software restriction. I have no problem with low rep users not being able to participate in public chat, but I have a BIG problem in an established user not being able to invite them to chat to more deeply discuss their problem.

I favor this feature request.

There are many cases where a low-rep user shows willingness to learn something instead of saying "im a newbie, pls tell me how to do it". In many such cases, I want to be able to help the user, but can't because they don't have enough reputation to chat.

Discriminating users based on their reputation is not a good idea, at least when determining if they're eligible to join chat. A user's reputation being 1 doesn't mean they are dumb. Nor does it mean they're incapable of contributing to a productive discussion. Some of these new users are actually quite capable and might be experts at what they do — if you can get them to engage in a healthy conversion, it might encourage them to be an active contributor.

I'll admit to having upvoted one or two questions of the question-asker in order to get them into chat. With this feature, that won't be needed any more. It will also help reduce the clutter (read: noise, that adds nothing useful the post) in the comments under a question.

I agree as well. But it does not need to be room owner. Any person with say 500 rep shall be able to invite low rep user to chat. I have seen today some newbie but his post was very low quality so it was downvoted and closed immediately. Answearing such broad question did not make sense. But sharing some thoughts in chat would do.

I think 500 rep is way too low. I wouldn't trust a 500 rep user with such a privilege. I would be more trusting of a user with at least 2000 or 3000 rep. –  Cupcake Jun 19 '14 at 3:55
I forgot to mention it shall be onetime privilege. So there is no hurt. If the bar is high this feature is less useful. –  Leos Literak Jun 19 '14 at 4:30

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Water Quality Image Map

Does the presence of nitrates affect water quality?

Unlike temperature and dissolved oxygen, the presence of nitrates usually does not have a direct effect on aquatic insects or fish.  However, excess levels of nitrates in water can create conditions that make it difficult for aquatic insects or fish to survive.

Algae and other plants use nitrates as a source of food.  If algae have an unlimited source of nitrates, their growth is unchecked. So, why is that a problem?

Which river is most likely affected by high levels of nitrates?

Comparison of rivers

The river on the right is as green as pea soup, a result of high concentrations of algae.  Click here to see other examples of how nitrate levels affect algae growth in lakes.

Can the presence of nitrates affect human health?

People who use wells as a source of drinking water need to monitor the level of nitrates in their well water.  If you drink water that is high in nitrates, it can interfere with the ability of your red blood cells to transport oxygen.  Infants who drink water high in nitrates may turn "bluish" and appear to have difficulty in breathing since their bodies are not receiving enough oxygen.

In this unit, you will be introduced to the concept of nitrates and how nitrates can influence the aquatic environment.  The relationship between nitrate and dissolved oxygen levels will be introduced.  This unit will also discuss how nitrate levels are influenced by nature as well as man-made processes.

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PEER Curriculum | Water Quality Modules | Teacher's Pages | Standards