Captain Pantoja and the Special Service – Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa - Captain Pantoja And The Special Service

Dealing with a sensitive and controversial topic, prostitution, Mario Vargas Llosa utilizes humour and elements of modernism to highlight the conflicts and irony that the protagonist faces in completing his job as an Army captain. Masterfully combining comic, tragedy, satire and irony, the Nobel prize winner presents moral questions relating to the existence and exploitation of prostitution – a topic that is as hard to discuss now as it was in 1973.

With a fluid and flexible format, ranging from linear story telling to segments of military documents, radio broadcasts, dialogue etc., the novel portrays different and varying positions on the Special Service that captain Pantoja is assigned to create and manage. To the captain, this is simply an order from the Army that he must complete and therefore his approach and view at the beginning of his assignment is methodological and objective.  The character displays no moral opinion of the subject and proceeds with careful analysis and calculations of supply and demand and planning the logistics of the prostitution service. To the religious people of Iquitos and surrounding areas, the women in the service are “those who dishonorably deal in their own body” and is an abhorrent and unacceptable practice. The women are considered shameful and disgraceful, filled with sin and utterly dishonourable. To the women themselves, service for the military is stable, low risk, well paid: “security working with the soldiers, feeling yourself protected by the Army”. These opposing views rooted in extremely different motives present the main conflict of the novel that the protagonist finds himself in. The captain struggles between orders from the general, pressure from religious groups and his own military discipline, which is further complicated by his lustful instincts, and pressure from his family. As the conflict builds up and escalates, ironically because the protagonist had “converted the Special Service into the most efficient unit of the armed forces”, the central question of the novel presents itself subtly: “should prostitution be accepted?” Llosa does not answer this but merely presents readers with story line and character branches that are vibrantly developed, charged with energy and strong motivation for the opinions they hold.

This chaotic environment is managed ingeniously by Llosa’s light and farcical tone, which worked extremely well for the topic at hand, one that stirs emotionally and heated debate. Due to the comical tone throughout the narration, the novel allows readers to take in the topic with a relaxed and open mind, hence making the novel effective at communicating different points of view. Most importantly, it has the effect of making Pantoja appear likable; if a more serious and grim tone had been employed, he would have been perceived gravely by the readers right from the start from organizing the service, in other words, being a “pimp”. The novel eases in to such serious topic playfully, but never normalizing or diminishing the importance of the novel’s central theme. However, half way through the novel, a drastic change in tone marks and foreshadows tragic endings. As Pantoja’s nightmare plagues him, the use of strong words such as “terror, distrust, frightened, devil, torture” marks the shift of the story’s direction.

The tragedy that happened to the Special Service has deep thematic implications. Up until that point in the novel, the Special Service has never been described as being a violation of another’s body and they have always been escorted with secure measures. However, the prostitutes’s attack, rape and murder reinstates the vulnerability of the women, placing them in the same danger they had been when they were working outside the army. In addition, the assailant of the women signifies a failure of the army to protect the people who rely on it, and work for it, and symbolically, combined with the bureaucratic implications in the army from the beginning of the novel, is a strong criticism of the Army’s inability to achieve its goals. The crucifixion of the beautiful woman can be interpreted as religion’s role in the danger that women in prostitution face: religion cannot make prostitution go away, and provides little help for the women in such situation.

Mario Vargas Llosa ultimately leaves it up to his readers to take a moral stance on the subject of prostitution. In the end, Pantoja is portrayed as a hero, one with compassion for the women he recruits and strong sense of discipline in the job he undertakes. He is a hero for standing up for the women under his control, by bravely saying to his General Scavino, “And as for the women who carry out this work with true self-denial, what they do has never been acknowledged.” He is a one of a kind hero, a controversial one no doubt.

Chocolates for Breakfast – Pamela Moore

At 18, Pamela Moore wrote a coming-of-age story, but it is rather a crashing-into-age “tragedy”. Even though the characters announce that they “are not capable of tragedy” and their lives are a “child’s game that came to an end”,  I can’t help but feel a sense of overwhelming sadness as the story closes, as if the protagonist had failed her life. It was then that I catch myself doing the thing that the parents, in the story and in real life, do and think for their children, and I realize the ultimate struggle and conflict of this story: how to gain power and freedom when one is not ready for it.

Struggling against parents is one of the major themes of the novel. From the first chapter, Courtney laments about her relationship with her mother, “why do we have to pretend to the parents?” The girls lie and avoid their parents when needed so they can achieve a sense of freedom: going to parties at night, drinking with boys and having affairs at their command. Inadvertently, the lies distance them from their parents, and build up an illusion that they have complete control over their lives. Courtney and Janet learn to become masters at controlling the people they meet, through dates and love affairs. Their attractive youth becomes one of their weapons and they equate sexual liberty and breaking laws with power. But it is not just defying parental rules that make them free, it is also breaking away from their parent’s influence. Courtney resists her parents advice, but it is Janet who displays her struggle emotionally and physically as pivotal points of the novel.

In the two scenes between Janet and her father, dynamic and different attack strategies were utilized by the characters. These attacks are seen again and again in many different stories of parent and children, which may be different in words but the same in essence. Janet’s position is her right to privacy and freedom, while her father’s is his right to maintain guidance and control over his underage daughter. The struggle starts from an isolated incident to emotional and accusatory language, escalating in intensity. This is how family relationships are destroyed, from small incidents, building up to accumulating unresolved bitterness to the point where emotion and fact cannot be separated. Once tangled up in this mess, the characters have no way out.

Not unlike parental struggle, which is both physical and emotional, the female protagonists also plunge themselves into love affairs that result in damage. Courtney’s affair with Cabot, which under current laws can be considered statutory rape, met with strong disapproval from her wise guardian Al Leone. This love started out to be a “Romeo and Juliet” type and seemed to head out to a strong and glamorous finish, but Moore chose to let the affair meet with reality and end with pain. The centre piece of the lost of innocence in “Chocolates for Breakfast” is not losing virginity sexually, but rather Courtney’s realization that love is “ugly” and never perfect. It is then she learns to manipulate her lovers, as seen with George, Anthony, Charles etc. She moves from one to another without pain, just like her moving from one restaurant to another, “I get tired of the same places.” Perhaps this is her declaration of sexual independence, that she is not in need of one single man. Readers may disagree with Courtney’s way of finding sexual liberty, but it is no doubt she is making her statement loud and clear. To me, it is a tragedy, because I could no longer see what her value in love is, though she longingly wants to be loved.

And as the girls learn about their life and values, I find myself judging them, disapproving of their decisions, being disappointed and at the same time cheering them on. I react to their actions the way their fictional parents do, and realize the girls did achieve freedom because they made decisions independent of other’s judgments and faced the consequences. The story is a complete coming-of-age tale, with strong female protagonists who refuse to be victims. When the book was published, it probably gained attention for its sexual themes, but I believe it is the psychological and physical struggles that make the story so riveting and moving and relatable to anyone who is going through or remembers the difficulties of growing up.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

Charles Yu started with a very simple and interesting idea. Instead of creating a story about the excitement of time travel, Yu chose his main character to be a normal tech guy. Yu focused his story on an aspect of time travel that pop culture has not explored. And from that idea, the novel offers an observation of our life from the perspective of a science fictional world. That is indeed a very clever and creative idea, which is also the highlight of this unique science fiction novel.

I am not a fan of science fiction, but Yu’s writing has some kind of charm and novelty that interests me greatly. Yu doesn’t spend too much of his book on just creating a science fictional world. He doesn’t spend pages and pages describing this imaginary scientific universe. Instead, Yu draws parallel comparisons between the world we dearly know and the world Charles Yu (the character) is from. To many readers, this novel is a disappointment because it is not really ‘science fictional’; it’s quite “real”. The book’s themes and feelings need not a futuristic setting. But by using “time travelling” as a metaphor for regret and nostalgia, Yu offers a different spin on the topic of time and space travel, while allowing readers to relate to his main character on a human level, instead of trying to imagine him as some kind of robot or alien.

Yu defines his own physical world using the same template as our scientific theory. I enjoy reading his theorems, especially since I study physics and math on a regular basis. With all the fancy words and the paradoxes (especially the non-existing object paradox), Yu’s definitions aren’t just descriptions of the science fictional universe in his novel, they are also Yu’s attempts at explaining human emotions in a scientific manner. What if all emotions can be clearly defined like a physics theorem:

“Nostalgia, underlying cosmological explanation for

weak but detectable interaction between two neighboring universes that are otherwise not causally connected.

manifests itself in humans as a feeling of missing a place one has never been, a place very much like one’s home universe, or as a longing for versions of one’s self that one will never, and can never know.”

These fundamental concepts make up Yu’s own version of time-travelling: it is a process where one observes a different timeline from the timeline one is currently in. It is a process that relies on human memories, because time travelling is very similar to revisiting memories in our head. And once readers understand Yu’s paradigm for time-travelling, they will realize that after all, this science fiction is not a science fiction, but in nature, a novel about the past, mistakes, regrets and how to deal with them.

So perhaps those disappointed readers do have a reason.

And for that same reason, I am very fascinated with the way Yu perceives and constructs time-travelling. It is not a big fancy action-packed rocket-science process that Hollywood movies make it out to be. It can be, rather, a leisure activity affordable to the masses and allows us to relive over and over again moments and milestones that we want to preserve. It is ultimately an private emotional journey that we experience everyday when we think of a happy or sad moment in the past.

“Time travel is not a technology built outside, with titanium and beryllium and argon and xenon and seaborgium, but rather it is am mental ability that can be cultivated. […] We experience the present and remember the past. We can’t remember the present, except what is deja vu but a memory of the present? And if we can remember the present, why can’t we experience the past? What kind of machine is this? This machine, what my son and I have built, this is a perception engine, and it works on your mind as much as anywhere else.”

As much as I enjoyed the unique ideas that Yu presented, the writing toward the end of the book became heavy and wordy. The verbosity became a flaw instead of a stylistic bonus, and the way Yu wrote theorems was much more appealing than reading paragraphs and paragraphs that present the same thing. That took away from the quality of this impressive debut. However, some lines now and there are such a pleasure to read.

“The good news is, you don’t have to worry, you can’t change the past. The bad news is, you don’t have to worry, no matter how hard you try, you can’t change the past.”

Love in a Fallen City (collection of short stories) – Eileen Chang

This is the first work of fiction by a female author I’ve read this year (apart from E.L. James, but I don’t want to admit that). So I read Eileen Chang’s collection of short stories, one that is praised internationally because of the sharp, observant and loving stories that combine exquisitely both traditional Chinese and modern Western styles.

Chang’s stories are dynamic and panoramic. Her characters are moving, interesting, alive and multi-dimensional, often passionate and unpredictable. They are believable and understandable even though they come from a different culture and time than most of us. The stories’s settings are exotic and unique, often in Shanghai and Hongkong around the years of transitioning to more Westernized cities. The endings are often bittersweet. The language soft and calm. The clever descriptions short, selective and beautiful. Chang’s command of fiction is masterful; her keen observation of the changing society is transformed flawlessly into stories of China’s volatile time periods, with people struggling to make decisions, to love and live in a shattering environments.

There are many things I love about Chang’s stories: the setting, the characters and the writing.

The China that Chang describes in her stories is beautiful as I would imagine from Chinese ink paintings: “already, beyond the wall a roar of wild azaleas was blooming across the hill, the fiery red stomping through brittle grass, blazing down the mountainside.” The flowers, the tea, incense, mountains create a romantic dreamy backdrop for Chang’s stories. But there are also Western theaters, dance halls, beaches, trams, crowded cities. Chang’s world is fiercely aristocratic and considerably wealthy, with traditional values still strictly in place with the Confucianist familial hierarchy, but at the same time, people still fall in love, to marry, to have affairs, to divorce, to go against families for one’s happiness. However, Chang’s setting is not messy, chaotic, broken, but rather liquid, changing, unsettling, creating the perfect background for Chang’s memorable characters.

They are often fierce and passionate. They learn to love with a naive mind or broken hearts, or both. These characters define their own kind of ‘love’: the “red rose” love, the “white rose” love (Red Rose, White Rose), the “Wei-long-innocent-adolescent-sweet” kind of love (Aloeswood Incense), the “love in a fallen city” kind of love. And then there is also hate, the twisted, suppressed, confused hate of a young man struggling to face his emotions and lie up to his parents’ expectations (Jasmine Tea). These characters glow with passion and motivation; they are individuals finding their own path, making their own families and culture while the world around them changes. What I love most about them is their eager to fight for their own life: Weilong setting out on her own to create the life she always wanted, Liusu and Liuyuan rising from the debris of the bombed Hong Kong to create a marriage for themselves. These new and modern men and women of the changing China constantly come to terms with their feelings and decisions and respond to changing circumstances with logic and determinism.

Chang uses her beautiful language to bring the setting, characters and stories to life. For me, language-wise, “Sealed-off” is the most successful story in the collection. Chang uses sound, colors, motions masterfully to describe an encounter between people on a crowded train. The invisible human connection and the internal psychological feedback mechanisms are highlighted cleverly and realistically. Chang’s writing echoes the nostalgia of classical literature and adopts modern techniques into one unique and genius style of her own.

“But in this unreasonable world, who can distinguish cause from effect? Who knows which is which? Did a great city fall that she could be vindicated? […] Liusu didn’t feel there was anything subtle about her place in history. […] Those legendary beauties wo felled cities and kingdoms were probably all like that. Legend exists everywhere, but they don’t necessarily have such happy endings. When the huqin wails on a night of ten thousand lamps, the bow slides back and forth, drawing forth a tale too desolate for words-oh! why go into it?” (Love in a Fallen City)

Catch-22 – Joseph Heller

There is nothing much about “Catch-22” that has not been mentioned in scholastic articles and essays that analyze this “apocalyptic masterpiece”. I’m sure if I was a literature student I would have to write an in-depth report of this novel at some point in my academic life, but I am not, so instead of trying to dissect this work of art, I will just jolt down some of my reactions to this novel.

I believe that “Catch 22”, along with 1984, is a must-read for everyone. If its reputation hasn’t convinced you enough, here are some of my reasons, from the objective of a common reader and not an academic literature researcher, for why you should (must) read this book.

Firstly, it’s funny. It’s not like “Heart of Darkness” or other Ondaatje war novels with such thick, over-bearing melancholic tone. Dealing with the ghastly topic of war, the novel chooses a humorous approach. It’s pretty obvious from the first chapter how unique this novel is: the absurdity of the character’s action, the contrasting and illogical sequence of events, the meaningless conversations. You should laugh, and not criticize the total incoherence logic, because as the novelty of the humor start to wear off and you don’t find Heller’s jokes funny anymore, you would come to realize that his jokes are not just cheap ways of pulling attention. The illogic is the theme of the book; the paradoxical motifs keep repeating itself to build fundamental themes of this classic novel. So do try to find those jokes funny instead of resisting the (seemingly) nonsensical layout of the book, because the book gets much darker afterwards.

Secondly, it’s quite unpredictable. That is an obvious fact anyone can observe from just the first few chapters. Chronology does not exist in the novel, neither does logic. Even Kurt Vonnegut places his jokes in order and creates an apparent plotline that readers can follow. But Heller just keeps pumping out illogical jokes after illogical jokes, and if you can find the patience and mood to play along with him, you’re in for a fun ride. Unlike usual books that go in a direction that you can predict, Catch 22 just spirals out of control. It’s very fun, indeed, to, for once, let the story lead you.

Thirdly, it’s meaningful and smart. You could easily pull some materials off the book and crack a joke to people and look very intelligent. Furthermore, it is a very recognized book, so people might even perceive you as a scholarly person just when you allude to Catch-22.

I can think of more, but let’s talk about the book now.

Many themes appear and re-appear in Heller’s novel, usually at unexpected moments. Before my eyes, the novel transforms illogic into logic, creates its own rationale and justifies its unusual characters. Heller’s brilliance lies in building up this absurd world, then making his readers realize that is the world we have. The juxtaposition between sanity and insanity, between normal and abnormal, justice and injustice (and much more) emphasizes the crucial effects of war, bureaucracy and capitalism. Hidden among the complex humor and satire is the truth that we may or may not have accepted. This truth involves greed for money and power. And the system has allowed individuals to manipulate logic to their own benefits, resulting in the absurdity that we observe but not always realize.

While playing with logic, Catch-22 also describes the graphic terror of war. In the last few chapters, as the tone switches from “hilarity to horror”, readers come to face the more immediate effect of war: death. Strangely, I felt “sad” as the characters disappear. The sombreness of the theme of death is greatly emphasized by the contrast between humor and horror. The novel also redefines “heroism”. As Yossarian comes to realize his ultimate solution, the novel also presents a new perspective on the glory of war and what it means to truly be a hero.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

With “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”, Jonathan Safran Foer has written a novel for everyone.

The novel is filled with humanity, emotions, tempers, lost, kindness and the human connection that we all share. Foer describes with such compassion the delicate relationships between us in a compelling unbelievable journey, which although is so unlikely, gives us a chance to hope and have faith in each other in this completely strange world we occupy.

Although the book is praised to have dealt with the sorrows of 9/11, I didn’t really feel this was the objective of the book. The novel is merely using  9/11 as an instrument to address a much vaster topic of human kind. It’s not just the lost and pain of the 9/11 victims that readers feel, it is also the suffering and regrets of victims of wars before my generation’s time. The feeling of compassion I had for these characters proves that Foer can genuinely tuck at heartstrings with sincerity and love.

I read reviews of this book upon completion, and many criticisms of the novel revolves around the “over-the-top” portrayal of human emotions, or the fact that Foer had “stolen” ideas from other works, or the unlikely events in the story. I however received the book with more open arms and I embraced the modern fairy tale emerging from the sadness and loneliness of our lives. Foer offers his readers hope and courage to cure ourselves from the prison that we build for ourselves by curling into our own blanket of silence. We can break the silence and reach out to others.

Contrary to what some online comments say about the nine-year-old Oskar Schell, I found him very adorable and creative. From the first chapters I admired his ideas to “fix” the problems he sees around him; impractical ideas, to be fair, since he is only supposed to be nine years old, but ideas that reflect his longing for compassion and care. My favourite Oskar Schell idea was the idea of building a massive system of drains from everyone’s pillows to collect people’s tears when they cry at night, and in the morning the weatherman can inform the entire city of how much people have cried. I admire that kind of caring thought, and it made me think of how much we estrange each other.

In an era of instant connection via internet, Foer offers a completely different way for us to connect to others: go on a journey on foot. As the novel traces Oskar’s clumpsy footsteps throughout New York, readers are opened to a world much different from the one we envision in our heads when we think of “the world out there”. It is a city where there are no kidnappers, there is no reason to be afraid of talking to a stranger, asking strangers about their personal thoughts. It is a world where you can ask for a hug, a kiss without feeling out of the norm, where people can believe one another and support a child through his quest for the truth. This is why I think this story is a modern day fairy tale; it represents such simple dreams and hopes romantically in an imagination that is so close, yet so unbelievable.

Oskar’s quest to find the truth hidden behind his father’s key isn’t an ordinary journey. And for those who were disappointed in the ending, I would say, “you have totally missed the entire point of the story.” It is a quest for intimacy, for belonging and love. Put in Oskar’s own words, his journey was to bring him closer to his father, a spiritual embarkation that revealed how similar we all are, in the quest to feel closer to another human being. Foer had depicted what I had always hoped was true: that somewhere out there someone is feeling the same way I am and is striving towards the same goal as I am. We are surprisingly parallel adventurers, and without knowing, we form invisible connections with our paths.

At the same time, the story is also about how we fail to reach out and understand one another: “He looked confused, or embarrassed, or surprised, or maybe even sad. I couldn’t tell what he was feeling, because I couldn’t speak the language of his feelings.” The characters often fail to express themselves, through the lack of courage and faith. This human flaw causes each of them to unintentionally hurt each other and drift apart. And yet shining brightly in the center of the story is a boy who is determined on his own goal, and without knowing, touches these adults and heal them in ways no reader could have predicted.

The novel is a stunning read, filled with gentle metaphors and pictures that will provoke thoughts and feelings. It is a book written for everyone because everyone needs a nice fairy tale to hope in and believe in.

A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess

In this short novel, Burgess traces the happenings of a teenage “gangster”. With the use of Nadsat, Burgess’s invented language, the protagonist, Alex, is stylistically portrayed as a symbol of rebellion and ultra-violence, whose journey spans between high and lows of power. The narration is kept simple and linear, though not without interesting twists, and concisely raises some key questions about humanity, repression and freedom.

The language in the novel created a challenge for me to break the ‘code’ of speech, and although I still haven’t understood every word in Nadsat, I can appreciate the tone of rebellion that the language conveys. And throughout the novel, the language is fast-paced, straightforward, strong, depicting sharp images of attacks and assaults, as well as Alex’s quick-minded intelligence. This all makes “A Clockwork Orange” a compact novel, surged with adrenaline and fright.

The novel is not just about violent crimes however, but also of subtle but “big” questions of our humanity. It challenges the idea of being “cured”, “healthy” and “good”, as opposed to being evil and repressive. Alex remains quite undeniably a horrible villain until the second part of the book, where the “good intentions” of the people trying to cure him becomes questionable. Surely Alex is “evil”, but so is the government, according to those who are against the Ludovico technique, since it tortures and distorts individual personality, striping people off their right to choose his own fate. So what constitutes as evil? It is easy to agree evil is beating up helpless people, but is it also evil to beat up those who beat up people, with an even more powerful and torturous method? It is debatable how far the government’s power should extend to, in the name of justice even, to “correct” or transform human beings into personalities accepted by the general society. “You’ve sinned, I suppose, but your punishment has been out of all proportion. They have turned you into something other than a human being.” (Chapter 4, part 3) Forcing conformity is repression, therefore it is evil, but what if it is the conformity to “goodness”? And with the juxtaposition of two situations of “cure”, one announced by Dr. Brodsky, whose mission is to turn Alex into a violent-hating and “good” citizen, and one announced by a different doctor later on, who considers him returning to a violence-seeking state of mind as “good”, emphasizes the subjective of “healthiness”, and the fact that upon different intentions, different meaning and idea are used for the same word. So what constitutes “evil” and “goodness”? Perhaps they can never have definite meaning, since human intentions vary wildly from person to person, and from time to time.

Another idea the book tackles is the meaning of being “human”. Raised by the jailer and F. Alexander, the subject of debate involves concepts of freedom of choice: if a man is good, but he did not choose to be good, instead forced to be good, is he still human? In contrast, if a villain chooses to be evil, he is still human, because he has a choice in his actions. Is it still humane to force an individual to be “good”, even though that means stripping away his freedom? Or is this act acceptable, because “goodness” trumps freedom? “You have no power of choice any longer. You are committed to socially acceptable acts, a little machine  capable only of good.” (Chapter 4, part 3) Alex’s situation puts our morals into question, asking whether it is freedom that is superior to “goodness” (which consists of kindness, caring, respect, etc.), or the opposite. How important is freedom, and how much are of it are we willing to give up for other benefits. For example, would you give up your right to smoke in public so you don’t have to smell other people’s smoke? “The tradition of liberty means all. The common people will let it go, oh yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life.” (Chapter 5, part 3) And it is also the question of how much freedom should one be allowed, and how much of it should be restricted upon individuals who have encroached on other’s well-being. In reality, this issue arises in areas such as the debate around whether the capital penalty should be legal, whether rapists should be castrated etc. And in Alex’s case, I had to debate whether he is a hero or a villain, and still i have not decided.

Finally, “A clockwork orange” is a portrayal of youth, with all its strength and power, its capacity to do good and bad, to be influenced and to revoke and fight against influence. Burgess demonstrated this chaotic time of one’s life through the over-the-top violent life of Alex, with all his sins and wit, his ability to realize what is being done to him and the rebellious instinctive behaviour that is so familiar to any youth. And the final chapter, where the anger and greed for power subsides, Burgess calls the dying flame of violence “maturity”, a state of mind with calmness and seeking of the future. Alex is a hyperbolic description of us teenagers and young adults, who seek for pleasure and fight to find it, who thirst for being a non-conformist and being free to pursue what we claim make us powerful. But it is not just a novel for growing youths, it is also a reflective piece on the freedom of life and self-determinism.


HALIFAX -- A bill proposing changes to how Nova Scotia's electoral map is drawn will proceed without amendments despite objections from Acadian groups.

Acadian groups had asked for the removal of a provision that would allow so-called "non-contiguous"' constituencies -- ridings that are not connected geographically -- and another that would allow a committee to determine the minimum and maximum number of electoral districts.

Under the proposed legislation, the number of voters in each district would have to fall within a certain population range of plus or minus 25 per cent of the average.

Exceptions would also be permitted based on geography as well as historical, cultural or linguistic factors, which is expected to give more of a say to black and Acadian minorities in elections.


Ask A Master Gardener – Any Day is a Good Day in a Garden

All parts of Foxglove are poisonous, possibly deadly, if swallowed.

Any day is a good day, if spent in a garden. There are so many proven benefits to gardening that it is almost hard to list them…beautifying the landscape, getting exercise, reducing blood pressure and cholesterol, decreasing depression, producing nutritious foods, and more. However, as with any venture, caution must be exercised in order to keep things on a positive note.

Most plants in the landscape are beneficial and provide beauty, nutrition, delight for the senses, or even medicinal rewards. Some, however, are poisonous.  Ingesting, or in some cases, touching, specific plants can have undesirable results.  Consequences can range from mild discomfort (nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, or stomach cramps) to a fatality.  Gardeners need to be aware of the plants that can cause harm to themselves, to children, and to pets.

Toxicity can vary depending on the part of the plant consumed. For instance, rhubarb leaves are toxic to humans and should not be consumed.  The stems are quite safe and delicious, making many consumers happy with a springtime rhubarb pie or crisp.

Other plant toxicity is species specific. Dogs and cats can romp through a patch of poison ivy with nary a response.  Let a human do the same and it will result in a painful, blistering, itching rash. Pokeweed berries (Phytolacca Americana) are eaten by birds, deer, and other animals.  However, just a small amount will kill a child and not many more will fell an adult.

In this case, size does matter. Children with their smaller body weight will have a more severe reaction than an adult male.  Metabolism can also play a role with different people reacting differently to the same dosage.

Taste is not an indicator of toxicity. Some poisonous plants have a pleasing flavor, therefore do not expect a child or pet to spit out the berry thinking it does not taste good.  The best course of action is to become familiar with the plants on the landscape that are poisonous and are in an area accessible to children, pets, or others likely to sample their wares.

A complete list of toxic plants in Wisconsin is available at:  The most common garden plants that can have serious consequences are:  Azalea, Lily of the Valley, Hydrangea, Foxglove (digitalis), Larkspur, Oleander, Purple Nightshade, Mistletoe, Water Hemlock, and Castor Bean. These plants are some of the deadliest, with all parts of the plants being toxic, and some having berries or roots that are more hazardous. They can cause heart, liver, digestive, and neurological issues.  In some cases, like oleander, a single leaf contains enough toxins to be fatal to a small child.  If exposure occurs, do not waste time; seek treatment immediately.

While it is unlikely that an adult will pop the berry or leaf of an unknown plant into their mouth, children and pets have no such qualms. Therefore, it is advisable to be aware of the plants that cause problems and protect fragile individuals.  The Wisconsin Poison Control Center number is 1-800-222-1222.  Located in Milwaukee, it provides 24-hour, toll-free service for everyone in Wisconsin.  If an animal ingests something, call the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center at 1-888-426-4435. (There is a fee per case for this service, charged to the phone bill.)

Be wise, be aware, be educated, and garden on.

Carol Shirk

Certified Master Gardener

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kurzweil is an influential atheist? really? how?
Greg Fish

totally agree. I just shared similar views on Kursweil and the OpenAI initiative on a hacker news article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13394604

basically, consciousness is spiritual most likely. we most likely are already in the “indestructible” reality system and it’s built with something way more powerful than silicon. These people in silicon valley are the epitome of arrogant. They know nothing of personal introspection and spiritual evolution (aka “THE PATH”) yet are trying to box it up into a single point (um “singularity”) that they are well on their way toward attaining.


Dell has informed staff based in its UK operations that it needs to make cuts to its workforce in order to grow its business and operate effectively.

The global technology company confirmed to Computerworld UK that operations in Bracknell, Nottingham, Glasgow and London would “continue to play a pivotal role”, but job losses would occur nonetheless.

“Dell has shared with the teams that with regret we need to make some very limited reductions to our workforce at our UK sites,” said a spokesperson for Dell.

“In order to serve our customers and grow our business, Dell must operate as effectively as possible. This requires that we rationalise resources and capabilities between business units, and continue to build the best and brightest teams to support our customers.”

The statement went on to say that Dell would continue to look ‘creatively and critical’ at how it operates in the UK.

“Through this process, we’ll continue to keep our teams informed and look for opportunities to develop our people,” the spokesperson added.

It was not confirmed how many job losses there will be, or when they will take place.


How precise is my measurement?

Sam ShearmanMarch 28, 20181 comment

An accurate, precise definition

To answer this question, let’s first settle on a definition for “precision.” Doing so is useful, because you might hear the term precision interchanged with accuracy or measurement error. Precision and accuracy are types of measurement error (Ref 1), where measurement error is the difference between a measured value and the actual (or true) value. Accuracy (sometimes called bias) is a number that quantifies repeatable or systematic measurement errors such as those that result from resolution limitations, calibration error, or measurement-procedure problems (Fig 1). Alternatively, precision errors are random fluctuations in your measurement.

Figure 1, Errors in precision cause sample readings to spread out randomly from a sample mean. Accuracy (bias) errors are systematic, meaning that they impose a difference in the sample mean.

 A common measurement goal is to reduce measurement error, whatever the source. Reducing accuracy errors requires such initiatives as regularly scheduled calibration and choices regarding measurement design / setup. Improvements in this area often result from planning, diligence, and other “human” factors. Improving precision certainly entails these factors; in addition, its random nature means you can characterize it with statistical analysis.

 Any thorough discussion of statistical characterization of random fluctuations will dive into details related to statistical analysis, but I’ll refrain because such material resides in many textbooks. Instead, I’ll focus on some measurement-oriented specifics. Refs 2, 3 are a few helpful textbooks for background.

Precision dissection

With this measurement-oriented focus in mind, let’s return to the question “How precise is my measurement?” We’ll begin by considering a common measurement situation: given some data acquisition hardware, you want to sample the signal output of a transducer in order to measure a physical quantity associated with that transducer and you want to find the precision of your measurement. The situation might involve static measurements such as temperature measured with a RTD or thermocouple, or perhaps strain measured with a full- or half-bridge strain gauge. It might also involve dynamic signals, where the measurement of interest is a power spectrum or octave analysis.

 Because both static and dynamic signals are subject to random fluctuations, the following considerations apply for either class of signals. The difference between the two is often what you consider as a sample. For a static signal, a sample is often an instantaneous voltage level that you scale somehow to convert it to a physical quantity. For a dynamic signal, a sample could be an array of values that represents the power spectrum or octave analysis of a record of signal samples.

 Multiple samples (however you define them) are necessary to gauge your measurement precision. For one, remember that precision is actually a measure of random fluctuations that you won’t see if you are examining a single data point. Further, as discussed in a previous column (Ref 4), you should try to avoid using single samples as measurements. (Even in point-by-point control applications, where single-point measurements are common, there is often a hidden statistical treatment in the form of a filter—a mean value is a lowpass filter.)

Confidence in your measurement

Once you’ve acquired multiple samples, you can actually gauge precision with several powerful statistical analysis tools: confidence interval (CI) and confidence level (CL). The CI sets a range of values where you expect the mean of your measurements to reside. The CL is a percentage that specifies your statistical confidence as the probability of the mean falling in the CI. Fig 2 shows an example of a CI.

Figure 2, A confidence interval is a range of values delineated by numbers derived from a probability distribution (commonly a normal distribution or a T distribution) and a confidence level that you specify.

 In the context of CIs and CLs, it is common to refer to a population mean and not a sample mean. The difference is subtle, but important. The population mean represents the value that you would calculate with an infinite number of samples, while the sample mean is the arithmetic mean of your finite number of measurements. This distinction is what really imparts the practical benefit of working with CIs and CLs: they compensate for the fact that a direct measurement of a population mean isn’t possible because you cannot gather an infinite number of measurements.

 The practical use of these tools is to choose a desired CL and then use it, along with a set of measured values to determine a CI. Doing so is straightforward and is outlined in the steps below:

  1. Verify that your data has a Normal (Gaussian) probability distribution. Making this assumption simplifies things, and is reasonable at least for a first pass—a famous mathematical theorem (Ref 5) relates that the mean value of an arbitrary signal is usually Gaussian. Nevertheless, statistical “goodness-of-fit” tools (Refs 1, 2) are available to allow you to empirically make this judgment.
  2. Find the mean and standard deviation of your samples with the following formulas: and . For both equations, xi is a sample value and n is the number of samples. Modern programming environments, such as LabVIEW include ready-to-run functions to calculate these values.
  3. Find the Standard Deviation of the means as
  4. Choose a desired CL, and use it to find a corresponding area for 1-CL/2 under a Normal curve. LabVIEW includes a built-in function (VI) for this job: “Inv Normal Distribution.” (For smaller sample set sizes (a good rule of thumb is n<30), you can use the t-distribution as an alternative to the normal distribution. A corresponding LabVIEW function is “Inv T Distribution.”)
  5. Multiply the resulting area under the normal curve by the standard deviation of the means, which you calculated in step 3. This value, along with the sample mean from step 2 defines the CI as , where z is the area from step 4.

 With these tools, your measurement evolves from a single value to a range of values and a probability. This extra information is useful in that the extent of the CI and the CL relate information about the number of measurements made and the random nature of the measurand. As shown in Fig 3, wider intervals at the same CL indicate fewer samples were used to gather the sample mean or an increased standard deviation.

Figure 3, This intensity plot shows a general trend that appears in the width of a confidence interval (CI). The CI width decreases with an increasing number of samples or a decreasing Standard Deviation of your samples.

  1. Smith, Steven W., A Scientist’s and Engineer’s Guide to Digital Signal Processing, California Technical Publishing, 1997, ISBN 0-9660176-3-3. The complete book is available online at
  2. Chugani, Mahesh, A. Samant, and M. Cerna, LabVIEW Signal Processing, Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall PTR, 1998. ISBN 0-13-972449-4.
  3. Beckwith, T, and R. Maragoni, Mechanical Measurements, 4ed., Reading: Addison-Wesley Pub Co., 1990. ISBN 0-201-17866-4.
  4. Shearman, Sam, “Take Control of Noise with Spectral Averaging,” R&D Magazine’s Data Acquisition, Vol 4. No 7. July 2000, pgs 6-9.
  5. Chung, Kai Lai, A Course on Probability Theory, 2ed, Academic Press, 2000. ISBN 0121741516

[ - ]
Comment by jimi75April 3, 2018

I have a doubt and probably I'm misunderstanding something. Why, in step 5, do you define the z value as area? Isn't it the z-score of the standardized normal distribution corresponding to the selected area?

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HIIT exercises

Fewer reps may yield higher outcomes

Scientists on the College of Stirling in Scotland have discovered people who find themselves doing fewer repetitions throughout high-intensity interval coaching (HIIT) exercises could get higher health advantages than those that full extra.

Based on Dr. Niels Vollaard, a researcher concerned within the evaluation, an absence of time is ceaselessly cited by folks as one of many principal obstacles for changing into and staying bodily energetic.

“Excessive-intensity exercises have begun to deal with this drawback, permitting folks to get most well being advantages whereas figuring out for a shorter time.”

Vollaard added:”For the primary time, we now have proof to recommend an indicator of health ranges is improved extra by doing fewer repetitions of high-intensity train. We’re presently performing research to analyze the physiological mechanisms which will clarify this sudden discovering.”

Health ranges had been measured by VO2max, the maximal quantity of oxygen the physique is able to utilising in a single minute, which is accepted as probably the greatest indicators of future well being and danger of untimely loss of life. Nonetheless, learning different indicators of well being and health, together with blood stress and insulin sensitivity, will give a fuller image of how the physique responds to various kinds of HIIT exercises.

Beforehand, train scientists assumed that performing extra repetitions of high-intensity train will produce higher enhancements in cardiorespiratory health.


In what follows are the selections of readings that we need to cover this quarter. As you well know, the theme of curriculum is literacy, education, and power. I will also post a few other sources to help you unpack the assigned articles.

Online reader

Abby's Lament: Does Literacy Matter?

Confronting Class in the Classroom

Dictating to the schools

Extraordinary isn't enough

How teachers make children hate reading

How to tame a wild tongue

Literacy and the Politics of Education

My graduation speech

On the uses of a liberal education

Preparing minds for markets

Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work

Some very modest proposals for the improvement of American education

The lost generation

Why we have college

More sources

Critical literacy

Critical literacy and art education: Alternatives in the school reform movement

Finding classroom success in noisy mix of Spanish, English

Promoting young women's voices in schools and communities

Revisiting the ten conditions for learning


For Ragnar Tournarie and Denis Rouillard, going from collecting to releasing records was almost fortuitous. In 2010, they founded Cranes Records as an extension of their work as visual artists and to help friends’ bands issue proper releases. “It quickly turned into a hybrid of a label and an art project, always [falling] between cinema and art history, or anything else linked to music,” the duo told Remezcla. Being that they are based in France, it may seem odd that Tijuana’s Dani Shivers and Mint Field have made it onto their roster. But their global operating philosophy has led them to reach out to scenes outside of their home country.

The interest in Tijuana came about after Ragnar met director Ricardo Silva following a showing of his film Navajazo at the art school he was attending at the time. After chatting about music and film, Silva turned Tournarie onto Dani Shivers, which motivated him to travel Tijuana to continue his studies and experience the music scene first hand. During his stay, Ragnar built relationships with labels, bands, promoters, and filmmakers. Not only has Cranes collaborated with Dani Shivers by releasing her music on beautifully packaged vinyl records, but they’ve also commissioned Spécola – the production company that Silva is part of – to direct videos for two of the artists on their roster. Currently they are working on releasing Mint Field’s “Ciudad Satélite” on flexi disc.

Has this connection created new opportunities for TJ artists? The head honchos at Cranes certainly felt that their music and art could do well reaching a wider audience, but these musicians have a strong work ethic and a growing career. If you look closer at how Cranes was conceived, you understand how its collaborations are mutually beneficial and rewarding for everyone involved.

“It quickly turned into a hybrid of a label and an art project.”

Before the label started to release regular albums, they took on the task of putting together bootleg demos for friends’ bands, like The Dead Mantra. Given that most labels opt to print CDs or stick to digital formats, it says a lot about the importance they place on experiencing music on vinyl. Both Tournarie and Rouillard are avid record collectors and music nerds that go to great lengths to obtain rare LPs and audiophile-grade equipment. To be able to afford such a hobby requires commitment and creativity. These qualities have proven useful when running an independent label that focuses mainly on vinyl releases, and initial releases helped the The Dead Mantra have a presentable catalog and gave Cranes low-risk capital to launch as a label. Cranes would later enlist Spécola to direct the stunningly shot video for TDM’s song “Mxeico.”

While the music industry has lured many music lovers into starting labels, the sad truth is that the business of album sales often puts a strain on financial success. After preparing the first TDM releases, Ragnar and Denis realized that they could only act as a label for other artists if the albums doubled as art pieces. At this time they studied fine arts at Le Mans, France, a city close to Paris that is known for car races and its “sad population,” as they put it.

Cranes forces us to appreciate not only the music contained in the records, but the art that it inspires.

Being exposed to art history, theory, and production inevitably affected how Cranes was conceived. Now it’s as much a label as an art project that produces film, visual art, music, and installations. For Ragnar and Denis, it’s “a pretext for practicing anything we like, especially concepts of identity and aesthetics.” This tongue-in-cheek statement should not be taken lightly, as their meticulously detailed album covers are works of art in and of themselves. Previous releases have included packaging that folds like origami, hand-sewn covers, and lace patterned paper sleeves made with a paper hole punch. The amount of dedication and care they put into each release has a lot to do with how strongly they feel about each artist they decide to collaborate with.

Hand-sewn cover of Seventeen At This Time's  "Everything I Touch Goes Wrong (Shotgun Wedding Edition)"

Hand-sewn cover of Seventeen At This Time’s “Everything I Touch Goes Wrong (Shotgun Wedding Edition)”

Ragnar and Denis have a strong inclination towards darkwave, post-punk, and shoegaze, and release records they like without falling prey to trends or hype. That philosophy enables them to establish long-term relationships with signees, evidenced by the fact that most of the artists on the roster have produced multiple releases.

So slowly but surely, Cranes is building a library that forces us to appreciate not only the music contained in the records, but the art that it inspires. The imprint has recruited artists who resonate with the label’s style and aesthetic, reaching far beyond French borders, and Ragnar and Denis’ underlying drive to reimagine what a record should look and feel like deserves recognition.


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Tuesday, April 24, 2018

What Is Light?
An Excerpt from Luminous Life by Jacob Liberman
Since humanity’s first sunrise, seers have wondered about the nature
of light and suspected that this mysterious and all-pervasive phenomenon
must be fundamentally related to our deepest questions
about God, life, and the meaning of existence. The Bible tells us that
life began with the dawning of light, and virtually every spiritual
tradition identifies light with the Creator, speaking of the “divine
light,” the “light of God,” and describing spiritual evolution as the
process of “enlightenment.”
Health and well-being are commonly thought of as an emanation
of light — or “glow” — a radiance that cannot be described.
Glowing physical health is primarily a function of the power of
our “inner sun,” and our glow seems to increase as our awareness
expands. At full illumination, this radiance becomes visible to the
naked eye, which is why great actors are often likened to “stars,”
and saints are traditionally depicted as being surrounded by brilliant
halos and described as “illumined.”
Many of our verbal expressions also illustrate the countless ways
in which light manifests in our everyday lives. We say that pregnant
women are “glowing,” and when we feel inspired we say we have
had a “flash” of insight. When someone is very smart, we say they
we say they have “seen the light.” When we speak of a new idea, we
might say “a light bulb went off.” When we want someone to calm
down, we might suggest they “lighten up.”
Scientists have also puzzled over the nature of light. In 1640
the Italian astronomer Galileo wrote a letter to philosopher Fortunio
Liceti stating, “I have always considered myself unable to understand
what light was, so much so that I would readily have agreed to
spend the rest of my life in prison with only bread and water if only
I could have been sure of reaching the understanding that seems so
hopeless to me.” Around 1917 the physicist Albert Einstein wrote to
a friend, “For the rest of my life I will reflect on what light is!” By
1951 he confessed that he had spent fifty years of “conscious brooding,”
trying to understand the nature of light yet was no closer to the
answer than when he began.
In the process of chasing the mystery of light, however, Einstein
developed the theory of relativity, establishing that at the speed of
light, time ceases to exist. In addition, a photon, which has no mass,
can cross the cosmos without using any energy. So for light beams,
time and space do not exist.
More recently, however, quantum physicists have described light
as the foundation of reality. This is profoundly significant when
we realize that quantum theory is considered the most successful
scientific formulation in history and that 50 percent of our current
technology is based on it. According to theoretical physicist David
Bohm, “Light is energy and it’s also information, content, form, and
structure. It’s the potential of everything.”
We live in a universe that appears to be created and nourished by
light. According to German writer and politician Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe, “All life originates and develops under the influence
of . . . light.” This becomes obvious when we experimentally place
plants, animals, or humans in darkened environments and notice
that their vitality and well-being gradually diminish, bringing their
lives to a halt. Without light, there is no will to live. We are literally
robbed of the spark that propels our spirit.
With such recognitions, the artificial distinctions we have between
science, health care, and spirituality are dissolving, and each is
being traced back to light. Mystics, scientists, and healers now agree,
in their respective terms, that light holds the secret to human awakening,
healing, and transformation.
Dr. Jacob Israel Liberman’s discoveries in the fields of light, vision, and consciousness, have been enthusiastically endorsed by luminaries in the fields of health, science, and spirituality, including Deepak Chopra, Bruce Lipton, and Eckhart Tolle. He is the author of Light: Medicine Of The FutureTake Off Your Glasses And See and Wisdom From An Empty Mind. His newest book, Luminous Life: How the Science of Light Unlocks the Art of Living, reveals how light guides our every step, so we may fulfill our reason for being.


Bankhead Elementary
Where all students are safe, connected, and valued!
Scanning Phase

As a staff that has recently engaged in the Spiral of Inquiry process for the first time, a large amount of time was spent in the scanning phase, asking the question, "What is going on for our learners?"  In order to create as large a scan of the learning landscape as possible, staff, students, and parents were involved in the process at various points.  For our first efforts, staff participated in the scanning phase during the fall of 2016 and were given time during multiple staff meetings, as well as Implementation Day, to discuss with colleagues what they were observing.  We in fact began our journey of understanding what was going on for our learners by working collaboratively with AS Matheson, South East Kelowna Elementary and the Instructional Leadership Team (ILT).  In order to address the question of "What is going on for our learners?" a number of different methods were also utilized.  Identified below are some of the main ways in which the staff engaged in the scanning phase.

  • School-wide and classroom observations

·       One to one conversations with individual students - survey developed by the staff

·       School-Wide Survey of our families

·       Development and review of classroom profiles for every class

·       School Based Team data

·       Conversations with parents

·       Review of feedback from school-wide data from staff

We then went deeper into understanding what the learning looked like from the student and parent perspectives.  This process of examining what we believe is important allowed us to create student and parent surveys.  These surveys were based on 5 essential questions from Linda Kaiser and Judy Halbert 's "Spirals of Inquiry".   Our questions were developed by our Committee and then were tested on a pilot group of students.  Following feedback and discussion we then improved the questions and brought these forward to our entire staff for discussion.  The questions we decided on are the following:

1)      Do you have adults who care about you? (What about at school? Who else?)

2)      Think about the school year.  What are you learning?  Why is it important?

3)      How is it going at school?  Can you tell me more about this?

4)      When you make a mistake/or a poor choice how do you feel and what do you do?

5)      What could help you be more successful?  Explain

We also went through a similar process in developing, piloting and asking parents for their feedback.  The difference being all staff members interviewed students one-on-one whereas we surveyed parents on-line.  We did receive a 25% parent participation rate which is considered high for an on-line school- wide survey.  All staff members interviewed a minimum of 7 students with half from their classroom and half randomly selected from other grades.  What was becoming noticeable during the scanning phase, and through many conversations about the scanning process is that several theme were becoming very evident.  This brought us to the focusing phase.


Diseases - clinical signs, transmission and treatment

The list of diseases that the dairy herd are prone to is almost endless.

Some diseases are, however, more significant than others although different diseases may be important for different reasons.

Some have zoonotic implications, some have serious consequences in terms of animal welfare and others can result in a significant compromise in productivity and profitability.

This list of diseases will give you information on how to detect and combat the risk on-farm.


Identify the test statistic, Basic Statistics

The National Center for Health Statistics recently released a report that stated 70% of adults do not exercise regularly. A researcher decided to test whether the results on a state-by-state basis differed from the 70% reported by the National Center for Health Statistics at the 5% significance level. The researcher took a sample of 350 adults in Wisconsin and found that 252 of the 350 indicated that they didn't exercise regularly.

A.   State the null and alternate hypotheses.

B.   Identify the test statistic

C.   State the decision rule.

D.   Show the appropriate calculations and state the statistical decision.

E.   What conclusions can you draw concerning the exercise rate of the people surveyed in Wisconsin?

Posted Date: 3/26/2013 2:23:34 AM | Location : United States

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Dissecting German Grammar and Swiss Passports: Open-Domain Decomposition of Compositional Entries in Large-Scale Knowledge Repositories / 896
Marius Pasca, Hylke Buisman

This paper presents a weakly supervised method that decomposes potentially compositional topics (Swiss passport) into zero or more constituent topics (Switzerland, Passport), where all topics are entries in a knowledge repository. The method increases the connectivity of the knowledge repository and, more importantly, identifies the constituent topics whose meaning can be later aggregated into the meaning of the compositional topics. By exploiting evidence within Wikipedia articles, the method acquires constituent topics of Freebase topics at precision and recall above 0.60, over multiple human-annotated evaluation sets.


High Volatility in the Stock Market Or Is It?

1 rating

Russ Allen

17 Oct, 2014

in Options

Currently the implied volatility levels in the stock market are much higher than they have been for quite some time. What does this mean for our option trading?

One of the main factors in the profitability of our option trades is the “inflatedness” of the prices of the options. When the consensus of option traders is that stock prices will move rapidly, then the prices of options will be inflated. We say that “implied volatility” is at a high level. At such times, as a general rule we want to use options strategies in which we sell options short. We then hope to buy them back later at lower prices, if we have to buy them back at all.

In times when option prices are deflated (implied volatility at a low reading), we use different strategies. We buy options rather than selling them short, in hopes that they will re-inflate to more normal levels. This deflation and re-inflation of option prices happens in cycles. Those cycles are related only loosely to the up-and-down cycles in the prices of stocks themselves. It is quite possible that option prices are deflated while stock prices themselves are inflated, and vice versa.

So at all times, we must gauge whether volatility is high or low, since this determines whether we want to be a buyer of options or a short seller.

As stated above, the usual measure of the “inflatedness” of options is a calculation called implied volatility, or IV. To somewhat oversimplify it, IV is calculated based on the prices at which options are trading; and represents the expected annualized rate of change in the stock price.

An implied volatility reading of 16% on a two-month option, for example, means that based on the price that its buyers are paying today, they expect the stock to move over the next two months in a range that would, if it continued for a year, be 16% wide ($16 for a $100 stock). IV is separately calculated for every option on a stock, and the separate values are then averaged together to get an aggregate implied volatility level for the stock as a whole.

OK. So high IV equals expensive options, and low IV equals cheap options. The next question, then, is – high or low compared to what? The answer is, compared to past history. Which leads to another question – how much history?

Below is a price chart of SPY, the exchange-traded fund that tracks the US stock market benchmark, the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index:

Figure 1 – SPY weekly price chart, with Implied Volatility and ATR as a percentage of price

Fig 1

The above chart shows activity for about the last year. The red line at the bottom is Implied Volatility. Its reading as of October 9, 2014 was about 15%, up from 9.6% just a few weeks ago in July. This means that options are now quite a bit more expensive now than they were then. So, should we now be selling options short?

By the way, the above question has nothing to do with whether we think stock prices will go up or down. If we do decide to be short options because of high volatility, then we will either decide to sell calls if we’re bearish, or to sell puts if we’re bullish.

Now let’s back out a few years for a wider perspective:

Figure 2 – SPY weekly price chart 2008-2014, with Implied Volatility

Fig 2

Notice that the current IV reading of 15%, while pretty high for the last year, is nowhere near the levels that occurred in previous major drops in 2011 when it reached 39%, 2010 (39%) and worst of all 2008 (67%). By the way, these figures represent weekly closing values. In 2008 the intraday high for IV on the SPY was over 90%.

So it’s clear here that a high reading of IV now doesn’t necessarily mean that IV can’t go even higher.

What if it does? If you have sold options short because you thought IV was high, and IV then goes much higher, does that mean you will have large losses?

Maybe, but not necessarily. It is certainly true that increasing IV will in fact push up the price of the options that you sold short, in the short term. But the portion of the options’ value that is affected by IV is time value. When the option comes to its expiration day, it will have no time value – it will have only its intrinsic value. That intrinsic value will be zero if the option is out of the money at that time.

For example, say that you sold the October SPY 186 puts short on October 9 at $.50. These puts would expire eight days later on Friday, October 17. By the way, THIS IS NOT A RECOMMENDATION. If you did sell these, you would have received $50 per contract.

Now let’s say that October 10 was another bloodbath like the 9th, and SPY were to drop by another $4.00, to $192.75. Meanwhile, say the drop in stock prices made option traders more nervous, and the implied volatility level rose all the way to its 2010/2011 high of 39%. On Friday the 10th, the puts that you had sold the previous day at $.50 per share would then be around $2.90 per share. If you were to close out the trade at that point by buying to close the puts at $2.90, it would be for a loss of about $2.40 per share, or $240 per contract.

BUT – at that SPY price of $188.75, the 186 puts would still be out of the money. That would remain true unless SPY were to drop all the way below $186 in the following week. As long as SPY were to remain above the $186 put strike price, and you did not close out the short put position, you would still eventually make your $50 per contract. This is because the puts would still expire worthless, as long as they were out of the money at expiration day.

So whether they temporarily had a time value of fifty cents, three dollars, or three hundred dollars, at expiration they would have no time value. As long as SPY remained above $186, the options would have no intrinsic value either, and expire with no value at all. You would keep your original $50 per contract.

Oct 30, 2014

Member (1 post)


Pope Francis's address on the White House lawn Wednesday morning covered a range of topics, including religious liberty, inequality, immigration, and climate change. "To use a telling phrase of the Reverend Martin Luther King," the Pope said of the treatment of our "common home," "we can say that we have defaulted on a promissory note and now is the time to honor it." Francis explicitly referred to President Barack Obama's efforts to reduce air pollition; otherwise his remarks were general. But that hasn't stopped a common criticism from re-emerging.

Indeed, throughout Francis's tenure as pope, critics have wondered if his interest in politics, perhaps the most worldly of earthly affairs, is unbefitting of the Vicar of Christ. “The charge that the pope is too political is not new,” history professor Walter Moss noted in a February essay, “and has just intensified in right-wing circles since Rush Limbaugh claimed in 2013 that the pope’s words regarding capitalism were ‘just pure Marxism.’” Perhaps distantly echoing Limbaugh’s disdain for papal politics, this year’s slate of GOP candidates have been quick to dismiss Francis’s approach to politics and economics, with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie recently saying, “The fact is that his infallibility is on religious matters, not on political ones."

Implicit in Christie's remark—and in much anxiety about Francis’s focus on politics—is the idea that the realm of religion and its moral considerations is somehow separate from the world of politics. The fact that politics are rightly conceived of as fraught by distasteful compromise and often corruption likely contributes to the separation of that dreadful enterprise from the heavenly, high-minded world of religion, where right and wrong are far more clearly demarcated. There is also probably some bleed between the idea of separating religious morality and political consideration, thanks to American regard for the idea of separating Church and State; but to split up the two institutions is a far more plausible endeavor than attempting to split up the two forms of deliberation.

In reality, politics is as much a moral theater as any other human activity. And we all bring our morals into politics.

To paraphrase Aristotle, the question before any democratic body is: How ought we live together? This is the foundational question of democratic politics, one that helps illuminate matters of government procedure (such as how to make decisions) as well as the goals of governance itself. If, as Michael Scaperlanda and Teresa Stanton Collett argue in Recovering Self-Evident Truths: Catholic Perspectives on American Law, “legal systems are meant to order relationships among human persons,” then laying out laws is a matter of making judgments as to how human relationships should be ordered. When we create laws in order to create peaceful relations between citizens, communities, states, and nations, we are communicating at the very least that we value peace, and likely a variety of other values that peace itself ensures: life, self-actualization, development, joy.

All of which are moral judgments. That living is better than dying and thriving is better than struggling are not straightforwardly objective calculations, but rather reflections of our shared investment in a particular vision of human life. (Bleaker, more martial cultures of the past might well disagree with us.) But these are the morality calls that underpin the enterprise of our politics, and in many ways the game of political rhetoric concerns various parties attempting to claim that their policies or missions more accurately reflect or achieve our values than their opponents’ do.

For that reason, it is both incoherent and absurd to claim Pope Francis is being especially daring by addressing politics from a moral perspective. It is incoherent because all people who talk about politics, be they clerics or politicians or ordinary citizens, do so within a framework of explicit or implicit moral premises. It is absurd because it isn’t possible to imagine politics without the moral concern that precedes the whole project of political life to begin with, namely how best to live public life in an orderly way.

For Pope Francis, ignoring political matters would mean ignoring a key component of the lives he is entrusted to care for and guide. Despite the suggestions of his critics, his statements about politics are not excessively detailed prescriptions; Francis has not proposed any bills, and he is not in the habit of trying to tinker with legislation. What he can do and does well is to highlight the moral dimensions of matters that might otherwise appear to be simple issues of calculation—that is, to point out that polluting the air is more than a question of what costs companies must endure to reduce emissions, but also a question of what we owe to our common home and the people we share it with. It has never been the case that Francis is too political, but is probably the case that politics is, oftentimes, not nearly morally conscious enough.


“Attack on New Ulm” by Anton Gag, 1904

The painting’s celebrated accuracy rested on the fact that Gag—himself a German-Bohemian immigrant who moved to New Ulm because of its settlement as a German community—based his representation off of narratives told by white settlers, still residing in New Ulm, who claimed to distinctively remember exact scenes from the conflict. However, Gag reportedly had another source for his creation: a visit to a Dakota Indian Reservation. The Dakota story of the conflict was not the reason for the visit, but rather to draw the Dakota and their “artifacts” for representation in the painting. The painting has recently been problematized as inaccurate historical representation perpetuating stereotypical visions of Native Americans as violent and “savage”.

In the fall of 2015, the Art Subcommittee of the Minnesota State Capitol Preservation Commission, held a critical discussion on the representation of Native Americans in the art displayed at the Capitol. Committee member Gwen Westerman, Dakota educator and professor at Minnesota State University in Mankato, asked the other members to examine the paintings depicting Native Americans behind the visitor’s lens, and specifically, how Native American visitors might see the paintings without any context or description. How might visitors imagine themselves or their relatives in the art displayed?

Prompting this discussion was a previous meeting on Civil War paintings—the context and time period in which the Dakota War occurred—commissioned for the Capitol during the early 1900’s. These paintings were thoroughly researched, demonstrated by the great detail in Civil War uniforms and through the fact that artists called on Civil War veterans to return to specific battle sites to show their exact positions during a battle. Visitors to the Capitol announced their enthusiasm for what they felt was an ability to recognize family members and their stories in these paintings. In contrast, Westerman noted the lack of detail in the depictions of Dakota people, the inaccuracy of the clothing worn in these depictions. She drew further attention to the deceptive nature of another painting, “Treaty of Traverse Des Sioux”, which hides the reality of governmental pressures and misleading treaty translations between the English and Dakota languages.

“Treaty of Traverse des Soux” by Frank Blackwell Mayer, 1885

In summary, Westerman suggested that being presented with only titles and one-sided memories displayed in the paintings, visitors arrive without any prior knowledge or context of the history in the paintings and are not able to fill in the blanks. She asked the subcommittee to consider the larger issue at hand: What might people take away from their experience, and how do these paintings reflect Minnesota stories?

Brieanna Watters is a Ph.D. student in sociology at the University of Minnesota. Her research interests are in mass violence, collective memory and post-colonialism in the United States.


Richard Corman: Madonna

  • Richard Corman, Madonna, June 17, 1983

    Richard Corman, Madonna, June 17, 1983

On June 17, 1983, Richard Corman photographed Madonna for the film treatment of Cinde Rella – A Rock Fable. The proposed film was slated to star Madonna as Cinderella in a “gentle spoof” of the original fairy tale; rather than a glass slipper, it would be her voice that revealed her identity to Prince Charming, and the classic ‘happily-ever-after’ ending was adapted to include a music contract. At the time, Corman was a budding photographer, having worked as a studio assistant to Richard Avedon. Madonna, on the verge of stardom, was also known for her work as a back-up dancer and artist’s model, including for the photographer Lee Friedlander.

While the film was unrealized, the narrative of Cinde Rella unfolded in Madonna’s own career. Just one month following this photoshoot, her self-titled debut album was released. Including the Billboard hits Lucky Star, Borderline, and Holiday, the album would ultimately be certified 5 times platinum for having sold 5 million albums worldwide. Madonna’s career was launched. Said Corman of Madonna at the time, “her charisma was multi-dimensional. Her physical beauty, her fashion, her hair and makeup, her humor, her playful sexiness and her accessibility” (Richard Corman, Madonna 66, 2016, n.p.).

Corman, like Andy Warhol and others before him, favored the Polaroid process for the “simplicity” and immediacy that the medium offered. Due to the instantaneous and playful qualities that are inherent to Polaroids, the resulting prints, each unique, capture Madonna’s club-kid-cool style as a rising star. Seen behind her is a 1980s East Village backdrop that attracted other creative luminaries, including Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Kenny Scharf, all of whom could be found on any given night at the legendary Club 57 on St. Mark’s Place.

The Polaroids on offer were believed lost for thirty years and have only recently been rediscovered by the artist. As the prints were stored during this time, the color and clarity remains strong. Additionally, the fourteen mounted prints were used as an illustrated accompaniment to the original film treatment for Cinde Rella.

Explore Cormon's polaroids on Artsy, and place max bids on more than 200 artworks in Phillips: Photographs. Live bidding opens Monday, April 9th, at 10:00am ET.


QVM: Quaternions, Vectors, Matrices

static int const dim = /*user-defined*/;

This member of user-defined (partial) specializations of the vec_traits template must be a compile-time integer constant greater than zero that defines the size (number of elements, or dimension) of a user-defined vector type.


Grit Flashcards Preview

Self Improvement > Grit > Flashcards

Flashcards in Grit Deck (66):

The highly accomplished were paragons of perseverance.”

First, these exemplars were unusually resilient and hardworking.

Greatness is Doable

Effort Counts Twice

when you consider individuals in identical circumstances, what each achieves depends on just two things, talent and effort. Talent—how fast we improve in skill—absolutely matters. But effort factors into the calculations twice, not once.“Effort builds skill. At the very same time, effort makes skill productive. Let me give you a few examples.”

Treadmill Test

running hard was not just a function of aerobic capacity and muscle strength but also the extent to which “a subject is willing to push himself or has a tendency to quit before the punishment becomes too severe.”

“Staying on the treadmill is one thing, and I do think it’s related to staying true to our commitments even when we’re not comfortable. But getting back on the treadmill the next day, eager to try again, is in my view even more reflective of grit. Because when you don’t come back the next day—when you permanently turn your back on a commitment—your effort plummets to zero. As a consequence, your skills stop improving, and at “the same time, you stop producing anything with whatever skills you have.”

Woody Allen to Young Artists

Or, in Allen’s snappier formulation, “Eighty percent of success in life is showing up.

Without Effort

there are no shortcuts to excellence.

Developing real expertise, figuring out really hard problems, it all takes time—longer than most people imagine. And then, you know, you’ve got to apply those skills and produce goods or services that are valuable to people.

Grit is About Working on something you care about so much you are willing to stay loyal to it.

Grit Score Can Change

How gritty you are at this point in your life might be different from how gritty you were when you were younger.”

Passion needs Intensity and Endurance

Ultimate Concern

Positive Fantasizing

Or having a few competing goal hierarchies that aren’t in any way connected with each other.

A top Level Goal

When your High Level Goal In Place, do not fear the failed low level goal.

The low-level goal with the angry-looking X through it has been blocked. It’s a rejection slip, a setback, a dead end, a failure. The gritty person will be disappointed, or even heartbroken, but not for long.
Soon enough, the gritty person identifies a new low-level goal—draws another cartoon, for example—that serves the same purpose.

Build a Coherent Goal Hierarchy

To what extent do these goals serve a common purpose? The more they’re part of the same goal hierarchy—important because they then serve the same ultimate concern—the more focused your passion.”

To Achieve Lower Level Goals

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Sound advice, but as they say “try, try again, then try something different.

Keep the Higher Level Goal firmly planted

Lower Level Goals are means to the higher level goal

Building Your Compass

Grit Features

Degree to which he works with distant objects in view (as opposed to living from hand to mouth). Active preparation for later life. Working toward a definite goal.

Tendency not to abandon tasks from mere changeability. Not seeking something fresh because of novelty. Not “looking for a change.”

“Degree of strength of will or perseverance. Quiet determination to stick to a course once decided upon.

Tendency not to abandon tasks in the face of obstacles. Perseverance, tenacity, doggedness.”

One form of perseverance is the daily discipline

of trying to do things better than we did yesterday. So, after you’ve discovered and developed interest in a particular area, you must devote yourself to the sort of focused, full-hearted, challenge-exceeding-skill practice that leads to mastery. You must zero in on your weaknesses, and you must do so over and over again, for hours a day, week after month after year. To be gritty is to resist complacency.

What ripens passion is the conviction that your work matters.

For most people, interest without purpose is nearly impossible to sustain for a lifetime. It is therefore imperative that you identify your work as both personally interesting and, at the same time, integrally connected to the well-being of others. For a few, a sense of purpose dawns early, but for many, the motivation to serve others heightens after the development of interest and years of disciplined practice.

hope does not define the last stage of grit. It defines every stage. From the very beginning to the very end, it is inestimably important to learn to keep going even when things are difficult, even when we have doubts. At various points, in big “ways and small, we get knocked down. If we stay down, grit loses. If we get up, grit prevails.”

passion for your work is

Novelty of the Expert vs Beginner

William James

The old in the new is what claims the attention,“The old with a slightly new turn.”

some people get twenty years of experience

while others get one year of experience . . . twenty times in a row.

Kaizen is Japanese for resisting the plateau of arrested development.

Its literal translation is: “continuous improvement.”

Among Grit Paragons

“It’s a persistent desire to do better, “It’s the opposite of being complacent. But it’s a positive state of mind, not a negative one. It’s not looking backward with dissatisfaction. It’s looking forward and wanting to grow.”

Deliberate Practice:

Find Your Achilles Heel :zeroing in on just one narrow aspect of their overall performance. Rather than focus on what they already do well, experts strive to improve specific weaknesses. They intentionally seek out challenges they can’t yet meet.

Then, with undivided attention and great effort, experts strive to reach their stretch goal. Interestingly, many choose to do so while nobody’s watching.

Then experts do it all over again, and again, and again. Until they have finally mastered what they set out to do. Until what was a struggle before is now fluent and flawless. Until conscious incompetence becomes unconscious competence.”

Subtle Refinements of Technique and Mental models Can

add up to dazzling mastery.”

“Every day is an experiment.

The work you put into the practice results in

what you are able to do in the presentation

top performers point out that the alternative to deliberate practice

mindlessly “going through the motions” without improvement—can be its own form of suffering.”

Each of the basic requirements of deliberate practice is unremarkable:

• A clearly defined stretch goal
• Full concentration and effort
• Immediate and informative feedback
• Repetition with reflection and refinement

But how many hours of practice do most people accomplish that checks all four of these boxes? ”

Work Smart Over Hard

It’s not hours of brute-force exhaustion you’re after, he told them. It’s high-quality, thoughtful training goals pursued, just as Ericsson’s research has shown, for just a few hours a day, tops.”

my second suggestion for getting the most out of deliberate practice: Make it a habit.

By this I mean, figure out when and where you’re most comfortable doing deliberate practice. Once you’ve made your selection, do deliberate practice then and there every day. Why? Because routines are a godsend when it comes to“doing something hard.

daily rituals

In their own particular way, all the experts in this book consistently put in hours and hours of solitary deliberate practice. They follow routines. They’re creatures of habit.

However they say it, the message is the same: the long days and evenings of toil, the setbacks and disappointments and struggle, the sacrifice—all this is worth it because, ultimately, their efforts pay dividends to other people.

In harmony with one's good inner spirit. Aristotle believed noble and pure.

In the Moment, self-centred experience. primitive and vulgar

This is not to say that all grit paragons are saints, but rather, that most gritty people see their ultimate aims as deeply connected to the world beyond themselves.”

Job Career, Calling

a job (“I view my job as just a necessity of life, much like breathing or sleeping”),
a career (“I view my job primarily as a stepping-stone to other jobs”), or
a calling (“My work is one of the most important things in my life”).”

adults who felt their work was a calling missed at least a third fewer days of work than those with a job or a career.”

A calling is not some fully formed thing that you find

Whatever you do—whether you’re a janitor or the CEO—you can continually look at what you do and ask how it connects to other people, how it connects to the bigger picture, how it can be an expression of your deepest values.”

To Build a Purpose

First Purposeful Role model--:shows its possible to accomplush something on behalf of others.
Second:The person discovers a problem in the world that“needs solving.
Third:“I personally can make a difference.” This conviction, this intention to take action, he says, is why it’s so important to have observed a role model enact purpose in their own life. “You have to believe that your efforts will not be in vain.”

Fall Seven

Rise Eight

Suffering Doesn't Lead to Helplessness

It’s suffering you think you can’t control.”

“additional experiments revealed that suffering without control reliably produces symptoms of clinical depression, including changes in appetite and physical activity, sleep problems, and poor concentration.”

I have a feeling tomorrow“will be better is different from I resolve to make tomorrow better. The hope that gritty people have has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with getting up again.”

Optimists vs Pessimists

just as likely to encounter bad events as pessimists. Where they diverge is in their explanations: optimists habitually search for temporary and specific causes of their suffering, whereas pessimists assume permanent and pervasive causes are to blame.”

The Danger of Permanent and Pervasive Explanations

you might say, I screw up everything. Or: I’m a loser. These explanations are all permanent; there’s not much you can do to change them. They’re also pervasive; they’re likely to influence lots of life situations, not just your job performance. Permanent and pervasive explanations for adversity turn minor complications into major catastrophes. They make it seem logical to give up. If, on the other hand, you’re an optimist, you might say, I mismanaged my time. Or: I didn’t work efficiently because of distractions. These explanations are all temporary and specific; their “fixability” motivates you to start clearing them away as problems.

If you believe there are no solutions to your problem, there is no hope of you finding any

Learn to identify Failure as a cue to try harder rather than

as confirmation that they lacked the ability to succeed.”

Growth Mindset Makes Grit

We’ve found that students with a growth mindset are significantly grittier than students with a fixed mindset. What’s more, grittier students earn higher report card grades and, after graduation, are more likely to enroll in and persist through college. ”

Ultimately, adopting a gritty perspective involves recognizing that people

get better at things—they grow. Just as we want to cultivate the ability to get up off the floor when life has knocked us down, we want to give those around us the benefit of the doubt when something they’ve tried isn’t a raging success. There’s always tomorrow.”

The people who have continued to be successful here have stayed on a growth trajectory.

They just keep surprising you with how much they’re growing. We’ve had people who, if you looked at their résumé coming in, you’d say, ‘Wow, how did that person end up so successful?’ And we’ve had other people come in with incredible credentials, and you’re wondering, ‘Why did they not go further?’ ”

You need to step back, analyze them, and learn from them. But you also need to stay optimistic.”

We think there is plasticity in that circuitry. If you experience adversity—something pretty potent—that you overcome on your own during your youth, you develop a different way of dealing with adversity later on.

It’s important that the adversity be pretty potent. Because these brain areas really have to wire together in some fashion, and that doesn’t happen with just minor inconveniences.”
For the rewiring to happen, you have to activate the control circuitry at the same time as those low-level areas. That happens when you experience mastery at the same time as adversity.”

You need to learn that there’s a contingency between your actions and what happens to you:

If I do something, then something will happen to you

Collectively, the evidence I’ve presented tells the following story:

Practice Optimistic Self Talk

Math "Talent"

“People assume you have to have some special talent to do mathematics,” Sylvia has said. “They think you’re either born with it, or you’re not. But Rhonda and I keep saying, ‘You actually develop the ability to do mathematics. Don’t give up!’ ”

“There have been so many times in my career when I wanted to pack it in, when I wanted to give up and do something easier,” Rhonda told me. “But there was always someone who, in one way or another, told me to keep going. I think everyone needs somebody like that. Don’t you?”