Sep 182017

Today is the birthday (1888) of Archibald Belaney who called himself Grey Owl when he took on a fraudulent First Nations identity for himself as an adult. Belaney was, to say the least, a colorful character, much prone to exaggerating and downright lying about his life. He also appears to have married 4 women without divorcing any of them (although the civil legitimacy of some of these marriages is doubtful, having been performed as indigenous rituals). He was born in England and migrated to Canada early in the 20th century. He rose to prominence as a notable author and lecturer on conservation, described as “one of the most effective apostles of the wilderness”. In studying the Ojibwe, he learned some native harvesting techniques and trapping skills which provided him with a living for a while. The pivotal moment of his life’s work was when he began a relationship with a young Iroquois woman named Gertrude Bernard, who assisted in his transition from trapper to conservationist.

Grey Owl was born Archibald Stansfeld Belaney near Hastings in Sussex. His mother, Kittie, was his father’s second wife. Years before Archie’s birth, his father, George Belaney had emigrated to the United States with his then-wife Elizabeth Cox and her younger sister Katherine (Kittie). After Elizabeth’s early death, George persuaded Kittie, not yet 20, to marry him, a marriage that would have been illegal in Britain. Within the year they returned to Britain in time for the birth of their son Archie. The family lived together near Hastings until Kittie became pregnant for a second time. George and Kittie Belaney left to return to the United States, where he abandoned her. Archie remained in England in the care of his father’s mother Juliana Belaney and his father’s two younger sisters, Julia Caroline Belaney and Janet Adelaide Belaney, whom the boy would know as Aunt Carry and Aunt Ada. Kittie visited him a few times.

As a boy, Belaney was known for pranks, such as using his grammar school chemistry to make small bombs which he called “Belaney Bombs.” At the time he was fascinated by Native Americans, and he would read extensively about them and draw them in the margins of his books. Belaney left Hastings Grammar School and started work as a clerk with a timber company located behind St Helen’s Wood. There Belaney and his friend George McCormick practiced the arts of knife throwing and marksmanship. His last event at the company was lowering fireworks down the chimney of the timber company’s office. The fireworks exploded and nearly destroyed the building. After the timber yard fired him, Belaney’s aunts let him move to Canada, where he sought adventure.

On March 29, 1906 (aged 17) Belaney sailed for Halifax. He emigrated ostensibly to study agriculture. After a brief time in Toronto, he moved to Temagami (Tema-Augama), Northern Ontario, where he worked as a fur trapper, a wilderness guide at Keewaydin camp, and a forest ranger. At first he began to sign his name as “Grey Owl”. Then he fabricated a Native identity, telling people that he was the child of a Scottish father and Apache mother. He claimed to have emigrated from the U.S. to join the Ojibwa in Canada.

Belaney went to Toronto to earn money in the retail industry with aims of traveling farther north. Before heading to Northern Ontario to stay with the Guppy family in Lake Timiskaming, Belaney was keen to become a guide and continued to educate himself in nature. Before becoming a trapper, Belaney sought first-hand experience to learn the basic skills of a woodsman and apprenticed himself to Bill Guppy, who taught Belaney how to use snow-shoes and the basics of trapping, including how to place several types of trap. Following the Guppy family, he moved to Lake Temagami (Tema-Augama) in Northern Ontario, where he worked as a chore boy at the Temagami Inn for 2 years before returning to Britain.

Upon his return to Lake Temagami, Belaney’s fascination with the Anishinaabe people increased. Belaney set about studying their language and lore while conducting a relationship with Ojibwa co-worker Angele Egwuna. Egwuna helped Belaney increase his knowledge of trapping and fish nets, and also provided him access to a network of Ojibwe people. Belaney says he passionately embraced the cause of the Ojibwe Indians, and that in turn the Ojibwe treated Belaney as one of their own. In 1909, Belaney spent a winter with the Ojibwa trappers, and claimed he had been adopted as an Ojibwa trapper. In Donald B. Smith’s From the Land of Shadows, it is noted that Belaney’s greatest lesson from the Ojibwa was the fragility of the environmental ecosystem and this was profoundly influential in forming his conservationist views. On August 23, 1910, he and Angele Egwuna married.

Belaney enlisted with the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force (CEF) on May 6, 1915 during the First World War. On his attestation papers, he claimed to be born in Montreal on September 18, 1888, and listed no next of kin. When asked about his marital status, there was some confusion. He wrote the word ‘yes’ then crossed it out, then wrote the word ‘no’ and crossed it out, leaving his marital status unclear to the military at the time of enlistment. He stated his trade was a ‘trapper’ and that he previously served as a ‘Mexican Scout’ with the 28th Dragoons, although this is unclear since the U.S. was not in any significant military actions in the region (other than small operations, in which he could not have served). Belaney joined the 13th (Montreal) Battalion of the Black Watch. His unit was shipped to France, where he served as a sniper. His comrades accepted his self-presentation as Indian and generally praised his conduct. Belaney was wounded in January 1916, and then more seriously on April 24, 1916, with a shot through the foot. When the wounded limb developed gangrene, Belaney was shipped to Britain for treatment.

While doctors tried to heal his foot, they moved Belaney from one British infirmary to another for a full year. In Britain, Belaney met again with childhood friend, Constance (Ivy) Holmes, and they married. Their marriage failed in a short time, without his having told Holmes that he was still married to Angele Egwuna, whom he had abandoned but not divorced. Belaney was shipped back to Canada in September 1917, where he received an honorable discharge on November 30, with a disability pension.

In 1925, then 37-year-old Belaney met 19-year-old Gertrude Bernard (aka Anahareo, or Pony), a Mohawk Iroquois woman who was to be very influential in his life. She encouraged him to stop trapping and to publish his writing about the wilderness. They had a passionate 8-year affair, beginning with their Anishinaabe wedding ceremony. Through her influence, he began to think more deeply about conservation. Anahareo encouraged his writing and influenced him by saving and raising a pair of beaver kits.

After accompanying Belaney on a trapline, Anahareo attempted to make him see the torture that animals suffered when they were caught in traps. Anahareo could not convince Belaney until his pivotal moment of conversion from trapper to conservationist occurred involving beavers. According to Belaney’s Pilgrims of the Wild, he hunted down a beaver home where he knew a mother beaver to be and set a trap for her. When the trap caught the mother beaver, Belaney began to canoe away to the cries of kitten beavers which greatly resemble the sound of human infants. Anahareo begged Belaney to set the mother free, but he could not be swayed from his position because they needed the money from the beaver’s pelt. The next day, Belaney went back for the baby beavers which the couple adopted. Albert Braz noted in “St. Archie of the Wild”, “Indeed, primarily because of this episode, Grey Owl comes to believe that it is ‘monstrous’ to hunt such creatures and determines to ‘study them’ rather than ‘persecuting them further.'”

Belaney’s first journal article, “The Falls of Silence”, was published under the name A.S. Belaney in Country Life, the English sporting and society magazine. He also published articles on animal lore as “Grey Owl” in Forest & Outdoors, a publication of the Canadian Forestry Association. He became increasingly known in Canada and the United States. In 1928, the National Park Service made a film, Beaver People, featuring Belaney and Anahareo, which showed them with the two beavers which they had taken in as kits. Belaney wrote 25 articles for Canadian Forest and Outdoors magazine between 1930 and 1935, published while he was in the midst of writing his first book.

Belaney’s first book,The Men of the Last Frontier was published in 1931, and it traced the devastating story of the beaver as well as posed some concerns about the future of Canada and its forests. Beaver pelts had become such a hot commodity in Canadian industry that the beaver was on the verge of extinction when Anahareo helped Belaney understand the desperate need for protecting the animal instead of trapping it. According to Belaney in The Men of the Last Frontier, trappers swarmed to the forests in higher numbers than ever before in 1930 because of the beaver’s scarcity, and he argued that the only way to save this animal was to remove all of the trappers from the forests. This was an extremely difficult feat however because their pelts were so valuable and the job economy was so poor in the 1930s that he described their role in the economy as “beavers [being] to the north what gold was to the west”. Though much of his focus in his writings were on the beaver, he also believed that this animal could be used as a symbol for the disappearing future of Canadian wilderness in a broader sense. Belaney believed that Canada’s wilderness and vastly open nature was what made it unique from other countries of the world, and this was disappearing at an extremely fast rate due to consumerism and the modernist emphasis on capital. Grey Owl also discussed in The Men of the Last Frontier how the Canadian government and logging industry were working together to project a false image of forest preservation in order to gain possession of Canada’s forests and rid them of their resources, burn down what remained, and attempt to replant “synthetic forests” in their places. The Men of the Last Frontier was a call of desperation for the people of Canada to awaken from their immobility and resist the destruction of their country as the forests were being turned into deserts for profit.

For me as native-born Argentino the great irony is that beavers are a menace in southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego where they were introduced from Canada, originally for their pelts.  But they have no natural predators there and there is virtually no hunting or trapping, so they are overrunning the wilderness and destroying woodlands and rivers with their dams and lodges. At the moment the government appears powerless to stop the devastation which is painfully evident if you visit the region.

In 1931, Belaney and Anahareo moved briefly (with their beavers) to a cabin in Riding Mountain National Park to find a sanctuary for them. Riding Mountain National Park was found to be an unsuitable habitat for the beavers, as a summer drought resulted in the lake water level sinking, and becoming stagnant. Both the beavers and Belaney were unhappy with the situation, causing Belaney to search, with the support of the Dominion Parks Branch, for better living conditions. The Parks Branch suggested Prince Albert National Park, situated 450 miles north-west of Riding Mountain National Park. Belaney and Anahareo found the park suitable for their needs as it was isolated, teeming with wildlife, heavily wooded. Belaney told his publisher and future biographer, Lovat Dickson, the following story about his origins:

In 1935–36 and 1937–38, Belaney toured Canada and Britain (including Hastings) to promote his books and lecture about conservation. His popularity attracted large, interested audiences, as Pilgrims in the Wild at one point was selling 5,000 copies a month. Belaney appeared in traditional Ojibwa clothing as part of his fraudulent First Nations identity. Although his aunts recognized him at his 1935 appearance in Hastings, they did not talk about his true, British origins until 1937. During a publication tour of Canada, Grey Owl met Yvonne Perrier, a French-Canadian woman. In November, 1936 they married.

The book tours (and chronic alcoholism) took a major toll on Belaney’s health. In April 1938, he returned to Beaver Lodge, his cabin at Ajawaan Lake. Five days later, he was found unconscious on the floor of the cabin. Although taken to Prince Albert hospital for treatment, he died of pneumonia on April 13, 1938. He was buried near his cabin with 2 of his children.

Eating something you have foraged seems appropriate for today’s recipe. This will depend on where you live, of course.  One of my most valuable possessions for many years when I lived in the Catskills was the Peterson guide to edible plants.  Some are pretty obvious, such as the many berries available in the region – most notably blueberries.  But there are mountains of edible greens which you can eat fresh or boiled.  Mushrooming is a little tricky, and I would not recommend it without some expert knowledge. I routinely found morels, boletus mushrooms, sulfur shelf mushrooms, and puff balls.  I always loved the line “all true puff balls are edible.” This is correct, but what is a “true” puff ball ???? The deadly amanitas has the habit of disguising itself as a puff ball when young. You can tell the difference quite easily if you cut one open (and know what you are looking for). Anyway, I find puff balls rather bland. Fried to a golden brown in heaps of butter they aren’t too bad. Watercress was also abundant in side eddies of streams where I lived and you could pick basket loads in minutes. Then there’s acorns, black walnuts, scuppernong grapes . . . you name it.  There’s a feast out there. Have at it.

Aug 122017

Cinnamon Elephant Ears

1 cup sugar
kosher salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 sheet puff pastry, defrosted

Preheat the oven to 450˚F/230˚C.

Cool on a wire rack.

Sep 142016

Today is the birthday (1909) of Sir Peter Markham Scott CH CBE DSC FRS FZS,  British ornithologist, conservationist, painter, naval officer, and sportsman. Scott was born in London, the only child of Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott and sculptor Kathleen Bruce. He was only two years old when his father died. Robert Scott, in a last letter to his wife, advised her to “make the boy interested in natural history if you can; it is better than games.” He was named after Sir Clements Markham, mentor of Scott’s polar expeditions, and his godfather was J. M. Barrie, creator of Peter Pan

Scott was educated at Oundle School and Trinity College, Cambridge, initially reading Natural Sciences but graduating in the History of Art in 1931. He displayed a strong interest in painting, became known as a painter of wildlife, particularly birds. His wealthy background allowed him to follow his interests in art, wildlife, and many sports, including wildfowling, sailing and ice skating. He represented Great Britain and Northern Ireland at sailing in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, winning a bronze medal in the O-Jolle dinghy class.

During the Second World War, Scott served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. As a Sub-Lieutenant, during the failed evacuation of the 51st Highland Division he was the British Naval officer sent ashore at Saint-Valery-en-Caux in the early hours of 11 June 1940 to evacuate some of the wounded. Then he served in destroyers in the North Atlantic but later moved to commanding the First (and only) Squadron of Steam Gun Boats against German E-boats in the English Channel. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for bravery.

Scott is credited with designing the Western Approaches ship camouflage scheme, which disguised the look of ship superstructure. In July 1940, he managed to get the destroyer HMS Broke (D83) in which he was serving experimentally camouflaged, differently on the two sides. To starboard, the ship was painted blue-grey all over, but with white in naturally shadowed areas as countershading, following the ideas of Abbott Handerson Thayer from the First World War. To port, the ship was painted in “bright pale colours” to combine some disruption of shape with the ability to fade out during the night, again with shadowed areas painted white. However, he later wrote that compromise was fatal to camouflage, and that invisibility at night (by painting ships in white or other pale colors) had to be the sole objective. By May 1941, all ships in the Western Approaches (the North Atlantic) were ordered to be painted in Scott’s camouflage scheme. The scheme was said to be so effective that several British ships collided with each other. The effectiveness of Scott’s and Thayer’s ideas was demonstrated experimentally by the Leamington Camouflage Centre in 1941. Under a cloudy overcast sky, the tests showed that a white ship could approach six miles (9.6 km) closer than a black-painted ship before being seen. For this work he was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire.

He stood as a Conservative candidate unsuccessfully in the 1945 general election in Wembley North. In 1946, he founded the organization with which he was ever afterwards closely associated, the Severn Wildfowl Trust (now the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust) with its headquarters at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire, where he saved the nene or Hawaiian goose, from extinction in the 1950s, through a captive breeding program. In the years that followed, he led ornithological expeditions worldwide, and became a television personality, popularizing the study of wildfowl and wetlands.

I’m not an especially avid fan of Scott. I watched a few of his television shows in the 1960s, but he seemed a bit too aristocratic and distant for my tastes. I was intrigued by the fact that he was Robert Scott’s son, though, and wondered whether that was what led to his fame. I think, in hindsight, that’s a bit harsh. His work on conservation, especially wildfowl and wetlands, is extremely important,  not least because he began it at a time when few were interested. The water meadows in Gloucestershire he preserved are some of the last remaining in Britain. They were once havens for biodiversity throughout the British Isles. By my eye his painting is sentimental and overrated as art. It was good for raising money for, and awareness of, conservation, however. Here’s a gallery:

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I’m awfully tempted to give a recipe for wild duck or goose, but will resist. You have to accept, though, that Scott came to conservation because he had been an avid hunter, not in spite of it. Many conservation efforts in Britain and the U.S. were promoted by hunters precisely because they experienced, first hand, the declining numbers of wildfowl. I’ve been a duck hunter myself, in the brackish sounds of North Carolina (not because I care for the sport, but because I was documenting the culture as an anthropologist). I too witnessed the plunging populations of ducks and geese over the course of the 1970s and ’80s. So, I’ll divert from meat to eggs.

Duck eggs are a rarity in the West, but in Asia they are as easy to find as chicken eggs (as are quail eggs). I probably ate duck eggs more often than chicken eggs in China. Basically you can do with duck eggs whatever you do with chicken eggs – fry, poach, boil, bake, scramble, etc. You can make omelets, soufflés, frittatas, cakes, or whatever you want. They are about the same size as a chicken egg and taste more or less the same – perhaps a bit richer, and the yolks can be more golden. Here’s a gallery to get you started.

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This website is great. There is a heavy emphasis on asparagus and ham as accompaniments. So, for today I’ll go with a poached duck egg with fried ham and asparagus on toast. This can make a good first course. I often poach eggs instead of frying them, and have used them a lot in recipes here in this blog. But a quick scan shows that I have never given a recipe. People don’t poach eggs much these days. I guess they think it is more of a hassle than frying, though I don’t think it is. It just takes a little practice. Here’s a step by step.

Use a deep frying pan. Fill it with water and add a little salt and vinegar. The vinegar assists in keeping the white together as it cooks.

Bring to a slow simmer.

Crack an egg on to a plate or saucer. This step is not absolutely necessary, but I find it aids in getting the egg into the poaching water.

Slide the egg gently into the water.

Push the yolk  and white around a little (gently) whilst it cooks. You want to keep the white tight, and also keep the yolk off the bottom.

Remove from the water with a slotted spoon and serve.

The degree of doneness of the egg is your choice. I prefer the white cooked and the yolk runny. This takes about 3 minutes. If you want a harder yolk cook the egg longer.

May 142016

Ruby-throated Hummingbird

mb11 mb10 mb9

Sufficient for 4 or 5 persons.

Seasonable from April to September.

Jul 292015

The tiger (Panthera tigris) is the largest cat species, reaching a total body length of up to 3.38 m (11.1 ft) and can weigh up to 388.7 kg (857 lb) in the wild. Its most recognizable feature is a pattern of dark vertical stripes on reddish-orange fur with a lighter underside. The species is classified in the genus Panthera with the lion, leopard, jaguar and snow leopard. Tigers are apex predators (top of the food chain), primarily preying on ungulates such as deer and bovids. They are territorial and generally solitary but social animals, meaning that they are usually solitary but have some social traits. Adult males are usually fiercely territorial but on occasion will allow other males to enter their territory provided they are submissive. Females often have somewhat overlapping territories. Tigers require large contiguous areas of habitat that support their prey needs. This, coupled with the fact that they are indigenous to some of the more densely populated places on Earth, has caused significant conflicts with humans.

Tigers are among the most recognizable and popular of the world’s megafauna. They have featured prominently in ancient legends and folklore, and continue to be depicted in modern films, advertizing, and literature. They appear on many flags, coats of arms, and as mascots for sporting teams. The tiger is the national animal of Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Malaysia and South Korea.

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The tiger replaces the lion as king of the beasts in cultures of eastern Asia, representing royalty, fearlessness and wrath. In Chinese children stories, it is often said that the stripes on a tiger’s forehead represent the character 王 (“king”).

Some Asian cultures that celebrated tiger worship in the past still practice forms of it. In the suburbs of Kunming, where I live in China, there is a tourist attraction where the tiger worship of the Yi minority is displayed for tourists. This takes place in Solar Calendar Square (complete with a growling tiger statue, five meters high). In Chuxiong there is a similar attraction. A tiger totem ritual is presented for tourists; the ritual portrays the Yi belief that the tiger set the entire world in motion. A tiger dance is also performed at such places explaining the history of the Yi and their worship of tigers.

Along with these tourist attractions that display historical practices of the Yi, there is also archeological evidence for tiger worship in Yunnan. Tigers were found depicted on small stones. These stones were pierced and worn as amulets, suggesting that the tiger had a certain power of protection for its wearer. The Queen Mother deity of the west, Hsi Wang Mu, sometimes possessed the tail of a tiger in her depictions and, like the tiger, was associated with the mountains . The tiger was also a deity for both the Tungus and the Black Pottery people.

In many parts of Vietnam, the tiger is a revered creature. Some villages have a tiger temple. Tigers are admired for their great strength, ferocity and grace. The tiger is also considered a guardian deity. Tiger statutes are usually seen at the entrance of temples and palaces, keeping evil spirits from entering those places.

The tiger is associated with the Hindu deities Shiva and Durga. In Pokhara, Nepal the tiger festival is known as Bagh Jatra. Celebrants dance disguised as tigers and are “hunted”. The Warli of Maharashtra in India worship Waghia the lord of tigers in the form of a shapeless stone.

The slang for “so-so” in Kunming dialect is 马马虎虎 (horse horse tiger tiger). Don’t ask me why.

For a recipe I have chosen a Thai dish of sliced barbecued steak with a hot dipping sauce known as Crying Tiger. I’ve had it several times in Kunming cooked by Dai chefs. It’s easy enough to make as long as you follow the recipe for the dipping sauce precisely. You might find powdered roast rice difficult to find, but it’s easy to make. Scatter raw rice grains in a dryheavy skillet and toast them over medium heat, stirring constantly, until they take on color. Then grind them to a powder in a food processor or blender. Here’s an authentic recipe.

You can serve the steak hot with rice, or cold over salad greens with a little of the sauce on the greens.

Mar 222015

World Water Day has been observed on 22 March since 1993 when the United Nations General Assembly declared 22 March as “World Day for Water.” This day was first formally proposed in Agenda 21 of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro. Observance began in 1993 and has grown significantly ever since. For the general public to show support, people are encouraged not to use their taps throughout the whole day. The day has also become popular on Facebook and Twitter.

In addition to the UN member states, a number of NGOs promoting clean water and sustainable aquatic habitats have used World Day for Water as a time to focus public attention on the critical water issues of our era. Every three years since 1997, for instance, the World Water Council has drawn thousands to participate in its World Water Forum during the week of World Day for Water. Participating agencies and NGOs have highlighted issues such as that a billion people worldwide do not have access to safe water for drinking, and the role of gender in family access to safe water.

The theme for 2015 is Water and Sustainable Development which consolidates and builds upon the themes of previous World Water Days in order to highlight water’s role in the sustainable development agenda.

These themes are taken from the official website with my commentary in italics.

Water is health

Clean hands can save your life

It has long been a well known fact that keeping your hands clean is one of the most important, if not the most important, way to prevent contracting infectious diseases. As a pastor I used to shake everyone’s hand on the way out of church and then immediately wash my hands.

Water is nature

Ecosystems lie at the heart of the global water cycle.

Obviously you cannot have an ecosystem without water. ALL living things require water to survive. Some, such as cacti and camels, are ingenious at storing water in dry ecosystems, but they still need it.

Water is urbanization

Every week, one million people move into cities.

The endless migration of people to cities puts an increasing, and at present unsustainable, burden on lakes, rivers, and reservoirs which are frequently polluted.

Water is industry

Industry has a complicated relationship with water resources. It has an insatiable need for water which is used for a variety of purposes, such as for cooling. But then it returns the water to rivers and lakes. All would be well if it were clean upon return, but often it is not.

Water is energy

Water and energy are inseparable friends.

Among other things, water is an important source of energy via hydro-electric power. Niagara Falls, for example, provides vast quantities of electricity that serves the eastern seaboard f the U.S. and Canada. Hydro-electric is eminently sustainable.

Water is gender

In many cultures women are responsible for the family water supply.

Water is food

To produce two steaks you need 15 000 liters of water.

Here is a table of the quantity of water needed to produce various foods (click to enlarge).

Sometimes I struggle to find a recipe linked to the theme of the day. No worries on that score today: just the opposite. Too much! I figured that the most obvious use of water in cooking is in making soup – generally speaking, my favorite class of food; spring, summer, autumn winter. I am never happier than when my kitchen is redolent of rich savors from a bubbling pot on the stove. So, I recommend you make your favorite soup today. Mine is an Indonesian chicken soup – soto ayam (which translates as “chicken soup). There are almost infinite varieties, but the basics are the same. You serve a chicken broth, piping hot, spiced with shrimp paste and turmeric and containing noodles and chunks of poached chicken. Each diner gets a bowl and then adds toppings from a selection, such as, green onions, sliced hard-boiled eggs, crispy fried onions and/or garlic, cilantro, and sambal oelek. Here’s my rough recipe guidelines from memory, as ever, with only loose ideas about quantities.

©Soto Ayam

In a big stock pot poach a small chicken with a stalk of lemon grass, 1 tablespoon of ground turmeric, a hunk of blachang (dried shrimp paste), 1 teaspoon each of ground cumin and ground coriander, and a piece of fresh ginger until the meat is just tender. This usually takes me about 50 minutes. Remove the chicken, return the broth to a boil and cook a sufficient quantity of noodles for the number of diners. Cellophane noodles are the commonest in Java and Bali, but it’s your choice. I’ve often used ramen.

Strip the chicken meat from the bones. When the noodles are cooked, make up deep bowls of broth with noodles and chicken. Provide your guests a choice of toppings for them to add as they wish. The standards are crispy fried onions, sliced boiled eggs, and sambal oelek, a fiery sauce made with fierce red chile peppers and tomato (which I have often found at supermarkets in the U.S). There are no limits, however. Other favorites include cilantro leaves, bean sprouts, and sliced boiled potatoes.

You can buy crispy fried onions, but they are easy to make. Slice onions coarsely and spread them with salt in a sieve. Let the moisture drain out, then pat them dry with paper towels. Heat deep frying oil to 300°F and fry the onions until they are deep golden. Drain on wire racks. They can be stored in airtight containers, so you can make big batches. You can do the same with sliced garlic.

Sep 012013

Martha today

Martha today

Pigeon peas and Rice

*1 green pepper with ribs and seeds removed
*1 medium onion peeled and quartered
*1 scotch bonnet pepper (or other hot pepper)
*2 cloves garlic peeled
*5 stems fresh cilantro
*½ tsp dried oregano
*2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
*1 tsp salt
1 cup cooked pigeon peas (or canned)
1 ½ cups long grain rice
3 cups water
1 tbsp capers plus their vinegar
1 lime cut into wedges

Serves 4 to 6


Glossary of Linguistic Terms

Conditional Relation

A conditional relation is a logical relation in which the illocutionary act employing one of a pair of propositions is expressed or implied to be true or in force if the other proposition is true.

If you give her the ring, then you are married to her. I hereby pronounce you married. Are you married to her? Do marry her.  If only you would marry her!

Once admit that they have a case, and your moral superiority collapses.


When are they available

The Mathemagicians are mainly undergraduate and postgraduate students who volunteer their time. As such any visit to a school is arranged around their study commitmetns. Most undergraduates leave Oxford for home at the end of each term so they are usually available during term time, but postgraduates may be available outside these times.

We generally need a minimum of one month notice to arrange a visit. It may also be possible to arrange for a class to visit the Mathematical Institute for a workshop.

The above information serves as guidance only so please do not hesitate to contact us with your request - we will do our best to accommodate you.

Mathemagicians Chocolate game Truck game


Each month (alternates between the 2nd Monday and Tuesday of the month), ladies are invited to gather for a meal at a restaurant in the Madison Area.  We venture to a variety of places and types of cuisine.  We gather between 5:30 & 6 and stay as time allows.  This is a wonderful opportunity to connect with new people.

The men of Sugar River also have a night out.  They meet at 6 and also stay as time allows.  This group usually gathers on Monday, either the 2nd or 3rd Monday of the month.


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Determining Which Events Are Not Being Processed

Events that are not processed end up in a dead letter queue. There are two types of events. One, where the event could not be parsed at all. Two, where the event was parsed, but failed validation


Anthropology and Archaeology: Year In Review 2000

Physical Anthropology

In 2000 an international research team published a molecular analysis of mitochondrial DNA extracted from the rib of an approximately 29,000-year-old Neanderthal infant. (Mitochondria are DNA-containing cytoplasmic components of cells that play an essential role in the conversion of the energy of foodstuffs into the energy used for cellular activities.) The specimen was recovered from Mezmaiskaya Cave in the northern Caucasus region of Russia, one of the easternmost Neanderthal sites. When the DNA fragment, consisting of 345 base pairs, was compared with the same region sequenced in 1997 from a specimen found in the Feldhofer Cave in Germany, only 12 differences (3.48%) were found. This close genetic relationship provided invaluable corroboration for the authenticity of the previously reported, but undated, Neanderthal sequence from Germany. The infant’s DNA exhibited 22 differences from the standard human (Anderson) reference sequence for modern human mitochondrial DNA, whereas the Feldhofer Cave specimen contained 27 differences with respect to the Anderson sequence. Nineteen of these differences were shared by the two Neanderthals, and subsequent analysis placed them in a clade (lineage) distinct from modern humans. The age of the most recent common ancestor of the mitochondrial DNA molecules of the two Neanderthal specimens was estimated to be 151,000–352,000 years, a range concordant with dates derived from the paleontological record for the emergence of the Neanderthal lineage. Overall, the results supported the out-of-Africa theory for the origin of modern humans rather than the multiregional hypothesis.

  • Neanderthals and modern humans during the Late Pleistocene to the Holocene epoch. Thematic map.
    Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

The surprisingly recent radiocarbon date (29,195 [ 965] years ago) on collagen derived from the Neanderthal infant lent credence to the assertion that Neanderthals and modern humans overlapped throughout much of Europe for thousands of years. An international team also recently redated two important Neanderthal specimens from Vindija Cave in Croatia. The new radiocarbon dates of 29,080 ( 400) and 28,020 ( 360) years ago from a mandible and a parietal bone of different individuals provided additional confirmation of previous claims, based on sites in Spain and Portugal, that some Neanderthal populations were still present less than 30,000 years ago, well after the first definitive evidence of modern human skeletal structure in Europe (at approximately 32,000 years ago).

Dmanisi, Georgia, captured the paleoanthropological spotlight when two partial hominid crania dated to about 1.7 million years ago documented what may have been the first migration of the genus Homo out of Africa. The site had previously yielded a hominid mandible in 1991 and a metatarsal bone in 1997; however, the taxonomic affinities of the two specimens as well as their dating were uncertain. The new skeletal material, along with more than 1,000 simple stone artifacts and new geochronological and paleomagnetic data, were combined by an international group of scholars to suggest the following scenario. Shortly after the first appearance of Homo ergaster (also called African Homo erectus) about 1.9 million years ago, a population of these hominids moved out of Africa via the Levantine corridor (near the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea) and continued in a northeasterly direction, eventually arriving in Dmanisi between the Black and Caspian seas.

Structurally, the Dmanisi remains closely resembled the 1.6 million-year-old Kenyan fossil known as the Nariokotome boy. The larger of the two Georgian specimens was an almost complete adult male calvarium (skullcap) with a cranial capacity of 780 cc (47.6 cu in), while the slightly smaller but more extensively preserved cranium, thought to be from an adolescent female, yielded an estimate of 650 cc (39.7 cu in). Perhaps the biggest surprise came not from the African morphology of the specimens but rather from the extreme simplicity of the associated artifacts. The tools consisted of flakes, scrapers, and choppers made entirely from local basalt sources, using a technology similar to that employed in East Africa as early as 2.4 million years ago. Consequently, a major implication of the cultural remains was that biological changes rather than new tools may have prompted early global colonization by Homo. Once H. ergaster achieved larger body size and once brain size exceeded that of the australopithecines, the forests of Africa were quickly left behind. It is possible that after Dmanisi these hominids moved eastward to Asia, where simple chopping tools predominated for more than a million years and where their descendants gave rise to Asian H. erectus.

The apolipoprotein (a complex molecule that combines fat and protein) E locus provided a clear example of natural selection in action during the last 300,000 years of human evolutionary history. An American-Finnish collaboration traced the genealogical history of a potentially deadly human gene. Although humans exhibited three different alleles at this locus (designated E2, E3, and E4), their closest living relative, the chimpanzee, had only the medically dangerous E4 allele. (An allele is any one of two or more genes that may occur alternatively at a given site [locus] on a chromosome.) The E4 allele was already known to increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease in humans. The ancestral E4 allele associated with elevated lipid levels was detected in only 13.5% of the chromosomes taken from an ethnically diverse set of four human populations, whereas the much more favourable E3 allele had a frequency of 79.7% among the 96 individuals sequenced at this locus on chromosome 19. Thus, the E4 allele inherited from humans’ apelike common ancestor with the chimpanzee was hypothesized to be undergoing a rapid replacement throughout the world’s populations by the medically far less dangerous E3 allele under the influence of natural selection.

Test Your Knowledge
A compound microscope.
Microscopes and Telescopes: Fact or Fiction?

June 26, 2000, was a historic day in the annals of human biology and physical anthropology. It marked the joint announcement—by Francis Collins (see Biographies), leader of a publicly funded international consortium of genome scientists, and by J. Craig Venter, president of Celera Genomics—of the final assembly of two working drafts of the human genome sequence. The actual data were posted on the Internet as a public database ( (See Life Sciences: Special Report.)

Cultural Anthropology.

As it entered the new millennium, cultural anthropology, after a decade of questioning its subdisciplinary character (specifically versus physical anthropology) and its role in understanding major trends in the contemporary world, had undergone changes that culminated in clear directions for the future. Among current concerns were ethnographic methods in anthropology, violence and war, race and ethnicity, the public face and role of anthropology, cross-national immigration and identity, the anthropological code of ethics, the environment, and human rights. In addition, core topics such as kinship were being revisited.

The shift from an earlier focus on discourse, gender, and postmodernist writing was reflected in American Anthropological Association Distinguished Lectures (for example, Sidney Mintz) and in major publications (most prominently, Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology, edited by H. Russell Bernard, an updating of the 1970 methodological “bible” edited by Raoul Naroll and Ronald Cohen). The Sidney Mintz distinguished lecture of 1996 was published in Current Anthropology in 2000, and the Handbook of Methods, a major 1998 hardcover reference volume of 19 chapters by anthropologists actively engaged in research, was reissued in paperback during the year and was thus made more accessible for classroom teaching and research.

Both publications were trendsetting and pathbreaking. This was welcomed in a field that had become saturated with nonempirical works on, among other subjects, women and gender (especially on women in the Middle East)—works that were influenced more by premises from area, women’s, and cultural studies than by anthropology. Some had adopted strong anticulture postmodernist postures that questioned ethnographic authority and stressed multiple “voices.” Discourse scholarship (originating in art, literary, and cultural studies) examined text without understanding its context and words without ethnography.

Reaction against this trend was strong, some of it ironically by non-Western scholars who challenged its fundamental humanist claim and objected to its implications of Western superiority. Most prominent was the discussion by Ziauddin Sardar, who wrote: “Colonialism has already drained much of the wealth of the ‘Third World,’ [and now] postmodernism appropriates the last resources . . . its traditions, spiritualities, cultural property, ideas and notions . . . the new imperialism.” This challenged the presumed claim that a humanistic quality inheres in certain human domains, such as oratory and dance performance, but not in others, such as alliance and kinship practices. Mintz’s lecture-publication reaffirmed field-gathered ethnographic data. Beyond this, it recalled earlier anthropology with its applications and impact beyond academia, adopting unpopular postures in defense of the legitimacy of traditional ways of life and cultural practices.

The recent posture against culture and generalization, which denied people’s individuality and the particularity of cultures, was compellingly critiqued in the above-mentioned Handbook of Methods. Stripped of identity, people become homogenized and globalized actors in a large machine of economy and postmodernity. The volume was timely in topic and current and comprehensive in the range of subjects covered; it embraced qualitative and quantitative approaches and visual and archival methods, from epistemology to ethics to visual anthropology and much more. The chapter on visual anthropology reflected the growing importance of the visual as a tool for analysis and a source of data. The Handbook was favourably reviewed as authoritative on the methods of anthropological research (systematic collecting and interpreting of human behaviour in natural settings) by experts on fieldwork in anthropology and also was regarded as serious about the ethnographic enterprise.

As to public issues, an international conference was organized by universities in Sweden and Denmark to which international scholars were invited to discuss the impact of legal immigration from less-developed (particularly Islamic) countries to the welfare states of Scandinavia. The rapid shift in population demographics became an urgent subject, intersecting cultural anthropology with public policy. The growing presence of Muslim immigrants in predominantly Lutheran Scandinavia was changing the sociocultural landscape of that area. This trend drew attention to the need of anthropological understanding of Islam and Muslim life.

The publication in November of Darkness in El Dorado: How Scientists and Journalists Devastated the Amazon by freelance journalist Patrick Tierney produced a major crisis in anthropology. Advance proofs of the book precipitated sensationalized stories critical of the Yanomami project, a series of studies among the indigenous Yanomami people of Venezuela and Brazil that began with genetic research conducted in 1968, funded in part by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and led by the late James V. Neel of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Also on the project team were anthropologist Napoleon A. Chagnon of the University of California, Santa Barbara (now retired), who had worked with the Yanomami since 1964, and, later, filmmaker Timothy Asch. Tierney’s allegations included improper use by Neel and his team of a vaccine purported to have resulted in a devastating measles epidemic among the Yanomami. Subsequent expert investigations refuted these and many other claims, and by year’s end the credibility of Tierney’s own research was being called into question. A second aspect of the controversy involved accuracy and representation of data, specifically Chagnon’s depiction of the Yanomami as a fierce and violent people. Concerns over scientific accuracy were not new (for example, more discussion of the controversy over Margaret Mead’s classic work in Samoa was reported in Current Anthropology’s August–October 2000 issue). In the current case, this longstanding intramural debate among anthropologists was further muddied by external factors, including an old dispute between Chagnon and local missionaries and the sometimes violent relations between Brazilian gold miners and the Yanomami. On the bright side, out of this crisis in cultural anthropology emerged a needed debate on ethical accountability in field research, informed consent by studied populations, and the role of the revised Code of Ethics drafted by the American Anthropological Association in 1998.

Eastern Hemisphere

The year 2000 proved fruitful for Old World archaeology. A joint Syrian-American expedition uncovered what was purported to be one of the world’s oldest cities, a more than 5,500-year-old urban centre at Tell Hamoukar in northeastern Syria near the Iraqi border. At the site, located on an ancient trade route between Nineveh and Aleppo, archaeologists identified what may be a Late Chalcolithic (about 3500 bc) mud-brick city wall, 3 m (10 ft) high and 4 m (13 ft) wide, and excavated a group of mud-brick dwellings complete with ovens. Also recovered were more than 80 bone stamp seals carved with animals such as leopards, lions, rabbits, fish, bears, birds, and dogs; 15 seal impressions; and thousands of beads. The presence of a Late Chalcolithic city in Syria challenged the generally accepted view that urban centres first developed in ancient Sumer (present-day southern Iraq) following the invention of writing during the Uruk period (about 3200 bc). It would appear that Tell Hamoukar developed well before the invention of writing and before the appearance of several other criteria thought of as marking “civilization.”

An underwater archaeological survey of the Mediterranean just a few kilometres off Egypt’s north coast revealed the remains of two 2,500-year-old cities, possibly the suburbs of Canopus with the districts of Menouthis and Iraklion, which served as trading hubs in the Late Dynastic Period. Among the well-preserved remains were temple structures with statues of Isis, Sarapis, and Osiris associated with royal heads of pharaohs; port facilities; fallen monuments; inscriptions; ceramics; and late Islamic and Byzantine jewelry and coins, all embedded in the seafloor less than 10 m (33 ft) below the water’s surface.

A controversial find was the so-called Tomb of Osiris on the Giza Plateau in Egypt. Thought by some to be an Osirion, a cenotaph dedicated to Egypt’s master of the underworld and god of fertility, the four-pillared rock-hewn grotto, 30 m (98 ft) below the Giza Plateau, may simply have been another shaft tomb belonging to royalty of the Late Dynastic Period.

Pits containing the remains of sacrificed dogs at the 5,500-year-old settlement of Botai in north-central Kazakhstan may shed light on ritual practices recorded in the Rigveda, written c. 1000 bc. In the epic, dogs serve as guardians of the gate into the afterlife, which was believed to lie to the west. The bodies of at least 15 dogs, similar in stature and cranial features to Samoyeds, had been deposited in small pits in or near the western walls of houses. Each pit contained between one and six dogs, along with the skulls of horses.

Thirteen 2,500-year-old carved stelae (stone pillars) of a type never seen before in Anatolia or the Middle East were found at Hakkari, a small town in Turkey near the border with Iran and Iraq. Hewn from a hard local stone, the stelae ranged from about 75 cm (28 in) to more than 3 m (10 ft) in height. They may depict rulers of Hubushkia, a kingdom centred on the headwaters of the Great Zap River that appears in the Assyrian annals of the 10th and 9th centuries bc.

In China a walled city about 3,300 years old was unearthed at Anyang. Known as Huanbei Shang City, the site, covering approximately 465 ha (1,160 ac) and surrounded by rammed earthen walls, dates to the Middle Shang Period (about 1450–1250 bc), a time little understood in Chinese history. Oracle-bone inscriptions placed the last Shang capital at a site known as Yinxu, about 1.5 km (l mi) southwest of Huanbei Shang City. Scholars believed the newly found site may have been the city of Xiang, which, according to historical sources, served as the capital of the Shang Empire prior to the founding of Yinxu.

A large cache of gold and silver bangles, gold beads, and agate and onyx beads, dating to the Harappan Period (2600–1900 bc) and of a type known from the Indus Valley sites of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan and Lothal, Rakhigarhi, and Dholavira in India, was discovered by villagers in the city of Mandi some 150 km (90 mi) east of New Delhi. The finds extended the known reach of the Indus Valley civilization beyond its previously known cultural area of eastern Pakistan and western India.

Excavations in Britain yielded a number of important finds, including a large cache of Roman coins found in a farmer’s field near Glastonbury, Eng. The hoard comprised more than 9,200 coins, most of which were silver denarii, common coins equivalent to pennies in Roman times. The coins spanned the period from Mark Antony (31–30 bc) to Severus Alexander (ad 222–235), with the latest coin dating to about ad 224. The hoard was unusual in that many of the coins dated from the early part of the 3rd century, a relatively calm and prosperous period of Roman rule in Britain. Most Roman hoards found in Britain date from the end of the Roman period, the late 4th and early 5th centuries, when political instability prompted people to hide their wealth.

What was hailed as the best-preserved Iron Age settlement in Britain was found on the southern tip of Mainland, Shetland Islands. Occupied from about 200 bc to ad 800, the site consisted of a massive round stone watchtower approximately 15 m (50 ft) in diameter and 3–4 m (12–15 ft) high, surrounded by well-preserved buildings, some still bearing traces of yellow plastered walls. The tower was an Iron Age status symbol for the ruling elite, which suggested that the site was a centre of considerable wealth.

Ongoing construction and development in Italy laid bare more of the country’s ancient past. In Rome walls and foundations belonging to a villa from about ad 150 were found during construction of a tunnel leading to a large parking garage beneath the Vatican, and the remains of the Imperial Roman port, once used to receive and warehouse goods arriving from Ostia on the coast, came to light during excavations prior to the building of a streetcar station at Trastevere on the Tiber River. Port remains included warehouses, workshops, offices, and baths adorned with mosaics depicting sea creatures and marine life, as well as numerous amphorae, ceramics, coins, and oil lamps dating to the 2nd through the 4th century ad.

A submarine crew searching for the wreckage of an airplane piloted by Antoine Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince, discovered the wreck of a 6th–5th-century bc Etruscan ship off the coast of southern France. Found off the coast of the Hyères Islands near Toulon, the ship was carrying a varied cargo, which included amphorae possibly filled with wine, olive oil, or garum, a fermented fish sauce, and a shipment of tile. Only three Etruscan wrecks had ever been recovered, all plundered and poorly preserved.

Western Hemisphere

The debate over the date of the first human settlement of the Americas continued unabated in 2000. A few new discoveries appeared to support a pre-Clovis culture settlement more than 13,000 years ago. The Topper site on South Carolina’s Savannah River was originally thought to be a Clovis site of about 11,500 bc, but test pits sunk below the Paleo-Indian occupation level revealed small stone flakes and tools of an apparent pre-Clovis type more than one metre (3.3 ft) lower. The artifacts included tiny microblades and a scraping tool, which excavator Albert Goodyear considered unique to southeastern North America but reminiscent of Stone Age tools from Siberia. As of late 2000, the occupation level remained undated but was possibly up to 18,000 years old, one of the earliest known records of human occupation in the Western Hemisphere.

Maya archaeology continued to yield spectacular discoveries. A Maya lord named Ukit-Kan Lek (“Snake Gourd”) ruled over the ceremonial centre of Ek Balam in Mexico’s northern Yucatán between ad 790 and 835. In 1999 archaeologist Victor Castillo unearthed Snake Gourd’s grave under a limestone pyramid, which was built atop at least four earlier buildings. Twenty-two ceramic vessels lay in the burial chamber, one bearing the lord’s name, together with fine jade fragments, obsidian (volcanic glass) blades, and inscribed conch shells.

The spectacular Nazca lines of southern coastal Peru had generated controversy for generations. The Nazca were farmers, fisherfolk, and expert weavers, and their pots and textiles revealed complex religious beliefs. They lived on the fringes of the Pampa de Ingenio, a desert with all the potential of a fine sketch pad. There they swept away the topsoil of fine sand and small stones to form in the white alluvium an intricate web of lines and figures too large to be fully viewed from the ground. High above the desert in a helicopter, one can see lines, some as wide as an airport runway, that extend for kilometres across valleys and low hills. Others radiate from hubs. Some lines coalesce into giant birds, monkeys, a whale, spiders, even plants, but those who created them never saw them in their entirety. Why, then, did people without airplanes draw such lines and figures? Were the lines a giant astronomical observatory or a huge religious monument?

Astroarchaeologists Anthony Aveni and Gary Urton, in an effort to answer those questions, mapped more than 62 raylike hubs of lines and measured the orientation of 762 straight lines near Nazca, some up to 13 km (8 mi) long. Aveni and Urton plotted the orientations on a computer and found that many of them pointed to the point on the horizon where the Sun appears during those critical days in early November when runoff first flows into coastal rivers from the Andes Mountains. Thousands of Nazca potsherds, crude shelter remains, and cairns litter the lines, the latter serving as markers for people walking the alignments. Aveni concluded that the Nazca lines were pathways, maintained, swept, and ritually cleansed by local kin groups as an important part of ritual activity surrounding the arrival of water on the pampa. A nearby ceremonial centre, Cahuachi, forms a complex of mounds, cemeteries, and shrines, which face toward the pampa and its pathways. Also nearby, water bubbles to the surface year-round. Nazca art from Cahuachi and other locations emphasizes masked performances by priests and mythical beings, part of the ceremonies that surrounded the first appearance of life-giving mountain water. Aveni’s research thus pointed to a close connection between the lines in the desert and the water that nourished crops and people along the Pacific.

Brazil’s Amazon Basin was among the archaeologically least-known regions of the world. Recently, caves in Amapá state on the Maracá River, a tributary of the Amazon, yielded ceramic funerary urns, used by local peoples between the 5th and 15th centuries ad.The now sparsely occupied area was densely populated 1,500 years ago. The finely made urns, about 0.75 m (2.5 ft) high, were modeled in the form of seated male and female figures and placed on benches, a privilege reserved for shamans and chiefs. The urns contained defleshed bones from corpses that were exposed until the flesh had decayed and then were laid to rest in deep caverns. The Maracá finds were unique and dated to a period before the region was depopulated by European contact and infectious diseases.

While reexamining the excavated bones of colonists from Jamestown, Va., the earliest permanent English settlement in the New World, biological anthropologist Doug Owsley of the Smithsonian Institution discovered that five of the skeletons were those of Africans. The five died in their early 20s to mid-40s, and, as they had not been buried on their backs with their hands at their sides and heads to the west—the European fashion at the time—they were originally thought to be Native Americans. One of them displayed an advanced case of syphilis, which had affected every bone in his body. Judging from the bullet hole in his head, he was killed to put him out of his misery. Owsley’s discovery confirmed that Europeans, Native Americans, and African slaves were all present at Jamestown.

In a fascinating piece of archaeological detective work, British Museum scientists determined that a copper breastplate owned by late-19th-century Pacific Northwest coast Native American chief Neghicum-gee was made not of native copper but of English ore. His intricately decorated breastplate was an important status symbol, one of many “coppers” that linked individuals to the remote past of their ancestors. Neghicum-gee’s copper contained unusually high quantities of bismuth, a heavy element that occurs in large amounts only in Cornish copper from southwestern England, where it was smelted between 1700 to 1850. The scientists believed it was quite possible that the copper was made from ore traded with trappers or whalers decades before the Spaniards and Capt. James Cook arrived in the area in 1774 and 1777.

On Nov. 29, 1864, more than 700 soldiers of a volunteer Colorado militia unit attacked a Cheyenne and Arapaho Native American encampment at Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado. Ignoring the American flag, peace signals, and a white flag, they slaughtered at least 150 old men, women, and children while most of the men were out hunting. Although the general location of the massacre was known through oral tradition to the descendants of the victims, it was only when an archaeological survey was carried out that the actual location was found, about a kilometre and a half (about a mile) north of where historical evidence said it was. The archaeologists found 5.4-kg (12-lb) cannonballs, the type used by the Colorado soldiers in their surprise attack, and artifacts that matched well with records of goods given to the Native Americans and found at sites of equivalent age. The Sand Creek research confirmed the essential truth of Native American oral traditions and thus allowed them to be used as archaeological tools.

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Creating Travel time for road segements

2017-09-19 11:08:48

I would like to calculate travel time by bicycle in postgis. Following this example from the book QGIS becoming a GIS power user, the calculation is in walking distance. How can I calculate if bicycle travel means are used.

ALTER TABLE newark_osm ADD COLUMN traveltime_min float8;

UPDATE newark_osm SET traveltime_min = length_m / 6000.0 *

FROM pgr_drivingdistance('SELECT id, source, target,

traveltime_min as cost FROM newark_osm'::text, 1,

100000::double precision, false, false) di (seq, id1,

id2, cost)

JOIN newark_osm rd ON di.id2 =;


The TFC Title Loans Scholarship for Financial Innovation – $2,000.00 Awarded

As a new generation of students getting an excellent education, you have the ability to solve a major financial issue that affects thousands of people every day. TFC Title Loans strongly believes that your creativity may hold the answers to revolutionizing the lending industry.  The goal is to better benefit both the consumer and impose less risk to the lender.  For this reason we have created the Financial Innovation Scholarship Program.

How do I know I’m eligible for the scholarship?

To qualify for TFC Title Loans Scholarship for Financial Innovation you must be enrolled in an accredited undergraduate university.  You must also be working towards a degree in Financial Mathematics, Business, Finance, or Economics.

How do I apply for the TFC Title Loans Scholarship?

In fewer than 1000 words, propose a new financial product that could improve the current issues within the sub-prime lending industry. Describe a business model, whether web-based or not, that could lessen the consequences of sub-prime lending.  The essay should include the perspective for both the consumer and the lender.  It is encouraged that applicants include possible projections, APRs, and calculations as evidence for their proposal.

What needs to be included?

Along with your essay we also ask that you include:

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When is the application due?

Please send in your application by August 1st to receive funds for the Fall 2017 Semester.

According to the business magazine Entrepreneur, as you move into adulthood your credit score replaces your SAT score as the number that defines you to institutions. As a current college student you know all too well how it feels to be judged based on a number.  This does not end after you finish college. Those who have high credit scores have no trouble finding funds when they are in need but many are not so lucky.

Every week low credit scores lead to thousands of people being turned away from traditional lending. There has been an array of lending programs built over the years for individuals with poor credit. Most of them have higher interest rates in order to compensate for the credit risk posed by a subprime borrower.

People with poor credit get into situations where they need emergency funding just as often as people with perfect scores. History has shown there is a need for sub-prime lending; however, the risk is on both sides.  In the sub-prime market, higher interest rates and unexpected financial circumstances (unemployment, divorce, medical emergencies) can lead to the consumer’s inability to repay the loan on nearly 10% of all loans issued. On the reverse, the lender needs to charge higher interest rates to combat this loss in capital and support their overhead.

Ideas to help jump start you:

Past Winners

Andrew Ferrante – Clemson University


Another important and pleasurable way of expressing unity is by giving some orderly succession to a number of objects more or less similar. And this succession is most interesting when it is connected with some gradual change in the aspect or character of the objects. Thus the succession of the pillars of a cathedral aisle is most interesting when they retire in perspective, becoming more and more obscure in distance: so the succession of mountain promontories one behind another, on the flanks of a valley; so the succession of clouds, fading farther and farther towards the horizon; each promontory and each cloud being of different shape, yet all evidently following in a calm and appointed order. If there be no change at all in the shape or size of the objects, there is no continuity; there is only repetition - monotony. It is the change in shape which suggests the idea of their being individually free, and able to escape, if they liked, from the law that rules them, and yet submitting to it.I will leave our chosen

3 The Law Of Continuity Perspective Elements 41

Fig. 33.

Illustrative composition for a moment to take up another, still more expressive of this law. It is one of Turner's most tender studies, a sketch on Calais Sands at sunset; so delicate in the expression of wave and cloud, that it is of no use for me to try to reach it with any kind of outline in a woodcut; but the rough sketch, Fig. 33., is enough to give an idea of its arrangement. The aim of the painter has been to give the intensest expression of repose, together with the enchanted, lulling, monotonous motion of cloud and wave. All the clouds are moving in innumerable ranks after the sun, meeting towards the point in the horizon where he has set; and the tidal waves gain in winding currents upon the sand, with that stealthy haste in which they cross each other so quietly, at their edges; just folding one over another as they meet, like a little piece of ruffled silk, and leaping up a little as two children kiss and clap their hands, and then going on again, each in its silent hurry, drawing pointed arches on the sand as their thin edges intersect in parting: but all this would not have been enough expressed without the line of the old pier-timbers, black with weeds, strained and bent by the storm waves, and now seeming to stoop in following one another, like dark ghosts escaping slowly from the cruelty of the pursuing sea.

I need not, I hope, point out to the reader the illustration of this law of continuance in the subject chosen for our general illustration. It was simply that gradual succession of the retiring arches of the bridge which induced Turner to paint the subject at all; and it was this same principle which led him always to seize on subjects including long bridges wherever he could find them; but especially, observe, unequal bridges, having the highest arch at one side rather than at the centre. There is a reason for this, irrespective of general laws of composition, and connected with the nature of rivers, which I may as well stop a minute to tell you about, and let you rest from the study of composition.

All rivers, small or large, agree in one character, they like to lean a little on one side: they cannot bear to have their channels deepest in the middle, but will always, if they can, have one bank to sun themselves upon, and another to get cool under; one shingly shore to play over, where they may be shallow, and foolish, and child-like, and another steep shore, under which they can pause, and purify themselves, and get their strength of waves fully together for due occasion. Rivers in this way are just like wise men,who keep one side of their life for play, and another for work; and can be brilliant, and chattering, and transparent, when they are at ease, and yet take deep counsel on the other side when they set themselves to their main purpose. And rivers are just in this divided, also, like wicked and good men: the good rivers have serviceable deep places all along their banks, that ships can sail in; but the wicked rivers go scooping irregularly under their banks until they get full of strangling eddies, which no boat can row over without being twisted against the rocks; and pools like wells, which no one can get out of but the water-kelpie that lives at the bottom; - but, wicked or good, the rivers all agree in having two kinds of sides.

Now the natural way in which a village stonemason therefore throws a bridge over a strong stream is, of course, to build a great door to let the cat through, and little doors to let the kittens through; a great arch for the great current, to give it room in flood time, and little arches for the little currents along the shallow shore. This, even without any prudential respect for the floods of the great current, he would do in simple economy of work and stone; for the smaller your arches are, the less material you want on their flanks. Two arches over the same span of river, supposing the butments are at the same depth, are cheaper than one, and that by a great deal; so that, where the current is shallow, the village mason makes his arches many and low: as the water gets deeper, and it becomes troublesome to build his piers up from the bottom, he throws his arches wider; at last he comes to the deep stream, and, as he cannot build at the bottom of that, he throws his largest arch over it with a leap, and with another little one or so gains the opposite shore. Of course as arches are wider they must be higher, or they will not stand; so the roadway must rise as the arches widen. And thus we have the general type of bridge, with its highest and widest arch towards one side, and a train of minor arches running over the flat shore on the other: usually a steep bank at the river-side next the large arch; always, of course, a flat shore on the side of the small ones: and the bend of the river assuredly concave towards this flat, cutting round, with a sweep into the steep bank; or, if there is no steep bank, still assuredly cutting into the shore at the steep end of the bridge.


These 6 Companies Are Boycotting Trump – BOYCOTT THEM NOW

Six major companies had no problem sponsoring the 2012 GOP presidential convention when a career politician was the nominee. However, they pulled out in 2016 when President Donald Trump was nominated.

The Hill reported that Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, UPS, Motorola, Ford and Walgreens all declined to participate in last year’s GOP convention after learning that Trump would be the nominee. Though they refused to actually say that Trump was the reason they pulled out, it’s pretty clear that their decision was about him.

In a disturbing twist, Wells Fargo decided to move forward with sponsoring the Democratic convention’s host committee in Philadelphia due to their large market share there.

“We are supporting the City of Philadelphia host committee given our significant community bank and team member presence,” said Wells Fargo spokeswoman Erika Reynoso. “Our decisions around the host committees were determined late last year before either party determined the nominees. This is consistent with our past practices.”

Since then, other companies have turned on Trump as well. Conservative Fighters reported that Heineken has just sent out bottles that call for “a world without borders or barriers.”

“Here’s to an Open World: To a world without borders or barriers,” Heineken said in their ad campaign. “To the belief that there’s more that unites us than divides us. To finding common ground. So raise a bottle with the person next to you. Because a stranger is just a friend you haven’t had a cold Heineken with yet. Open your world.”

Heineken is clearly trying to rebel against Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration by calling for open borders.   But the company is willfully ignoring that countries like Sweden, Germany, and France which all advocates for open borders have seen a startling spike in violent crime and terrorism. The vast majority of Americans don’t want this same plague on their communities and polls indicates 80% disapprove of sanctuary city policies, and that 52%  of voters support Trump’s temporary ban of refugees.

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Antarian Rangers

For centuries, the Antarian Rangers served as a paramilitary force tasked with assisting the Jedi Order. Rangers were non-Force sensitive beings who performed duties ranging from exploration to resupply, also acting as a provisional fighting force when diplomacy failed. The Antarian Rangers’ ranks consisted of species from all over the galaxy, but the organization originated on the Gotal home of Antar 4.

A Gotal named Kaskutal and Jedi Master Marus Timpel founded the Antarian Rangers over 600 years ago. Kaskutal possessed limited talent with the Force, but the Jedi Order rejected him for training. Undeterred from helping the Order, Kaskutal used his connections to establish a much-needed logistics chain for the Jedi, raising funds to provide supplies and transports. This initiative grew to a galaxy-spanning organization comprised of thousands of beings filling essential support positions for the ever-vigilant Jedi.

400 years prior to the fall of the Republic and reorganization into the Empire, the Antarian Rangers were officially attached to the duties of the High Marshall of the Republic. In this role, their duties were expanded to include the protection of the Republic Senators and Councillors, as well as serving in a security capacity for Coruscant.

With the outbreak of the Clone Wars, and the rise of Defense Councillor Palpatine to the role of Supreme Chancellor, the Antarian Rangers were tasked with forming the core of the new Grand Army of the Republic, providing support capacities in the logistics chain. They acted as the non-clone core of the Army, Navy and Corsucant Home Guard. This broke them into many different departments, effectively disbanding the Rangers. In fact, only the Senatorial Guard kept the blue armor and Force Pikes the Antarian Rangers were known for, and even they changed their armor colors to red to match the clones in the later stages of the war.

With the reorganization into the Galactic Empire, the Antarian Rangers of the Coruscant Sentatorial guard adopted the new name of the Imperial Royal Guard, and the last traces of the old Antarian Rangers disappeared entirely.

Antarian Rangers

Force Unbridled azelana azelana


Electro Magnetic Field Testing

Graphonyx Absorption of Microwave Emitting Plasma Phenomenon

Upon irradiation from a 915 MHz to 2.45 GHz microwave field the Graphonyx material has shown the ability to emit visible, infrared, and ultraviolent radiation. It has further shown to have unique electromagnetic radiation absorption properties. It is still uncertain as to what causes this phenomenon, however we know that it is not related to metallic impurities as this material is created without a catalyst and is more than 99.9% pure carbon.

The Graphonyx material appears to act as a photon energy converter in response to incident electromagnetic radiation in the microwave spectrum. The extremely high energy that is created is then transferred/conducted through the Graphonyx material and into its immediate surroundings. The Graphonyx material retains none of the energy that is created from this reaction. This process has worked well in the curing of composites, human cell tissue ablation, as well as cell tissue reconstruction/engineering. Treatment in a thermal/oven type environment has also demonstrated that Graphonyx has very high thermal insulation properties


Software from our Group

Efficient Ancient Genome Reconstruction.
Mayday is a microarray data analysis platform and is designed to be a flexible solution for processing microarray data. It features interactive visualization as well as a plug-in framework to support analytical tools.
mitoBench is an integrated workbench for mitochondrial data analysis, incorporating several state of the art visualisation methods and accompanying data handling tools for easier analysis.
Alignment visualization based on SuperGenome coordinates.
Comparative TSS prediction from RNA-seq data.
Interactive Pan-genome Visualization
Interactive Phased Haplotype Visualization
Reveal is our visual analytical approach to the challenges of eQTL data exploration and visualization.
nocoRNAc is a software for the automated prediction and characterization of ncRNA transcripts in bacterial genomes
GaggleBridge is a software supporting collaborative research based on the Gaggle.
Scalable visual analytics framework for high dimensional data.


South Korea: A Different Kind of Coup Attempt

Seoul, South Korea (NEO) – Usually, speaking about a political struggle in the Republic of Korea, we pay attention to either the suppression of the opposition forces or attempts of President Park Geun-hye to strengthen her position in the struggle against the neoconservatives. This struggle has been lingering with a variable success.

Seoul, South Korea Image Source: Bridget Coila, Flickr, Creative Commons

Seoul, South Korea
Image Source: Bridget Coila, Flickr, Creative Commons

On the one hand, the faction that supports ex-President Lee Myung-bak has received a knock: his “diplomacy of natural resources” was finally declared as an absolute failure and an unprofitable project. On the other hand, corruption scandals, which we covered before, have not yet brought success to either party. Investigation is underway, but no new scandalous evidence has been discovered so far. Besides, the mass media is inclined to pay more attention to another scandal that has to do with new exposures in the ranks of the National Intelligence Service.

It is in this context that the conservatives launched their attack and took quite a serious step. First, a person from “their” camp, ex-Minister of Justice Hwang Kyo-ahn, whom our audience knows very well due to his role in the liquidation of the United Progressive Party, was appointed to the position of the Prime Minister of the country. Once Park Geun-hye ran out of candidates from her “substitute bench,” she had to introduce his candidacy for the position.

278 parliamentarians attended the plenary session on June 10, 2015, dedicated to the Hwang’s approval. 156 parliamentarians voted in favor, 120 against and 2 abstained from voting.

Unlike the debates concerning other candidates, hearings during which Hwang’s merits and “skeletons in a cupboard” were reviewed, went surprisingly smoothly.

First, the majority of those summoned with a purpose of playing the key role in the discreditation of Hwang Kyo-ahn were absent. Secondly, this time uncomfortable questions were fudged, rather than exaggerated. Was he guilty of evading military service? A former medical officer invited to the hearings stated that Hwang’s medical examination was carried out in compliance with the rules, and that decisions were taken based on its results. Maybe he was involved in the scandal, which broke out in 2005 in connection with the Samsung Group, when records exposing presumable corruption in the relations between the company and some politicians leaked to the mass media? Mr. Hwang used to serve in the position of the Prosecutor, and decided to cease the investigation since the recorded event took place back in 1997. This question was dismissed as ungrounded, as it was confirmed that his decision did not violate the law and that its limitation period for the case ended, indeed. The scrutiny to which Mr. Hwang was subjected was much milder in comparison with what candidates supporters of Park Geun-hye had to go through.

But that was just the first step. And then, the floor leader of the Saenuri Party (the ruling party) Yu Seung-min, who is also a member of the Conservative Party, attempted to initiate a constitutional reform, which would considerably restrict authorities of the President of the country. Technically, the issue concerned the introduction of amendments to the National Assembly law, which would give the representatives a right to request amendments or revisions of administrative regulations that in their opinion contradict the purpose and content of the legislation of the country. In fact, the wording was elaborated in such a way that the parliament would be granted power allowing it to seriously limit legislative initiatives of the executive branch of the government and de facto disapprove presidential decrees.

The situation when administrative bodies have to comply with the requirements of the legislative branch significantly changes the balance of power. It actually concerned an inconspicuous constitutional revolution; in case it was successful, the presidential republic would become a parliamentary one.

Park Geun-hye sternly criticized the idea of the reform, as the passing of the bill could paralyze the government. The reading of many important bills related to the improvement of living conditions in the country (for example, reform of the state employee retirement benefit plan taking place at the initiative of Park Geun-hye) was postponed only because of confrontations among the political circles. If the parliamentarians are vested with the right to change government decrees, the authorities will essentially lose the ability to implement their policy. That would cripple the economy of the country and harm its citizens.

Nevertheless, on May 29, the amendments to the National Assembly law were adopted. However, in early June, Park Geun-hye vetoed the bill, having applied this right for the first time after her accession to the position of the President of the Republic of Korea in 2013.

Speaking at the government session, the leader of the state noted that the parliament was looking to appropriate some of the powers of the judicial authority in order to interfere with cases assigned solely to the competencies of the government. Thus, the bill is unconstitutional and violates the principle of separation of powers of the legislative, administrative and judicial bodies.

The bill was submitted to the National Assembly for the second time. But during the July 6’s plenary session, debates over the initiative were cancelled because the ruling Saenuri Party refused to participate in voting. Technically, that means that until the end of the work of the National Assembly of this convocation (May 2016), this bill will continue to be automatically rejected. Only after the election of a new Parliament, it would be reasonable to lobby for the bill again.

Apparently, the position of the representatives changed under the influence of Park Geun-hye, who, on June 25, openly qualified the actions of Yu Seung-min as “treacherous.” She noted that politicians must represent the interests of people and not to use their power for achieving the goals of their personal political philosophy and political logic. It should not be forgotten that at the time when Yu Seung-min was starting his career of a representative, he used to be a member of Park Geun-hye’s faction, and that he joined the right wing later, when Lee Myung-bak was in office. This is when he started his critical rhetoric aimed at her community-minded initiatives, and first of all her policy of the improvement of welfare, while preserving the same level of taxes.

A crisis broke out in the ruling party, and its leader Kim Moo-sung stated that in the conditions of an exacerbating conflict resignation of Yu Son Min from the position of the leader of the parliamentary faction of the Saenuri Party was inevitable. On July 8, after he received a corresponding recommendation from representatives, Yu Seung-min satisfied their request. However, he noted that all he wished for when he “put at risk his political career,” was to “preserve the indisputable significance of paragraph one of article one of the Constitution,” in which South Korea is identified as a democratic state. He also submitted apologies to the citizens of the country for ceasing his activities, not having fulfilled all his promises.

It is expected that now the intraparty confrontation would either reduce or cease. The President’s administration reacted to the statement made by Yu Seung-min about his resignation by expressing hopes for the improvement of relations between him and the ruling party, and noted that technically President does not belong to any party. It is not surprising since the struggle between the proponents and opponents of the President has just entered into a new phase, as the time for the nomination of candidates for the 2016 parliamentary elections is approaching.


Controlled Chaos and The Meaning in Software Development

I believe that I was born to be a computer programmer. Somewhere, deep in my soul, there is a need to organize my thoughts in ways that are both new and interesting, but also foundational and reusable at the same time. I’ve always felt that there is something atypical about this kind of work, and about the people who have chosen to do it. Not that it is better or worse than any other profession mind you, but that it was very unique, and at the same time both interesting and powerful.

However over the years, I have learned that this is not exactly a commonly-held belief.

Years ago (it seems like another lifetime now), a manager of mine was adamant that we create a “software development factory”. This person worked in Information Technology, but was never a programmer. This person (hence forth referred to as “IT”) was in love with “process”. “IT” had worked up through the I.T. ranks as an analyst at first, but had been able to cultivate the right look and absorb the right words to be promoted through past similar personalities into a position of real power.

At this one historic moment, “IT” was in the driver-seat of a team of managers and developers. I was one of them. The problem was, “IT” had no had no idea what our jobs entailed. Since “IT” did not like to think there was a concept,”IT” did not understand, “IT” decided to “improve” the team. “IT” had the bright idea that we should take a team of developers and create a “factory” out of them. In this person’s mind, programming was a rote exercise that could be turned into a repeatable process. In the “I.T.” view, programming did not take any real thinking. You took inputs, processed them, and created outputs. “IT” believed this was the most menial work possible, only important enough to be treated in the most dismissive of ways.

Suffice to say, “IT” and I did not get along. However, instead of rolling over, I tried to fight back.

  • I argued up and down, and down and up, left ways and right ways that my team of developers were not factory workers, and they did not create widgets.
  • I explained over and over that each project was different and required a unique solution that could not be picked off a shelf and plugged-in automatically.
  • I created 100 page documents that described in detail how software development worked and how it was more iterative and creative than simply straight-forward and rote.
  • I created diagrams of every type imaginable showing the tools, the process, and the creative thinking that went into designing software.
  • I pasted images of all our work on the walls and in the conference rooms.
  • We adopted SCRUM and Extreme Programming methodologies to show that development was iterative and not simple a step-by-step process,
  • I hung statements from notable software designers and developers in the hallways.
  • I brought in great software developers to teach classes on design and creative software development

In the end, of course, it did not work.

I was demoted.

My team was cut in 1/2, then 1/2 again.

Work was outsourced.

When it stayed internal, it was done by generic contractors instead of the type of hand-picked software wizards I knew would make the best developers.

Quality slipped, and so did deadlines.

The super-effective and proud team that I once led was turned into a hallow carcass.

This proved to me that there is a common misconception about what software development really entails. I’m not talking about “software support”, but real, honest programming. Truthfully, I don’t think many people outside of core development circles understand how software is made, or what it means to the people that do it.

Worse, this misunderstanding is not just superficial. It colors decisions made by people in the highest places of power. It’s ill-informed, destructive, and in some cases, could even be dangerous.

A few  years ago, I decided to try to find out what other people have written on this subject. I was on a quest to find a way to describe programming that would make someone in “IT”‘s position understand the reality of “programming”.

I started at he top. One of the masters of computer science, Donald E. Knuth, wrote about The Art Of Computer Programming in 1974 (he is also the author of the widely read multi-volume set of books by the same name) . Knuth chose to describe programming as art:

“My feeling is that when we prepare a program, it can be like composing poetry or music…Some programs are elegant, some are exquisite, some are sparkling. My claim is that it is possible to write grand programs, noble programs, truly magnificent ones!”

While his ideas on the subject are a close approximation of my own, I needed to try to find some other perspectives as well. With a little more searching I found this great article about Art And computer Programming, by John Littler. It contains many quotes from developers on the subject, as well a very relevant quote from none-other than Albert Einstein.

While both of these sources were awesome, I was not sure that “art” was the only description I was looking for. Programming may well be an “art” but it is also a “science” too, so just calling it an “art” is not quite accurate. Furthermore, calling it an “art” certainly would not have changed the mind of “IT” . In fact, “IT”, being of simple mind (in my opinion anyway) , would have probably just found that idea “elitist”, and dismissed it immediately. Because of this, I wanted to find another word that did not seem quite as lofty. I found it a few lines down in Littler’s article.

“To me, it relates strongly to creativity, which is very important for my line of work”

This , a quote from Guido van Rossum (the creator of the Python programming language), was getting closer to what I wanted to read. Being “creative” was certainly necessary for art, but it was also necessary for many other pursuits. “Creativity” could describe a beautiful painting, as well as an effective strategic battle plan, or even the solution to complex problem with no clear-cut answer. To me, software development involved at the very least, all three of these things. I decided to follow this line to see where it would take me.

Over at, I found that someone named “guitar man” had asked this question: “Is computer programming creative? or is it a just an analytical type process? ”

There was one answer, and it came from a guy with the very creative name: “Jeztyr – whispering in the ears of kings” :

“Programming is an art form that fights back. It requires creativity to solve the seemingly unsolvable, and analysis to make it better, faster, more efficient. A lot of programming is mundane, ritualistic stuff, but other times it’s rewardingly convoluted.”

This answer really hit home with me. I liked the use of the words “creativity” and “analytical” at the same time. However, the best word for me was “convoluted“. Some how that word seemed to describe the software development process in a way that I had never considered before. I decided to look-up the word “convoluted” on Here is what it said:

con-vo-lut-ed: Adjective: complicated; intricately involved: a convoluted way of describing a simple device.

“Hmm.” I thought. I then looked at the synonyms: “elaborate,

All of these words seemed to point to something that was underlying all of this, but not quite yet on the page. Yes, software development is “intricate” and “elaborate”, but the words “tangled” and “baffling” also stood out to me. Those words seemed to describe to me the state of “software development” when you know the problem you need to solve, but you don’t yet know how to solve it. It is also the same part of the process that can require a creative “spark” to surmount, and once a solution is in place, the process becomes more scientific. This limbo state of development always seemed to the most “unordered “to me the most…chaotic.

I then recalled something from our time dabbling in SCRUM (a software process that embraces change instead of pushing back on it). The phase was “controlled chaos“. While the SCRUM definition was not necessarily what I was looking for, the term seemed to be appropriate. Software Development was an ever-evolving process of taking chaos and creating order. Creating order from chaos is not an easy thing to do, but it is something that certain individuals (including many talented programmers) thrive upon.

I searched for some thoughts on this, and I found one that was so blunt and and final, even “IT” could have internalized it. Software Engineer Robert L. Glass described his role this way:

“Eat Chaos, Poop Order.”

In the most base way possible, Glass had crystallized my thoughts on software development. He continued to clarify his position.

“Chaos and order are the theme of my life. I consume one and produce the other.

I could not agree more.

At this point, I seemed to have come to the end of my journey. All of these quotes I had found sort of swirled around in my head until I came to a realization of what it all meant to me, and it is the following:

Programming is at once, both disciplined, and undisciplined . You must follow some rules, but also strive to break others if you want to make breakthroughs and discover new ways to make better software. It truly is art and science mixed, however the amount of each depends on the problem you are trying to solve. However, there is something else. Programming is like making sense of the senseless. It starts as chaos,and through sheer will of the mind, that chaos is organized into something amazing. It is also a stunningly enjoyable profession that feeds your mind and soul at the same time. In my nearly 30 years of programming experience, the initial surge of energy I feel when sitting down to start developing a new program has never dissipated nor has the sense of satisfaction when the last line of code is written and I hit the [Enter] key for the final time. If anything, the process has only grown greater and more important as the years slip by. In the final analysis, far from being a rote exercise, creating software just might be the the ultimate creative medium. With the proper knowledge, creativity, and computer power, you can build almost anything you can imagine.

It was long-winded, but I was satisfied with my answer. However, if I had been able to express these thoughts properly all those years ago, would I have been able to change the mind of someone like “IT”, and finally prove the reality of software development to someone in power?

Probably not, but at least I proved it to myself.

(originally posted June 9, 2009)