Title: Consumption

Author: Hebi R.

Rating: PG

Disclaimer:I do not own Harry Potter. I am happy not to own the Dementors.

I love to feed. In an existence filled with cold mist, feeding provides me with the only light I can bear.

I enjoy the taste of happiness. Happy memories fill me up in a way that despairing thoughts never can. They are rich and sweet. Though some gobble them down, I like to consume them slowly. I savor the feeling of joy in my mouth, with all its flavors and complexity.

I love the texture of a soul as it slides down my gullet, and the feeling of warmth within me that lasts for days afterwards. For a time after I consume a soul, I can open my eyes. I can see color. It is a feast of a different kind, yet is every bit as delectable.

It never lasts long. Soon, the memories begin to fade. A new harvest from an old source yields only bitter fruit. Soon, the soul loses its warmth, and the colors fade again. My eyes become cloudy once more, and before long I cannot open them at all. Pleasure flees so rapidly.

I must always seek more memories and souls. More sweet sensations that try so hard to flee. I will consume them. Forever.


Only compare you to you

I’ve spent a lot of time feeling like an imposter:

And there’s a really big part of me that thinks that, at any given moment, I’m a bad dice roll away from being told that I’ve been discovered as a fraud. It feels like I’ve been coasting on good fortune, but sooner or later one of these code reviews or invoices or app reviews is gonna expose me as the incompetent nimrod that I really am.

The thing about this rampant self-criticism is that it was always scathing but it was never productive. I would never say to myself oh man, I’m not an actual programmer and then proceed to work really hard to prove myself wrong; I’d usually shame-watch a couple episodes of Frasier until I forgot about it. Demoralization never led to self-improvement.

And here’s the thing — I know, rationally, that I’m pretty good at what I spend my time doing. (It feels weird to type that, as if there’s something boastful about self-confidence.) Like, I have a good job where I get good reviews and make things that help people. I have side projects and consulting where I’m able to translate my time and experience into dope things. I write online and get positive feedback. So where’s that gap between rational and irrational coming from?

So recently I’ve been doing something different — instead of looking at Dribbble shots or GitHub repos or great essayists and wondering how I’ll ever get that good, I’ve been looking backwards at past Justin. I’ve dug up old code reviews; old essays and blog posts; old screenshots.

And wow, I’ve gotten better! I can write more clearly, and in my own voice; I know how to avoid state and unnecessary coupling; I’ve gotten over my weird aversion of negative space. 2015 Justin was dope at a lot of things but 2016 Justin is pretty much better across the board.

(Maybe this is focusing more on the slope of my improvement rather than the eventual end goal. Which is equally healthy — I don’t think there’s ever going to be a point where I look at my abilities and be like ‘yep, this is all I need, nothing more to improve!’.)

Until then, I’ll keep getting better, and try real hard not to get too stressed out about people who are fortunate enough to be further along than I am.

Justin Duke is a writer and developer in Seattle.
He likes good, practical things.
(And writing in the third person, I guess.)


Self-taught artist Mauricio Paz Viola (b 1985; Carmelo, Colonia, Uruguay) embarked on his artistic journey early in life. Dabbling in plastic art since 7, he has participated in various art competitions in his native Uruguay and abroad.

At 14, Paz Viola began to participate in group shows and individual shows nationally and internationally in galleries and museums in Uruguay, Argentina, Chile, United States, Italy, among others.

His work has been featured in doctoral studies, programs in art, in universities in Chile, Mexico, Argentina and Spain, and are frequently featured in magazines and art books, among which are Latin American Plastic Art Annual Review, High Impact: the Art of Visual (New York) as well as books in Spain, Argentina, UK, France, etc.

The style of Paz Viola has evolved from realism, landscape and portraits in his youth to surrealism and expressionism. Since his arrival in Chile in 2008, he started to focus on abstract expressionism.

The most notable influences of Paz Viola are Roberto Matta, Maurits Cornelis Escher, Joan Miró, Vasili Kandinski, Max Ernst, as well as Uruguayan artist and friend Javier Gil, who imbued a sense of motion into rigid objects as if everything had a life of its own – a concept expressed in Paz Viola’s series “Nothing in the Void”.been working on the 7 series (some are sub-series).

Mauricio says: ‘Since I am a compulsive obsessive person when I am in the heat of creation. I try to channel all my energy in my works and series as much as I can in a short period of time; in a sense, I surrender to the muse and let her lead me.’

In terms of what inspires your work?

In fact I refrain from saying too much in my paintings. It has never been my intention to talk about politics or social matters in my paintings. My work is more than anything an invitation for viewer to enter dreamlike, sometimes surrealistic worlds.’

I want the viewer to escape for a few seconds from their day-to-day reality without asking questions, only enter and dream, like a type of hallucinogen.

What inspires him the most is sex.

Not merely the act that shows the carnal animals that we are, but sex as a divine action that is repeated in all creation. The term ‘sex’ derives from the Latin word ‘sexus’, or ‘sectus’, meaning section or separation.

Sex is an action constantly repeated in order to create and re-create, from mathematics, physics, chemistry to theories on the creation of the universe. If one pays attention, there are sexual actions everywhere, not only in creations of human beings.

It is beautiful, unique, good. Maybe I see it this way because I am a follower of Gurdjeff’s theories, which argue that all manifestations of the self is sexual in nature, and that sex is the most important archetype in the human machine.

Another thing that inspires him is ancient civilizations

The ones buried by history, true stories of Mayan, Egyptian, and South American civilizations. It seems like the true story of humanity is much more incredible than science fiction.

I constantly absorb information from mystery, hidden worlds, aliens, UFOs, parallel universes. I think these are the most important topics in life, but nobody seems to want to talk about them or know about them much. In this case we are face with the same, timeless questions: where do we come from? Where are we going? And who created life?

In a word, I am inspired by life itself, by nature, the universe(s), the infinite and inexhaustible worlds completely unknown to us… biology, sciences, arts… ultimately, LIFE.

What is your earliest art memory?

I have always been interested in artistic expression since I was born in a family with a love of letters: my father wrote folk songs, my mother wrote poems, and my two sisters are published authors.

However, I am the only painter in the family. Luckily, I have always had unwavering support of my family. Motivation and enthusiasm are the most important things for children, and later in adulthood it is the need for expression and communicate the real “self” through art – these are the two most important factors in the life of an artist every day.

Art has always had a presence in my life. I have been painting and drawing since I was a child. I was 7 when I saw in a language textbook an image that marked me for life: it was a painting by Roberto Matta.

I still remember how I sat at my school desk as a child, completely astonished by the colors and shapes. However, it wasn’t until my adolescent years (at 13) that I began to participate  in painting workshops

Connect with Mauricio Paz Viola


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'Pairs of Legs' printed from

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Pairs of Legs

How many legs does each of these three creatures have?
How many pairs is that?
How do you know?
 3 creatures
What about these three creatures?
 3 creatures

Why do this problem?

This problem relates counting in twos with the natural phenomenon that legs on creatures always come in pairs. It might be best done with a small group of children.

Possible approach

You will need a set of the animal cards and the legs cards from this sheet.  Alternatively, you could use cards from these sheets which also include a centipede and a millipede along with name cards.
You could start by showing the children all the pictures of the animals.  If they need prompting, ask them to talk about what they see.  They are likely to mention a whole variety of things, but focus in on the number of legs the animals have, perhaps by saying something like, "Tell me about the animals' legs".
Lay out the other cards which have the number of pairs of legs written on them, and without saying much else, invite the children to match the animal to the number of legs it has.  Depending on how well the pupils can read, you may want to read each card aloud.    Try not to intervene as they tackle the task but listen and watch what they do.   (If you are using the name cards too, you could introduce them at this stage as well.)   You might wish to leave the centipede and millipede to be done later as they do not have exact numbers of legs - but these do always come in pairs!
Once the group is happy that they have sorted the cards, ask them to explain to you how they did it.  This will give you some insight into how well they understand the concept of pairs.  It might be appropriate to check the matching together by asking individuals to count the legs in whatever way they feel most comfortable.   If they count in ones, challenge them to tell you how many pairs that makes and support them in modelling ways to do this.    You may find that even numbers come up in conversation too.
Can they think of anything else that comes in pairs as well as legs?

Key questions

How will we find a card to go with this one?
Tell me about what you've done.

Possible extension

Learners could look up other animals and creatures and their numbers of pairs of legs.  You could go on to an activity such as Noah, which asks children to suggest animals that have a particular number of legs in total.   Alternatively, they could try Number Tracks.

Possible support

Some children  may need more practical experience of pairing before having a go at this activity, for example using socks or gloves or shoes.


.: World Sea Temperatures / South America / South Orkney Islands

Sea Temperatures in South Orkney Islands

Sea temperatures for 1 locations in country South Orkney Islands. The warmest water in South Orkney Islands is in Islas Orcadas where water has 2 degrees celsius. On the contrary, the lowest temperature is in Islas Orcadas where water has only 2 degrees celsius. This means the difference between the warmest (Islas Orcadas) and coldest (Islas Orcadas) place in South Orkney Islands is 0 degrees celsius.
At the moment the warmest country in South America is Colombia where current average water temperature is 29 °C. The coldest country at the moment is South Orkney Islands with average water temperature -1 °C. Among 12 countries in South America, currently South Orkney Islands has 12th warmest water.
The average temperature in the last month in South Orkney Islands was -1 °C, the highest temperature was -1 °C and the lowest temperature was -1 °C.
Below is list of towns in South Orkney Islands with information about water temperatures. You can order locations by different criteria.
 Order sea temperatures by: NameWater temperaturePopularity
Islas Orcadas

Average water temperature: -0,7°C

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New Code holds banks accountable

by 04 Feb 2014

As of this week Australian banks will be accountable to a new code designed to improve the rights for their customers.

The revised code, which is contractually binding for all subscribing banks, requires banks to better respond when customers are in positions of financial hardship as well as providing clearer and more in-depth information regarding options, rights and concessions.

Steven Münchenberg, chief executive of the Australian Banking Association says the new  Code reinforces the banking sector’s commitment to acting fairly responsibly and transparently.

“Banks recognise they have to be there for customers in the long run and not just there to ensure they’re making their month-to-month payments,” says Munchenberg.

“There are times when any one of us can suffer a setback that means we can no longer meet our financial obligations, like paying the mortgage or credit card bill. This can happen because our working hours have been reduced or we’ve even lost our job, because of unexpected illness, because a relationship breaks down, or for a host of other reasons. It’s at times like these that banks can try to help people get through their financial difficulties and back on their feet.”

Significant changes to the Code include:

New and stronger financial hardship provisions - banks are more alert to people who may be in financial difficulty when meeting their repayments, staff to respond promptly to requests for assistance, and banks to ensure staff are trained in understanding the bank’s financial hardship commitments;

- A commitment not to combine accounts or assign the customer’s debt when a bank is actively considering whether the customer is in financial difficulty;

- A commitment to provide information about no or low-fee accounts to customers if the bank becomes aware the customer has a Commonwealth concession card, such as a Seniors Health Card, Health Care Card or Pensioner Concession Card;

- Clarification that chargeback rights exist for disputed transactions on relevant debit cards, including debits under recurrent payment arrangements;

- New provisions for customers in remote Indigenous communities, including making relevant information accessible, providing assistance to customers to meet identification requirements and appropriately training relevant staff to be culturally aware;

- A commitment that banks only sell debts to third parties that agree to comply with the ‘Debt Collection Guideline: for Collectors and Creditors’; and

- A commitment to send customers with a mortgage, on a primary place of residence or residential investment property, an annual reminder about their insurance obligations.

The Code of Banking Practice also covers small business customers. As well as the existing obligations to small business customers, banks have a new notice requirement that will see them normally give at least 10 business days’ notice before making any necessary materially adverse changes to a small business customer’s terms and conditions of their credit facility.

The revised Code is available from the ABA website.


Estate Planning

When it comes to planning for your estate, it can be as simple as a basic will and living will for an individual or it may require a more sophisticated and elaborate plan that involves wealth-preservation strategies to minimize estate and income taxes or transferring of business assets for owners of closely-held businesses. Regardless of the size of your estate or the value of your assets, we can help you plan for the orderly distribution of your property.

Each person's personal and financial circumstances are different. That's why the estate planning lawyers at CGA Law Firm will meet with you to learn about your specific circumstances and determine your goals and objectives. We will work with you to document your assets, identify your beneficiaries and execute your wishes. Our estate planning documents are tailored to your needs and ensure that your wishes are clear and specific as to what should happen upon your death.

We understand that it may be uncomfortable to think about death or disability, but establishing an estate plan is one of the most important steps you can take to protect yourself and your loved ones. Proper estate planning puts you in charge of making financial and medical decisions should you become physically or mentally unable to do so for yourself. It also spares your loved ones the heartache and expense in making those decisions for you.


Short-Term Gain

What is a 'Short-Term Gain'

A short-term gain is a capital gain realized by the sale or exchange of a capital asset that has been held for exactly one year or less. Short-term gains are taxed at the taxpayer's top marginal tax rate.

A short-term gain can only be reduced by a short-term loss. A taxable capital loss is limited to $3,000 for single taxpayers and $1,500 for married taxpayers filing separately.

BREAKING DOWN 'Short-Term Gain'

Short-term gains and losses are netted against each other. For example, assume a taxpayer purchased and sold two different securities during the tax year: Security A and Security B. If he/she earned a gain on Security A of $5,000 and a loss on Security B of $3,000, then the net short-term gain is $2,000 ($5,000 - $3,000).


Businesses need to prepare for changes to company law

East of England-based accountancy firm Moore Thompson is encouraging business owners to prepare for a change to company legislation that will require them to register individuals with ‘significant control’ over the company.

Under proposals, laid down in the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015, all businesses that are not subject to specified separate disclosure requirements must create and maintain a register containing details of any person with ‘significant control’.

A person with significant control is loosely defined as a person who directly or indirectly holds more than 25 per cent of the shares or voting rights in the company.

It also includes any person who directly or indirectly has the power to appoint or remove the majority of the board of directors of the company or otherwise has the right to exercise or actually exercises ‘significant influence’ or ‘control’ over the company.

Any person who has the right to exercise or actually exercises significant influence or control over a trust or firm (such as a partnership) that is not a legal entity, which in turn satisfies any of the first four conditions over the company, is also considered a person with significant control under the legislation.

The new Person with Significant Control (PSC) Register must be available for inspection and up to date information must also be provided to Companies House at least once per year.

Mark Hildred, Managing Partner at Moore Thompson, said: “Companies will need to produce and hold their own PSC Registers from 1 January 2016 and must submit it to Companies House by 6 April 2016, as part of their confirmation statement, which replaces the traditional annual return.

“This is an additional legislative burden on businesses, but they need to understand that this new law imposes proactive obligations both on companies and on persons with significant control.”

Mark added: “Failure to complete a PSC Register and file it with Companies House could mean that the business and its directors face criminal liability.  Additionally, the company can freeze the interest of any individual whom the company has identified as being eligible to be placed on the PSC register until they comply. Dividends, voting and other rights could be affected while the interest is frozen.

“Businesses should act now and seek professional advice if they are unsure of their responsibilities under the new legislation.”

If you would like help with compliance at your business, please contact Moore Thompson by calling 01775 711333.


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Archive for January, 2013

Hic Sunt Leones

All thought is in language. Plato says (in a number of his dialogues, for instance, in the Cratylus) that thought is the conversation of the soul with (phases of) itself. What comes into thought when this conversation takes place is another matter. In the first instance, the dialogic aspect is determined in large part by the memory of past experiences as these are brought to the forefront of one’s consciousness; secondarily, by external stimuli.

Here is a contemporary example. Standing outside the New York Public Library at the entrance to the Research Library on Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second Street in Manhattan and waiting to be allowed in, I turn around to see the two sculptured lions on their pedestals that guard the building on the Fifth Avenue side. This immediately summons forth the Latin phrase my beloved wife Marianne (a Latinist and medievalist) taught me long ago, Hic sunt leones ‘here are lions’, which was to be found on ancient maps to signify that the cartographer did not have knowledge of what lay beyond the boundary at that point (and assumed that wild beasts lurked).

Clearly, the Latin phrase was triggered by the stone lions outside the Library. But it could not have been part of my thought in an immediately summonable linguistic form without the cherished memory of the person who taught the phrase to me.

Cultural Cachinnation as a Paralinguistic Phenomenon

Laughter is a cultural phenomenon. A Japanese, for instance, has a different laugh from an American. Moreover, laughter differs by age and sex in all cultures. When high-pitched, the kind of laughter that is designated by the intransitive verb cachinnate ‘to laugh loudly or immoderately; guffaw’ is a particular feature of the contemporary behavior of middle-aged and older American women and is typically paralinguistic (during and after speech). Besides being high-pitched, this species of laughter is usually drawn out and aesthetically unappealing. It is not to be heard from American males (partly because of the structural differences between the larynxes of men and women) and is largely absent as a concomitant of the speech behavior of either sex in other cultures.

Given the marked presence of apotropaic features in the speech of females (noted in earlier posts), it is tempting to seek an explanation of this kind of laughter in the ever-present possibility that women’s behavior, more than that of men, includes apotropaism as an unconscious goal at the very least. However, precisely how cachinnation achieves that goal is unclear. By a woman speaker’s resort to it, perhaps high-pitched laughter is a way of signaling––as pre-, inter-, or postlude––that whatever is said need not be taken at full value. Cachinnation would thereby be of a piece with other behavioral characteristics that distinguish men from women in American culture.

“It’s OK by Me” as a Syntactic Calque

Yiddish has provided American English with a number of borrowings, typically loan words, but there is one syntactic borrowing that may not be recognized as such by ordinary speakers, namely the use of the preposition by instead of with in the phrase “it’s OK (alright, fine) by me.” The construction using by stems from Yiddish bei and probably came into the language from the Yiddish song “Bei Mir Bistu Shein” (Yiddish: בײַ מיר ביסטו שיין, “To Me You’re Beautiful;” German “Bei Mir Bist Du Schön”)), which started life in a 1930s Broadway musical and became a worldwide hit with its recording by the Andrews Sisters in 1937.

Another possible syntactic borrowing in American English from a Germanic language––specifically, German––may be the compound verb sleep in ‘sleep late, past the normal time’, which makes no sense on its face in terms of English semantics but can be traced as an adaptation to the German verb einschlafen ‘fall asleep’, where English in is the equivalent of German ein-.

These two syntactic borrowings are but a rivulet in the much bigger stream of latter-day German influence on American English syntax (especially in the language of advertising and the media), typified by the use of adjectival compounds with a past passive participle as the second element and with instrumental meaning, as in doctor-tested, etc.

Semeiotic Neostructuralism and Language

Readers of this blog who have an interest in the conceptual underpinnings of its posts may benefit from being reminded of some of the main points in which the doctrine christened “semeiotic neostructuralism” (in the spirit of C. S. Peirce’s pragmaticism) by the author differs fundamentally from the dominant paradigm of contemporary linguistics, which is nominally identified with Chomsky and his followers––regardless, nota bene, whether these latter-day practitioners have renamed their particular enterprise (e. g., “Optimality Theory” or “Cognitive Linguistics;” ALL linguistics is necessarily ‘cognitive’, hence CL is a pleonasm) so as to differentiate it from what was originally called “tranformational” or “generative” grammar.

Chomsky has a rather mechanistic view of language, for all that he understands that the freedom to compose  sentences that are original, unpredictable, and yet intelligible is different from the unoriginal, predictable products of strictly mechanical  action. His view is mechanistic nonetheless because he simply posits underlying structures by which sentences are to be generated. Possibly in a wider perspective, Chomsky is no more reductively mechanistic than a semeiotic neostructuralist, in a wider perspective, is a phenomenalist. For he no doubt admits (or would admit) that the linguistic universals in our brains are not just there, period, but evolved, with the brain’s evolution, as chance variants that were ‘selected’ by the principle of reproductive success. Similarly, the intentions or needs or felt urgencies to speak or to achieve certain outcomes might explain––but only in a context wider than Chomskyan linguistics––why language’s generative mechanisms are used in this way rather than in that.

But if we focus simply on the linguist’s study, as diversely conceived by Chomsky and the semeiotic neostructuralist, then there is this difference: for the one, the teleology of language is excluded from linguistic explanation, while for the other it is the very stuff of explanation. For the one, linguistic phenomena conform to a describable structure of highly abstract laws, while for the other linguistic phenomena exhibit an intelligible if less abstract, more complicated structure. For the one, the system is a given, and any changes in it are accidental, while for the other development is essential to language––development is more the reality than is any one system of  rules––and that development is also intelligible and not merely given.

That is the conflict. The reason the semeiotic neostructuralist approach is, if it is successful, superior is that it can be used to explain the very evolution of the brain-mechanism or linguistic capacities and universals that Chomsky can at best describe. That is, given creatures somewhat sociable, exchanging  signs as their way of life, then the survival value of their communicating more elaborate and precise diagrams would explain the retention of those fortuitous variations, say, in brain structure that promote exactly such powers of expressible diagrammatization. That is, the principle of this evolution will be itself linguistic, and continuous with the principles of postbiotic, strictly linguistic evolution.

The thought here is not unlike that which refuses to postulate linguistic intentions separate from the capacity to exercise those intentions. Just as there could be no desire to speak without an ability to speak, so also there could be no evolution of linguistic capacities––even, or especially, at the physiological level––except among those who, already speaking to one another, will more likely survive as a species if they speak more effectively. Thus, instead of a neurophysiological explanation of language, we have a linguistic explanation of the higher cortex––and probably not just the speech centers either, since so many of our capacities for sensation and action would be bootless without our capacities for speech.

The Metrical Substrate of a Phraseological Cliché II (“At the End of the Day”)

One of the fundamental problems confronting (historical) linguists is that of explaining why certain innovations arise and become full-fledged changes in natural languages, while other innovations die aborning. Not all innovations have the power of survival as part of the norm, and it is their raison d’être that needs to be addressed in any explanatory theory of language structure.

In that connection, following a line of reasoning that has been explored several times in earlier posts, one must keep prosody (“the metrical substrate”) in mind as a possible explanans––without, however, falling into the fallacy of the single cause.

A good candidate for such an explanation is the phraseological cliché “at the end of the day” that is constantly bleated about in contemporary media-speak (as elsewhere). Its prosodic structure is straightforwardly anapestic, i. e., with a metrical foot consisting of three syllables and stress on the ultima. This fact alone seems to have induced both its rise and its ultimate tenacity in contemporary speech.

The Power of Prosody (“Please exit through the rear door.”)

Three little children, none older than four, get on a Manhattan bus (the 86th Street Crosstown) and sit down. Soon the usual recorded announcement comes over the PA system: “Please exit through the rear door.” The children immediately start repeating the sentence, bouncing it back and forth to each other like volleys on the tennis court. One child even alters it slightly by substituting /l/ for /r/ in the penultimate word so that the sentence comes out, “Please exit through the real door.” The children have a good laugh over this innovation but then go right back to bandying the original.

Why are these juvenile speakers of American English so enamored of the language of the announcement? Because of its prosodic structure, to wit: the sentence consists of a perfectly good trochaic line, with a stressed anacrusis and a spondee in the last foot.

From such perfectly prosaic material is poetry born on the lips of a child.

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Library of Congress Classification

A B C D E F G H J K L M N P Q R S T U W Z

Subclass K Law in general. Comparative and uniform law. Jurisprudence
Subclass KB Religious law in general. Comparative religious law. Jurisprudence
Subclass KBM Jewish law
Subclass KBP Islamic law
Subclass KBR History of canon law
Subclass KBU Law of the Roman Catholic Church. The Holy See
Subclasses KD-KDK United Kingdom and Ireland
Subclass KDZ America. North America
Subclass KE Canada Subclass KF United States
Subclass KF Law of the United States
Subclass KG Latin America - Mexico and Central America - West Indies. Caribbean area
Subclass KH South America
Subclasses KJ-KKZ Europe

Subclasses KL-KWX Asia and Eurasia, Africa, Pacific Area, and Antarctica
Subclass KZ Law of nations


Overused Wrists

wrist tendonitis

Spring is here and we are outdoors enjoying our food and beverages on NYC streets. We are enjoying gustatory pleasures in addition to the olfactory and tactile pleasures of spring. Everything is alive! People are usually more active outdoors or just visibly so. Some might be increasing their activity level because it is spring but for others, their activity level might be remaining the same or even lesser. In the bar and restaurant industry, often times the job is secondary to a desire to become an established actress or musician, which can mean increased stress on multiple body parts.

I met a bartender named Katerina at Flinders Lane in the East Village. I was enjoying a simple glass of wine but was in awe of the simple manual juice press that she was using to squeeze limes. It consisted of spinning a handle easily until the lime caught between the teeth. Then the handle required overpressure to actually juice the lime. This action required good grip strength in the hand but also strength in the arm all the way up to the shoulder. Katarina shared with me that she is a dancer and was diagnosed with wrist tendonitis. She has danced on the Evita Tour. She stated that her pain was up the pinky side of the hand and forearm. During dance performances she would have to catch herself from a falling positon and land on her hands on multiple occasions.  Then, she would come to work and have to make fresh juice for the cocktails. Using the press would be difficult because of the repetitive nature of the work as well as the stress applied into the forearm and hand.

Dr. Karena Wu
Dr. Karena Wu from ActiveCare Physical Therapy, New York, NY

The wrist is a very small area with many bones, ligaments, nerves and tendons. It allows for dexterity and strength but can also cause great pain and dysfunction. We use our hands for everything. In an industry where prep and great service are required, this can mean job-related pain and potentially time off of work. We always think of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS) as the wrist tendonitis, but this is not quite true. Wrist tendonitis shares the same symptoms but is technically a different problem. Both are repetitive stress injuries, but wrist tendonitis has as its root cause the tendons that cross the wrist joint. CTS involves compression and inflammation of the median nerve, a different soft tissue.

Symptoms of wrist tendonitis are pain in the wrist and forearm, reduced range of motion, a feeling of tightness or achiness, loss of hand strength and numbness. There will be inflammation and swelling of the tendons around the wrist and the tightness can extend up into the forearm where the muscles of the tendons exist.

Physical Therapy for wrist tendonitis involves reducing the pain, inflammation and tightness. That might mean wearing a wrist splint to minimize the amount of motion in the wrist joint. When you wear a splint, this gives the soft tissues a chance to relax and calm down. Once the pain and inflammation calm down, we would prescribe strength training of the entire upper extremity, with a focus on the elbow, wrist and hand. The stronger the more proximal joint is (the shoulder), the less work the distal joints (elbow, wrist and hand) have to do. There needs to be balance and all need to be as strong and powerful as possible, but you cannot expect a small wrist joint to do what a big shoulder joint can do. The wrist and hand complex is very special and very complicated and requires a delicate balance of mobility, strength and dexterity.

Once strength and flexibility are restored and basic activities of living do not cause pain, you can reintroduce higher intensity activities required in dance or any exercise that requires sustained gripping or hand motions. Rehabilitation exercises are incorporated with work or sport-specific drills to help maintain a pain-free and healthy state. Your hand and wrist will thank you and you can return to the fine motor skills required in service with a smile.

Dr. Karena Wu is owner and Clinical Director of ActiveCare Physical Therapy. She has been practicing physical therapy for 16 years in New York City after she graduated from the Program In Physical Therapy at Columbia University. She received her clinical doctorate in physical therapy from Temple University. She has advanced training in manual therapies, specifically in the Maitland Australian Approach and Myofascial Release. Karena is a Certified Orthopedic Manual Therapist, Strength and Conditioning Specialist, Kinesiology Tape Practitioner and Pilates Instructor. She is also LSVT BIG, FMS and SFMA Level 1 Certified. Karena is a dedicated practitioner who takes a holistic approach to her practice. She actively networks with a team of physicians, chiropractors, acupuncturists and massage therapists. Her patient population consists of professional athletes, dancers, celebrity chefs, TV media stars, high end business professionals, and NYPD/FDNY. Karena is used as a healthcare expert on CBS, NBC, NY1, PIX11, Verizon Fios, Fox News and Dr. Oz. She is the Director of Education for SpiderTech Kinesiology Tape and is on the Medical Board of the Association of Volleyball Professionals. Visit her website at activecarephysicaltherapy.com.


DMX Networking 101

Our sets are becoming more and more dependent on large and complex Lighting Control Systems. Individual control of over 1000 different lights is becoming common. These complex lighting control systems can save hours of set up time each day when they are installed and managed properly. This course trains the Set Lighting Technician how to properly install, use, and maintain DMX networks. This information is the cornerstone for all of the lighting control systems required by the demands of our productions, both large and small. Also covered will be equipment function, selection, and maintenance for Opto-Isolators; Mergers; and DMX cabling. This class is primarily geared for those people who will be installing the DMX network. This class covers topics that are listed as being in the content outline for the ETCP Entertainment Electrician Certification Exam.


Drug subsidies

Thomas Lumley blogs at Stats Chat:

There are new, very promising treatments for some cancers, which work by disabling one of the safety mechanisms in the immune system so that it can attack the tumour. These treatments have been approved in the US for melanoma and the most common type of lung cancer, and they look better than anything we’ve seen before.  The problem is the price, more than NZ$200,000.

In New Zealand, roughly 2000 people die of melanoma or lung cancer each year. At the current market prices, a course of treatment for each of them would absorb more than half of ’s budget.

It would cost $400 million a year for the one drug.

There really are people whose disease completely vanished, but only about one in sixteen. Two thirds didn’t see any response. Even for the people who have no detectable disease we can’t yet know if the benefits will last a few years or a lifetime.

Pharmac is not going to fund these treatments at anything like the current price in the current budget. That’s not a matter of debate or public pressure. It’s just not happening. It won’t add up. Conceivably, the government could decide to come up with the money to fund the treatments outside the current Pharmac budget. I don’t think that would be the best way to spend the money, but I’m glad to say this is the sort of decision I don’t get to make.

$400 million for a 1 in 16 cure rate is unlikely to occur.

Over the next few years, other companies will introduce treatments that attack the same or related immune checkpoint targets, and competition will make the price fall. At some point, it will be worthwhile for drug companies to make Pharmac an offer it can accept, as happened recently with Humira, Pharmac’s current top spend (which turns off the immune response in a somewhat similar way to how the new cancer treatments turn it on).

Five years ago, you couldn’t get these treatments if you were a billionaire. In ten years or so, I expect these or similar treatments will be effectively free to New Zealanders. At the moment, we’re in the painful transition period, where the manufacturers can afford to target only the wealthiest individuals and insurance companies.

Exactly. There is always that transition period from no one can afford it (as the average cost of a new drug approved by the FDA is $4.5 billion) to when governments can subsidise it for most people.

Incidentally Pharmac’s budget has increased 25% since 2008 – from $636 million to $795 million. In real terms that’s an 11% increase.

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On March 16, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals – which has jurisdiction over appeals from Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming – drove home that when it comes to jury instructions, the devil is in the details.  Reasoning that a lower court jury “might have relied on the erroneous direct-threat standard,” the court reversed a verdict in favor of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”).

EEOC v. Beverage Distributors Co., LLC involved a disability discrimination claim lodged by a warehouse employee against his employer.  The employer offered this employee a promotion to a higher-paying job, but it was conditioned on his passing a physical examination.  Although he passed the exam, the examining doctor noted that he was legally blind and that he would require a workplace accommodation to mitigate the risks from his impaired vision.   The employer refused to institute any accommodations and rescinded the promotion.

The EEOC brought suit in the District of Colorado on the employee’s behalf, alleging the employer’s actions violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”).  The employer responded by asserting a “direct threat” defense, arguing that the employee’s impaired vision would create a significant risk of harm to himself and others and that no reasonable accommodations could reduce or eliminate that risk. At the conclusion of the trial, the district court provided the jury with the following instruction on the employer’s defense:

To establish th[e direct-threat] defense, Beverage Distributors must prove both of the following by a preponderance of the evidence:

  1. Sungaila’s employment in a Night Warehouse position posed a significant risk of substantial harm to the health or safety of Mr. Sungaila and/or other employees; and
  2. Such a risk could not have been eliminated or reduced by reasonable accommodation.

The district court supplemented this instruction by telling the jury to consider the reasonableness of the employer’s belief regarding the existence of a direct threat.

The Tenth Circuit concluded that these instructions constituted reversible error.  It held that the employer should not have been held liable for disability discrimination in rescinding the promotion if it had “reasonably believed the job would entail a direct threat.”  The court explained that a reasonable belief was all that was needed – “proof of an actual threat should have been unnecessary.”  The court additionally held that the trial court’s second instruction did not cure the error, and that the combined instruction was incorrect, stating: “The first part of the instruction inaccurately stated that Beverage Distributors had to prove that Mr. Sungaila posed a direct threat. And the second part of the instruction did not cure the error by directing the jury, without explanation, to consider the reasonableness of Beverage Distributors’ belief.”

This case is important in that it clarifies that actual proof of a direct threat is not required to assert the defense; all that is required is a reasonably-held belief of a direct threat.  It also serves as a reminder that precise language is of paramount importance in jury instructions, lest a jury hold an employer liable based on a failure to prove something that it was not required to prove in the first instance.


TriDaS specified controlled vocabulary for the method of measurement TriDaS specified controlled vocabulary element shape adapted from dictionary created by BIAX Consult, Zaandam (NL). TriDaS specified controlled vocabulary for the type of location TRiDaS specified controlled vocabulary for the measurementSeries variable TRiDaS specified controlled vocabulary for the units in which data are stored TRiDaS specified controlled vocabulary for remarks attached to rings Enumeration of TRiDaS recognised project categories A controlled vocabulary is used to limit users to a pick list of values The name of the standard used to control this vocabulary The ID value in the standard dictionary corresponding to this entry The normalised name for this entry Suffix to add to a year number Simple presence/absence data type Complex presence/absence data type with additional possibilities Simple certainty data type An extension to the basic dateTime type which includes an optional 'certainty' attribute. Field containing date and time when this record was created. Field containing date and time when this records was last updated. An extension to the basic date type which includes an optional 'certainty' attribute. Data type for storing year. Includes a separate suffix attribute and optional certainty value Base data type inherited by all TRiDaS entities. Contains the fields common to all TRiDaS data entities. Fields for storing links to Series Link to preferred (best/most representative) series for this entity The type of entity this is. Preferrably derived from a controlled vocabulary. General description of this entity. Title or name of this entity. This should be a 'human readable' name by which the entity is referred. Identifier for this entity which in combination with the domain should be unique. This is typically a computer generated code such as a database primary key. The domain which this identifier is applicable to. Could be the URL of the organisation's server or the name of the organisation as long as it is not ambiguous. Details about the geographical location of this entity. GML representation of a location. Can be either a point to represent a particular location or a polygon to represent an area or a geographical extent / bounding box. The type of location that the geometry field represents taken from the TRiDaS controlled vocabulary. Stores potential difference; number of meters difference, so 0 is exact. Additional information about the location, for example, point taken from center or corner of area, which corner Filename of a file associated with this entity. Generic field for storing key/value pairs for data not currently supported in the TRiDaS standard Name of the field. The data type that this field contains. A project is defined by a laboratory and encompasses dendrochronological research of a particular object or group of objects. Examples include: the dating of a building; the research of forest dynamics in a stand of living trees; the dating of all Rembrandt paintings in a museum. What is considered a 'project' is up to the laboratory performing the research. It could be the dating of a group of objects, but the laboratory can also decide to define a separate project for each object. Therefore, a project can have one or more objects associated with it. The dendrochronological research laboratory where this work was done. Identifier for the laboratory. Name of the laboratory. Acronym of the laboratory. Town or city where the laboratory is located. Country where the laboratory is located. Category of research this project falls into. Preferably from a controlled vocabulary. TRiDaS controlled vocabulary of research categories. Principal investigator of this project. When the dendrochronological project took place. Could consist of a start- and end-date. If unknown it should be estimated. Date of the request for dendrochronology. If unknown it should be estimated. The person/organisation who commissioned the project. Citations of publications relating to this project. National/International system in which the research project is registered. An object is the item to be investigated. Examples include: violin; excavation site; painting on a wooden panel; water well; church; carving; ship; forest. An object could also be more specific, for example: mast of a ship; roof of a church. Depending on the object type various descriptions are made possible. An object can have one or more elements and can also refer to another (sub) object. For instance a single file may contain three objects: an archaeological site object, within which there is a building object, within which there is a beam object. The list of possible object types is extensible and is thus flexible enough to incorporate the diversity of data required by the dendro community. Only information that is essential for dendrochronological research is recorded here. Other related data may be provided in the form of a link to an external database such as a museum catalogue. Name of creator, place of the workshop/wharf etc. Name of the owner of the physical object. Details on the time period this object covers. If the date is already known in more or less detail: historical period (broad). Equivalent to Dublin Core term 'temporal'. Method of dating support (e.g. archive sources, inscriptions, stratigraphic context, associated finds, typology, stylistic aspects, carpenter marks, radiocarbon, OSL, other methods). An element is a piece of wood originating from a single tree. Examples include: one plank of a water well; a single wooden panel in a painting; the left-hand back plate of a violin; one beam in a roof; a tree trunk preserved in the soil; a living tree. The element is a specific part of exactly one object or sub object. An object will often consist of more than one element, e.g., when dealing with the staves (elements) of a barrel (object). One or more samples can be taken from an element and an element may be dated using one or more derivedSeries. The most detailed taxonomic name known for this element (species, genus, family etc). Preferably from the Catalogue of Life ( controlled vocabulary. The shape of this element, as a free text description, an entry from a specificed controlled vocabulary, or perferably from the TRiDaS controlled vocabulary. Physical dimensions of this element, either height and diameter, or height, width and depth. The units of these measurements must also be specified. Height of this element. Should be used in combination with either diameter, or width and depth. Diameter of this element. Used in combination with height when the element is a tree. Width of the element. Depth of the element. Whether this element is original, a repair or later addition etc. Processing (carved, sawn etc.) rafting marks etc. Carpenter marks, inscriptions etc Altitude in metres if this element is a standing tree in situ. Only relevant if this element is a standing tree. Contains details about the slope this tree was growing on. Angle of slope from horizontal in degrees Angle in degrees from north along which the slope lies Only relevant if this element is a standing tree. Contains details of the soil the tree was growing in. General description of the soil type Depth of soil in centimetres Only relevant if this element is a standing tree. Contains details of the bedrock below where the tree was growing. General description of the underlying bedrock A sample is a physical specimen or non-physical representation of an element. Examples include: core from a living tree; core from a rafter in a church roof; piece of charcoal from an archaeological trench; slice from a pile used in a pile foundation; wax imprint of the outer end of a plank; photo of a back plate of a string instrument. Note that a sample always exists and that it can either be physical (e.g. a core) or representative (e.g. a picture). A sample is taken from exactly one element and can be represented by one or more radii. Date the sample was taken Description of the position in the element where this sample was taken from State of the material (dry/wet/conserved/burned, woodworm, rot, cracks) things that indicate the quality of the measurements. Are knots present in the sample? Details of the pith, heartwood, sapwood and last ring under the bark. This is included under the radius or measurementSeries entities. If present in both, the measurementSeries details supercede those of the radius. Whether the pith is present or absent Whether the heartwood is present or absent Estimated number of missing heartwood rings to the pith Description of the way the estimation of how many heartwood rings are missing was made and what the certainty is. Details about the sapwood Whether the sapwood is present or not Number of sapwood rings measured Information about the last rings under the bark. If the last ring is under the bark is present, include information about the completeness of this ring and/or season of felling. Estimated number of missing sapwood rings to the bark Description of the way the estimation of how many sapwood rings are missing was made and what the certainty is. Bark is present or absent A radius is a line from pith to bark along which the measurements are taken. A radius is derived from exactly one sample. It can be measured more than once resulting in multiple measurementSeries. Angle in degrees from north along which this radius lies. This entity is used instead of a standard 'radius' when radius details are not known. A base type inherited by measurementSeries and derivedSeries. A measurementSeries is a series of direct, raw measurements along a radius. A single measurementSeries can be standardised or a collection of measurementSeries can be combined into a derivedSeries. The measurements themselves are stored separately as values. Date that the measurements where made. Name of the analyst that made the series Name of the dendrochronologist that oversaw the analyst Method that was used to measure this measurementSeries, preferably from the TRiDaS controlled vocabulary. TRiDaS controlled vocabulary for the method of measuring. More information about this entity. Contains either the 'interpretation' of the series or an 'interpretationUnsolved' placeholder Information interpreted from the series Chronology used to interpret the series Year of the first measured ring. This is derived from the chronology that was used to date this series. It is not to be confused with sproutYear. Statistical value used to support match with chronology Significance of the statistical match with the chronology Software used to perform the statistical match with the chronology Estimated year that the tree sprouted Estimated year of death of the tree Estimated provenance derived from the matching chronology If no measurementSeries information is known (e.g. if describing a derivedSeries where no measurementSeries data is available) this placeholder is used instead of a standard measurementSeries entity. A derivedSeries is a calculated series of values and is a minor modification of the 'v-series' concept proposed by Brewer et al (2009). Examples include: index; average of a collection of measurementSeries such as a chronology. A derivedSeries is derived from one or more measurementSeries and has multiple values associated with it. The date that this derivedSeries was created. The reason/rationale why this series was made Numerical method used to standardise the series Name of the person that created this derivedSeries Version number of this derivedSeries This is a container for a group of actual measurement values. When appropriate this container includes details on the variable being represented as well as the units used. If the values are unitless, then the special <unitless> field is used. Measured variable (ring width, earlywood, latewood etc) preferrably taken from the TRiDaS controlled vocabulary Measurement units used for these value, preferrably taken from the TRiDaS controlled vocabulary Presence of this field denotes that hte associated values have no units. Not to be used to denote *unknown* units. A value is the result of a single ring measurement. The type of measurement this is along with the units used are recorded in the 'values' container in the associated measurement- or derviedSeries. Alphanumeric code to identify the sequential position of the value, e.g. nr1001, nr1002 Optional field to denote how many underlying values went to create this value in a derivedSeries Remark about this value. Remarks can be standardised to consistantly record important features like 'frost damage' - preferrably using the TRiDaS controlled vocabulary. TRiDaS controlled vocabulary for specific remarks.


Let me start by clarifying something. When I refer to my “anxiety”, I am not simply talking about my fears or situations that make me nervous. I’m not talking about the kind of anxiousness that everyone experiences throughout their life. I am talking about Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)- a mental condition which affects nearly every aspect of my life in one way or another.

You’ve probably noticed my nervous behaviors. Bailing on plans at the last minute, making excuses to stay at home, chewed nails, sudden crying, shortness of breath, restlessness, fearing new situations, inability to go to places alone.  Panic attacks.

I try to hide my struggling, but I know you see it. You see it because you care. And because you care, you often try to help. You tell me to take deep breaths. You tell me to calm down, or to stop worrying. With good intentions, you quote Philippians 4:6 to me. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” You try very hard to diffuse the situation. But it has never worked. Not even once.

I’m writing this letter, because I want to be fair to you. I want you to understand what my anxiety is and what it feels like, because I want you to know that I’m not ignoring your advice. I know that my emotions can be hard for you to deal with, and that our relationship isn’t an easy one for you. For that reason, I feel like I owe you an explanation.

Anxiety feels like an ocean. When it hits, I struggle to keep my head above the water. It’s overwhelming and every single moment feels like I’m one breathe away from drowning. It’s so big, so vast, and it extends further than I can see. The water is dark and heavy. And the more I struggle against it all, the higher the waters gets.

The words “calm down” force me to struggle against my anxiety. And the water rises just a little more.

It should be obvious, but please remember: If I could stop my anxiety, I would have done so by now. These emotions are not a choice, or something that I have invited into my life. I am not a victim, but I am certainly not a willing participant. So please stop telling me to calm down. Please stop using phrases that imply that I should be able to control my anxiety.

I know you want to help me- you wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t- and I love you for that. But you need to stop trying to help me rationalize the feelings that I’ve spent my whole life trying to understand. Irrational fears and emotions cannot be understood. Instead, try this: When my anxiety is pulling me under, let me know that you see my struggle, even if you don’t understand it. Pray for me, but don’t ask me to do the praying. Listen to me, but don’t offer “easy” solutions. Most importantly, know that you do not have to fix me or make my anxiety go away. I want you to be my friend, not my therapist. I will never put those kinds of expectations on you.

I wish you didn’t have to deal with this; Ironically, you seem to feel the same way about me. So this is a learning process for both of us. I promise to keep trying to find new ways to cope with my anxiety. In return, I simply ask that you keep being my friend, even if don’t always deserve it. Friendships like ours are often what keep my head just above the water. And that means everything to me.

Thank you,

Your Friend

[su_box title=”My Mind Talk” box_color=”#00859d”]A series devoted to our readers. Does your Mind do a lot of thinking too ? Do you have questions to ask ? A Poem, A question, an article or any thought that wants to be shared. Pour them here. Click the Submit button and we will publish it on our Site. Why let that thought Sink ? Let it be free Write on.. 🙂 Let the Mind Talk Begin [/su_box]

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Suggested Journeys for Maheshwar

We are pleased to offer the following selection of suggested itineraries based on our personal experiences. By combining these itineraries with your thoughts and ideas we can tailor any journey to make it special, unique and designed around you.

Sacred Places and Natural Beauty of Madhya Pradesh

15 days starting from £3695 per person

Despite being one of India's most rural states, Madhya Pradesh is the cradle of Indian civilisation with a strong Hindu-Buddhist culture, abundance of historical sites and plethora of wildlife unrivalled throughout the subcontinent. After an exploration of Delhi, fly to Bhopal and visit the...

Classical India - A Journey from Mumbai to Agra

18 days starting from £3980 per person

As one of the world's great nations, India has an unrivalled historic tradition with this itinerary exploring the ages of Indian history through religion, architecture and people. Leaving the Victorian grandeur of Mumbai, journey to central India, home to the cave temples of Ajanta and Ellora,...


Andrés López-Sepulcre

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Theory suggests evolutionary change can significantly influence and act in tandem with ecological forces via ecological-evolutionary feedbacks. This theory assumes that significant evolutionary change occurs over ecologically relevant timescales and that phenotypes have differential effects on the environment. Here we test the hypothesis that local(More)
Recent study of feedbacks between ecological and evolutionary processes has renewed interest in population regulation and density-dependent selection because they represent black-box descriptions of these feedbacks. The roles of population regulation and density-dependent selection in life-history evolution have received a significant amount of theoretical(More)
There are many theoretical and empirical studies explaining variation in offspring sex ratio but relatively few that explain variation in adult sex ratio. Adult sex ratios are important because biased sex ratios can be a driver of sexual selection and will reduce effective population size, affecting population persistence and shapes how populations respond(More)
Dispersal is often risky to the individual, yet the long-term survival of populations depends on having a sufficient number of individuals that move, find each other, and locate suitable breeding habitats. This tension has consequences that rarely meet our conservation or management goals. This is particularly true in changing environments, which makes the(More)
Ecological and evolutionary processes may interact on the same timescale, but we are just beginning to understand how. Several studies have examined the net effects of adaptive evolution on ecosystem properties. However, we do not know whether these effects are confined to direct interactions or whether they propagate further through indirect ecological(More)
Adaptation does not necessarily lead to traits which are optimal for the population. This is because selection is often the strongest at the individual or gene level. The evolution of selfishness can lead to a 'tragedy of the commons', where traits such as aggression or social cheating reduce population size and may lead to extinction. This suggests that(More)
Fluctuating environments are expected to select for individuals that have highest geometric fitness over the experienced environments. This leads to the prediction that genetically determined environmental robustness in fitness, and average fitness across environments should be positively genetically correlated to fitness in fluctuating environments.(More)
The carrying capacity of an environment is determined partly by how individuals compete over the available resources. To territorial animals, space is an important resource, leading to conflict over its use. We build a model where the carrying capacity for an organism in a given environment results from the evolution of territorial defense effort and the(More)
In semelparous populations, dormant germ banks (e.g. seeds) have been proposed as important in maintaining genotypes that are adaptive at different times in fluctuating environments. Such hidden storage of genetic diversity need not be exclusive to dormant banks. Genotype diversity may be preserved in many iteroparous animals through sperm-storage(More)


Bacon and leek soup

    Bacon and leek soup

    2 people made this

    About this recipe: When making this, I tend to look for the leanest packs of bacon and go from there. This slow cooker recipe is a favourite of my family and is nice and simple to create.

    Merseyside, England, UK

    Serves: 6

    • 1kg cooking bacon
    • 275 to 300g leeks
    • 5 large potatoes
    • mixed herbs

    Prep:15min  ›  Cook:4hr  ›  Ready in:4hr15min

    1. Trim all visible fat from the cooking bacon.
    2. Cut the bacon into chunks and place in slow cooker dish. Cut the leeks and place into the dish. Cut the potatoes into small chunks and place in the dish.
    3. Add water so that it is just visible and not over the top of the ingredients. Add as much mixed herbs as you want.
    4. Cook on high for 4 hours or on low for 8 hours.
    5. Once cooked remove approx 1/2 to 2/3 of the ingredients from the dish (depending on your preferred thickness). Drain into a pan and place the drained liquid back into the slow cooker, leaving the removed ingredients in a colander.
    6. With a hand blender blitz the remaining contents of the slow cooker pot into a thick soup. Once blitzed, replace the removed ingredients. Give it all a stir and serve.

    If you feel the blitzed soup is a little too thick, add some hot water from the kettle to thin it back out a little. If its a little too thin, add some more of the removed ingredients and continue to blitz.

    See all 12 recipes

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Other Indication

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is one of the most common female endocrine disorders. PCOS is a complex, heterogeneous disorder of uncertain etiology, but there is strong evidence that it can to a large degree be classified as a genetic disease. PCOS is characterized by high levels of androgens, a male hormones particularly testosterone resulting in high levels of luteinizing hormone (LH) and low levels of follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) which prevent follicles from producing a mature egg from the ovary and is associated with insulin resistance. Small cysts called poly cysts usually, but not always, surround the ovaries and appear like a strand of pearls on an ultrasound examination. The cysts develop from hormonal imbalances.
Excessive androgen secretions can lead to excess collection of fluid in a thin walled sac like structure of ovary, which further leads for formation of cyst in the ovary.
Mechanism of action:

FEMDAYS help toning the muscles of the uterus, balancing the reproductive hormones to stop excessive uterine contractions and optimal endocrine functions to balance the entire hormonal axis naturally, thereby relieving the spasmodic pain.

FEMDAYS reduces high levels of androgens and prostaglandin levels in the body and increases the Serotonin levels. Also balances the hormones estrogen, follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and progesterone.

Diet for Dysmenorrhea, Oligomenorrhea, Menorrhagia, Leucorrhoea and Polycystic Ovarian Disease (PCOD) or Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS)

The patient should not consume deep fried and tart food. The last week of the menstrual cycle is very vital for these patients. Should avoid anything cause constipation. Vegetable like Colocasia, Yellow pumpkin, Potato, Brinjaland red meat, dairy products, caffeine, Tea, coffee, alcohol, aerated drinks, salt, and sugar are to be avoided. White pumpkin, Papaya, Drumstick, Bitter gourd and Cucumber are helpful. Garlic is recommended. Women having Dysmenorrhea should use garlic in a dose of 10 cloves, two times a day.

Dietary supplement of POMEGRANATE EXTRACT will also help the conditions.


Our Humane Society started with one person who had the desire to help animals and their people in need. We need like minded individuals like yourself to help us grow so that we can answer the calls for help. Our volunteers give hope to each and every animal in need. Join our volunteer family today!
 Thank you for your interest in volunteering
with The Humane Society of Loudoun County!


The Perfect Client

by Bill Purdin

Some would say that that is an oxymoron. Not for us. We’ve had many of them, and we are hoping for more. Time will tell.

We have also had some of the other type of client, too.

Building a great client relationship takes time and practice and experience. Clients come in all sizes and in all industries. Budget size at the start of the relationship predicts nothing. Chemistry predicts nothing. Bad clients are adept at conviviality almost without fail. One thing is predictive however: does the new client have the capacity to listen and to learn, or are they dismissive of others and arrogant, always putting themselves and their opinions first? One meeting should do it. I have left the polished mahogany boardroom of a multi-billion dollar bank relieved to depart without the new business. I have left the garage-office of a one person shop so excited about the prospects of working with that individual that I was back on the phone even as I was driving home.

The two most important criteria are: courage and confidence. In the former category I am speaking of moral courage and not the animal variety. And in the latter category I am speaking of competence, really.

Competence and Confidence

In a study of competence and confidence in The New York Times published a few years ago it was noted that in all of the case studies, and commensurate statistical compilations, competence and confidence had a counter-intuitive, inverse relationship. When the “confidence” level was exhibited at its highest level, competence was at the lowest level. And, as you would expect, when competence was exhibited at the highest levels, confidence, expressed and proclaimed, was at its lowest, in fact it was often denied entirely. Think about that for a minute. The more you actually know about a topic the more you are inclined to deny any level of real confidence, even though your performance is at the highest levels. Why is that? The more you actually know about a subject, the more you know how much there is to know; how much you don’t know. As you competence rises, your confidence in your own omniscience, gracefully and respectfully deminishes.

– Benjamin Disraeli

– Benjamin Franklin

Stupidity is without anxiety.
– Johann von Goethe

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.
– Benjamin Franklin

Working with truly competent people is really fun. They always recognize talent when they see it. They always love honesty and truth. They are tireless in discovery. They are loyal in every way. And their prospects for success are unlimited, so finding them at the beginning, middle, or at the end of their careers does not matter in the least. Finding them is all that matters.

Sad to say, truly competent people are as rare as true leaders. By the way, competent people are natural leaders, too, but you have to talk them into it.


The rise and fall of the representational theory of measurement (2)

In the previous entry we saw how the so called ‘Representational Theory of Measurement’ appeared to solve one of the deepest problems in the empiricist account of scientific knowledge: how to justify the use of numbers in science (and the calculations that used them), taking into account that all knowledge was supposed to be grounded on empirical data, and these were supposed to be purely qualitative. The solution consisted in the proof of a ‘representation theorem’, which was basically divided into a proof of existence (i.e., that it exists some function –an homomorphism– assigning a number to every object in a domain that fulfils some purely qualitative conditions), and a proof of uniqueness (i.e., that any other function that satisfies the same formal properties is related to the former one by some formula –for example, a proportional change of scale, like that transforming measures in kilograms into measures in pounds). In particular, in the case of ‘extensive measurements’ (those for which the sum is a well defined operation), it must be the case that:

– for every x and y, xQy if and only if f(x) ≥ f(y)

– for every x and y, f(x*y) = f(x)+f(y)

– for every other function g that has the properties B and C, there is a real number k such that, for every x, g(x)=kf(x)

where Q means ‘…is at least as big as…” and * is a combination operation. According to this radically empiricist account, hence, to ‘measure’ would simply consist in representing (or ‘summarising’) some qualitative relations with the help of numbers.

The representational theory was received with hope and joy in many sciences (particularly psychology and economics) that wished to become as ‘scientific’, ‘objective’ and ‘successful’ as those in which scientists where able to make astonishing prodigies of precision and prediction, like physics. For example, economists dreamed of establishing a ‘measure’ of their old concept of ‘utility’, a numerical representation of individual preferences and their intensity. In principle, it seemed there were no much difficulty in translating preference relations into a numerical order: just assign two numbers U(x) > U(y) to options x and y just in case an agent prefers x to y, i.e., if she always chooses x when offered a choice between x and y. But function U is totally arbitrary save for having to respect this ‘monotonicity’ condition, in the sense that, if a function U represents the preference of an agent for x over y and y over z (such that, for example, U(x)=10, U(y)=9 and U(z)=2), the functions that assign values 100, 3 and 2, or 100, 99 and 75 to x, y and z respectively, work equally well, and so no one of them can be called a ‘measure’.

Things are different when we consider the choices an agent makes under uncertainty, i.e., when she does not directly choose between options, but between ‘lotteries’, or combinations of options in which each option has a definite probability. Suppose, for example, that the agent prefers lottery A to B, where A consists in option x occurring with a 50% probability, y with a 25% probability, and z with a 25%, and B consists in option x occurring with a 10% probability, y with a 8% probability, and z with a probability of 10%. Perhaps there is some set of conditions that can be verified between this more complex type of preference comparisons, conditions that are purely qualitative (save for the trivial fact that they are preferences over entities that may contain a quantitative description –probabilities, in this case–, but it is the concept of preference the one we want to measure quantitatively, not the concept of those things that are preferred), but that guarantees that the functions U that we assign to the agent’s preferences are not as arbitrary as we saw in the previous paragraph, i.e., that they are ‘measurable’. Perhaps the greatest success of the representational theory of measurement was the proof, published in 1954, by the mathematician Leonard Savage (a former assistant of von Neumann), that this was exactly the case1.

The conditions are slightly more complicated than the ones for extensive properties we saw in the previous entries (see 2 for a brief summary), but the idea is the same, with an important difference: now, the numerical function representing preferences (‘utility’) is not unique up to scalar transformations, but only up to linear transformations, i.e., if assignments U and V both satisfy the qualitative conditions of Savage theorem, then there are numbers a and b such that for any x it happens that U(x) = aV(x) + b (in the case of ‘ratio scales’, like those of mass and length, b is necessarily 0; now, it can be any real number), and such that the agent’s choices (whose systematic mutual relations are what is described in the theorem’s axioms) are consistent with the maximisation of what is called ‘expected utility’, i.e., the expected value of the functions U or V, given a function of probability that is also uniquely determined by these same axioms. This made of ‘subjective utility’ a concept with exactly the same mathematical properties as the usual scales of temperature (but not absolute temperature): though it does not make sense to say that, if the utility you get from something is 10 and the one you get from something else is 20, the latter gives you ‘twice’ satisfaction than the former, it can be correct to say that the difference between the satisfaction you get from those two things is twice the difference between something that gives you 8 units of utility and something that gives you 3 units. The logic of the expected utility function already suggested this last mathematical properties: if you are indifferent between choosing option x and a lottery in which you win prize y with probability p and prize z with probability (1-p), and such that you prefer y to x, and x to z, this can be represented as:

EU(x) = EU(lottery) = pU(y) + (1-p)U(z)

but, since

EU(x) = U(x) = p(Ux) + (1-p)U(x),

it follows that

p(Ux) + (1-p)U(x) = pU(y) + (1-p)U(z)

pU(x) – pU(y) = (1-p)U(z) – (1-p)U(x)

p[U(x) – U(y)] = (1-p)[U(z) – U(x)]

And hence,

[U(x) – U(y)]/[U(z) – U(x)] = (1-p)/p

I.e., the ratio of the differences between the utilities of the three options has to be equal to the ratio of probabilities in the lottery, no matter what function U you have used to represent the agent’s preferences for x, y and z.

An additional prize of Savage theorem is that the qualitative conditions stated in its axioms (remember, conditions about what an agent prefers to what) can be interpreted as conditions of rationality: it would be irrational to behave, i.e., to choose, in a way contrary to what the axioms state. For example, if you violate the axiom of transitivity (if you prefer x to y, and y to z, but prefer z to x), then you have irrational preferences. In this case, you will be turned into a ‘money pump’: suppose you start having y, but prefer x, then you can consider to pay some little amount of money for the right of exchanging x for y; now you have x, but since you prefer z to x, you will be happy to pay a little bit so that you can change z for x; once you have z, since you prefer y to z, you will pay something to make the change. So you end having y, as in the beginning, but has given out three amounts of money. No matter how small these amounts are, the process can be repeated till you loss all you fortune. Something similar happens if other of the axioms of Savage are violated. In conclusion, rationality (in the sense of having ‘consistent’ preferences and choices) not only can be summarised in a simple list of mathematical axioms, but these axioms seemed to entail that a necessary condition of being rational is that you choose in such a way that you are maximising a mathematical function that can be as well defined as the temperature of your room is definable in Celsius degrees, for example.

This result opened great expectations in the social sciences and in psychology, during a time dominated by a radically empiricist, behaviourist paradigm in most part of those areas, with the hope that many other concepts and properties could be subjected to some similar treatment. Measurement theory was then practiced mainly during the next decades by mathematical psychologists and social scientists in cooperation with philosophers and logicians (e.g.,3), aspiring to put on firm foundations what can be objectively asserted and measured about those fields. Of course, if you know a little bit about the state of those disciplines you will know that successful measurement is still a very far objective. One of the reasons of that failure is that the representational theory of measurement was not capable of delivering what was expected from it, but we will see this in more detailed in the next entry.

  1. Savage, Leonard J., 1954, The foundations of statistics. New York, John Wiley and Sons.
  2. Karni, Edi, 2005, “Savage’s Subjective Expected Utility Model”(PDF)
  3. Krantz, David H., R. Duncan Luce, Amos Tversky, and Patrick Suppes. 1971. Foundations of Measurement. Vol. 1, Additive and Polynomial Representations. Mineola: Dover.

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What happens to transportation projects under President Trump?

Transportation has been vastly underfunded in the past two decades, according to most Democrats in the House and Senate. President Obama tried to raise taxes on oil imports and gas usage to fund transportation projects, but Congress has been a stone wall, refusing to raise taxes or spend more on infrastructure.

You would think under Republican President-elect Donald Trump, things are about to get worse, but the billionaire businessman has advocated for more infrastructure spending throughout his campaign.

See Also: Sustainability will be driving the smart city bus by 2020

In his announcement speech, Trump spoke about the need to spend more on our infrastructure: “We have to rebuild our infrastructure. Our bridges, our roadways, our airports.” Trump also lambasted Hillary Clinton’s infrastructure plans, which included $500 billion in spending and loans, saying more is needed.

It sounds like Trump is willing to spend hundreds of billions, if not trillions, fixing and upgrading America’s infrastructure, but details of his plan are sketchy. He hasn’t provided an actual spending figure, and apart from the wall, there aren’t that many signature projects that have Trump’s approval.

Going around Washington

Cities and states have started to bypass Congress entirely when it comes to transportation projects, usually pushing the project to a vote. That has resulted in major projects being approved, like the ½ percent rise in sales tax in Los Angeles, which will provide $120 billion to future transportation and construction projects.

This works for some programs, although states can only go so far when it comes to changing the tax laws and increasing import charges. For massive programs to be approved, Congress would need to change its tune.

Even if Trump were to announce major infrastructure programs, it would be hard to push them through a Republican House and Senate. Republicans have blockaded almost all of Obama’s plans, convinced that infrastructure doesn’t need massive spending increases, and if they do the states can decide.

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Infographic: how UK health spending compares to other countries

The health of a nation is often measured in economic terms – how much a country chooses to spend, where that money comes from, what it spends it on and how much that money translates into quality of care.

This infographic shows how UK health expenditure, access to care and health outcomes compare with seven other OECD countries.

To read about what the UK might learn from New Zealand’s healthcare system, click here.


What opinions do you have about what it means to be a boy or a girl when you’re a ninth grader in Denmark?

A conversation between Oliver Enevoldsen, Carl Lonborg, Gustav Lunde, Viola Melamies, Waldemar Blichfeldt, William Kronborg, Rasmus Baun Bartran, Gustav Ravn Madsen, Hanna-Sofie Dahle and Sigrid Garder, 9th grade students from Maglegaards School in Denmark

From the moment we are born, people are divided into two groups depending on which gender you have. Girls are given pink clothes, bows and dolls while boys are given blue clothes, toy cars and plastic swords. This contributes to the reason why at a young age boys typically play with other boys and girls typically play with other girls. There are often appointed different properties and standards to each gender that defines what is “right” and “wrong”. This is how it goes throughout most of our lives: boy colours/girl colours, boy interests/girl interests, boy toys/girl toys – and so on. In reality there is nothing but an anatomical difference between boys and girls, and we shouldn’t allow ourselves to predetermine whether our children should become princesses or not, and if their opinions “fit” their respective gender.

This goes back to a very early categorization that has been tied up in a vicious circle. Unconsciously, through books and children’s movies, genders are portrayed in such a way where girls wear pink and boys wear blue. These categorizations put people in particular boxes where, if you choose to step out of your box, you are immediately seen as different or abnormal. For example if a girl wants to do something that a boy does it seems weird. Almost perceived as “wrong”. That “diversity” we are delegated does not only affect us during childhood, it is noticeable throughout all of our lives.

Equality between genders is a delicate and difficult thing and it’s no secret that men have a lot more advantages than women when it comes to jobs. On average men earn more than women in higher positions such as a CEO. That is not fair since people’s salary shouldn’t be based on your gender but on your work ethic and level of skill.