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From its dramatic opening in which a trader lies dying in a tent while his caravan continues on to Jericho without him, to the confusing days following the death of Jesus, Crace's novel of forty days' "quarantine" in the wilderness startles, fascinates, and ultimately haunts. Readers who embrace a literal interpretation of the Bible may be offended by the premise and plot of this novel, in which Jesus and four other pilgrims seek spiritual enlightenment in separate caves in the bleak wilderness. Each, including Jesus, faces personal demons as s/he wrestles with solitude, starvation, and thirst. For those who regard events in the New Testament as symbolic, rather than literal, the novel offers a surprising new way of experiencing and interpreting the trials in the wilderness, the death and burial of Jesus, and ultimately the influence of Jesus on succeeding generations.
Crace's descriptions of the natural world are breathtaking. Using vivid verbs, musical cadences, unique metaphors, and acutely perceived observations about man, nature, and the spirit, he brings the wilderness into sharp focus, often personifying nature and its creatures without a trace of romanticism. "The clouds came down to sniff the hills, to scratch their bellies on the thorns," "Clouds and lightning moved away, banging on their shields," and sounds of wind that "could be mistaken for the vast percussion of the storm-pressed, canvas billows of a ship" are among the hundreds of vibrant and unique images which bring nature to life and illustrate man's closeness to it. With a similar focus on men as humans within nature and the wilderness, he attempts to recreate the quarantine experience and man's desire to connect with a higher power. Jesus, like the other pilgrims, is human here, a man rooted in the real world of his day and subject to the same urges as other men. He is different from them, however, in his determination not to yield to privation as he seeks union with God through his visions and hallucinations.
This is not a book that will appeal to everyone. Though Crace's purpose is not to debunk, he does challenge our understanding of what happened between the forty days in the wilderness and the resurrection and its significance. The language is stunning, the characters are fascinating, the imagery is unique, and the power of nature is overwhelming--but one's enjoyment of the book ultimately depends on one's willingness to consider alternative interpretations of some of the basic tenets of Christianity. Mary Whipple
on 5 June 2001
If there are writers more protean than Jim Crace, novelists more determined than he not ever to write the same kind of book twice, they keep well hidden. Crace's previous novels had settings as varied as these: prehistoric earth (The Gift of Stones), metropolitan Britain a few years in the future (Arcadia), and Cornwall in the 19th Century (Signals of Distress). Lest we should see a pattern developing, he has gone hiking and this, his fifth novel and already something of a modern classic, takes place in Judea, two thousand years ago. The hero is called Jesus. He is from Galilee. He is a carpenter by trade. How original.
Words lose their meanings and I suppose it is a sad reflection on the times to note that for most people now the word 'quarantine' conjures up the image of six months of doggy hell; or, just possibly, the director of Pulp Fiction. The founding meaning is gone to most, but the book reminds us that quarantine originally meant a period of 40 days and nights alone, often fasting, done with the aim of achieving some personal or spiritual goal. (The duration alone is retained in the French 'quarante'.) The supporting characters in Crace's novel are four people pursuing such a quarantine in search of relief for their respective problems ("madness, madness, cancer, infertility"). The fifth is Jesus, a young man of zealous disposition. The other four will break their fast every night: a sign that they don't really believe that god will provide for them, let alone that he will cure their maladies. Jesus is different:
"His quarantine would be achieved without the comforts and temptations of clothing, food and water. He'd put his trust in god, as young men do. He would encounter god or die, that was the nose and tail of it. That's why he'd come. To talk directly to his god. To let his god provide the water and the food. Or let the devil do its work. It would be a test for all three of them."
In a lesser novel, this could become the central concern: "Does Jesus live or die?" (Forty days? No food or water? What do you think?) But Crace deals the story more skilfully, by making Jesus only a little more prominent than the other quarantiners. The true central characters are a travelling salesman, Musa, and his wife Miri. Musa is a tough man and a cruel husband, whose reputation precedes him as he lies dying of fever on the novel's first page. When Miri goes off, with rather too much haste, to dig a grave for Musa, Jesus encounters him and he mysteriously recovers.
Musa's subsequent faith in Jesus - he becomes obsessed with "the little Gally" - is matched only by his faith in himself. The scenery is littered with caves where the quarantiners stay, and Musa wastes no time in making them believe that he owns the land. He extracts rent from the afflicted four with no difficulty. Musa comes to resemble God. He fails to abide by the rules he himself sets. His vengeance is arbitrary. His power over the others rests mostly in reputation, unfulfillable threats and his forbidding appearance: at the same time he has a ridiculous unmanly voice, and his vast weight means that he cannot get up without help from someone else. He is a God, like all the others, who requires his believers for survival. But Musa is a second-rate deity, the Alan Partridge (if you will) of the first century AD: he is torn between abusing those weaker than himself and becoming obsessively worshipful of anyone in whom he detects power. Jesus becomes the object of his fascination, and it is not long into the novel when Musa (and so the others) start thinking of him as a 'healer'. The implication as the novel ends is that from the mouths of these half-dozen wanderers will be born the rudiments of Christianity. The crucial point Crace makes is that whatever Jesus actually does is not relevant... Religion, the novel seems to say, is based on belief not reason. As such it is beyond logical attack or defence.
But the underlying themes are not half the pleasures of "Quarantine". The surface is divertingly beautiful. As ever Crace makes the scene and land his own, and the cruel Judean desert becomes vivid and full of character:- "This was the wind on which to fly away. Its gusts and blusters came looking for him in the cave, bursting in like rowdy boys to shake him from unconsciousness." "The salty scrubland was a lazy and malicious host. Even lizards lifted their legs for fear of touching it too firmly." (This is the language which earlier reviews found "shallow and uninspiring.") Crace also is adept at firm characterisation, and when literary fiction suffers a dearth of really villainous characters it is a relief to have Musa, whose unremitting wrongdoing is perversely admirable.
So broad is Crace's skill, that the reader feels that the whole book could be driven by any one of the factors alone: setting, plot, characters, themes. That he manages to sustain them all at once is (not literally) miraculous. Crace may not think much of religion but he has the gift of the greatest creators of legends: he makes you believe.
on 24 May 2010
Someone recently chose this book for our book club after complaints that we had had too many 'chick flick/easy reads' for some time. It proved to be a massive success more due to the discussions it brought on. It is a brave theme the author has chosen and it brought on much debating on the 'myth', as some chose to view it, of Christ and how 'legends' in general can be born. However, it is not a religious book #for those who were concerned that it is and perhaps not for them# or anti-religious either - Jesus is just one of the folk along with other memorable characters who are on this 'pilgrimage'. All agreed, even if it was not really the type of novel they normally enjoy, that it was beautifully, descriptively and in some ways hallucigenically written. You can feel and breath the heat and aromas of the area - such is the power of Crace's decription. The ending is vague but we all agreed it would be hard to finish it any other way. It is also surprisingly easy to read. It is a book you will never forget and would possibly go back to even if just to re-read some of the stunning description.
Quarantine comes much lauded. It was Booker shortlisted. It ticks the “controversial” box, dealing with an episode of the life of Christ.

Sometimes, when reading the Bible, one is tempted to ask: how would that work, then? What would that actually have looked like? There are few clues in the Bible; there is almost no characterisation; events are set out in a very skeletal fashion and there is little sense of what make people tick. So, when Jesus goes into the wilderness for 40 days, what did that actually mean?

In Quarantine, it seems that this 40 days in the wilderness is a fairly common rite of passage or penance. There is a conveyor belt of pilgrims ready to take the place of their predecessors, living in caves and living on whatever small creatures come their way. This particular batch of pilgrims have different motives for coming to the desert: variously they hope for fertility, cure from illness or spiritual enlightenment. Oh, and one of them was Jesus.

The pilgrims have the dubious fortune to run into a merchant, Musa, who had fallen sick and was left for dead by his caravan as they headed on to Jericho. Following a visit from Jesus, and to the disappointment of his long-suffering wife, Musa recovers. Musa then provides much of the narrative drive as he seeks to exploit the pilgrims and, in particular, to forge a link with Jesus that might enable them both to become very rich.

Quarantine differs from the Biblical story in its inclusion of other people; and these other people form a human representation of temptation. Jesus is frail, uncertain, desperate. He has a strong faith but he doesn’t know where it comes from. He seems always to have been a bit of a square peg in a round hole, and he hopes his time in the desert will provide answers.

There is ambiguity in Jim Crace’s narrative. It is not clear whether Jesus does perform miracles or whether routine customs are misinterpreted. It is not clear whether Jesus is god (Crace uses a small g), or whether he is simply searching for god. The ending, in particular, is opaque and whilst it might seem profound to start with, it will probably frustrate readers.

The writing is top quality. Crace uses humour, irony, pathos. He uses mundane language to describe the miraculous and colourful language to describe the mundane. Some of the set pieces are brilliantly conceived, and the relationships between the characters are carefully thought through. But after a while, it all feels a bit unvarying. We have got the basic idea; we understand what the desert looks and feels like; we know Jesus and Musa. There’s not much more to say. But Crace presses ahead and says it anyway. Like the desert, it ends up feeling rather slow and very arid.
on 10 May 2009
As a Christian I was not offended at the idea of writing a book about Jesus despite what others may think. I bought this in my first year of university, I read the first page and nodded off. I thought it boring; yet it stayed on my bookshelf until year 4 when I blew away the dust and immersed myself. I'm glad I did. It was truly marvelous, the language and writing style I thought wonderful. I would highly recommend this book to everyone eventhough I know, even for personal experience, that it is not for everyone. All I can say is, if you buy it, read a bit and not like it, keep it on your bookshelf and wait; you will read it someday and hopefully find it as wonderful as I did. Bring on the next one by Jim!
on 19 December 2002
Quarantine is a novel of Christ's forty-day sojourn in the wilderness in which He was tempted by Satan. It resembles a fable in its construction. This tale was first told in the Bible, in the Gospels of Mark and Luke, and Matthew. Milton based Paradise Regained on Christ and His temptation. Crace's Jesus, however, is someone far different.
In Quarantine, Christ seems to be more of an unlearned carpenter than someone divine; someone whose parents have reprimanded Him for His habit of piety and who has fled to the desert of Judea in a search for God and truth.
Christ is not alone in the Judean wilderness; there are other quarantiners, each with his own purpose and each on his own quest. Some are determined to be cured of blindness or barrenness, while others are simply searching. Jesus chooses one of the most uncomfortable caves in the area in which to spend His forty days, and He is determined to spend them without food or water. In contrast, the wealthy merchant Musa, though suffering from an apparently terminal illness, spends his day with his pregnant wife in a lavish tent.
Crace, a master at integrating his setting into the very fabric of his story, describes the desert in minute detail. This detail, which covers the flora and the fauna, the geography and the geology, is so minute, however, that many readers, (I was one) will need to keep a dictionary handy. If there are words you can't find, don't worry; this is Jim Crace writing and, just as in Being Dead, another five-star novel, words, and worlds, often exist only in the author's imagination. And ours.
The story continues along the lines of a classic fable, but we feel as though we are lost in a dreamworld, in a hallucination perhaps, as the characters of Musa, his wife Miri, and her contemplative friend, Marta become symbols for the Biblical story with which most of us are familiar.
Crace is a writer's writer, a true original, and this book, like his others, is never predictable. This is an author who is strange, creative and original, but always wonderful. Never a political writer, Crace is more concerned with giving us a world within a world, with detailing the landscape and the culture. In Quarantine, there is the almost obsessive description of the desert; in Arcadia, it was a produce market; in Signals of Distress, nautical matters and life in an early Victorian seaport; in Being Dead, it was, of course, death. Or rather, the process of death.
Crace eschews political and topical themes and instead focuses his attention on the beginnings and endings of lives and of worlds: the remnants of the stone people, the dispossessed greengrocers, the quarantined. He writes with what Iris Murdoch calls "crystalline" construction; a novel that is really more like a poem, introspective and artistic and thematic. He very much resembles William Golding and Signals of Distress is very reminiscent of Golding's novel, The Spire.
Crace is not going to be everyone's cup of tea. But for those looking for something a little different, something that will make them think, something that is quietly profound, Crace may be just perfect.
on 27 September 2014
Jim Crace is certainly a powerful writer but some readers might find his intensity a bit hard going.

The very titles of his novels, such as "Being Dead", "Continent", "The Gift of Stones" and this one, "Quarantine", let you know almost immediately not to expect light fiction.

I found "Being Dead" - which described a murder and the immediate aftermath - interesting although a bit methodical and the same goes for "Quarantine".

It portrays a group of characters trapped in the desert in Israel 2,000 years ago.

One of them goes by the name of Jesus from Galilee and is searching for God in the wilderness.

He and the others - a grasping merchant and his pregnant wife, various would-be hermits, including a woman who may be barren and is desperate for a child - face their problems against a harsh landscape of rocks and stone under a merciless sun, fearful of poisonous snakes, scorpions and that most dangerous of all beasts, their fellow man.

Crace fans might like it but I'm not so sure about others.
Not quite an everyday story in the lives of ordinary first century AD Jewish folk - but, as we are led to believe that quarantine is not unusual for the times - not far off! With only slightly more characters than you can count on the fingers of one hand and 250 or so pages in which to do it you'd think that it would be reasonable to expect rounded portraits instead of the two-dimensional cardboard cut-outs presented before us. In the few pages devoted to Him, even Christ is personified as little more than a confused and, possibly, deluded youth with nothing more ambitious on his mind than impressing his parents and the village elders! The whole thing is just Albert Square in loincloths and sandals with a hint of Thelma and Louise - but with far less character development and much less interesting! The fact that this book was the Whitbread Novel of the Year says more about, either the scandalously narrow-minded judges or the shocking paucity of truly worthy writing than anything about the quality of this tawdry and mean-spirited little affair.
on 16 June 2011
This is a haunting re-imagining of the Gospels' account of the trials of Christ in the wilderness. Crace has a magical way with character and atmosphere. The wilderness is rendered vividly and becomes a character in itself - hot, oppressive, but also mystical and menacing. The encounters between the sadistic salesman Musa and the other travellers are particularly gripping and unsettling.

For me, the most effective aspect of the novel was the Christ character - his presence seems to permeate every page, even when the narrative is focussed elsewhere. The depictions of his childhood, the early blossoming of his faith, his relationships with his disapproving synagogue and family, and best of all his prayer-life, are particularly moving and seem totally in keeping with the character of Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels.

I initially thought the denouement was a bit of a cop-out, a clever literary dodge to sidestep the question of Christ's identity. But after finishing this novel, it is the ending that stays with me most - strange, sad and beautiful all at once, much like the rest of this book.
on 31 August 2013
I stuck with this book based on the excellent endorsements on the cover. There is no doubting that Crace is a master when it comes to describing even the most mundane. I found myself skipping some of the vivid detail in search of some substance. I am left with the impression that the main objective of Quarantine is to showcase Crace's descriptive aptitude, this, in my opinion is at the expense of a narrative that keeps the reader engaged. There was enough about the nature of the 40 day fast to make this a worthwhile read for me, but the ending, although it will please many, was a bit flat and anti-climatic.

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Change typically doesn't hit the health care industry all at once, but in practically a blink of an eye, cancer immunotherapies -- training the body's immune system to recognize and attack cancer -- are all the rage.

We can certainly point to the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in 2013 as the reason this treatment pathway took center stage, with Bristol-Myers Squibb's nivolumab and Merck's lambrolizumab, which both treat advanced types of melanoma, stealing the show. These two experimental therapies are part of an exciting class of PD-1 inhibitors which, in really early-stage studies, delivered stunning overall response rates (ORR). A phase 1 study that combined nivolumab with FDA-approved Yervoy delivered an ORR of 53%, while the optimal dosage of lambrolizumab produced an ORR of 52%.

Yet, the truth of the matter is that there are a number of advancing cancer immunotherapy studies currently under way from the likes of Dendreon (NASDAQ:DNDN), Galena Biopharma (NASDAQ:GALE), NewLink Genetics (NASDAQ:NLNK), Peregrine Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:PPHM), and Inovio Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ:INO) as well. In other words, cancer immunotherapy studies aren't exclusive to Bristol and Merck.

Macrophages fusing with cancer cell. Source: Dr. Raowf Guirguis, Wikimedia Commons.

These companies share one common bond
However, these five immunotherapy-focused companies above do share a bond that extends beyond their research. This bond in question is that they're all relatively small ($1 billion in market value or less) all things considered, and that a majority of their valuation is based on the future success of one or two therapies within their respective pipelines.

Let's have a quick look at each pipeline so you can get a better idea of how much "hope" is really baked into each of their valuations. Keep in mind that my intent is not to pass judgment in a good or bad sense on any of these five immunotherapy-focused companies, but to instead highlight which one or two immunotherapy drug hopefuls could make or break these companies.

Dendreon is really the only established biopharma of the group, with its metastatic prostate cancer immunotherapy Provenge being approved by the FDA in April 2010. Dendreon's therapy works by collecting some of a patients' immune cells (a process known as leukapheresis), exposing those cells to a signature protein from the targeted cancer, and then reinjecting those immune cells so they can target prostate cancer cells. In trials, Provenge was shown to have improved median overall survival by a tad over four months.

Unfortunately for Dendreon, competition in treating metastatic prostate cancer has been increasing at a ferocious pace, and Dendreon didn't exactly handle its product launch very well. Peak sales expectations for its immunotherapy vaccine have fallen from $4.3 billion a few years ago to roughly 10% of that total today, even with its recent European approval. If Dendreon is unable to cut its costs with its second restructuring in as many years, the company's share price may have further downside.

Galena Biopharma
Galena might be the poster child for unbridled hopes and dreams in the biotech sector, with its share price both more than quadrupling and losing more than half of its value in just the past couple of months. There are a number of factors at work here for this volatility, but I'd surmise that the bulk of Galena's hope is built into the success or failure of its cancer immunotherapy NeuVax.

NeuVax is targeted at HER2-negative breast cancer patients (the predominant type of breast cancer) as an adjuvant therapy to help them maintain their disease-free status. Without getting too technical, NeuVax stimulates specific CD8+ cytotoxic T-lymphocytes causing them to recognize and destroy HER2-expressing cancer cells. In the final results from its phase 2 trial, Galena reports that at the 60-month mark, only 5.6% of NeuVax intent-to-treat subgroup of patients had a relapse, while 25.9% of patients in the control arm had a cancer reoccurrence. Overall, this represents a recurrence reduction of 78.4% in the target population and was more than enough to justify its ongoing phase 3 studies of the vaccine. It will still be a while before we have the results from Galena's phase 3 study, but NeuVax certainly has make-or-break potential for Galena.

NewLink Genetics
Unlike Dendreon and Galena, NewLink Genetics really has two products in its HyperAcute immunotherapy platform working side by side to give the company its current $1 billion valuation -- algenpantucel-L in two separate late-stage pancreatic cancer studies and tergenpumatucel-L in relapsed or refractory non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

Novartis Research

Source: Novartis.

NewLink's immunotherapy treatments work by modifying existing cancer cell lines to express alpha-gal, a carbohydrate that the human body has a natural immunity to. Once in the body, alpha-gals train the body to recognize these cancer cells and to seek out and destroy them. In early June, NewLink released phase 2 data on tergenpumatucel-L for NSCLC, noting that it delivered median overall survival of 11.3 months and long-term stable disease in eight of 28 evaluable patients.

Just days later, NewLink reported phase 2 data from a resected pancreatic cancer study involving algenpantucel-L, which demonstrated disease-free survival in 62% of patients after one year. The data also showed a median overall survival of 42 months in patients with elevated levels of anti-mesothelin antibodies, which was more than double the median overall survival of patients without elevated levels. NewLink's treatments are therefore very specialized, and based on its $1 billion valuation, hopes for its success run high.

Peregrine Pharmaceuticals
With the exception of Cotara and PGN650, an early-stage tumor imaging agent, Peregrine's entire valuation is based on immunotherapy agent bavituximab which is being tested in both first- and second-line non-small cell lung cancer, liver cancer, and HER2-negative breast cancer, to name a few studies.

Peregrine's bavituximab is unique in that it's a phosphatidylserine (PS)-targeting monoclonal antibody. In easier to understand terms, PS is an immunosuppressive molecule typically found inside healthy cells, but in tumor cells, it's located on the outside of the cell, providing immune response protection. Bavituximab aims to block this immunosuppressive response and allow the body's immune system to recognize and destroy these cancer cells.

No trial is currently more important to Peregrine than its second-line NSCLC study, which is currently in phase 3 trials. Although its phase 2 results were far more complicated than they should have been, the end result was a better-than-doubling in median overall survival to 12.1 months from 5.6 months in the control arm. Bavituximab also delivered a 40% increase in progression-free survival, to 4.2 months from 3.0 months. Without question, this phase 3 study will go a long way to proving or disproving the viability of Peregrine's immunotherapy.

Inovio Pharmaceuticals
Inovio Pharmaceuticals might be the one exception to the rule, here, since it has four cancer-focused immunotherapies in development in addition to a number of clinical and preclinical HIV and hepatitis-focused vaccines.

Inovio's claim to fame in this space is its SynCon vaccine platform, which utilizes synthetic DNA to target multiple disease antigens and break down whatever immune resistances may exist. The company's SynCon vaccines have thus far been developed to treat cervical dysplasia/cancer, as well as cancers that express hTERT such as breast, lung, and pancreatic cancer.

Despite having a number of existing trials, only one of Inovio's in-house studies has advanced beyond phase 1. However, this vaccine, VGX-3100, demonstrated incredibly promising early-stage immune responses to antigens from the human papillomavirus infection. Early data showed that VGX-3100 was effective at destroying precancerous cervical dysplasias that had been transformed by HPV, meaning it could have early- and later-stage success in treating cervical cancer.

Most cancer immunotherapy stocks have exploded higher recently, but even these aforementioned five companies may have trouble keeping up with this top stock


Was Prince an 'Acquired Musical Savant'?

Prince on piano

For more fascinating stories like this one, like The Daily Grail on Facebook or follow us on Twitter. You can also support our writing via Patreon.

In April 2016, the world was rocked by news of the death of Prince Rogers Nelson. One of music’s - or more correctly, modern culture’s - biggest ever stars, Prince was a man of small stature whose shadow of influence was mind-boggling large. Immediate musical tributes from fellow 80s icon Bruce Springsteen, Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour, country star Chris Stapleton, the cast of the hit musical Hamilton, and many others were testament to the respect the man and his music were held in.

For much of the public, Prince was a ‘star’; a hell of a performer who they might have seen playing guitar and piano in different music videos. What most musicians knew, however, was that Prince was - beyond his singing, his dancing, his band-leading skills, and his audio production talents - a skilled instrumentalist of the highest order, on not only the guitar and piano, but drums, bass guitar and more. Indeed, it is difficult for anybody who hasn’t played each particular instrument to truly appreciate how good he actually was.

It is silly to have debates about “was Prince a better guitarist than Clapton” or whoever - there are many ways to value a musician’s skill, whether it’s technical, historical knowledge, talent at improvising, or ability to play ‘for the song’ (among others). Let’s just say that Prince’s live band (on record, he often played all the instruments himself) was filled with musicians of the highest calibre - and if Prince ‘blind’-auditioned for each of the parts of his own band, he would probably have got all of the gigs based purely on his skill on guitar, bass, keyboard and drums.

The almost supernatural array of talents that Prince possessed are enough to have made many wonder as to how anyone could have assembled such a formidable skill-set - remembering that much of it was already fully formed at the time of his debut album, in his teens (go back and listen to his debut album For You, with tracks such as “Just as Long as We’re Together” sounding like an extremely tight band of talented musicians - but it’s all him).

Most accounts of Prince’s life put his skill set down to the twin factors of being a ‘functional orphan’ - he was largely abandoned by each of his parents in turn, and so is said to have spent much of his time playing music - who nevertheless inherited from those parents some serious musical acumen (his father was a jazz pianist, and his mother a singer). His unfortunate family situation - along with his extremely short stature (Prince only stood 5’2”) - are also claimed to have made him absolutely driven to prove himself to the world.

But could there have been an additional factor at work?

A Prodigious Musical Talent

Many people are musically talented. Many also become extremely proficient at their chosen instrument at a young age. However, Prince’s abilities, excelling on multiple instruments, verge on the spooky - the type of talent that gives rise to ‘down at the crossroads’ mythologies. He mastered a variety of instruments rapidly in his youth, to the point of being able to play all of the instruments on his debut album while still in his teens.

With his estate in confusion following his tragic passing, and his legendary control of material being posted online at least temporarily on hold, YouTube has been flooded with video examples of his wonderful talent (though how long they will remain is another question). Here are just a few isolated examples, among many: ... Read More »

News Briefs 06-06-2016

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Philosopher Says We Should Begin Planning Now, So That a Super-Intelligent A.I. Doesn't Kill Us All Off

AI Death Flowchart

Could the creation of an artificial intelligence (AI) more powerful than our own be a dangerous moment in the history of humanity? Philosopher Nick Bostrom, in the TED talk below, says yes indeed. Intelligence is what has lifted humans to their current dominion over many aspects of nature, Bostrom notes, so the creation of an intelligence beyond ours would have "profound implications":

Chimpanzees are strong...pound for pound, a chimpanzee is about twice as strong as a fit human male. And yet, the fate of [chimpanzees] depends a lot more on what we humans do, than on what the chimpanzees do themselves.

Once there is super-intelligence, the fate of humanity may depend on what that super-intelligence does.

Bostrom points out that problems may not even necessarily be due to malevolence on the part of the AI. He points out the story of King Midas, who wished for his touch to turn everything into gold, as an allegory for what might happen to us if we give a super-intelligent AI a poorly thought-out 'wish' to complete.

As such, Bostrom urges those involved in the creation of artificial intelligence to consider the safety measures needed now. so that we can plan for the eventuality of an intelligence superior to our own:

I believe that the answer here is to figure out how to create superintelligent A.I. such that even if -- when -- it escapes, it is still safe because it is fundamentally on our side because it shares our values. I see no way around this difficult problem.

...The technical problems that need to be solved to make this work look quite difficult -- not as difficult as making a superintelligent A.I., but fairly difficult. Here is the worry: Making superintelligent A.I. is a really hard challenge. Making superintelligent A.I. that is safe involves some additional challenge on top of that. The risk is that if somebody figures out how to crack the first challenge without also having cracked the additional challenge of ensuring perfect safety.

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“…What is the aim of a physical theory?”

Quote of the Day:

Pierre Duhem

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Luckily, we've got some good friends in high place, so we've been able to assemble a bunch of awesome stuff - including (but not limited to) a signed Tool poster, a copy of the Black Dossier League of Extraordinary Gentlemen signed by Alan Moore, signed Darklores, Jacques Vallee's

Passport to Magonia - that we'll be giving away to randomly selected 'Friends of the Grail' in coming months. Unfortunately, we can't give one away to every supporter - but we'll try and assemble enough cool items that we can keep giving you a chance to be a winner.

Massive thanks and appreciation to all who take the time to support the Grail!

News Briefs 02-06-2016

Asking the big questions...

Thanks Kat, @Red_Pill_Junkie and @UnlikelyWorlds.

Quote of the Day:

There's a one in billions chance we're in base reality.

Elon Musk

How Long Would It Take for Evidence of Our Civilisation to Disappear?

In discussing the possibility of lost civilisations, the question is often asked: if there was an advanced civilisation in antiquity - say, more than 10,000 years ago - how much evidence would actually be left for us to find? The above video covers this in asking the question, what would happen if humans disappeared from the planet:

After 10,000 years, the only reminiscence that people were here someday, will be the remains of a few stone constructions, among which [would be] the pyramids in Egypt and the Great Wall of China. Mount Rushmore National Memorial will be there almost intact for several hundreds of thousands of years.

(via Gizmodo)

News Briefs 01-06-2016

Thanks @GrailSeeker and @JohnReppion.

Quote of the Day:

Cicero (43BCE)

King Tut Was Buried With a Dagger of "Extraterrestrial Origin"

King Tut's Space Dagger

In 1922, Howard Carter stunned the world with his discovery of the 'lost tomb' of the Egyptian King Tutankhamun (18th dynasty, 14th C. BCE), still intact with its treasures (and body of the now-famous boy-king) having remained safe from looters over the millennia. Three years into his investigation of the contents of the tomb, Carter found two daggers within the wrapping of Tut's mummy: one on the right thigh, with a blade of iron, and another on the abdomen - this one with a blade of gold.

While for most people the latter might seem the more interesting, it is the dagger with the blade of iron that has been of more interest to archaeologists. In ancient Egypt, minerals such as copper, bronze, and gold were used extensively from the 4th millennium BCE, but - despite the significant amounts of iron ore in the area - iron was very rarely used until the 1st millennium BCE. As such, there has long been a debate as to whether the dagger found on Tut's thigh might have been made out of meteoritic iron, which was highly venerated by the ancient Egyptians.

The dagger, pictured above, is certainly a thing of beauty. At 34.2cm (roughly 14 inches) long, it has a finely manufactured, non-rusted blade of iron, and a handle largely made of fine gold with a rounded knob of rock crystal at the end. Additionally, it was protected by a gold sheath decorated with a floral lily motif on one side and with a feathers pattern on the other side, terminating with a jackal’s head.

But is it from space? Scientists set out to answer that question in a recent study, which has just been published in the journal Meteoritics & Planetary Science under the title "The meteoritic origin of Tutankhamun’s iron dagger blade" Lead author Daniela Comelli and her team of researchers (thankfully) used a non-destructive technique known as X-ray fluorescence (XRF) to determine the composition of the dagger at two different places on the surface of the blade.

Their analysis - carried out at the Egyptian Museum of Cairo - demonstrated that the two buik constituents of the dagger's blade were iron (Fe) and nickel (Ni), with minor concentrations of cobalt (Co). And, importantly, they found that the nickel contributed around 10.8% of the full weight of the blade:

[Additionally] the Ni/Co ratio in the dagger blade is consistent with that of iron meteorites.

Their conclusion: "The blade’s high Ni content, along with the minor amount of Co and a Ni/Co ratio of ~20, strongly suggests an extraterrestrial origin".

Location of space dagger on King Tut's body

This finding, along with last year's discovery that a 5000-year-old bead from the beginnings of Dynastic Egypt was also made from the remains of a meteorite, reinforce the idea that the ancient Egyptians attributed great value to iron from meteorites.

In this new paper, the researchers do feel that their finding "provides important insight into the use of the term “iron”, quoted in relationship with the sky in Mesopotamian, Hittite, and Egyptian ancient texts":

Beside the hieroglyphic “bja”, which already existed before the XIX dynasty with a broad meaning (as “mineral, metal, iron”), a new composite term “bja n pt”, literally translated as “iron of the sky,” came into use in the 19th dynasty (13th C. BCE) to describe all types of iron. In the same period, we can note a text at Karnak
probably describing a meteorite. The introduction of the new composite term suggests that the ancient Egyptians, in the wake of other ancient people of the Mediterranean area, were aware that these rare chunks of iron fell from the sky already in the 13th C. BCE, anticipating Western culture by more than two millennia.

I mentioned some fascinating details about the ancient Egyptian veneration of meteorites, sourced from researchers Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert, in my post about the beads last year, so I won't discuss it again at length here. But at the end of that post is an interesting hypothesis that wasn't explored much further: could the sacred Egyptian 'Ben-Ben stone' (like other omphalos stones) have originally been a conical meteorite? And, while we're speculating: could its shape have ultimately given rise to the shape of the pyramids?

This new research at least adds to the collection of very cool artefacts from space, including the Buddhist iron man (stolen by Nazis no less), and this more modern Japanese meteorite sword.

Related stories:


What Cody Zeller needs to show

However, there's one area of the floor Zeller still has to show drastic improvement. If he does, it could bode well for his success and the success of the Hornets in 2014-15.


Phytomedics, Inc.

Phytomedics, a spin-off biopharmaceutical company at Rutgers, focuses on human healthcare and plant biotechnology with the goal of discovering, developing and manufacturing new plant-based pharmaceuticals, such as botanical drugs, nutraceuticals and functional foods.

The company is currently taking a series of botanical drug candidates through clinical and preclinical development. It is also engaged in the manufacture of novel therapeutic proteins in plants. Selected New Jersey farmers are growing plants containing botanical therapeutics to provide compounds used in product development by Phytomedics, Inc.

Another core area of Phytomedics' business is the plant-based production of recombinant proteins, such as antibodies, cytokines and vaccines. REPOST technology, one of the tools licensed from Rutgers, uses greenhouse-grown plants to synthesize and continuously secrete large quantities of biopharmaceutical proteins from their roots into a hydroponic solution.

  1. Rutgers
  2. Executive Dean of Agriculture and Natural Resources
  3. School of Environmental and Biological Sciences


Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:

A reconstruction of the accentual history of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages

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Item Summary

Title: A reconstruction of the accentual history of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages
Authors: Shimabukuro, Moriyo
Advisor: Serafim, Leon A
Issue Date: 2002
Publisher: University of Hawaii at Manoa
Abstract: This dissertation reconstructs the accentual history of the Japonic languages (i.e., the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages). Applying the comparative method, the reconstruction of Proto Japonic (PI) accent is based on modern dialects of Japanese and Ryukyuan and also on the dialect of the Ruiju Myogi-sho (a text written in the 11th century). The author looks into 'natural' accentual changes in the Japonic languages and formalizes them. Using these changes or rules, he accounts for the developments of the accent systems of descendant dialects or languages from PJ. Furthermore, he takes typology of accent (i.e., locus and register) into account and explains how typologically different accent systems develop. The dissertation has revealed that Hattori Shiro's accentual subcategories for disyllables are seen not only in Amami and Okinawa Ryukyuan, as he claims, but also seen in Yaeyama and Miyako Ryukyuan. Based on this, the author argues that Proto Ryukyuan (PR) and PJ must have had these distinctions, although Hattori did not reconstruct them. Therefore, there are in total eight accent categories for PJ disyllables - it had been thought that there were only five distinctions. Kyoto dialect has been thought to have evolved directly from the dialect of the Ruiju Myogi-sho. Because of this, it was difficult to account for the development of Kyoto dialect. However, based on accentual correspondences, the author contends that Kyoto dialect is not a direct descendant of the dialect of the Ruiju Myogi-sho, and that the development of the Kyoto dialect is explained by the aforementioned natural changes. The correlation between a long vowel in the initial syllable and word-initial register has been suggested by Samuel E. Martin and Hattori. However, the register in relation to the length has not been reconstructed. This dissertation gives more evidence to support the register hypothesis, and reconstructs a register system in PR and PJ.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 389-397).
Mode of access: World Wide Web.
Also available by subscription via World Wide Web
xii, 400 leaves, bound maps 29 cm
Appears in Collections:Ph.D. - Linguistics


Welcome to Beyond Racism, site of the Comparative Human Relations Initiative (CHRI), a unique collaboration among people and institutions in Brazil, South Africa, and the United States for exchanging information, ideas, and strategies to overcome discrimination and inequality.

This site offers information, resources, and links for people wanting to learn about why and how racism persists. The site’s documents identify national and international trends that increasingly affect efforts to move beyond racism and other types of unfair discrimination in these three nations and around
the world.


If attention is any indicator, the Nuggets really like UCLA guard Zach LaVine.

The young, athletic LaVine wasn't exactly holding court, as he was doing more listening than anything else after the pre-draft workout ended and he waited for his round of interviews. But his company included Nuggets coach Brian Shaw and other assistants as well as general manager Tim Connelly.

It was not a 'hi' and 'bye' conversation. It was lengthy.

LaVine was part of a star-studded affair, joined by Syracuse point guard Tyler Ennis, Kentucky small forward James Young, Florida forward Casey Prather and Kansas forward Tarik Black.

"It feels great," LaVine said of the post-workout attention. "Going through the process, the only time going through it, just trying to be a sponge and pick up everything I can. I asked a lot of questions, what they like, what they don't like. Just try to get to know them. It was my first time meeting them, it was their first time meeting me, so I'm just trying to show my personality."

On the court, he's a known quantity, and should be available should the Nuggets want to select him when their turn comes up at No. 11 in the June 26 NBA draft. LaVine has seen his stock soar since the NBA combine, where he put up eye-opening performances in drills in front of league GMs and coaches.

LaVine played just his freshman season with the Bruins, a reserve who averaged 9.4 points and 2.5 rebounds in 37 games. He is a good 3-point shooter (37.5 percent), and film study revealed that during the NCAA season he was particularly effective in catch-and-shoot situations. As such, LaVine sparkled in an 'around the world' 3-point shooting drill on Saturday, which is a catch-and-shoot exercise.

Convincing NBA teams he is a willing and effective defender is a priority for him, as is proving that he can be a decision-maker and playmaker with the basketball. He was mainly a shooting guard for UCLA, but says he can play either position.

LaVine's athleticism - a max 41.5-inch vertical - jumps out at anyone watching. Film study showed he can get to the rim anytime he wants, but many times struggles finishing through contact.

And he knows that.

"They know I can jump, they know I can shoot the ball, score the ball pretty well," said LaVine, who wants to show "every aspect of my game, showing that I'm a capable defender on the ball and off the ball. Just trying to touch on everything."

Ennis, meanwhile, is a traditional point guard. He can be put into pick-and-roll situations right now, because of his poise, his vision, and his ability to make the right decision the vast majority of the time. Ennis led the ACC in assists and steals, but because he played in Syracuse's trademark 2-3 zone, its main defense, he has to prove he can defend in the mostly man-to-man NBA.

"Teams question it," Ennis said. "To be able to play in the 2-3, you have to be able to defend somewhat. But to come in here and show you can defend against another top guy is a way to take that out of the picture. I want to come into every workout and show that I can defend."

Christopher Dempsey: cdempsey@denverpost.com or twitter.com/dempseypost


Why my first was a .45 by Andrew Tuohy

Not the manufacturer's intended use.

Once I returned to California, however, I was so excited to be back—and excited to see my family shortly thereafter—that I couldn’t sleep that first night and decided to take the Ambien.

It should be said that drugs and guns don’t mix, but little-known fact is that drugs and online shopping can be just as bad for you.

Well, bad for you. Read the whole thing and admire the amazing photography here.


The supplier shall inform telegraphically to the consignee details of despatch giving RR/ LR No., Wagon/Truck No., Type of wagon, craneable consignment or otherwise, total value of consignment, etc. to facilitate the consignee to arrange for clearance of goods.


© 2016 Shmoop University, Inc. All rights reserved.
Differential Equations

Differential Equations

Differential Equations and Their Solutions

A differential equation (d.e.) is any equation that has one or more derivative in it. These can be first derivatives, second derivatives...whatever.

Sample Problem

The following are differential equations.

' + " + xy = 0

Sample Problem

The following are not differential equations, because they don't contain any derivatives.

x2 + y2 = 8

x + xy – y + 9 = 0

x = 9

The order of a differential equation is the highest derivative that occurs in that differential equation.

Sample Problem

The differential equation

' + " + "' + x = 0

has order 3 because that's the highest derivative in the equation:

' + " + "' + x = 0.

Sample Problem

The differential equation

has order 1 because it only contains a first derivative.

A d.e. of order 1 is called a first-order differential equation, and a d.e. of order 2 is called a second-order differential equation. These are the kinds of differential equations that you'll probably see most often.

People who Shmooped this also Shmooped...


About Brownberry®

Brownberry® is Bread Perfected®.

In 1946, Catherine Clark began to notice something about the American diet. She saw that good, old-fashioned homemade wheat bread was missing and decided to do something about it. Using a family recipe with freshly milled wheat, she created bread that had a unique flavor and hearty goodness.

Everyone praised its wholesome flavor and texture. So, Catherine convinced her husband, a bank officer, to take out a $7,000 mortgage on their home. She bought an oven, a mixer, a second-hand delivery truck, and an old grocery store to use as her bakery. She fired up the oven and began baking her hearty wheat bread. Watching fresh loaves coming from the oven, she said, “brown as berry,” and Brownberry Ovens was founded.

With sales more than doubling every year, she expanded operations, building a $400,000 bakery in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. The bakery has grown several times and is still the major bakery of Brownberry products. In 1972, Mrs. Clark merged Brownberry with the Peavey Company in Minneapolis, providing fresh bread for the new eastern markets.

Times changed, the company grew, but the standards set by Catherine remain. The original essence of her creation can be found in a variety of delicious wheat and grain products, all baked in Catherine’s slow, old-fashioned way – one batch at a time.


Web Results

DdB: How do we hear? - Dangerous Decibels

How do we hear? Sound waves travel into the ear canal until they reach the eardrum. The eardrum passes the vibrations through the middle ear bones or ...

How We Hear - American Speech-Language-Hearing Association

The ability to hear is critical to understanding the world around us. The human ear is a fully developed part of our bodies at birth and responds to sounds that are ...

Understanding how the ear works - Hearing Link

Why do we hear? Different levels of hearing were first noticed at the close of World War II by Dr Ramsdell while he was working in Deshon Army Hospital in ...

www.ask.com/youtube?q=How Do We Hear?&v=V3tdslM7X5w
Apr 2, 2012 ... I created this video with the YouTube Video Editor (http://www.youtube.com/editor )

Your Ears - KidsHealth

How the Ear Works - The Children's University of Manchester

are used to hear? Next. The. Brain. The anatomy of the ear... The ear is divided into three parts;. The outer ear, middle ear, and inner ear. Pinna. Ear Canal.

How we hear

How we hear. Sounds are invisible vibrations that travel through the air. When someone speaks, tree leaves rustle, a telephone rings or anything else creates a  ...

How We Hear | How the Ear Works | Hearing Solutions

How does the ear hear? We might not give it much thought, but it is somewhat complicated! We explain and have a diagram of the ear, here.

How do you hear? - Science Museum

You can hear a huge range of sounds, from a deep bass to a high– pitched whistle, and from a tiny whisper to a loud rock band. Sound travels through your ear ...

How Hearing Works | HowStuffWorks

To understand how your ears hear sound, you first need to understand just what ... Most of the time, we hear sounds traveling through the air in our atmosphere.

More Info

How Do We Hear? | NIDCD

How We Hear

How We Hear 700.gif (166 bytes). 4.jpg (1013 bytes) When we detect sounds, or noise, our body is changing the energy in sound waves into nerve impulses ...

How we hear | Australian Hearing

How we hear. December 09, 2013,. in Hearing Loss. The ear is quite a piece of engineering. A complex organisation of bones, hairs, nerves and cells, it picks up  ...


The scale of No Man’s Sky has been discussed and dissected numerous times. We’re excited by the universe the game has placed before us; a quadrillion stars that you can explore seamlessly. But the question of what players can do there has been weighing heavy. My recent conversation with Hello Games’ founder Sean Murray, along with an extensive hands-on session, finally provides some answers.

Murray, who also serves as one of the programmers at Hello Games, puts it plainly as he lands on a planet called Bulari V, “It’s a deep and challenging game,” he says as the UI highlights its current temperature of -163 degrees Celsius.

“There is no YouTube video for this planet, there is no FAQ,” Murray reiterates as he wanders the planet. We're the first people here. No Man’s Sky is a game about surviving the great unknown. You can play as an explorer, a scavenger, trader, or focus on combat, but ultimately the game is all these things.

The goal is to try to reach the center of the universe. To do so you will need to build up your technology, including your suit, weapon, and ship. This requires resources. Hello Games created its own periodic chart, and you can find these elements spread across the universe, some more rare than others. If you don’t want to search for them, you can trade, or battle a space freighter; it’s really up to you.

Technologies require different combinations of elements, and your items (gun, ship, suit) define how many upgrades they can hold. The long game is to get better items that can hold more technologies that can help you reach the center of the universe.

In the immediate term, the gameplay loop focuses on staying alive long enough to continue your journey. Remember that -163 degrees Celsius planet? Well, you have a shield technology that slowly falls away as you explore the planet. To recharge it, you need more resources. But there are challenges inherent to finding them; as it’s not as simple as just picking some plant. You probably need a better weapon, and on this planet there are NPCs that you could trade with, if you could speak to them. If you find artifacts out in the world, or even just chit-chat with the various life forms throughout the universe, you can learn their languages and increase your ability to trade or purchase items.

In other cases, you may run across a refinery that has a locked door. You could hack that door if you have the right technology, but a good old fashioned gun will blow the entrance wide open. Whenever you attack anything on a planet or in space for that matter, you raise your wanted level, much like in Grand Theft Auto. If you’re on a planet when that happens, it draws the attention of the sentinels, a self-replicating robot army. That means if you blow that door open, you need to get inside, download the plans for a new technology, and then get out of range and off the planet before the sentinels overpower you.

In my time with the game, I spent a lot of time wandering the surface of Bulari V, scanning animals and looking for resources. I built a grenade that could deform the world, which is useful for finding caves, but all I managed to do was dig a hole. I recharged my shield numerous times, one time in a bit of a panic. Bringing up the item creation interface doesn’t pause the game, which means you may sometimes be racing to complete the job as the cold of the planet tries to kill you. I managed to fight off death in time, and I also found a lot of artifacts and learned a lot of alien words, an experience I found oddly engaging.

After some time planetside, I hopped in my space ship and headed into orbit. I could have entered the space station, as they do have interiors. Instead, I decided to rob a space freighter and run to a far-off planet before the vastly more powerful fleet destroyed me. On this new planet I tried to avoid most of the indigenous creatures, but of course, one of them had to come after me; creatures become particularly aggressive at night. I shot and killed it with the mentality of kill or be killed. This brought the sentinels, who arrived to check out the situation. They didn’t attack because I didn’t start it, but they decided to follow me around for a bit while I explored the planet. Their presence certainly made the decision to blow something up a lot more difficult.

I enjoyed my time with No Man’s Sky, but I will admit the controls are a little clumsy at times (though the team assured me they are still being perfected). I’m not sure how long I will want to explore these beautiful worlds searching and fighting for resources, but in my short time I couldn’t look away. I want to reach the center of the universe. I want to see what that vast sea of stars holds. It’s now up to Hello Games to find the balance between challenge and resource management so that the gameplay is as engaging as the amazing universe when it ships on June 21.

To learn and watch even more about No Man's Sky, click on the banner below to enter our hub of exclusive content.


Afro-American and African Diaspora Studies | Survey of Hip Hop
A295 | 30938 | Orejuela

Examines rap music and hip hop culture as artistic and socio-
cultural phenomena with emphasis on historical, cultural, economic,
and political contexts. Topics include the coexistence of various
hip hop styles, their appropriation by the music industry, and
controversies resulting from the exploitation of hip hop music and
culture as a commodity for national and global consumption. Credit
given for only one of AAAD A295 and FOLK F295.


Reynolds: 15 Tips For Your Continuous Improvement

September 27, 2009

Presentation design expertG Reynolds Garr Reynolds posted a fascinating blog item today about the kaizen approach to improve, or ways to continuously strive to improve your presentation skills. (BTW – many of the 15 tips can be applied in other areas of your life or career beyond public speaking.)

In his lengthy blog item, he stresses the importance of daily, continuous steps toward a goal are far more valuable than most people think.

“Tiny improvements are o.k.,” he writes. “Over the long-term, these add up to great improvements.”

Reynolds is a former Apple Computer manager, author of Presentation Zen and a marketing professor at Kansai Gaidai University in Japan. As a result, his design methods are often heavily influenced by the Japanese culture.

The Creation Myth – Branding Your Business

March 1, 2009

When you hear the Hewlett-Packard Story, the image that often comes to mind is that of a Palo Alto garage. When people think of the eBay Story, they think of the founder’s fiancée trading pez over the Internet (even though eBay acknowledged years later that that story was fictionalized).

Most well-branded companies have a creation myth, says Terry Gault, VP and managing partner of communications consulting firm The Henderson Group, based in San Francisco.

The Creation Myth was the title of a highly interactive workshop Gault led yesterday at Presentation Camp at Stanford University. He defined the Creation Myth as a unique quality of a company or person.

To illustrate this, Gault told two stories, or “myths” of the creation of two separate companies. One was how David Henderson decided to leave a lucrative law practice and take a chance on launching a communications consulting business, which eventually landed Oracle as a client.

The other story was about the launch of Cirque du Soleil, the wildly successful circus show. After a successful launch in Canada, bankrolled by the Quebec government, the founders took the show to L.A., with only enough money to fly the crew there. If it had failed, they were stuck. However, it not only succeeded, Cirque du Soleil has launched an unprecedented 15 spin-off shows without a single failure.

While the story behind corporate Creation Myths may be at least partially true to some extent, if not completely fabricated, they all have several elements in common.
1. Memorable characters: Characters need names, because audiences have a hard time rooting for a nameless protagonist.
2. Vulnerability: the protagonist must show a vulnerable side, because it makes your character human, and your audience can relate to that.
3. High stakes: for a story to be truly compelling, stakes have to be very high. For example, if Cirque du Soleil failed in L.A., then what?
4. Details: Providing details that make it easier for your audience to visualize the story is key. In fact, details are far more powerful than adjectives.
5. Be Selective in Details: How do you know what details to put in and what details to leave out? The answer: If the details don’t enhance the scene or contribute to the myth, they should be left out.
6. Dialogue: In describing a scene, give the characters first-person dialogue. Instead of saying, he was panicking, demonstrate it with visual details. His hand shook as he held the phone. Sweat poured down his face.

Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address

Monday, January 19, 2009

Barack Obama’s inaugural address tomorrow is arguably the most anticipated inaugural address to date.

More than 2 million people are expected to brave the near-freezing DC weather to hear Obama address the nation in front of the U.S. Capitol as the 44th president.

It’s hard to imagine a more anticipated inaugural speech for several reasons. Not only will it be by the first African-American president, but also Obama rose to prominence as a prolific speechmaker. His 2004 Democratic National Convention speech catapulted him into the national political spotlight. And hardly anybody can argue that the current economic crisis builds more anticipation for Obama‘s first speech after taking the oath of office.

Obama’s 10-year-old daughter, Malia, is also adding additional pressure, according to a CNN article. After a family visit to the Lincoln Memorial, which has Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address inscribed on its walls, Malia turned to her father and said, “First African-American president — better be good.”

In a John F. Kennedy-like move, Obama, in tomorrow’s address, will ask Americans to restore a national value system that honors responsibility and accountability, according to Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, in a Sunday interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

JFK’s speechwriter and advisor Ted Sorensen told the New York Times, Obama should keep his focus on the country’s international standing.

“That Inaugural Address is going to define his presidency in the eyes of the rest of the world,” Sorensen said. “It should be “bipartisan in tone and global in reach.”

Speechwriting Style

In his critique of Obama’s speech style, Sorensen told the Times, “I would say that occasionally his sentences and words are not always short.”

That was a key element of Kennedy speeches written by Sorensen. In fact, a recent New Yorker article references Sorensen’s comment about Lincoln’s inaugural addresses: “Lincoln never used a two- or three- syllable word where a one-syllable word would do.”

While it’s common today for presidents to have their speeches crafted predominantly by others, Obama’s press secretary Robert Gibbs insisted in a Sunday TV interview that the president-elect had written the bulk of his inaugural address.

The Jan. 12th New Yorker article, written by Harvard history professor Jill Lepore, has a rather amusing title: “The Speech: Have Inaugural Addresses Been Getting Worse?

Throughout the campaign, Obama’s speeches have focused on hope and unity, such as the opening line of his Presidental-Elect acceptance speech last November in Chicago:

I haven’t heard anyone say they anticipate Obama to give a bad speech, but Lepore noted that most inaugural speeches are not memorable, aside from a few snippets (or soundbites).

Quite comically, she also noted: “A bad inaugural address doesn’t always augur a bad Presidency. It sinks your spirit though.”

Inaugural Address Trivia

(courtesy of Lepore’s article)

First inaugural address broadcast on the radio: Calvin Coolidge, 1925 (prior to that, inaugural addresses were only read by the general public in the newspaper)

First televised inaugural address: Harry S. Truman, 1949

First inaugural streamed online: Bill Clinton’s second term address, 1997

First expected to be Youtubed: Take a guess

Using Fewer Examples = A Memorable Speech

August 23, 2008

When you see a standup comic, such as Robin Williams, rattle off hundreds of one-liners in the course of a 30-60 minute performance, you often leave the show thinking that was hilarious, but I don’t remember any of the jokes.

If you are a public speaker, that’s not what you want your audience thinking as they leave your presentation (maybe the “hilarious” part, but of course, you want them remembering at least parts of your speech).

A friend of mine recently gave a speech loaded with great examples to illustrate his speech premise. In fact, in the course of his seven-minute speech, he used so many examples (5, 6, maybe even 10), I lost track. Not only that, I hardly remembered any of them.

To make your speech memorable, it’s best to wrap a story around your key points. People remember stories, but bullet points are often lost on them moments after the speech ends, if not sooner.

If you have multiple examples to illustrate a key point, choose the most powerful example and run it through the Sinatra Test, a phrase that comes from the book, Made to Stick (which I wrote about here).

Stories stick in people’s minds. And best of all, stories can have the power to make people act.

How to Write a Speech that Resonates with the Audience

March 30, 2008

In the next ten minutes, you are going to learn how to captivate an audience using a simple technique that subtly makes listeners pay attention.

That technique was used subtly in the previous sentence, which was to replace the word “I” with “you.” By putting the audience in the opening of a story personalizes it for them, and therefore, connects the speaker to the audience.

Some speakers start a speech by telling their audience what s/he (the speaker) is going to talk about, by saying, I’m going to outline steps on how you can captivate an audience. Instead of doing that, it’s far more effective to tweak that sentence by saying, During this presentation, you are going to learn how to captivate an audience.

Here are two examples on opening a speech. The first is written in first-person. The second example uses you, then transitions to first-person:

Example 1: My first paid speaking engagement couldn’t have gone any worse. As I took the podium in front of 300 real estate professionals, my knees wouldn’t stop shaking. I knew I would be nervous, so to calm my nerves, I tried opening with a joke, figuring that if I got them to laugh early on, my nerves would subside. But as I delivered the punch line, there was dead silence. How does a speaker recover from that?

Example 2: Imagine that you have been hired to keynote a conference, which will put you in front of the largest audience you have ever addressed – 300 real estate professionals. You take the podium. Your knees are wobbling as you peer out at a sea of unfamiliar faces. You deliver your opening statement, which you thought was laced with humor, but it is met with dead silence. (Pause) When that happened to me four years ago at my first paid speaking engagement, I imagined I would never be hired to speak to anyone ever again. But I overcame that disastrous experience and here I am, years later, making a living as a public speaker.

In Example 2, the speaker allows the audience to visualize themselves in that situation. Similar to when you watch a movie, you are living vicariously through the character, or in this case, the speaker. By the fifth sentence, the speaker seamlessly transitions the point-of-view by saying: When that happened to me four years ago at my first paid speaking engagement… By then, the speaker has hooked the audience, and now he can talk about his personal experience and how he overcame that frightening time.

Writing a Speech that is Clear and Concise

March 22, 2008

Speakers who can simplify their Made To Stick.jpg message through clear and concise examples have a far greater positive impact on there audiences. Instead of using multiple examples to illustrate a single point, it’s often best to use one very powerful example, and run it through the “Sinatra Test.”

The Sinatra Test, coined by Chip and Dan Heath, co-authors of the NY Times bestselling book Made to Stick, refers to the singer’s classic “New York, New York.” In the chorus, Frank Sinatra sings about starting a new life in New York City, and declares “if I can make it there, I can make it anywhere.”

The Made to Stick authors elaborate on the point by suggesting if you run a security company that has provided security for Fort Knox, there is no other credential you need to prove your credibility to another potential client. In other words, this one example alone is powerful enough to establish credibility, that no additional examples are necessary. Therefore, it passes the Sinatra Test.

By using an example that passes the Sinatra Test, a speech will have the clarity and simplicity to keep an audience attuned to your message.

Grabbing Your Audience’s Attention

January 14, 2008

Motivating and inspiring speechesstick figure.jpg start with a powerful introductory statement. One that connects with the audience and leads them to believe what they are about to hear is very important to them.

You do this by answering two fundamental questions they are all thinking. One: Why am I listening to this? Two: How can I use this information?

If you are keynoting a small conference or leading a sales seminar, a common misstep is to open by reintroducing yourself following the MC’s introduction of you.

The MC’s introduction should not only introduce your name and title to the audience, but also establish you as a credible expert in this field or on your topic. For example:

Our next speaker made headlines when he was hired by XYZ Corp. to revitalize its corporate sales department. Within three years under his leadership, XYZ went from the world’s eighth largest automaker to third. Here to share his secrets, please help me welcome, XYZ’s VP of Sales, John Smith.

An MC introduction like that allows John Smith to go right into the speech with an introduction that would paint a vivid picture in the audience’s mind of a common problem sales team’s struggle with and how he inspired his sales team to work together to overcome those problems.

If John’s introduction fails to grab the audience’s attention, he loses most of them for good.

Therefore, whatever powerful points he may have in the body of his speech or in the conclusion will have little impact on them if any at all.

While the introduction aims to grab their attention and inspire them to listen, the body of the speech aims to keep them engaged all the way through to the conclusion. The conclusion reinforces the main point and inspires them with a call to action.


NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2018, will probe the cosmos to uncover the history of the universe from the Big Bang to alien planet formation and beyond.

Scientists are planning to use the infrared telescope to search for the first galaxies that formed at the beginning of the universe. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will also have the ability to look through cosmic dust clouds to find newly forming planetary systems and seek out the chemical origins of life in the solar system.

The powerful $8.8 billion spacecraft is also expected to take amazing photos of celestial objects like its predecessor, the Hubble Space Telescope. [How the James Webb Space Telescope Works (Infographic)]

Instruments on board

The JWST will come equipped with four science instruments.

  • Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) — Provided by the University of Arizona, this infrared camera will detect light from stars in nearby galaxies and stars within the Milky Way. It will also search for light from stars and galaxies that formed early in the universe's life. NIRCam will be outfitted with coronagraphs that can block a bright object's light, making dimmer objects near those stars (like planets) visible.
  • Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) — NIRSpec will observe 100 objects simultaneously, searching for the first galaxies that formed after the Big Bang. NIRSpec was provided by the European Space Agency with help from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.
  • Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) — MIRI will produce amazing space photos of distant celestial objects, following in Hubble's tradition of astrophotography. The spectrograph that is a part of the instrument will allow scientists to gather more physical details about distant objects in the universe. MIRI will detect distant galaxies, faint comets, forming stars and objects in the Kuiper Belt. MIRI was built by the European Consortium with the European Space Agency and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
  • Fine Guidance Sensor/Near InfraRed Imager and Slitless Spectrograph (FGS/NIRISS) — This Canadian Space Agency-built instrument is more like two instruments in one. The FGS component is responsible for keeping the JWST pointed in exactly the right direction during its science investigations. NIRISS will scope out the cosmos to find signatures of the first light in the universe and seek out and characterize alien planets.

The telescope will also sport a tennis court-size sunshield and a 21.3 foot (6.5 meter) mirror — the largest mirror ever launched into space. Those components will not fit into the rocket launching the JWST, so both will unfurl once the telescope is in space.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is an $8.8 billion space observatory built to observe the infrared universe like never before. See how NASA's James Webb Space Telescope works in this infographic
Credit: Karl Tate, Infographics Artist

James Webb the man

The JWST is named for former NASA chief James Webb. Webb took charge of the space agency from 1961 to 1968, retiring just a few months before NASA put the first man on the moon.

Although Webb's tenure as NASA administrator is most closely associated with the Apollo moon program, he is also considered a leader in space science. Even in a time of great political turmoil, Webb set NASA's science objectives, writing that launching a large space telescope should be a key goal of the space agency. [See Photos of JWST, Hubble's Successor]

NASA launched more than 75 space science missions under Webb's guidance. They included missions that studied the sun, stars and galaxies as well as space directly above Earth's atmosphere.

Budget boondoggle

JWST's road to launch has been a bumpy one. Originally scheduled for launch in 2014, the space telescope was initially expected to cost about $5 billion, but due to budget constraints, technical setbacks and postponements, the space telescope's launch is now four years delayed and more than $3 billion over budget. However, NASA has said that everything is now on track for a 2018 launch date.

— Miriam Kramer, Staff Writer


Aquatic Park Maintenance Project

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At a cost of $57,000, the water park is undergoing some extensive maintenance.

In addition to resurfacing the bottom of the pool, workers have painted the inside of the pool house and all the railings. They are also replacing the safety surface at the water playground with concrete.

This years fees will stay the same, but concession prices are decreasing.

The park is set to open May 26, and possibly the weekend before.

Applications for lifeguards and pool attendants can be picked up at city hall.


Softball: Royalton erases nine-run deficit against Eagle Valley

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Royalton junior Kalee Petron drives a pitch back up the middle for a base hit during Wednesday’s game against Eagle Valley. The Royals came back from behind 9-0 to win the game 14-13.

Royalton fell behind 9-0 in the first inning, but slowly chipped away at the Rebels lead, Wednesday.

Finally, junior Kalee Petron delivered a two-out, two-run single in the fifth to put Royalton ahead for the first time, 12-11.

Eagle Valley came back to go ahead 13-12, but the Royals had one more rally in them in the bottom of the seventh.

With senior Kelsey Petron on second base after a walk and steal with two outs, sophomore Jacquline Nichols blasted a walk-off home run to give Royalton a stunning 14-13 win.

Nichols finished with three hits, three RBIs and three runs and senior Allison Popp went 3-for-4.


Mail-in ballots on their way to voters this week carry a question with far-reaching impact on the way Coloradans tax themselves and spend money on education.

Amendment 66 asks for a $950 million tax increase to fund a recently passed law, Senate Bill 213, that would implement school reform and change the way the state distributes dollars to its 178 school districts.

The new law touches on many aspects of school finance, starting with changing the way the state counts student enrollment. It also intends to channel more money toward early-childhood education, at-risk students, English-language learners, charter schools and locally determined innovations such as longer school days and years.

Advocates frame the tax increase as a crucial investment in education that will vault Colorado into a position as a national leader in reform.

"It's a transaction," said Gov. John Hickenlooper, who supports the measure. "Everyone has to decide: Is this worth what we're giving — $950 million? I'd argue it allows us to go out and say it's the most comprehensive education-reform initiative in the history of the United States. And if it passes, it will make us a national model for public education."

Criticism of the measure touches on several key arguments: The tax burden would be too great in a recovering economy; there's not enough reform in the overall package; and fairness issues abound, including disparities in districts' return on investment.

The tax issue has been a tipping point for business support of the measure. Most business groups have remained neutral on Amendment 66, but those that have come out against it, such as the South Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce, cite the two-tiered state income tax proposal as the deal-breaker.

The new tax structure doesn't change the state corporate rate, but small businesses that report business income on personal tax returns would see an increase.

"We have a flat tax in Colorado, nice and simple, and we need to keep that," said John Brackney, president and CEO of the group. "Otherwise, the next issue will come along and it will be a slippery slope of every legitimate interest saying it's just a tweak, let's do three, four or five (tiers)."

Major overhaul

The measure would provide the first major overhaul to the state's school finance system in nearly 20 years. It would attempt to make state and local shares of district funding more equitable by resetting the equation for funding lower-income districts.

It would pour $165.5 million into full-day kindergarten and $77.5 million into preschool programs. It also targets $100 million for education-innovation grants, such as expanded school days, and $381.3 million for student testing, professional development for educators, early literacy and school accountability.

It promises a net gain in funding for every district and financial transparency through a website that would allow the public to track spending at the school level.

"There's not a single district in the state that loses revenue on this," said Sen. Mike Johnston, the Denver Democrat who carried the bill.

What does it mean to a taxpayer's bottom line?

Valeria Cordova and Alex Duran look over their list of voters on Wednesday. The students, who are with Padres & Jóvenes Unidos, are knocking on
Valeria Cordova and Alex Duran look over their list of voters on Wednesday. The students, who are with Padres & Jóvenes Unidos, are knocking on doors in Denver neighborhoods for a get-out-the-vote effort for Amendment 66. (Erin Hull, The Denver Post)

That depends on where they fall within the proposed two-tiered state income tax system that does away with the 4.63 percent flat rate. Taxable income up to $75,000 would be subject to a 5 percent levy; income over that amount would be taxed at 5.9 percent.

For example, households with $35,000 of taxable income would pay an additional $130 annually; those with $85,000 would pay $405 more; and those with $135,000 would pay $1,040 more.

The financial impact of Amendment 66 goes beyond the tax increase alone, because it also frees up more than $600 million in existing education funding and redirects it to target programs.

Database: Find your school

School districts across the Colorado are projected to get a bump in the total amount of funding they receive from the state if Amendment 66 passes. Some districts, depending on formulas for funding children in poverty and English learners, will receive more money per student than others.

The figures are estimates from the Colorado Department of Education. They are based on current enrollment numbers but include estimates for an increase in the number of children attending full-day kindergarten and pre-kindergarten as a result of the school finance law.

Overall funding increases take into account, $441 per pupil for the teaching and leadership investment and hold harmless provisions.

Some school districts will receive more funding overall, though their per pupil funding is expected to decrease because of increased enrollment stemming from additional kindergarten and preschool slots. Other districts, such as Clear Creek and Pawnee, showing overall decreases may levy other mills that are not represented the data.

Search the database for your school

Online Database by Caspio
Click here to load this Caspio Online Database.

Leaders from most school districts have thrown their weight behind the measure, but some quibble with the new system of divvying up the funding, which will provide larger sums of money to those with greater concentrations of English learners and children in poverty.

In Colorado's rural areas, which account for 82 percent of the state's school districts and 23 percent of the student population, the reaction to Amendment 66 has varied. The Colorado Rural Schools Caucus, which has 136 members statewide, avoided the issue until a couple of weeks ago, when it decided to support the measure.

For the caucus, the key selling point is the influx of resources, particularly to areas where assessed property values are low and mill levies run high, limiting availability of local resources for schools. New money could also help make up for five years of recession budget cuts.

"For us, it's an equity issue," said George Welsh, superintendent of the Center School District in the San Luis Valley. "It's not perfect. But the way it takes into account your size and at-risk population and distributes dollars that way is a whole lot more equitable than what we're currently doing."

The Center School District could get an extra $1.8 million if the amendment passes, which bumps up its funding by 40 percent. Per-student funding at the school district is expected to grow 32 percent to $9,937.

The new law would address concerns around Amendment 23, which calls for annual increases in K-12 funding tied to inflation. SB213 would instead earmark 43 percent of the state's general fund for education, which proponents say would both protect education funding and also avoid crowding out the rest of the budget.

It also provides a reserve fund of $600 million, accrued from the first year of new tax revenues, that could mitigate cuts in lean years.

"If the budget drops again, you have padding to protect K-12," said Johnston, "which both protects K-12 and prevents K-12 from eating the rest of the budget."

Critics such as former state legislator Norma Anderson, the Jefferson County Republican who carried the last school finance act in 1994, contend that the 43 percent would not sufficiently fund K-12 education under the law and that base funding would need to come from the remaining budget.

The new law would include money to advance existing but unfunded reforms. Professional development money would augment the educator evaluation system passed in 2010 and put into effect this school year. Other dollars would address early-literacy development mandated by last year's passage of the READ Act and implementation of the Common Core State Standards.

Another major change would be the mechanism for counting students for funding purposes. The current one-day count near the start of the year would be replaced by a year-long tally that would effectively transfer per-pupil funding if a student changed schools.

Opponents such as Bob Hagedorn, a former Democratic state legislator from Aurora, see the measure as a "missed opportunity" for reform, even though it does contain money to help charter schools.

"I don't think it's enough of a step forward," said Hagedorn, who characterized the charter school enhancements as simply a means to quell political opposition to the tax increase. "It's much better than the status quo. But on the other hand, they could've done a lot more."

Far from perfect

Van Schoales, CEO of A+ Denver and the outgoing president of Colorado League of Charter Schools, said that while the measure remains far from perfect, it does offer major reforms.

Under the new law, the Charter School Institute would get funding equal to the average of what school districts are spending on mill levies. Charters could leave school districts that are not sharing their mill levy dollars and sign on with CSI. The law designates $18 million for charter capital construction.

"What ended up in Amendment 66 will be the best school finance law for charter schools in the country," Schoales said.

Some districts would see less return on their tax investment than others.

The Douglas County School District would get nearly $52 million, an increase of about 14 percent. The district's per-pupil funding would grow by more than 9 percent to $6,995, according to state estimates.

Board members of the Douglas County School District voted unanimously to oppose the measure. They argue that residents in Douglas County will be paying an additional $90 million to $100 million in taxes, but the district will get only $50 million in extra funding.

"Fundamentally, the issue from our point of view is that we're going to pay a dollar, and the state, after it processes it, will send 50 cents back to us. We think that's a bad deal," said board member Doug Benevento, who is seeking re-election.

Denver Public Schools Superintendent Tom Boasberg defended the system of doling out education dollars. He said if the amendment failed, districts with low property-tax wealth would be left behind.

"The rich will get richer and poor will get poorer," Boasberg said. "Denver actually has significant property wealth, in part because of its commercial property, but for other poor communities like Commerce City, Greeley, Mapleton and Aurora, they are the ones who would suffer really badly."

Boasberg said the additional funding is critical to closing the achievement gap between white children and minorities, and between poor students and their more affluent counterparts.

Kevin Simpson: 303-954-1739, or

Amendment 66

Below are estimates that show how the state's six largest school districts will fare if voters approve Amendment 66 in November.

Adams 12 Five Star

Funding before Amendment 66: $272 million

Funding after Amendment 66: $309 million

Funding change: $37 million

Percent change: 14 percent

Per Pupil before Amendment 66: $6,463

Per Pupil after Amendment 66: $7,076

Per Pupil Change: $613

Percent change: 9.5 percent

Aurora Public Schools

Funding before Amendment 66: $262 million

Funding after Amendment 66: $325 million

Funding change: $63 million

Percent change: 24 percent

Per Pupil before Amendment 66: $6,933

Per Pupil after Amendment 66: $8,104

Per Pupil Change: $1,171

Percent change: 17 percent

Cherry Creek Schools

Funding before Amendment 66: $336 million

Funding after Amendment 66: $371 million

Funding change: $35 million

Percent change: 10 percent

Per Pupil before Amendment 66: $6,576

Per Pupil after Amendment 66: $7,016

Per Pupil Change: $440

Percent change: 7 percent

Denver Public Schools

Funding before Amendment 66: $561 million

Funding after Amendment 66: $693 million

Funding change: $132 million

Percent change: 23 percent

Per Pupil before Amendment 66: $7,045

Per Pupil after Amendment 66: $8,131

Per Pupil Change: $1,086

Percent change: 15 percent

Douglas County School District

Funding before Amendment 66: $399 million

Funding after Amendment 66: $451 million

Funding change: $52 million

Percent change: 13 percent

Per Pupil before Amendment 66: $6,388

Per Pupil after Amendment 66: $6,995

Per Pupil Change: $606

Percent change: 9.5 percent

Jefferson County Public Schools

Funding before Amendment 66: $523 million

Funding after Amendment 66: $594 million

Funding change: $71 million

Percent change: 14 percent

Per Pupil before Amendment 66: $6,486

Per Pupil after Amendment 66: $7,112

Per Pupil Change: $627

Percent change: 10 percent

Source: Colorado Department of Education, Colorado Legislative Council and Denver Post calculations


Challenge Forum: Benefits of Walking

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Joined: Jun 12
Posts: 10

Posted: 20 Jan 2013, 13:45
Looking forward to tomorrow..Smile just wanted to share some of the benefits of walking-By Mayo Clinic staff:

Lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol (the "bad" cholesterol)

Raise high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol (the "good" cholesterol)

Lower your blood pressure

Reduce your risk of or manage type 2 diabetes

Manage your weight

Improve your mood

Stay strong and fit

So come on people - let's do thisVery Happy
Losing weight for me...no one elseSmile


ingredient information
Dill Extractives
The word â€œdillâ€� comes from the Norse â€œdillaâ€�, meaning â€œto lullâ€�. Drinking dill tea is recommended to overcome insomnia. A native to Europe, it is a Russian favourite and can be cultivated near the Arctic Circle. Both seeds and leaves are edible. It was known as a medicinal herb to the ancient Greeks and Romans, where soldiers placed burned dill seeds on their wounds to promote healing. Medieval Europe could not grow it fast enough for love potions, casting spells and for protection against witchcraft. â€œTherewith her Veruayne and her Dill, That hindreth Witches of their willâ€œ (Drayton, Nymphidia, 1627) . Carrying a bag of dried dill over the heart was considered protection against hexes. Attributed Medicinal Properties Dill seeds contain carvone as an essential oil. Dill is considered caminative, stomachic and slightly stimulant. Dill water is given to children for digestive problems. Also it â€œdestroyeth the hiccupsâ€�. Culinary Uses Dill is mainly used in pickling, where most of the plant is used. â€œDill Picklesâ€� have become a North American classic and in Europe Sauerkraut and dill vinegars have been popular for centuries. It is especially popular in Russia and Scandinavia, where it is used in courts-bouillons and sauces for fish, pickled salmon, casseroles and soups. It is also used on cakes and breads, particularly in rye breads, the way caraway is used. Dill should be used sparingly as the flavour grows. Its flavour works well in sour cream and yogurt sauces. The chopped fresh leaves are frequently used with trout and salmon, shrimp, deviled eggs, green beans, cauliflower, beets, soups, cottage and cream cheese. Source: A curry is any of a variety of distinctively spiced dishes, best-known in Indian, Thai and other South Asian cuisines, but curry has been adopted into all of the mainstream cuisines of the Asia-Pacific area. Along with tea, curry is one of the few dishes or drinks that is truly "pan-Asian", but specifically, its roots come from India. Curry was later brought to the West by British colonialists in India from the 18th century. Extract The distilled or evaporated oils of foods or plants (such as nuts, seeds, fruits, vegetables, herbs, spices, bark, buds, roots, leaves, meat, poultry, seafood, fish, dairy foods, or eggs) that are dissolved in an alcohol base or allowed to dry to be used as a flavoring. Food extracts as they are often labeled, are used to add a concentrated flavor to many food dishes, especially baked goods and desserts, without adding additional volume. Available in solid (cubes, granules or powdered), liquid or jelled form, extracts may be labeled as pure, natural or artificial. Pure and natural extracts are governed by laws in many countries that require compliance with procedures that take the extract ingredients directly from the named flavor, such as extracting oils directly from the vanilla bean to make pure or natural vanilla extract. Artificial extracts are flavors that do not necessarily use any ingredients directly from a source named for the extract but instead used combinations of ingredients to arrive at a flavor representative of the named food extract, such as artificial lemon extract. Some of the most widely used extracts include vanilla, almond, anise, maple, peppermint, and numerous solid or jelled extracts such as beef and chicken bouillon or meat demi-glaces. As an example of how the pure and natural extract is made, vanilla extract is created by soaking vanilla beans in water and an alcohol-based solution where it ages for several months, during which time the vanilla flavor is extracted from the bean. Anise extract, a sweet licorice tasting flavoring, is produced by dissolving the oil of anise seeds into alcohol. Grape extract is produced to assist with the wine making process. Compounds from the skin of grapes are extracted and added to the wine in order to impart tannin, color, and body into a wine. The characteristics of the wine can be changed dramatically by the amount of time the wine is in contact with the skins. If the grapes are in contact for too long, the resulting wine may be too potent, or what is sometimes called â€œover-extractedâ€�. Juices of fruits and vegetables are often extracted as juice extracts to be used similar to other food extracts, as a flavoring when preparing foods. A common utensil for the purpose of extracting lemon juice is available to assist with home recipes requiring a lemon flavoring.