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Pot Calling the Kettle Black

May 27, 2008

The New York Times reports that Scott McClellan, Bush’s former White House press secretary, has written a memoir about his years where he managed the White House press as the Bush administration took steps to destory the world from July 2003 to April 2006. He is gentle on himself, noting that “I fell far short of living up to the kind of public servant I wanted to be.” Less gentle on others, the Times notes McClellan’s claims that

President Bush “convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment,” and has engaged in “self-deception” to justify his political ends.

No way, Jose! How about that. Good thing he wrote this book so that we could know this sort of thing. Wonder how much he got paid for his book? Do you think he actually stayed in the job thinking, if I stick it out long enough, I can write a book? Or he was just blinded by… I don’t know, just having a job? Being part of the action? Enjoying widespread lying and spinning to the public?

Finally, after, like, three years of deceiving to the media, and working for an administration that systematically restricts access to (important, as well as seemingly mundane) information from the media, he

calls the news media “complicit enablers” in the White House’s “carefully orchestrated campaign to shape and manipulate sources of public approval” in the march to the Iraq war in 2002 and 2003.

Not that I think the media is that hot. Mr. McClellan just doesn’t seem like the best person to wax all philosophical on the problems with media. Since, you know, it was his job to mislead them.

Get Free Books

January 17, 2008

My friend RG, honored and revered benefactor of this blog, has alerted me to a great way to get free books. It is called Book Mooch. www.bookmooch.com It is pretty simple. You list books you want to give away. You get a point for giving someone your book (they have to request it from you for you to get the point) and then you can use that point to get a free book from someone else. You also get points for rating people who give you books and for listing books. All you pay is the shipping cost for the book that people request of you, but then they pay the shipping cost when they send your book, so it works out evenly. The only downside is that the books available are very best-seller-ish. So if you want to get a specialized book – it might be there, but it might not. Still, if you like reading bestsellers or have far too many books that you’ll never read again laying (lying?) around your house, this is great. I have so far mooched two books and sent away three. You should all join because I imagine my blog readers have some books I would love to mooch!

The Secret Is Total Bunk

November 28, 2007

I’ve been intending to write about The Secret for a while and Rev. Fred Small‘s recent UU World article Psst: ‘The Secret’ isn’t total bunk,”(adapted form a sermon) inspired me to sit down and get to it. (The Secret has also recently been mentioned at Philocrities and over at Surviving the Workday).

The problems with the book, the DVD companion to the book, and the general philosophy/science outlined therein are so numerous that I have no intention of trying to outline them all. You can read the wikipedia article, which outlines a good number of the problematic aspects and claims. The question for me, as it is was for Rev. Small, is if there is something redeemable about The Secret. Should we throw the baby out with the bathwater?

In the end, for Rev. Small, there was something redeemable about The Secret. After pointing out some of the problems with the book, he writes:

The Secret reminded me that to dwell constantly in the negative is its own kind of hell—a hell of my own choosing. I don’t want to deny or flee the negative, but I need not build my house on its sinkhole. How effective an activist for change can I be when my thinking and speaking are infused with hopelessness? How much time and energy in all areas of my life do I devote to criticizing what is, rather than creating what could be?

“There is no greater power in the Universe than the power of love,” says The Secret. “The feeling of love is the highest frequency you can emit. If you could wrap every thought in love, if you could love everything and everyone, your life would be transformed.” That’s a view I wholeheartedly endorse.

Yet, for me, while I understand that some good thoughts and ideas can come from The Secret – especially the sense that positive thinking is important, focusing on the negative is not often helpful, that we should “emit” love our lives, I think it is total bunk. Just because some parts of a book or a way of thinking can be isolated and might be helpful, I don’t think that we can, or should, separate out the acceptable parts of thinking such as that espoused in The Secret given what the overall “package” implies – an overall package that people are buying into by the thousands.

What does the overall package imply, you ask? That your thoughts are responsible for what happens in your life – if you think positive things, positive things will happen. And if you think negative things, negative things will happen. There is no gray area here.

“Everything that’s coming into your life, you are attracting into your life. And it’s attracted to you by virtue of the images you’re holding in your mind,” Bob Proctor of The Secret DVD tells us.

As Rev. Small reminds us in the UU World article:

The Secret demands three simple steps: 1) Ask. 2) Believe. 3) Receive.

“It’s like having the Universe as your catalog,” explains [Dr. Vitale, Metaphysician]. “You flip through it and say, ‘I’d like to have that product and I’d like to have a person like that.’ It is You placing your order with the Universe. It’s really that easy.”

The insurmountable problem I have with this is that the logical conclusion these sort of theological/scientific claims require: if things aren’t going well for you, it is because you are doing something wrong. Not only is this just reprehensible to me in general (thinking of those I know who have suffered and succumbed to cancer despite hopeful, joyful honest asking and believing), but this is also a quite racist, classist and sexist claim as well: those who are doing well are doing so because they have asked and believed – because they have done what they need to do, attracting good to themselves. Those who are not doing well have not asked and have not believed – according to The Secret‘s law of attraction, they have not attracted good things to them because their thoughts and energies are not good enough. So, women, if you get raped: you could have prevented that with different thoughts. To the millions suffering from the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa: you could have prevented this by thinking different thoughts. Did your wife get laid off from her job?: that also could have prevented by thinking different thoughts. If you go to a highly segregated school that is vastly underfunded and get an inadequate education: you simply did not open that catalog of the universe and pick out what you wanted – you could have prevented this by maybe taking a little action, but mostly by thinking different thoughts, emitting different energy. It’s really that easy.

Rhonda Byrne speaks to this in a Newsweek article:

“The law of attraction is that each one of us is determining the frequency that we’re on by what we’re thinking and feeling,” Byrne said in a telephone interview, in response to a question about the massacre in Rwanda. “If we are in fear, if we’re feeling in our lives that we’re victims and feeling powerless, then we are on a frequency of attracting those things to us … totally unconsciously, totally innocently, totally all of those words that are so important.” (Jerry Adler. “Decoding ‘The Secret'” Newsweek, March 2007)

Right. So apparently the Rwandans might who were massacred (or those killed during the Holocaust or, say, Matthew Shepard or other people who have been brutally killed) might have been having totally unconscious, totally innocent frequencies which, in the end, resulted in their deaths. What a woefully inadequate answer to questions about longing, hoping, and suffering in our world. Shame on you Rhonda Byrne.

Positive thinking is great. Emitting love frequencies is great. But this is not what The Secret is about. The Secret is making claims about how the universe works. If you think about what you want, believe it will come to you, it will. If it doesn’t, you aren’t doing things right. This sounds to me too much like blaming those who suffer from injustice, oppression, and simply those who suffer. It feels like such a slap in the face to all of the people who I have known throughout my life – and really, those throughout the world – who have believed, and yet suffered and struggled and not received. And, it is a slap in the face to those who, for whatever reason, have not been able to believe.

Our Unitarian Universalist faith does not offer easy answers to why there is suffering in the world. We do not have answers as to why we do not always get what we want, or why justice and goodness and health so often fail to manifest in our lives. This is because there are not easy answers to these questions. These are important places for reflection, exploration, struggle, and grappling with hard theological and scientific questions. Why did the cancer treatment not work? Why did our dad lose his job? Why does violence like that which we see in Darfur continue? The Secret, and any embrace of it, dismisses these questions and this grappling that is so central to our faith with easy, simplistic answers.

Let’s call this what it is. The Secret is bad pseudo-science and has nothing to do with what Unitarian Universalism is about. We can embrace love and positive thinking and hope without contaminating our faith or our lives with the absurd theological and scientific claims of The Secret.

Addendum: I just want to clarify, after reflecting on this post, that my frustration with The Secret is primarily about The Secret and its theology, not about Rev. Small’s attempt to glean something useful from it. I understand where Rev. Small was going with trying to take some good out of a book/theology/world-view that he takes pains to point out has great problems. I just respectfully disagree with that approach. I don’t know Rev. Small, but imagine, like so many of our ministers, is a thoughtful, kind, and very wise person. Just thought it was important to clarify this.

Meet Jesus: My running list of things that would somewhat traumatize lots of people I know

June 14, 2007

I just got a huge kick out of what is probably a great book. It is called Meet Jesus: The Life and Lessons of a Beloved Teacher and it is on the front page of the UUA bookstore website. It is so something I would get for my kids (if I had them) but I just envisioned some of my dear and beloved more traditional Christian friends and relatives and how dreadfully horrible this book would seem to them – you might as well give your kid a book called “How to Be Evil.” This goes in the same category with the tradition at my home UU church where everyone is invited to dress in costume the Sunday closest to Halloween and sing a song called “The Witch Song” with the following chorus:

Who were the witches, where did they come from?
Maybe your great great grandmother was one.
Witches were wise, wise women they say,
And there’s a little witch in every woman today.
There’s a little witch in every woman today.

Perhaps you have to come from a Baptist charismatic background to appreciate the absolute horror that these two very nice UU innovations would invoke. Why makes me laugh, I don’t know. It just does. It would so not be funny if these ideas were even ever mentioned anywhere some of my nearest and dearest. Or in my hometown. So not funny.

Favorite Books

April 12, 2007

Gosh, how have I not posted on this topic? Dan Harper over at Yet Another Unitarian Universalist recently posted about books that changed your life. My cousin Lydia who has her own blog lists her favorite books here (we used to have reading contests when I was little – who could read the most Nancy Drew books the fastest and when Lydia turned out to be more of a reader than me, my Dad would always point out the books she was reading sort of like, “Well at least someone your age appreciate books as they should.”). Maybe the reason I haven’t posted on this is because I read so many academic books that I have to trudge through, I forgot how fun reading is and how wonderful a good book can be. Not that I don’t like my academic books, but it is a different sort of satisfaction. Without further ado, a start to My Favorite Books list. Since this will take time to reflect on and fill out, this is just an off-the top of my head start. And these may not be my favorite books to read now, although lots of them are, but have been important favorite books throughout time.

Three Books that Come to Mind as Absolute Favorites

To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee

The Color Purple – Alice Walker

The Prince of Tides – Pat Conroy

(While the movies are all pretty good, the books came first for me. Movies later. As I noted in my comment on Yet Another UU, I first read all of these by the time I was 12. My parents were big readers and my Dad was an English teacher so my sister and I just sort of read whatever was around. It included lots of children’s books, but my parents liked these books and so I figured they must be good. As you can imagine, this meant that I didn’t really understand the books the first or second time I read them – but yet, even though I wasn’t getting it all, I had a strong sense that they were important books. I still read them all again every few years.)

Other Books I Really Like a Lot For Various Reasons

Texasville – Larry McMurtry (Just so funny.)

Evensong – Gail Godwin (link to my amazon.com review – scroll down to view)

Lie Down in Darkness – William Styron (As with a lot of other books, I read this first when I was way too young so I didn’t understand it that well the first time I read it, but somehow it stands out as a favorite because of the beautiful, tragic language, but also because it is a favorite of my Dad’s and somehow that makes it special to me.)

Amazing Grace – Jonathan Kozol (Caused an a-ha moment about my purpose in the world and an important realization about injustice in the world.

The Corner – David Simon and Edward Burns (link to my amazon.com review – scroll down to view after clicking)

Books for Children

Behind the Attic Wall – Sylvia Cassedy (this was a favorite in fourth grade)

Gypsy Summer – Wilma Yeo (a third grade favorite that I’m sure I read 20 times that is now out-of-print)

Harriet the Spy – Louise Fitzhugh (another third grade favorite – way before it was a movie!)

Steven Kellogg books – love them all

Academic-ish Books

In Memory of Her – Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza

Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World – Judith Lieu

more to come!

The Simple Living Guide – Book Review

March 19, 2007

So I cover simple living and increased simplicity a lot here, and I wanted to suggest one of my favorite books for getting inspired to live more simply and save money. It is The Simple Living Guide by Janet Luhrs.  I wish so much that there was a newer version of it – it came out in 1997 so it is a little dated in some ways.  Still – I have, for a very long time, wanted to save more money and live a life that is less driven by getting things done and one that is more focused on living life right now and enjoying those things that are important to me. I think a lot of time the right book comes along at the right time in our lives, and for me, this book was it. It provides lots of ideas – some about being just a little more simple and some that are about pretty drastic changes. This is not likely a book that people who want to live very radically simple lives would find valuable. This is for folks who still want electricity, maybe a car, some nice “things,” and so on. I found it very readable with lots of ideas, and also a very exciting philosophy – driving home the idea that we lose sight of the point of life – that for most people, it doesn’t make sense to work a lot, to get lots of money, to get a bigger house and lots of stuff. Rather, we can be more content (and have a lighter environmental impact) by working only as much as we need to in order to meet the needs that are basic and the needs that are most important to us. Thus, if having a nice car is important, save for that and cut down on expensive clothes. It encourages you to thin of life in terms of tradeoffs. If I work 50 hours a week, I can have a big house, but much less time to live in it or be with family. Is this worth it. It also helps to counter conventional wisdom about the kind of money it takes to live a “decent” life. This was big for me.  I loved the idea that it is not unreasonable to consider living on $40,000 with two children (okay, not in Boston) and not feel deprived. I know that lots of people live on much less than that, but the idea here was that you can live on much less than you think you can and not feel poor or deprived. It challenges assumptions and offers new way to think about things. The book did not come across as preachy to me. I think you can take from it what is helpful in your life – it is like a sourcebook or reference book. Take what works for you and leave the rest.

I won’t review here, but I also really liked Simplify Your Life.

Who Says You Can’t Publish Your Masters Thesis?

August 13, 2006

Nicole Sotelo, who was part of a small feminist group with me at HDS, and now works for Call to Action, published her masters thesis with Paulist Press. Isn’t that just wonderful!? I just found it randomly while doing another search.

Women Healing from Abuse: Meditations for Finding Peace


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Author Topic: [Blog Series]Miss Marguerite & The City - Day 178  (Read 1356 times)

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[Blog Series]Miss Marguerite & The City - Day 178
« on: February 11, 2010, 02:09:47 AM »
Well, it seems things have gotten off course with this blog series. In fact, I have been bad in not updating everyone on what is going on with moi. I will say I am in a better place than a few months ago. Having moved out of a hell hole with crazy and psychotic ex-roommates helped to relax me a lot more. The pressure of having to deal with those women along with finishing out the first semester at San Francisco helped out a lot.

As of now, the roommate situation has been resolved by chucking the old ones and moving into a new place with my friends. The three of us have not stopped laughing and cracking jokes since we moved in on the 21st of January. In fact, a few days ago, I let one of the roommates who is makeup savvy made me to look like the ultimate beautiful chola. You can see the picture here but for the unapproved, you will merely have to wait until you can see the fabulous red hair I have along with the make up. It is not too garish and in fact, I enjoyed the way my eyebrows were drawn along with the lip liner. Sorry, but no glue stick was used to make myself look chongalicious.

Now, let us try to get back to Marguerite & The City. For those of you who are new, The City is San Francisco and I am the lovely Marguerite.

February 10 [178] - Back On Track...Until The Wheels Fall Off

I managed to wake my lovely behind up around seven in the morning because of S. who I now share a room with; I love her to death and doubt I could get too angry at her. Old roommates are gone and the new aura of N. and S. surround and support moi. Cracking open my eyelids, I silently watch S. put on her makeup for the day while I lay back in bed. Since the heater in our room does not work the apartment complex has given us a space heater to keep our behinds from freezing to death. Living in San Francisco, I know now to slap on layer or two no matter if the day looks sunny and bright. The space heater makes the room toasty and to the point I throw off the thick covers to cool off but I love it to death.

As I watch S. put on her makeup, I go through the list of things I need to do today. I have to shower because while I had my hair cut two weeks back, I have to be tedious in washing and prepping my hair. Seems from the damage I have given my curls has landed me to shorten my hair by several inches. Do not get me wrong, I adore the new look and it shapes my face in a flattering way but I cannot pull it back in a severe bun for class or for 'work' nor can I put it up in a clip because the strands are too short and usually fall around my face. Nevertheless, I am enjoying the fact I can style and prep my hair in different ways. Yes, male readers you can ignore this certain paragraph because it is talking about women's hair and how pretty and wonderful and exciting and too many damn and's to count. Still, be happy I am telling you to compliment a woman on her hair especially if it looks as if she had it recently dyed or cut. Do that and be rest assured it will give you brownie points to redeem at a later date.

After I managed to wake my whole being up around 8 in the morning and N. and S. went off to their morning classes, I hopped onto Elliquiy. As a mentor, I try to make sure to go through my duties and as a writer, once more go through my threads. Though lately, I have grown bored not of my mentoring duties but of my threads. Honestly, I am one to enjoy a face pace game but almost turning my two year anniversary on Elliquiy (in July) I know that good games take a while. Not to say the fast-paced ones are bad, take a look at the games I have with Eden, Consort, Kaz and others on my Elliwiki (I need to update the bloody thing) and you can see I enjoy writing like it was my drug. However, after seeing no reply has been made to games, I busied myself with my non-vanilla work, vanilla work and reading for my classes.

Those of you who are barely starting to get onto the Marguerite & The City blog wagon, I am a part-time Dominatrix in San Francisco and no I am not a prostitute. If you want to learn about what I do, you can always ask me in private or even look through my first few blog posts here on Elliquiy for more information. Now, for my vanilla work I am part of a group who aids in preschoolers and sing them songs. Yes, I, Marguerite, sing the eensy weensy spider and jump around with children. Scary thought since those who know me can see I do not enjoy being petted nor hugged without permission. Those who intrude on my personal space will know next time not to do it again with my stern words and smirk.

Why don't we skip it a few hours since the hours between showering and before heading off to class are a bit non-special. Though I will say I managed to end up on the floor laughing because the roommates and I made it a habit of doing the cheesy but always classic, 'That's what she said', comments. Now, onwards a few hours.

-Skip a few hours to where I am not dead Elliquiy tired-

Right now I feel drained. I know part of it is because of the class day being longer and taking a chance on attending three hour classes. I wanted to sleep in later in the morning and get my class done without going three times a week. Right now I am going to class two days a week and I work on two other days but somehow tonight took me out of it. The Adolescent Psychology class I am taking is two days a week for ninety minutes but it puts me to sleep. The room is comfortable that I could and the Professor sometimes falters in her lecture but I do enjoy it. Perhaps it is because I am not fully engaged in the class because she lectures, lectures and lectures, sometimes she asks for participation and we usually end the class with a video on adolescence. There is the first exam coming up this week but really, I could not care less about the damn class.

As for the two other classes, I do like the subject but the classes are three hour which sucks the energy from this female. Hell, it is more work than the last job where I had three men before my feet in a hotel room. They did not leave me with a headache and the need to sleep for hours. Well, the men were delicious enough to service a female all in their fantasy to cater to a female and fight for the right to take up the first position while the other two serviced one another. My other job as a Domina is going well enough and the roommates support me one hundred percent in what I do. Of course, I have to gloss over a few things for the youngest, S., because I do not want to warp her mind...just yet. Nonetheless, whenever I have clients, I call them and they call me to make sure all is going well. Though with the way I prepare myself for 'work', I am not going to end up in trouble.

However, Sexuality in Latino/a Communities and Counseling in Multicultural Communities are both draining in how I must spend three hours but it is only for one day. Do not get me wrong, I enjoy being about to talk about sexuality in one class and in another class talk about culture and expectations. Today, I talked in Counseling about the fact that while women should stick together and have one another's back, we can easily stab each other in the back to make it to the top. Not to say everyone is a back stabber but I am not going to lie nor make myself look like the goody two shoes. If I am up for a promotion against another woman, be rest assured I will make sure her ass never makes it past the starting line. In this economy, people are throwing others under the bus to be able to secure a job or keep their current one. I can attest to being thrown under the bus plenty of times by women especially those who I knew would one day have to throw me in order to get ahead. Still, it does not take the sting out of the betrayal.

Once class is over at 7 it is already night. Damn Daylight Savings Time by making night come faster than it should. Just like a male in puberty to get to his Eden in under fifteen seconds. Nonetheless, I am safe to carry my pepper spray and I am not going down without grabbing gonads or snatching out an eyeball Kill Bill style.

The Kill Bill style seems to be gearing towards the neighbor downstairs who we all suspect is dealing illegal narcotics. How do we know? The youngest roommate texted N. and I in the middle of class to let us know the police came by to arrest and take the suspected criminal to the police station. Apparently, the cops that have been around the apartment complex were here for him but I plan to get the story out of the cops if they come back around tomorrow and our apartment manager. I am not sad since the male made blatant wolf-whistles and comments towards the three of us since we moved in. Plus his erractic behavior and his tendency to smell like Mary Jane gave us a tip he was dealing in cannabis. Hopefully, the people living in the household with him are not thrown out because of his stupid actions.

After hearing about the neighbor and once I finished my counseling class, I managed to walk back to the apartment with my roommate/friend (who is also in the same class with moi) before ending up throwing myself into bed. I did end up going through Elliquiy before the need for a nap took over. Must have knocked my ass out because I did not hear the roommates cleaning up the house and vacuuming the white carpet we have. I hate the fact we have to take our shoes off (because we have white carpet) before entering into the house. If we are in rush, we must stop, put the shoes back on and run our asses down two flights of stairs. Once I made into the apartment, I headed to the room, changed into pajamas and threw myself onto my bed. I did not care there was clothes and hangers on the bed only that I wanted to sleep.

I woke up an hour later with a groggy head and watched Mulan with S. I unwound with PM's, checking a few things on Elliquiy and setting up appointments with clients for next weekend. Sorry, but this weekend is dedicated to the roommates/friends. Oh, you will enjoy the next blog post especially with Friday, Saturday and culminating with dressing in Drag on Sunday which is Valentine's Day. Screw having to feel mopey about being single, I plan to bust out in drag and pick up a man while on the way to see Valentine's Day. No holiday is going to put me in a bad mood.

Until next time and there will be a next update:

Tempting, red apple in one hand and a bull whip in the other,

Miss Marguerite & The City

P.S. I love comments.

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Entering Gibraltar – Avoid the Airplanes!

Runway, Airport, Border, Spain

This nice little monument welcomes you once you make it across the airport runway.

When I first introduced you to Gibraltar, I mentioned that traveling back and forth from Spain is not the easiest thing to do. Because Gibraltar is a British Colony and Spain is, well, Spanish, you must cross a border each time you want to go from one place to the other. Many people who work down in Gibraltar choose to live in Spain, because the housing market is highly in favor of the renter/buyer. For example, the monthly rent you would be asked to pay for a four bedroom home in Spain could be the equivalent to the asking price for a two or three bedroom apartment in Gibraltar. However, by choosing to live in Spain, but work in Gibraltar, you must cross the border and go through customs every single day.

Now, walking across the border is the ideal form of transportation. Driving across is easy enough, but the border queue can be quite unpredictable. Some days you can drive right in, no problem at all. Other days, the queue can extend so long that you are in for an hour or two delay. We’ve been stuck in such a delay before, creeping and crawling with the masses as one car after another passes through.

Airport, Runway, Spain, Border

Headed back into Gibraltar! Walking across the runway with other pedestrians and admiring the view of the rock.

And then you have the runway. Gibraltar is a very small place, but it does have its own airport. Currently, they only fly to a couple destinations, London being their main one. The runway for incoming and outgoing planes stretches itself perpendicular to the road leading into the city, just after you cross the border into Gibraltar. If you are in a car, you drive across the runway; if you are on foot, you walk across the runway. You read that correctly. The runway, which active planes depart and land on, is crawling with pedestrians all day long. How do they manage this?

As a plane prepares to take-off or descend, the police come to either end of the runway crossing and close a barrier to both traffic and pedestrians. They roll out a spiked sheath to pierce tires in case any crazy car decides to plow through the barrier. And then you wait. A minute or two after the plane has taken-off or landed, they open it back up and cars, mopeds, and pedestrians go flying across the runway once more.

Runway, Airport, Spain, Border

Phew! I made it across! This sign greets you just after the monument, indicating the popular spots in Gibraltar.

Yesterday, I left the office a bit before Matt to head over to Spain and retrieve our car; we park in a dirt parking lot just next to the border on the Spanish side and walk across to come to work. We had laundry in the trunk and zero groceries at home, so I decided to drive across and park closer to our cleaners and the grocery store. Sure, we can grocery shop in Spain, but if I was going to have my car, I figured I’d knock it out before Matt got done with his work.

I departed the office by taxi, paid about £4.60 for the ride to the border, pulled my passport out of my pocket, and crossed into Spain. Seconds after making it across, I made the most irritating realization – Matt had driven that morning and I’d failed to remember to get the car key from him.

So, I pulled my passport BACK out and crossed BACK into Gibraltar. And thus I learned the danger of forgetting the car key or your passport before taking off for the border. It was also my luck that I was plum out of cash, couldn’t pay for another taxi, and would be walking all the way back to the office, about 20 minutes. On the plus side, I was wearing a warm jacket and comfortable walking shoes.

When I stepped out onto the runway tarmac, I realized I had my camera in my bag. Therefore, I decided to turn what could have been a true pain in the butt into a blog post. I’d bring the laundry in the next day, grocery shop some other time, and take my time walking back to the office.

It is a truly interesting little world that the people live in down here and I forget sometimes that I’m now part of it. Remind me sometime to tell you the terrifying and hilarious story of how the police closed the barrier to the runway while I was the lone person still walking across… 😉

Airport, Runway, Border, Spain

Haha! I took a second to snap a quick picture and captured the full essence. The car is driving on the road and perpendicular to it is the extended runway. Crazy!

Airport, Runway, Border, Spain

Leaving Spain behind. I’ve now crossed the airport runway and you are looking at the Gibraltar airport on the right.

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2 thoughts on “Entering Gibraltar – Avoid the Airplanes!

  1. Alice Vile

    The runway is closed!!

  2. Hahaha, exactly!!!

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text:
Definition of lascar in English:

  • A sailor from India or SE Asia.

    as modifier ‘the manning of British ships by lascar crews’
    • ‘The British officers were buried in the main part of the cemetery but the bodies of the thirty-one Lascar crew members went to the rear of the cemetery in a mass grave.’
    • ‘With origins throughout the lands bordering the Indian Ocean, from Mozambique to Malaya, Lascars had been employed by the East India Company for centuries.’
    • ‘The following year, the Lascar crew of the Australia were locked in a shed on a Melbourne wharf under guard until they too were shipped out.’
    • ‘The Merchant Shipping Act of 1823 replaced bonding with a law that confined Lascars to East India Company boarding houses and threatened those who did not board the next ship home with imprisonment for vagrancy.’
    • ‘Winder provides a backstage version of British history, with fascinating descriptions of how poor immigrants arrived from across the world, including Lascars, Chinese and Gypsies.’

Early 17th century: from Portuguese lascari, from Urdu and Persian laškarī ‘soldier’, from laškar ‘army’.


text:
Definition of spandrel in English:

  • 1The almost triangular space between one side of the outer curve of an arch, a wall, and the ceiling or framework.

    • ‘Relief panels containing scenes from the Childhood of Christ filled the triangular spandrels between the gables dominating the screen's facade.’
    • ‘On the rear wall is a kind of private chapel, a wall niche framed by pilasters and faced with spandrels with inlaid vegetal ornament, which shelters an altar.’
    • ‘The building service core is a solid, while transparency is achieved through variations in a curtain wall composed of vision, spandrel, and fritted glass.’
    • ‘The new tower appears in Bayard's photograph of 1851, yet Ruskin's spandrel is just visible - still unscathed.’
    • ‘About 1,100 glass panels, including windows and spandrels, were blown out.’
    1. 1.1 The space between the shoulders of adjoining arches and the ceiling or moulding above.

Late Middle English: perhaps from Anglo-Norman French spaund(e)re, or from espaundre ‘expand’.


text:
Definition of highlighter in English:

  • 1A broad felt-tipped pen used to overlay transparent fluorescent color on text or a part of an illustration, leaving it legible and emphasized.

    • ‘I'm one of those people who reads books with a highlighter or pen and I note passages that I find particularly meaningful/moving/well-written/enraging.’
    • ‘‘Aunt Lori is getting married,’ Sherri commented, marking the date with a highlighter in her appointment book.’
    • ‘Keep the study zone bright and clean, keep study supplies like pens, paper, highlighters and a dictionary on hand, and keep it free of distractions like the television, the telephone and loud music.’
    • ‘I ended up sitting reading it on the long journey southwards to London, with my highlighter and red pencil, marking the errors in the book as I read.’
    • ‘When I left for pastures new, I had literally a couple of dozen pencils, disposable ballpoints, marker pens, and highlighters stashed in my top drawer.’
  • 2A cosmetic that is lighter than the wearer's foundation or skin, used to emphasize features such as the eyes or cheekbones.

    • ‘Adding a drop or two of a liquid highlighter to your foundation will increase luminosity and produce an overall glow.’
    • ‘Imitate the look with the newest highlighters or light-reflecting lotions and tints, which help scatter light, leaving you with a noticeably glowing look.’
    • ‘I used highlighter under the eyebrows and silver on her eyes and a purply-mauve on her lips with a pink gloss.’
    • ‘The four eyeshadows are easy to apply (with fingertips) and also double up as highlighters and lipgloss.’
    • ‘The creamy concealers and highlighters in Pixi's Eye Bright Kit are the ultimate cover-up for bleary eyes the morning after the night before.’


text:
A158 road

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  (Redirected from A158 road (Great Britain))
Jump to: navigation, search

A158 shield

A158 road map.png
Click map to enlarge
Route information
Length: 41 mi (66 km)
Major junctions
From: Lincoln
  A46 A46 road
A15 A15 road
A157 A157 road
A153 A153 road
A16 A16 road
A1028 A1028 road
A52 A52 road
To: Skegness
Road network

The A158 road is a major tourist route that heads from Lincoln in the west to Skegness on the east coast. The road is located entirely in the county of Lincolnshire and is single carriageway for almost its entirety. The road is approximately 41 miles (66 km) long. The road gets quite congested with holiday traffic during the summer.

Lincoln to Horncastle[edit]

Approach to Lincoln at North Greetwell

The road begins outside Lincoln as part of the by-pass at the A46 (53°15′15″N 0°30′47″W / 53.2542°N 0.5130°W / 53.2542; -0.5130 (A158 road (western end))). roundabout with Nettleham Road (B1182). The road does not enter the borough of Lincoln, and begins in the parish of Nettleham in West Lindsey. Before the Lincoln Bypass was built (in stages) in the mid-1980s, the A158 historically went along Wragby Road (now the A15). Even earlier the A158 followed the northern end of Canwick Road, the former B1188, over Pelham Bridge since its opening in 1958, and along South Park Avenue which was also built in 1958, to meet the former A46 at St Catherine's. This was parallel to the former western section B1190. The A15 at the time followed the west of Lincoln town centre, then along Silver Street.

It heads south-east for 1 mile (1.6 km) until reaching a roundabout where the A15 joins from the centre of Lincoln. From here the route heads north-east through the village of North Greetwell along a former Roman road, where it is the parish boundary between Nettleham to the north and Greetwell to the south, Nettleham and Reepham, then Sudbrooke and Reepham. It passes Sudbrooke to the south, where there is a crossroads, with the main road for Sudbrooke to the left, and Star Energy's Welton Gathering Centre (in Reepham) for the Welton oilfield (part of the East Midlands Oil Province). The Cherry Tree Cafe is at the junction. It passes to the south of Sudbrooke Park (a Scout camp site), and crosses the Lincoln to Grimsby railway in the parish of Barlings, next to the Oriental Express Restaurant (former Station Inn). At Langworth there is a crossroads for Scothern, to the left, and Barlings, to the right, and passes St Hugh's church and the George Inn. It crosses the Barlings Eau at Langworth Bridge and there is a left turn for Stainton by Langworth, and a right turn for Newball, and the Woodside Wildlife and Falconry Park.[1]

Further on in the parish of Stainton by Langworth, near Rand Wood, the B1399 heads north-east while the A158 changes direction and heads east to Wragby. In Bullington it passes Bullington Hall and in Rand, it passes Brown Cow Farm, and there is a left turn for Rand and Rand Farm Park.[2] The Rand Group construction company was based there until October 2009 when it went into administration. It is briefly the parish boundary between Rand, to the north, and Goltho, to the south, and passes Goltho Gardens,[3] with a teashop. Approaching Wragby it enters East Lindsey. Here it crosses the B1202 at traffic lights near the Turnor Arms then forks with the A157 which heads through the Lincolnshire Wolds to Louth. The A157 formerly followed the A158's current route to Lincoln, and the A158's western terminus was at Wragby before the 1940s. It passes the parish church of All Saints, and crosses the former Louth to Bardney Line. From here the route gets quite twisty then heads south-east around the south end of the Wolds. It crosses Stainfield Back at Langton Bridge, and passes through Langton by Wragby, where there is a left turn on a bend for Panton, then a right turn on a bend for Chambers Farm Wood,[4] part of the Lincolnshire Limewoods nature reserve.[5] At Hatton Bridge, it is the parish boundary between Langton by Wragby, to the west and Hatton, to the east.

There are crossroads for Hatton, to the left, and another crossroads at the (unoccupied) New Midge Inn, where the road becomes the parish boundary with Minting to the south. At Baumber the B1225 joins from the north as the A158 continues towards in a more southerly direction towards the town of Horncastle. The B1190 and B1191 both join just outside Horncastle where the road crosses the A153.

Horncastle to Skegness[edit]

The A158 in Hagworthingham

After leaving Horncastle the route heads east with the B1195 heading off 2.6 miles (4.2 km) later to Spilsby. Further on the road passes through the village of Hagworthingham. The road then reaches a roundabout with the A16 at Partney. Both roads used to go through Partney but now bypass it. The construction of this bypass was preceded by a significant archaeological investigation.[6][7]The A158 continues east until reaching another roundabout with the A1028 which provides a short cut from the A16 further north. The B1196 also heads up to Alford from here. The A158 becomes dual-carriageway for 1 mile (1.6 km) from here until becoming single again through Gunby. The road then joins with the newly opened Burgh Bypass, before finally reaching Skegness where it terminates at a junction with the A52 (53°08′59″N 0°20′22″E / 53.1496°N 0.3395°E / 53.1496; 0.3395 (A158 road (eastern end))).

  1. ^ Woodside Falconry Archived 25 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine.
  2. ^ Rand Farm Park
  3. ^ Goltho Gardens
  4. ^ Chambers Farm Wood
  5. ^ Lincolnshire Limewoods
  6. ^ "Land at Partney bypass". Archaeology Data Service. 2005. Retrieved 4 April 2013.
  7. ^ Atkins, Robert; Popescu, Elizabeth Shepherd; Cane, Jon (ill.) (August 2005). Archaeological Excavations Along the Partney By-pass, Lincolnshire (a16/a158). Cambridge county council. ISBN 978-1904452171.

External links[edit]

Coordinates: 53°12′28″N 0°06′04″W / 53.2078°N 0.1011°W / 53.2078; -0.1011 (A158 road)


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Australian cricket team in England in 1961

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The 1961 Australian cricket tour of England began with a three-day match versus Worcestershire at the County Ground, New Road, Worcester on Saturday 29 April, play continuing on Monday 1 May and Tuesday 2 May. This match was rain-affected and ended in a draw. The tour ended at Trinity College Park, Dublin on 19 September when the Australians completed a 282 run victory in a two-day match versus Ireland.

The Australian tour party consisted of these players: R Benaud (captain), R N Harvey (vice-captain), A T W Grout (wicket-keeper), B N Jarman (wicket-keeper), W M Lawry, N C O'Neill, P J P Burge, C C McDonald, B C Booth, R B Simpson, K D Mackay, A K Davidson, F M Misson, G D McKenzie, R A Gaunt, I W Quick, L F Kline.

Series overview[edit]

The main business of the tour was a five-Test series versus England. The matches were played at Edgbaston, Lord's, Headingley, Old Trafford and The Oval. Australia won the series 2-1 to retain The Ashes.

Test series summary[edit]

No captain of my time has impressed me more than Richie Benaud. Richie had the gift of making you feel you were a better player than you really were. He made his players believe they could win, even when the cause looked utterly hopeless. Nothing illustrated more clearly Richie's adroit handling of men than his leadership of the 1961 Australian team which came to Britain. They should never have won the rubber with those players, but Richie instilled into them his belief in themselves - this attitude that "there is nothing we cannot achieve if we set our minds to it".

Ray Illingworth[1]

Five years after their disastrous showing against Jim Laker, the Australians returned to the top of the international tree by retaining the Ashes in England only months after their exciting victory over the West Indies in the memorable Tied test series of 1960-1961 played "Down Under".

The 1961 series was a personal triumph for skipper Richie Benaud, whose match-winning bowling and astute leadership in the fourth Test at Old Trafford proved to be the decisive factor in the series. With the series square, England needed 256 to win and were expected to get them, but Benaud, by bowling his leg breaks round the wicket into some rough created by footmarks, took 6-70 to secure an Australian victory by 54 runs. The key moment came when he bowled the England captain Peter May behind his legs for a duck. The bemused May had to be told by Aussie keeper Wally Grout that he had been bowled.

Australia won the series by drawing the final Test at The Oval and it confirmed a supremacy over England that would endure throughout the decade.

England in 1961 was heavily reliant on the fast bowling of Fred Trueman, then at his peak. It was his brilliant performance at Headingley, where he took 11 wickets in the match, that earned England its only win in the series.

Peter May had missed the start of the series and he relinquished the captaincy at the end of the summer, telling the selectors he did not wish to be considered for any more overseas tours. At the age of 32, he hoped to continue playing for Surrey but, as it turned out, he was lost to the game. He was one of the last amateur cricketers and he decided to make his living in the City of London.

The Tests in detail[edit]

After the first match was drawn, Australia had their traditional victory at Lord's (England not having defeated them there since 1934), by 5 wickets on a lively pitch. Davidson did the damage in the first England innings and McKenzie in the second. Lawry's 130 in Australia's first innings, when nobody else on either side made more than 66 in either innings, was crucial.

England won by 8 wickets at Headingley, Australia collapsing in their second innings from 99-2 to 120 all out, thanks to Trueman's devastating spell of off-cutters. He finished with figures of 6-30, having taken 5-58 in the first innings.

The Fourth Test at Old Trafford proved decisive. It was won by Australia by 54 runs. The last day was very exciting, seeing many turns of fortune. England had managed a first innings lead of 177. Australia's second innings had reached 331-6 at the close of the fourth day, a lead of 154. On the final morning, David Allen took 3 wickets quickly, reducing Australia to 334-9, and the game seemed won by England. But Davidson then took the attack to the bowlers, hitting Allen for 20 in an over, and with help from McKenzie added 98 for the last wicket. England needed 256 to win at 67 runs an hour. Ted Dexter, well supported by Raman Subba Row, scored 76 in 84 minutes and took England to 150-1, and strong favourites to win. But Benaud went round the wicket and aimed at the bowlers' footmarks, and caused a collapse. He finished with 6-70, and Australia won with 20 minutes to spare, thereby retaining The Ashes.

The final Test was drawn, after Australia had taken a big first innings lead.

The Australians had a stopover in Colombo en route to England and played a one-day single-innings match there against the Ceylon national team, which at that time did not have Test status.[2]

  1. ^ pp33-34, Richard Whitington, Captains Outrageous?, Stanley Paul, 1972
  2. ^ "Ceylon v Australia 1961". CricketArchive. Retrieved 30 June 2014. (subscription required (help)).

Annual reviews[edit]

Further reading[edit]

  • Bill Frindall, The Wisden Book of Test Cricket 1877-1978, Wisden, 1979
  • Chris Harte, A History of Australian Cricket, Andre Deutsch, 1993, ISBN 0233051309
  • Ray Robinson, On Top Down Under, Cassell, 1975
  • Fraser Simm, Echoes of a Summer Game, Stow, Selkirkshire, 2004

External links[edit]


text:
Gel (disambiguation)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

A gel is a complex solid but fluid substance with liquid-like properties.

Gel may also refer to:

Personal care[edit]

Pharmaceutics and physical chemistry[edit]

  • Gel capsule (gel cap), a gelatinous capsule in which a drug is held
  • Sol-gel, a colloidal suspension that can be gelled to form a solid
  • Hydrogel or Aquagel, a water-insoluble polymer
  • Xerogel, a dried gel that, when heated, becomes a dense glass
    • Aerogel, a gel that has been dehydrated under supercritical conditions such that the liquid has been replaced with gas

  • Color gel, a transparent colored material used to shade stage lighting
  • Gel, a fictional character from The Tribe (1999–2003) played by Vicky Rodewyk
  • Gel, an enemy from The Legend of Zelda series
  • "Gel", a song by Collective Soul from their 1995 self-titled album

Popular culture[edit]

Other uses[edit]

  • GEL, Georgian Lari, official currency in Georgia
  • Gël, a city in Armenia, now called Lichk
  • Gel battery is a rechargeable valve regulated lead-acid battery with a gelified electrolyte
  • Silica gel, a granular, porous form of silica made synthetically from sodium silicate
  • Opal, a mineraloid gel often used as a gemstone
  • Gel (dessert), a dessert made with sweetened and flavored gelatin

See also[edit]


text:
Ogun River

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

Coordinates: 6°44′44″N 3°20′33″E / 6.745589°N 3.34259°E / 6.745589; 3.34259

Ogun River
Ogun river.jpg
Country Nigeria
Basin features
River mouth Lagos
0 m (0 ft)

The Ogun River is a waterway in Nigeria that discharges into the Lagos Lagoon.

Course and usage[edit]

The river rises in Oyo State near Shaki at coordinates 8°41′0″N 3°28′0″E / 8.68333°N 3.46667°E / 8.68333; 3.46667 and flows through Ogun State into Lagos State.[1] The river is crossed by the Ikere Gorge Dam in the Iseyin local government area of Oyo State. The reservoir capacity is 690 million cubic metres (560,000 acre·ft).[2] The reservoir abuts the Old Oyo National Park, providing recreational facilities for tourists, and the river flows through the park.[3] The Ofiki River, which also rises near Shaki, is the Ogun River's chief tributary.[citation needed] The Oyan River, another tributary, is crossed by the Oyan River Dam which supplies water to Abeokuta and Lagos.[4] In densely populated areas the river is used for bathing, washing and drinking. It also serves as a drain for mostly organic wastes from abattoirs located along the river's course.[1]

In the Yoruba religion, Yemoja is the divinity of the Ogun River. The catechist Charles Phillips, father of the Charles Phillips who later became Bishop of Ondo, wrote in 1857 that the Ogun River was generally worshipped by the people who live along its banks from its rise until where it empties into the lagoon.[5] The river ran through the heart of the old Oyo Empire. Metropolitan Oyo was divided into six provinces with three on the west side of the Ogun River and three to the river's east.[6] At one time, the river formed an important route for traders carrying goods by canoe between Abeokuta and the Lagos Colony.[7]

  1. ^ a b A.A. Ayoade, A.A. Sowunmi & H.I. Nwachukwu (2004). "Gill asymmetry in Labeo ogunensis from Ogun river, Southwest Nigeria" (PDF). Rev. Biol. Trop. 52 (1): 171–175.
  2. ^ L. Berga, ed. (2006). Dams and Reservoirs, Societies and Environment in the 21st Century: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Dams in the Societies of the 21st Century, 22nd International Congress on Large Dams (ICOLD), Barcelona, Spain, 18 June 2006. Taylor & Francis. p. 314. ISBN 0-415-40423-1.
  3. ^ "Old Oyo National Park". Nigeria National Park Service. Retrieved 2010-11-05.
  4. ^ Ikenweirwe, N.b., Otubusin, S.O. and Oyatogun, M.O.O. (March 2007). "Fisheries of Oyan Lake, South West Nigeria and Potential for Ecotourism Development" (PDF). European Journal of Scientific Research Vol 16 No 3. Retrieved 2010-05-22.
  5. ^ McKenzie, Peter Rutherford (1997). Hail Orisha!: a phenomenology of a West African religion in the mid-nineteenth century. BRILL. p. 30. ISBN 90-04-10942-0.
  6. ^ Stride, G.T. & C. Ifeka (1971). Peoples and Empires of West Africa: West Africa in History 1000-1800. Edinburgh: Nelson. p. 296. ISBN 0-17-511448-X.
  7. ^ Foreign and Commonwealth Office (1859). British and foreign state papers, Volume 54. H.M.S.O.


text:
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UKEs president Marcin Cichy og Nkoms direktør Torstein Olsen
The Norwegian Communications Authority (Nkom) has established a cooperation agreement with the Polish sister authority Urząd Komunikacji Elektronicznej (Office of Electronic Communications) (UKE). The aim is to support the government's strategy for cooperation with Poland, and to ensure Nkom access to UKE's expertise and experience.
Frode Sørensen
European net neutrality is at the beginning of a new era. Through the net neutrality Regulation adopted in 2015, and corresponding net neutrality Guidelines issued in 2016, a new foundation for protection of the open Internet in Europe is established. The regulatory monitoring of net neutrality at the national level, as prescribed by the Regulation, should be the guarantee for a neutral Internet for European citizens and businesses.
The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC) has today published its Guidelines to National Regulatory Authorities (NRAs) on the implementation of the new net neutrality. BEREC’s mandate to produce the Guidelines stems from the Telecoms Single Market Regulation on open internet access. The Guidelines provide guidance for NRAs to take into account when implementing the rules and assessing specific cases.
Bilde av et tastatur med fokus på @-tegnet.
Today BEREC launches its draft European net neutrality guidelines, and over a period of six weeks’ public consultation, stakeholders are invited to provide their comments. BEREC will then, after having taken the feedback into account, finalize the guidelines by 30 August. This short paper presents some of the core questions which the guidelines seek to answer.
The Norwegian Communications Authority (Nkom) and its sister authorities in the four other Nordic countries have issued joint recommendations on measures against vulnerabilities in electronic communications networks. The aim is to close security holes that have been identified in the discussion about security on mobile networks.
Frode Sørensen
In 2015 we experienced a great breakthrough in the net neutrality developments in Europe. Late November, European net neutrality rules were published in the Official Journal, after a long and winding legislative process. Furthermore, BEREC is now tasked to develop guidelines for the implementation of these rules, and an initial step of this work is taking place today.


text:
Baby Fox (wild+animals ). Photo by backwardguy

Baby Fox

Uploaded by: backwardguy

Monday April 30, 2012

Hermiston, OR (Current Weather Conditions)

Caption: My wife found this poor guy stuck in the turn on pipe for my new irrigation hook up. I got him out with an old grabber my wife used to use when her leg was in a cast (See the pic in this series.) It immediatly ran into an old unused concrete culvert.

Image Description:

Manufacturer: Canon

Model: Canon PowerShot SX130 IS

Orientation: top - left

x-Resolution: 180.00

y-Resolution: 180.00

Resolution Unit: Inch

YCbCr Positioning: co-sited

Compression: JPEG compression

Exposure Time: 1/50 sec.

FNumber: f/3.4

ISO Speed Ratings: 160

Exif Version: Unknown Exif Version

Components Configuration: Y Cb Cr -

Compressed Bits per Pixel: 3.00

Shutter speed: 5.66 EV (APEX: 7, 1/50 sec.)

Aperture: 3.53 EV (f/3.4)

Exposure Bias: 0.00 EV

MaxApertureValue: 3.53 EV (f/3.4)

Metering Mode: Pattern

Flash: Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode.

Focal Length: 5.0 mm

User Comment:

FlashPixVersion: FlashPix Version 1.0

Color Space: sRGB

PixelXDimension: 2816

PixelYDimension: 2112

Focal Plane x-Resolution: 11540.98

Focal Plane y-Resolution: 11540.98

Focal Plane Resolution Unit: Inch

Sensing Method: One-chip color area sensor

File Source: DSC

Custom Rendered: Normal process

Exposure Mode: Auto exposure

White Balance: Auto white balance

Digital Zoom Ratio: 1.00

Scene Capture Type: Standard

InteroperabilityIndex: R98

InteroperabilityVersion: 0100

RelatedImageWidth: 2816

RelatedImageLength: 2112

About backwardguy

My wife of 42 years and I live in Hermiston OR. on a 5 acre "farmette". I was an elementary school teacher for 29years. I retired at the end of June 2015 and have been working hard ever since!. I enjoy the outdoors and animals and I'm an avid (not a good) golfer. My wife and I take our motorcycles on long trips and our destinations are almost always the beautiful National parks in Oregon, California, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Washington, Utah, and last summer we added Arizona to the list. Photography has long been an interest of mine and many of my photos are taken on our little farmette, and on our motorcycle trips.Click for weather forecast

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Skip to content

I Had a BBQ Stain On My White T-Shirt

June 11, 2010

I love me some warm weather and BBQ. Here’s a weekend treat for all you grill masters out there. Take that, Bobby Flay. This white barbecue sauce brings new meaning to “I had a BBQ stain on my white T-shirt.” Might need to consider a serious lyric-refresh, Timmy. White BBQ sauce is the new black.

White Barbecue Chicken

  • 1 ½ cups mayonnaise
  • ¼  cup white wine vinegar
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • 1 tablespoon coarse ground pepper
  • 1 tablespoon spicy brown mustard
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons horseradish

 Stir together all ingredients until well blended. You can store in an airtight container in refrigerator up to 1 week.

When you’re ready, marinate the chicken for about two hours. Grill chicken on a medium-high grill. Flip chicken on sides and keep flipping until it’s firm in the middle. Flip at least four times. You want it to be thoroughly cooked but not dry.

Check out those grill marks. Don’t mess with a man and his grill.

Pair with a tomato caprese salad.

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Schleidgen, Sebastian; Marckmann, Georg: Re-focusing the ethical discourse on personalized medicine: a qualitative interview study with stakeholders in the German healthcare system. In: BMC Medical Ethics 2013, 14:20

Background: In recent years, personalized medicine (PM) has become a highly regarded line of development in medicine. Yet, it is still a relatively new field. As a consequence, the discussion of its future developments, in particular of its ethical implications, in most cases can only be anticipative. Such anticipative discussions, however, pose several challenges. Nevertheless, they play a crucial role for shaping PM's further developments. Therefore, it is vital to understand how the ethical discourse on PM is conducted, i.e. on what - empirical and normative - assumptions ethical arguments are based regarding PM's current and future developments. Methods: To gather this information, we conducted a qualitative interview study with stakeholders in the German health care system. Our purposive sample included 17 representatives of basic research, clinical research, health economics, regulatory authorities, reimbursement institutions, pharmaceutical industry, patient organizations, as well as clinicians and legal experts involved in PM developments or policy making. We used an interview guide with open-ended questions and analyzed transcriptions of the interviews by means of qualitative content analysis. Results: The respondents addressed a multitude of concerns in the context of research on as well as application of personalized preventive and therapeutic measures both on the individual and on the societal level. Interestingly, regarding future developments of PM the ethical evaluation seemed to follow the rule: the less likely its application, the more problematic a PM measure is assessed. The more likely its application, on the other hand, the less problematic it is evaluated. Conclusions: The results of our study suggest re-focusing the ethical discourse on PM in Germany towards a constructive ethical monitoring which ensures to include only, nevertheless all of the actual and/or potential concerns that are ethically relevant in order to allow balancing them against the actual and potential ethically relevant benefits of PM measures. To render this possible, we propose a strategy for evaluating ethical concerns in the context of PM.


text:
Erba Dolce Stevia Natural Sweetener FAQ

Some stevias have a bitter after taste. Erba Dolce does not. Why?

There are two reasons why Erba Dolce has no bitter aftertaste: The first is the method of processing.  While Chinese and Korean factories traditionally use chemicals in their extraction and bleaching processes, Erba Dolce uses a physical process of molecular filtration specifically designed to separate the compounds that cause a bitter aftertaste.  In this process there are no chemicals added, therefore the final product is totally natural with an excellent flavor.

The second reason is the stevia variety grown in Colombia.  This variety is called Morita and was improved by the Japanese starting from Paraguay’s Bertoni stevia.  The stevia rebaudiana has two main molecules: stevioside and rebaudioside A.  The first one, stevioside, is both sweet and bitter. The second one, rebaudioside A, is only sweet. The more rebaudioside A in the leaf, the sweeter it is, with a less bitter aftertaste.  The Morita variety has a very high level of rebaudioside A, so it has a cleaner, sweeter taste and a lower bitter aftertaste. The Bertoni variety favored in China, Korea, Brazil and Paraguay has a high level of stevioside, but a much lower level of rebaudioside A.

How much Erba Dolce is needed to replace the sweetness of sugar? For example, how much Erba Dolce should I use to replace the equivalent sweetness found in one teaspoon of sugar?

Each sachet of Erba Dolce is equivalent to two teaspoons of sugar.

Can you bake with Erba Dolce? If a recipe calls for 1 cup of sugar, how much Erba Dolce would you need to replace the sugar?

Yes, Erba Dolce can be used to bake.  Stevia does not change its characteristics or sweetening capacity because of high temperatures.  For baking, the weight (amount) of sugar required must be divided in 12; the result is the amount of stevia that should be used.  For instance, if the recipe calls for one cup (16 tablespoons) then they should use 1 and 1/3 tablespoons of stevia (16/12=1.33).

Please note: because stevia does not have the same volume as sugar, that volume needs to be replaced with the other ingredients in the recipe.

What other countries permit the use stevia as a sweetener? For how many years have they been using it?

Countries such as Japan, China, Korea, Israel, Taiwan, Brazil, Paraguay, Colombia, Panama, Bolivia, Peru, Argentina and Central America all use Stevia as a sweetener. In Paraguay and Brazil it has been used for centuries and in Japan for over 5 decades.

Does Erba Dolce raise blood glucose levels?

No. The compounds of Erba Dolce do not require the production of insulin in order to be absorbed, therefore, the blood glucose levels remain stable.

Is Erba Dolce suitable for diabetics?

Yes.  The compounds of Erba Dolce do not require the production of insulin to be absorbed; therefore, its use is safe for diabetics.  There are several studies that show the effects of stevia in type 2 diabetics: its permanent consumption helps to normalize blood sugar levels.

In Colombia, Erba Dolce is the only brand guaranteed by the Colombian Diabetes Association.  There are other comparative studies that show Stevia is in fact, the only good sweetener for diabetics.

Does Erba Dolce have the same effects on teeth (tooth decay) as does regular sugar?

No. While regular sugar adheres directly and is a nourishing source for bacteria found inside the mouth, stevia does not constitute a source for them.  One of the main properties of stevia is that it is a bactericide; in its presence there is no bacteria growing so it is also considered as an anti decay product.  In Japan there are various toothpaste brands containing stevia as an anti decay product.

Why do you use maltodextrin as a carrying agent for Erba Dolce?

Stevia extract itself, without any carrying agent is very difficult to dose. Maltodextrin is a natural cereal extract used as a vehicle because it gives less calories than any other agent used in the market (dextrose, sucrose) and requires minimum amounts of insulin to be absorbed.

Maltodextrin is a universal carrying agent used in the production of all kinds of food, such as powder milk, frozen meat, sauces, among others.  It is very hard to find in the market another product as neutral and soluble as Maltodextrin.

Does maltodextrin have any side effects—good or bad?

There are no side effects known.  It is even used in powder milk drying process and baby food preparations.

What is the percentage of maltodextrin in Erba Dolce?

In the fabrication process of Erba Dolce, it is used a spray drying machine in which a pure liquid extract of stevia is apply onto maltodextrin; as a result the liquid becomes tiny stevia crystals that cover maltodextrin grains. Due to the kind of process and the equivalences of stevia in terms of sweetening capacity versus physical volume, it is difficult to determine the precise quantity of stevia. For Erba Dolce, 85% is maltodextrin and 15% is concentrated stevia extract.

Does extreme heat or cold have any effect on Erba Dolce?

No.  Erba Dolce is stable at both high and low temperatures.

Is Erba Dolce an all natural product? Could you briefly describe how Erba Dolce is produced?

Yes.  Erba Dolce is produced through purely physical processes (no chemicals) using natural raw materials that allow to obtain a 100% natural product.  The process includes the following stages:

Extraction: using osmosis water (purified).

Thick micro filtration and molecular filtration (TFF, Tangential Flow Filtration): using cellulose filters (vegetal material).

Concentration: water reduction by evaporation.

Drying and mixing: using a spray drying machine over a maltodextrin base, it is obtained a granulated powder that will be packed in sachets and containers.

Could you explain a little bit about the stevia plant, where it grows, how it is cultivated and harvested?

Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni is an herbaceous plant native to Amambai, in the border line between Brazil and Paraguay where is known as KAA-HE-E (native language).  It is a small shrub that reaches between 2.62 feet and 3.28 feet of maximum height.

The importance of this specie lies in the production of a non caloric sweetener, from 300 to 400 times sweeter than sugar. It is our warm weather and long growing season that provides the best quality leaves. Growing conditions include rich but sandy soil, plenty of water and lots of sunshine that provides up to 3 harvests per year in Paraguayan and Brazilian territories.

The stevia variety growth in Colombia is called Morita (Stevia Rebaudiana Morita) and its propagation is made through stalk fragments while Bertoni variety is made through seeds. In Colombia it reaches 6 harvests per year.

Does Erba Dolce grow its own stevia or do they buy it from local farmers?

Erba Dolce buys stevia leaves from locally contracted farmers.  Most of the crops are grown as part of a governmental program to provide new opportunities and better social programs for the workers.

What makes Erba Dolce superior to other stevia products?

Erba Dolce tastes exactly as the natural stevia leaf.  The production method is completely natural and Morita variety is the best leaf known so far. The carrying agents we use are GMO free providing a finished product with the best taste and highest quality available.

What makes this stevia different then the ones I currently use…is it price, taste, fair-trade, organic, etc?

The farmers with whom we contract handle clean crops and some of them have already received organic certifications.  Morita’s leaf, as explained before, has the highest sweetness level and the lower bitterness because of rebaudioside A.  One of Erba Dolce’s current suppliers is now Fair Trade certified.

Regarding price, Erba Dolce is not the least expensive because it is artisan made.  Other brands in the market with lower prices use stevia extracts from China which often make them less expensive but leave a bitter, chemical aftertaste.

Erba Dolce is a natural product made of the best quality stevia leaves guaranteeing an excellent taste; as mentioned before, these leaves are grown by local farmers as part of governmental programs that help them have new opportunities.

What are the best uses for stevia?

Erba Dolce Stevia is ideal to be added to hot or cold foods and drinks consumed daily.  It has a wonderful synergy with any kind of tea.  Stevia is a flavor enhancer; it improves the flavor of fruit juices and teas and can be used in food preparations such as desserts, cookies, ice creams, etc.

Is there any added value (fiber, vitamins, etc) ?

Dried stevia leaves contain vitamins, minerals and nutrients such as ascorbic acid, beta-carotene, calcium, chromium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, fluoride, zinc, selenium, cobalt and proteins. Some of the compounds such as vitamin A and C are sensitive to the high temperatures used in the extraction process, but many of the other compounds are retained.

Why is stevia a supplement? How is it good for you?

Stevia is a dietary supplement only for the USA, Canada and Puerto Rico because of FDA regulations.  In other countries it is used as a food, in the sweeteners category.   The reason for the current status of stevia in the U.S. is the lobbying efforts of the sugar and chemical sweetener producers to restrict the entry of stevia to this country and therefore eliminating the competition.

Erba Dolce complements the diet of people who want to live a healthy life style.  Erba Dolce is all natural and healthy.

If you have further questions or need any assistance please contact us at or visit our websites at:

2 Responses so far »

  1. 1

    agroaxon s.a. said,

    seed variety morita

    • 2

      dpalame said,

      Erba Dolce is manufactured with Morita 2 Variety. Please let us know if you have further questions and thank you.

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text:
Translation of telescopic in Spanish:

telescópico, adj.

Pronunciation /tɛlɪˈskɒpɪk//ˌtɛləˈskɑpɪk/

  • 1

    (relating to telescope)
    (observations/view) telescópico
    telescopic rifle rifle telescópico masculine
    • The telescopic observations used by Galileo to confute the Aristotelians are bound up with complex assumptions having to do with optics: this penetration of observation by theory is typical.
    • As with Galileo's first telescopic observations, these explorations will stimulate discussion on the origins of the newly revealed landscapes.
    • Centuries of telescopic observations revealed Mars to have a dynamic surface and atmosphere.
    • His telescopic observations forever changed how we understand the heavens; the Linceans hoped that their microscopic observations would do the same for the terrestrial world.
    • This helps explain why a favorite target of many amateur observers is the one telescopic object they know will actually change right before their eyes: Jupiter.
    • It has also entered its uninteresting season for telescopic observers; it looks like a small, featureless, gibbous Moon for the rest of the year.
    • The red and pink shades which color the horizon at these hours may be admired by lovers and vacationers, but to astronomers they are unwanted atmospheric phenomena that get in the way of telescopic observations.
    • This area had been studied extensively with telescopic images, and a near-equatorial landing would be most favorable for return-to-Earth trajectories.
    • It appeared similar to a telescopic view of a nebula and had a diameter of about half that of the lunar/solar disk.
    • This has happened only six times in since telescopic observations began: in 1631, 1639, 1761, 1769, 1874 and 1882.
    • By 1613 Galileo believed that his telescopic observations of the moons of Jupiter proved that the Earth and planets revolved round the Sun.
    • To oversimplify, then, Galileo's telescopic observations of remote surfaces and of appearances he knew to be illusions were revelatory in a way that the Linceans' microscopic scrutiny of matters at hand could not be.
    • In 1609 and 1610, Italian mathematician and astronomer Galileo Galilei and German astronomer Simon Marius began telescopic studies of Jupiter and its system.
    • She said that telescopic observations reported in 1977 reported the detection of methane and ethane on Neptune but not Uranus.
    • This was done first through telescopic measurements and early spacecraft fly-bys.
    • Scientists have studied the rocks and soil returned from the Moon by the Apollo astronauts and have used telescopic and spacecraft observations to learn a great deal about the lunar environment.
    • His astronomy brought back to the fore, he went on to make the earliest telescopic observations in England.
    • But telescopic observation reveals the different rings of the Saturn, called the Cassini divisions, as well as the nebula of the constellations such as the ‘Orion.’
    • He saw it directly and it was visible for some months, but is now a telescopic object.
    • While Mars and the Moon were objects of much attention by early telescopic observation, the surface of Venus remained a mystery.
  • 2

    (tripod) telescópico
    telescopic umbrella paraguas plegable automático masculine
    • Yet the telescopic boom design allows the operator to work in close when on severe slopes or in unstable conditions.
    • The vehicle that we are here concerned with is essentially a telescopic boom designed and constructed to raise or lower platforms or other fixtures to required positions.
    • When the sun comes out, it will open, allowing users to swim under blue skies, but when the weather turns, the telescopic structure will slide shut and heating will kick in.
    • The telescopic boom section is the one nearest the truck, and a folding section of slick line bridges the extending portion.
    • Among the new information is the fact that although the circular shaft of the minaret appears from the exterior to consist of three telescopic sections, structurally there are in fact only two.


text:
Woodpecker holes

This is a picture I took two days ago at the Sysselt forest near Ede. It’s an old dead tree where you can clearly see the holes that woodpeckers make in dead trees to excavate a nest. It can take them up to a month drilling their nest with their bill. I was amazed to see these woodpecker holes from up close (the tree had been cut as it was close to a walking trail). The Sysselt (part of the Veluwe nature area in the province of Gelderland) is a forest where many woodpeckers live, including the biggest woodpecker, the black woodpecker. We heard them calling while we were walking there, but sadly didn’t see one this time.

Woodpecker holes in a tree in the Sysselt

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text:
Links May 2008

The Daily WTF has published an interesting essay on why retaining staff is not always a good thing [1]. The main point is that good people get bored and want to move on while mediocre people want to stay, but there are other points and it’s worth reading.

Following the links from that article led me to an article comparing managing IT departments to managing professional sports teams [2]. They chose US football (a sport I know little about and have no interest in) so I probably missed some of the content. But they have some good points.

John Goerzen gave a good presentation to the idea of increasing petrol taxes and decreasing other taxes to have a revenue neutral result while also discouraging petrol use [3]. I credit him with presenting the idea not inventing it because I have heard similar ideas several times before (but not nearly as well written and not written from a right-wing perspective). Hopefully some people who read his presentation will be more receptive than they were to the other versions of the same idea.

Craig Venter spoke at TED about his work in creating artificial life [4]. He spent some time talking about the possibilities of creating artificial organisms to produce fuels directly from CO2 and sunlight.

Nick Bostrom published a paper explaining why he hopes that the SETI projects find nothing [5]. His theory is that the fact that our solar system has not been colonised and that we have seen no immediate evidence of extra-terrestrial life indicates that there is a “Great Filter” which is a stage of evolution for which it is most unlikely that any species will pass. If the Great Filter is in our past (he cites the evolution of multi-celled life as one of the possibilities, and the evolution of prokaryotes into eukaryotes as another) then it means that our future might be more successful than if the Great Filter was something that tended to happen to advanced societies.

Jared Diamond (the author of Collapse), has written an interesting article about vengeance [6]. He focuses on an example in New Guinea and uses it to explain why personal vendettas tend to run wildly out of control and how society is best served by having the state punish criminals.

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text:
Hard Drives for Backup

The general trend seems to be that cheap hard drives are increasing in capacity faster than much of the data that is commonly stored. Back in 1998 I had a 3G disk in my laptop and about 800M was used for my home directory. Now I have 6.2G used for my home directory (and another 2G in ~/src) out of the 100G capacity in my laptop. So my space usage for my home directory has increased by a factor of about 8 while my space available has increased by a factor of about 30. When I had 800M for my home directory I saved space by cropping pictures for my web site and deleting the originals (thus losing some data I would rather have today) but now I just keep everything and it’s still doesn’t take up much of my hard drive. Similar trends apply to most systems that I use and that I run for my clients.

Due to the availability of storage people are gratuitously using a lot of disk space. A relative recently took 10G of pictures on a holiday, her phone has 12G of internal storage so there was nothing stopping her. She might decide that half the pictures aren’t that great if she had to save space, but that space is essentially free (she couldn’t buy a cheaper phone with less storage) so there’s no reason to delete any pictures.

When considering backup methods one important factor is the ability to store all of one type of data on one backup device. Having a single backup span multiple disks, tapes, etc has a dramatic impact on the ease of recovery and the potential for data loss. Currently 3TB SATA disks are really cheap and 4TB disks are available but rather expensive. Currently only one of my clients has more than 4TB of data used for one purpose (IE a single filesystem) so apart from that client a single SATA disk can backup anything that I run.

Benefits of Hard Drive Backup

When using a hard drive there is an option to make it a bootable disk in the same format as the live disk. I haven’t done this, but if you want the option of a quick recovery from a hardware failure then having a bootable disk with all the data on it is a good option. For example a server with software RAID-1 could have a backup disk that is configured as a degraded RAID-1 array.

The biggest benefit is the ability to read a disk anywhere. I’ve read many reports of tape drives being discovered to be defective at the least convenient time. With a SATA disk you can install it in any PC or put it in a USB bay if you have USB 3.0 or the performance penalty of USB 2.0 is bearable – a USB 2.0 bay is great if you want to recover a single file, but if you want terabytes in a hurry then it won’t do.

A backup on a hard drive will typically use a common filesystem. For backing up Linux servers I generally use Ext3, at some future time I will move to BTRFS as having checksums on all data is a good feature for a backup. Using a regular filesystem means that I can access the data anywhere without needing any special software, I can run programs like diff on the backup, and I can export the backup via NFS or Samba if necessary. You never know how you will need to access your backup so it’s best to keep your options open.

Hard drive backups are the best solution for files that are accidentally deleted. You can have the first line of backups on a local server (or through a filesystem like BTRFS or ZFS that supports snapshots) and files can be recovered quickly. Even a SATA disk in a USB bay is very fast for recovering a single file.

LTO tapes have a maximum capacity of 1.5TB at the moment and tape size has been increasing more slowly than disk size. Also LTO tapes have an expected lifetime of only 200 reads/writes of the entire tape. It seems to me that tapes don’t provide a great benefit unless you are backing up enough data to need a tape robot.

Problems with a Hard Drive Backup

Hard drives tend not to survive being dropped so posting a hard drive for remote storage probably isn’t a good option. This can be solved by transferring data over the Internet if the data isn’t particularly big or doesn’t change too much (I have a 400G data set backed up via rsync to another country because most of the data doesn’t change over the course of a year). Also if the data is particularly small then solid state storage (which costs about $1 per GB) is a viable option, I run more than a few servers which could be entirely backed up to a 200G SSD. $200 for a single backup of 200G of data is a bit expensive, but the potential for saving time and money on the restore means that it can be financially viable.

Some people claim that tape storage will better survive a Carrington Event than hard drives. I’m fairly dubious about the benefits of this, if a hard drive in a Faraday Cage (such as a regular safe that is earthed) is going to be destroyed then you will probably worry about security of the food supply instead of your data. Maybe I should just add a disclaimer “this backup system won’t survive a zombie apocalypse”. ;)

It’s widely regarded that tape storage lasts longer than hard drives. I doubt that this provides a real benefit as some of my personal servers are running on 20G hard drives from back when 20G was big. The fact that drives tend to last for more than 10 years combined with the fact that newer bigger drives are always being released means that important backups can be moved to bigger drives. As a general rule you should assume that anything which isn’t regularly tested doesn’t work. So whatever your backup method you should test it regularly and have multiple copies of the data to deal with the case when one copy becomes corrupt. The process of testing a backup can involve moving it to newer media.

I’ve seen it claimed that a benefit of tape storage is that part of the data can be recovered from a damaged tape. One problem with this is that part of a database often isn’t particularly useful. Another issue is that in my experience hard drives usually don’t fail entirely unless you drop them, drives usually fail a few sectors at a time.

How to Implement Hard Drive Backup

The most common need for backups is when someone deletes the wrong file. It’s usually a small restore and you want it to be an easy process. The best solution to this is to have a filesystem with snapshots such as BTRFS or ZFS. In theory it shouldn’t be too difficult to have a cron job manage snapshots, but as I’ve only just started putting BTRFS and ZFS on servers I haven’t got around to changing my backups. Snapshots won’t cover more serious problems such as hardware, software, or user errors that wipe all the disks in a server. For example the only time I lost a significant amount of data from a hosted server was when the data center staff wiped it, so obviously good off-site backups are needed.

The easiest way to deal with problems that wipe a server is to have data copied to another system. For remote backups you can rsync to a local system and then use “cp -rl” or your favorite snapshot system to make a hard linked copy of the tree. A really neat feature is the ZFS ability to “send” a filesystem snapshot (or the diff between two snapshots) to a remote system [1]. Once you have regular backups on local storage you can then copy them to removable disks as often as you wish, I think I’ll have to install ZFS on some of my servers for the sole purpose of getting the “send” feature! There are NAS devices that provide similar functionality to the ZFS send/receive (maybe implemented with ZFS), but I’m not a fan of cheap NAS devices [2].

It seems that the best way to address the first two needs of backup (fast local restore and resilience in the face of site failure) is to use ZFS snapshots on the server and ZFS send/receive to copy the data to another site. The next issue is that the backup server probably won’t be big enough for all the archives and you want to be able to recover from a failure on the backup server. This requires some removable storage.

The simplest removable backup is to use a SATA drive bay with eSATA and USB connectors. You use a regular filesystem like Ext3 and just copy the files on. It’s easy, cheap, and requires no special skill or software. Requiring no special skill is important, you never know who will be called on to recover from backups.

When a server is backing up another server by rsync (whether it’s in the same rack or another country) you want the backup server to be reliable. However there is no requirement for a single reliable server and sometimes having multiple backup servers will be cheaper. At current purchase prices you can buy two cheap tower systems with 4*3TB disks for less money than a single server that has redundant PSUs and other high end server features. Having two cheap servers die at once seems quite unlikely so getting two backup servers would be the better choice.

For filesystems that are bigger than 4TB a disk based backup would require backup software that handles multi part archives. One would hope that any software that is designed for tape backup would work well for this (consider a hard drive as a tape with a very fast seek), but often things don’t work as desired. If anyone knows of a good Linux backup program that supports multiple 4TB SATA disks in eSATA or USB bays then please let me know.

BTRFS or ZFS snapshots are the best way of recovering from simple mistakes.

ZFS send/receive seems to be the best way of synchronising updates to filesystems to other systems or sites.

ZFS should be used for all servers. Even if you don’t currently need send/receive you never know what the future requirements may be. Apart from needing huge amounts of RAM (one of my servers had OOM failures when it had a mere 4G of RAM) there doesn’t seem to be any down-side to ZFS.

I’m unsure of whether to use BTRFS for removable backup disks. The immediate up-sides are checksums on all data and meta-data and the possibility of using built-in RAID-1 so that a random bad sector is unlikely to lose data. There is also the possibility of using snapshots on a removable backup disk (if the disk contains separate files instead of an archive). The down-sides are lack of support on older systems and the fact that BTRFS is fairly new.

Have I missed anything?

13 comments to Hard Drives for Backup

  • Jeroen Dekkers

    Btrfs send/receive has been merged in 3.6, so you don’t have to use ZFS to just get the send/receive feature.

  • IIRC, the big worry in the case of a Carrington Event was lack of timely replacements for the huge power transformers that would likely be destroyed.

  • etbe

    Jeroen: That’s great! But it won’t be in Debian until Wheezy+1 and I’ve got some servers that need upgrading much sooner than that. Maybe in Wheezy+1 time I’ll convert some servers to BTRFS, but then SSD is becoming more popular (prices for home use are decreasing and availability in DCs is increasing) so unless BTRFS gets a feature like ZIL there will still be a good incentive for using ZFS.

    Paul: If we had a government that wasn’t stupid and cowardly then they would reduce the anti-terrorism budget and assign some serious money towards preparing for such things. Having a stockpile of replacement transformers, engine control systems for government vehicles and essential services, etc would cost nothing compared to the post-911 expenses. But Carrington Events are likely to kill many more people than al Quaeda.

  • alex

    How are you running ZFS?

    I’m currently toying with fuse-zfs on an external USB drive- I rsync my hdd to it and take a snapshot. Dedupe + compression seems to work fairly well to save space, but my main fs is ext3.

  • etbe

    alex: I’m using zfsonlinux code, and for Debian/wheezy I’m using the Ubuntu packages, see the above URL.

    I wouldn’t be inclined to run it on removable media as it doesn’t seem to be designed for such things.

  • Paolo

    Between file system snapshot and rsync I put rdiff-backup, you have a mountable filesystem replica (local or over the net), plus differences snapshots:

    The target directory ends up a copy of the source directory, but extra reverse diffs are stored in a special subdirectory of that target directory, so you can still recover files lost some time ago. The idea is to combine the best features of a mirror and an incremental backup.” (from rdiff-backup site).

    The bad thing is that it is not actively maintained.

  • etbe

    Jeroen: The above LWN article describes the BTRFS send/receive functionality as experimental as of last month, it seems that the file format isn’t even stabilised.

    Above is the web site for rdiff-backup.

    rdiff is based on the rsync algorithm and described in the above Wikipedia page.

    Paolo: Thanks for the suggestion of that, I’ll investigate it for backing up databases. But for things like Maildir storage rsync and cp -rl is best.

  • Paolo

    Well, we use rdiff-backup storage for maildir (~ 400Gb), because all other options (Bacula, rsync, etc..) have not proved successful due to the time to complete, the high high volume of data (in the case of monthly full backup) and / or lack of historical data.
    In addition we are able to mount the “backup” and restart the service in the event of total loss of live data, or to restore a mailbox at a certain date with a single command.
    The other viable alternative – some sort of lvm or filesystem snapshot – is not an option for us in this moment.
    What are your concerns about using rdiff-backup to archive maildir storage?

  • etbe

    Paolo: Why do you need rdiff for Maildir? When backing up Maildir I exclude index files (because they would be regenerated by the server anyway if I restored them) and the server doesn’t modify any email files once they are written. So there should be no benefit in storing file diffs.

    Why would rdiff provide any benefit over “cp -rl” of an rsync tree?

    As for snapshots, LVM is somewhat painful. BTRFS and ZFS offer the promise of doing this properly, but I haven’t yet tested this in production. Comments about ZFS send/receive make it sound easy, but it seems that a fair amount of scripting would be needed to cover the cases of network outages between sites causing failed backups. You can’t just send/receive the diff between the last two snapshots, you have to cover the case where the previous backup run aborted.

  • Paolo

    You are right, any email file is never modified, so no need of computing diffs on it.

    But rdiff stores not only file diffs, but also the tree diff, so you have a full copy of your data, plus historical differences with the previous backups.

    In this manner we can restore a mailbox deleted x days before, while you can’t do that only with “cp -rl” (without multiple full copies of the data).

    Feel free to tell me if is not appropriate to continue this discussion on the blog.

  • etbe

    Paolo: The point of “cp -rl” is that you have hard-links not copies of the data. So you have multiple copies of the directories (which does take some space) but no multiple copies of data. Using that method I can just pipe tar over ssh to restore the data as it’s all there in a regular file tree.

    This discussion is fine here.

  • Paolo

    Russel: I had missed the use of hard links, my fault.

    At this point the only advantage of rdiff is to use a single command, instead of using rsync for remote copy and cp-rl to create the historical data, avoiding a bit of scripting for automating tasks.

    I must say that this use of hard links (which I had not well considered before) intrigues me, I think I’ll make some experiments on it. Thank you.

  • liw

    I used the rsync + cp -al trick for many years. I learnt that filesystems and tools tend to work badly when there are huge numbers of hardlinks. For example, I had a bad time moving my backups to another computer: rsync required too much memory, for example. Removing large trees of hardlinks was surprisingly slow. And so on.

    That’s one good reason to favor a backup tool rather than hardlink trees.

    That doesn’t mean hardlink trees are a bad idea, they’re just not perfect.