text:
Ada, We Hardly Knew Ye.

Ada Lovelace

A happy belated Ada Lovelace Day to everyone. For those unfamiliar with the remarkable Lady Lovelace, she was one of the most intriguing women of the nineteenth century, and along with her mentor and confidant, Charles Babbage, she formed one of the most fascinating partnerships in the history of science and offered the world a chance to experience the computer revolution 100 years early.

She was born Augusta Ada Byron, on December 10, 1815, the only legitimate child of the legendary Lord Byron and Annabella Milbank. Shortly after her birth, her parent’s marriage disintegrated in a spectacular divorce that scandalized English society and came to influence much of Ada’s young life. In the aftermath, Lord Byron left England for the Continent, never to return. Ada’s mother forbade the child to ever speak of him, and had Ada tutored extensively in mathematics as a means of countering any poetical influences or her father.

By the time she entered London society at the age of seventeen, Ada had matured into a young woman possessing charm, beauty and wealth. To her mother’s dismay she was a creature of fierce intellect and consuming passions, every bit the heir to her “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” sire. While making the rounds of balls and parties along with the other young women in her social milieu, Ada happened to attend a soiree held by the famous mathematician

Charles Babbage

Charles Babbage. He offered his guests a demonstration of his newest invention, a thinking machine.

A hush fell over the room as Babbage turned the crank handle of what he called his difference engine for the crème de la crème of London intelligentsia and high society. The device’s myriad brass and steel gears gleamed in the reflected gas light, and as they turned it began to perform calculations faster and with greater accuracy than any human could. The audience was fascinated and delighted, but most concluded the wondrous machine was simply an amusing plaything with no practical applications. Not so Ada.

Almost immediately she, unlike the other party goers, grasped the revolutionary significance of such a machine and spent many hours asking Mr. Babbage about its inner workings. For his part, Babbage was flattered by the attention of such a curious and intellectually gifted young woman. Within a few short months, he was helping her obtain the finest of mathematical tutors so that she could fully appreciate the elegance of the engine’s design.

It wasn’t long, however, before Babbage was setting out upon the next step in the evolution of thinking machines. He began working on plans for a much more sophisticated device he called the analytical engine. This was much more than simply a calculator. It could process and store information, even print out the results. It was in every modern sense of the word a computer.

When Ada found out she enthusiastically joined the effort, using her wealth and social connections to become the analytical engine’s most ardent advocate and spokesperson. She continued her mathematical studies, and showed such an affinity for it that Babbage began referring to her as, “The Enchantress of Numbers.” It was also during this period that Ada accepted an offer of marriage from a handsome young member of the nobility, William King, and formally became the Countess of Lovelace.

Word of Babbage’s new machine spread widely, and he was invited to deliver a lecture about it in Italy to that nation’s top scientists, mathematicians and engineers. He readily accepted, and so impressed them that one of the engineers, L. F. Menabrea, who would later go on to become Italian Prime Minster, wrote a detailed and quite complimentary paper on Babbage and the analytical engine. Unfortunately, the paper initially had little impact in England because as was customary for scientific papers from the Continent at the time, it was published in French.

Babbage needed someone to translate the work for the English public to help him obtain the funding he so desperately needed to complete his project, but he needed someone who was familiar enough with his machine to do it real justice and fully convey some of the finer technological points. He naturally called upon his closest ally, Ada. She quickly accepted, but that was not enough. Babbage took the unprecedented step of asking her to not only translate Menabrea’s work, but to add her own notes so as to show the machine and its potential to its best advantage.

This was in 1842. Writing and offering her scientific opinions was a far cry from the duties expected of a young married woman, let alone a countess, but Ada unhesitatingly took on the challenge. Her notes were in fact so extensive by the time she was done that they exceeded the length of Menabrea’s original paper. She fully expounded upon the intricacies of the analytical engine and significance on society of its completion. She even included a method for using the engine to calculate Bernoulli numbers. Many later writers have credited this as being the first published computer program.

Some writers have tried to downplay the significance of Ada’s contributions or suggested that the work was simply supplied to her by Babbage. The best evidence against this conclusion is the writings of Babbage himself. In his autobiography, Passages from the Life of a Philosopher, he wrote:

I then suggested that she add some notes to Menabrea’s memoir, an idea which was immediately adopted. We discussed together the various illustrations that might be introduced: I suggested several but the selection was entirely her own. So also was the algebraic working out of the different problems, except, indeed, that relating to the numbers of Bernoulli, which I had offered to do to save Lady Lovelace the trouble. This she sent back to me for an amendment, having detected a grave mistake which I had made in the process.

Alas, despite the best efforts of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, their dream of a nineteenth century computer revolution was not to be. Ada fell victim to ovarian cancer and died at the tragically early age of 37. In her absence, Babbage, for a number of political, economic and personal reasons, was never able to get enough funding to complete a working model of his analytical engine. After years of designing and drawing up extensive plans for his device and numerous unsuccessful attempts to obtain funding, Babbage died in 1871 with his analytical engine unbuilt.

Working model of the Analytical Engine

It would have been easy to forget about the scientific efforts of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, to let their memories slip into the ignoble history of fool’s errands and unrealized schemes, but in 1991, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Babbage’s birth the London Science Museum undertook a project to actually construct the analytical engine based upon the original plans. Working meticulously from Babbage’s notes and using materials and methods that he would have had access to in the nineteenth century, they built the machine. To their credit and the delight of fans of science, it worked. The mechanical computer that Babbage and Lovelace had struggled for so many years for had actually become a reality. So today, we can celebrate the genius of these two extraordinary individuals who persevered despite political opposition, economic difficulties and societal constraints. We can take a moment every year on October 7th,Ada Lovelace Day, to thank them for their efforts and to imagine what if.

Book Preview: Joseph Priestley

Thought folks might like to see a sneak peak of the upcoming book They Called Me Mad: Genius, Madness and the Scientists Who Pushed the Outer Limits of Knowledge
 Here’s an excerpt about one of the great chemists of all time, Joseph Preistley:

Prior to becoming a teacher, Priestley had little in the way of formal science education, but he viewed science as an important part of his students’ education. As he wrote in one of his later works:

“I am sorry to have occasion to observe, that natural science is very little, if at all, the object of education in this country, in which many individuals have distinguished themselves so much by their application to it. And I would observe that, if we wish to lay a good foundation for philosophical taste, and philosophical pursuits, persons should be accustomed to the sight of experiments, and processes, in early life. They should more especially be early initiated in the theory and practice of investigation, by which many of the old discoveries may be made to be really their own…” (Priestley, Expriments and Observation of Different Kinds of Air)

With this in mind, he began educating himself in the topic to better instruct his young charges. He even purchased a few scientific instruments for their benefit, including an air pump, a well-calibrated scale and a machine for generating static electricity.

The scientists of the time were a far cry from the professional researchers of today. In fact, the word “scientist” wouldn’t come into popular English usage for another hundred years. Instead, scientific experiments in the 1700’s and well into the 1800’s were carried out largely by amateurs, dilatants and dabblers who had the time and inclination to explore the scientific mysteries of the day. Once he began conducting and demonstrating experiments for his students, Priestley quickly became hooked, and was soon on his way toward becoming one of the dabblers.

Like many of his peers, Priestley became fascinated with the newly fashionable phenomenon of electricity. It was quite in vogue at the time, due in no small part to the efforts of an American experimenter named Benjamin Franklin. He and his fellow electricians, as they were called, were busy capturing the public’s imagination with flamboyant demonstrations of electrical wonders. What’s more, they were inventing practical applications for their electrical knowledge, including Franklin’s lightning rod and E.F. von Kleist’s invention of an early capacitor known as a Leyden jar.

Priestly was struck by the fact that no one had documented the history of this rapidly expanding field. He was still enjoying the success of his earlier book, and thought he might be just the man to tackle the job. With that goal, he set off for London to meet the electricians for himself, and propose to them that he chronicle their discoveries. To smooth the way, he brought with him a letter of introduction from the rector of the Warrington Academy, John Seddon. It was addressed to one of England’s leading electricians, John Canton, a member of the Royal Society. In his letter, Seddon wrote, “You will find [Priestley] a benevolent, sensible man, with a considerable share of Learning.” At the end, there was a short postscript: “If Dr. Franklin be in Town, I believe Dr. Priestley would be glad to be made known to him.” (Johnson)

As it happened, Franklin was in town. He was serving as the deputy postmaster general for North America. During the extended stays in London this required, Franklin would often frequent one of the local coffee houses near St Paul’s Cathedral, where he could strike up conversations with fellow freethinkers. Eventually Franklin and his friends formed an informal group they called the Club of Honest Whigs. They would meet on alternate Thursdays and discuss the burning issues of the day over coffee and porter. Frequently these discussions would involve scientific questions, and new theories and speculations about electricity were a frequent topic.

It was just such a meeting that John Canton attended in 1765, and invited the young Dr. Priestley to tag along. Soon the humble pastor was sitting across the table from his heroes, including the world famous Dr. Franklin himself. Franklin and the others welcomed their new admirer warmly as one of their own, and over the course of the afternoon, Priestley laid out his book proposal. Not only did they give the idea a warm reception but promised to help by supplying research materials and offering to read the manuscript. They also suggested experiments that he could conduct himself to better understand the subject. With their encouragement, Priestley leapt fully into the world of science.

Within a few days, Priestley was accompanying Franklin and Canton as they visited the Royal Society. Imagine what it must have been like for Priestley to entered those hallowed halls of science where Newton himself had once presided, and in such august company. In less than a week he had gone from a young dabbler to an honored guest of the great men of science. He would soon be sitting amongst them as a scientific peer.

When his time in London was done, he rushed back to Warrington and began assembling a sort of make shift laboratory. Using his limited funds to purchase the tools and materials he needed, He was soon throwing himself into scientific experimentation with an almost manic intensity. Unfortunately, there is no record of his wife’s reaction to all this, but she must have been less than pleased when, in order to conduct some of his messier experiments, he commandeered their kitchen sink.

Mad Scientist Hall of Fame: Luigi Galvani

Galvani LabDelicately, the practiced hand of the anatomist pealed back the skin of the once living frog to reveal the intricate network of muscles and nerves within.  Meanwhile, electrical sparks flashed and crackled as his assistant dutifully turned the crank of the static electricity generator and charged the primitive capacitor known as a Leyden jar.  Each worked independently, ignorant of the discovery to come.

No one is quite sure why he reached for one of the dissecting knives from the table where his master worked, but as the assistant did so, an electric spark jumped from the tip of the blade to the exposed leg of the frog.  As electricity surged along the sciatic nerve of the amphibian, the leg convulsed violently as if alive.  Both men were stunned.  They stooped to examine the leg more closely.  The doctor prodded the leg with the tip of his own scalpel to assure himself that the frog was indeed dead.  Since the assistant no longer cranked the generator, the leg remained still.  Had this happened in someone else’s laboratory, it might have been dismissed as a freak occurrence, but this was the laboratory of the great Italian anatomist, Luigi Galvani, and he was intrigued.

Luigi Galvani
Luigi Galvani

In 1780, Galvani was a well respected physician and lecturer at the famed University of Bologna.  He had produced a number of significant writings on anatomy, such as his well regarded treatise on the kidneys of birds.  However, like many scientists at the time, he had become fascinated with electricity.  Benjamin Franklin’s groundbreaking work on lightning in the 1750’s had made the study of electricity all the rage among researchers in both the New and Old World.  Galvani was one of many who eagerly sought the primitive electrical apparatus of the day to explore this new phenomenon.

The accident with the frog caused Galvani wonder.  Could electricity somehow animate the unliving tissue of the frog?  Could there be some connection between sparks of electricity and the spark of life itself?  He immediately began to investigate the possibility.  Being a trained scientist and meticulous experimenter, he carefully set up a series of experiments to replicate the initial accident.  In his own words, “For it is easy in experimentation to be deceived, and to think one has seen and discovered what we desire to see and discover.”

Galvani tried to see if the material with which he touched the frog’s leg had an effect.  An iron rod duplicated the original results, but a glass rod did not.  He tried attaching the leg to a long wire while he cranked the generator.  When he touched the wire, the leg again convulsed.  Again and again he repeated his experiments, changing one variable and then another.  In one of his more ghoulish attempts, he attached the spinal cords and legs of several dissected frogs to brass hooks.  The hooks were then hung from an iron railing surrounding Galvani’s garden.  Under the proper atmospheric conditions, they would twitch and contract.  One can only imagine what it must have been like to sit in the garden and watch a line full of disembodied frog legs dance to the accompaniment of thunder and lightning.

Galvani used these experiments and subsequent ones over the course of ten years to develop his theory of animal electricity, what today we would call bioelectricity.  In 1791, he published his results in De Viribus Electricitatis in Motu Musculari Commentarius, in English: On the Effects of Electricity on the Motion of Muscles.  It was met with widespread acclaim at the time.

Most of us associate the image of the mad scientist using the wondrous powers of electricity to revive the flesh of the dead with the work of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly, but it should be remembered that Luigi Galvani published his work six years before she was born and almost thirtig10_lightning_03_02y years before the first publication of Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus.  Perhaps it would be more accurate to credit him with burning this iconic image into the popular psyche.  Galvani, the real life scientist, therefore is better deserving of the title Modern Prometheus.


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Archive for the ‘Smashing Pumpkins’ Category

Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

Thursday, February 12, 2009
Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995)

Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995)

“My reflection / dirty mirror /there’s no connection / to myself /I’m your lover / I’m your zero / I’m a face in your dreams of black.”

Pretty depressing. To be honest, I would say 50 percent of Mellon Collie doesn’t appeal to me. I guess I could see this working better as single album.

But where Billy Corgan and the crew get it right, it’s really right.

I won’t try to pretend I have a long history with this album. In fact, I’ve only had it about a year. Yet even though I wasn’t there when it was released in 1995, forver changing the way conused teenagers looked at music, I can still appreciate the effect its had.

Though most of the lyrics are a bit down, this album isn’t solely a depressive dirge. Neither is it a post-grunge album filled with typical lyrics of childish self-angst. It’s deeper than that.  Mellon Collie reflects a great range of humanity – hope, pain, fear, love, even silliness. For that reason, it is honest and mature.

These lyrics aren’t depressing for the sake of being depressing.  I think a great example of this can be heard in the song “Galapagos,” which reflects the pain of losing someone. Yet instead of being bitter, it is tender, the mesage being that the person who left can still expect to be loved.

At the beginning of this review, I mentioned half the songs weren’t worth keeping. I still stand by that. But the ones that are  make Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness one of the greatest albums of nineties.

“Too late to turn back now / I’m running out of sound / and I’m changing / changing. / And if we died right now / this fool you love somehow / is here with you.”

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text:
Removal candidates in patterns

Cale Gibbard cgibbard at
Thu Jan 26 21:24:42 EST 2006

On 26/01/06, Simon Peyton-Jones <simonpj at> wrote:
> I agree that if (n+k) patterns go, then so should k patterns.  Both are
> overloaded, and that's the root of their complexity.

I'm not so sure about that. I don't use (n+k) patterns at all, but I
do get fairly regular use out of k patterns. (n+k) patterns can seem
like an odd special case in everything but Nat, but k patterns are
often the nicest way to handle base cases, and save you from writing
awkward-looking guards. Sure, they're not usually appropriate for
floating point computations, but for integral and rational types, they
work very well. (even if you can't pattern match against fractions)

One possibility is that k patterns could be generalised to arbitrary
members of Eq, rather than just being used for numbers. We could even
make variables bound in the parameter list available. So for a
simplistic example, one could write:

f :: (Eq a, Num a) => a -> a -> a
f x x = x -- if the two parameters match, give their common value
f _ _ = 0 -- otherwise give 0.

The first 'x' would pattern match as usual, and the second would
compare for equality with the first.

We'd have to work out the exact syntax for them -- essentially, it
would just involve detecting an arbitrary expression which was not a
pattern. There's some context sensitivity there with the option of
referring to previously bound variables though.

I'm not sure how often this would be used, and perhaps it's more
trouble than it's worth, but at least it leaves no further room for
generalisation, which makes the feature seem somewhat natural.

Even without previous-variable-binding, it subsumes all pattern
matching on literals, so it would take some thought to determine if it
really makes things more complicated or not.

> Personally I think ~ patterns are great, and we are now talking about !
> patterns, a kind of dual to ~ patterns.  So at least I think we should
> un-couple the two discussions.

I think so too. Removing ~ patterns seems like a fairly poor idea to
me. Sure, they're not very much explicitly used (though everyone uses
them implicitly in pattern bindings), but when you want them, they can
be fairly important. I think perhaps we just need better coverage of ~
in the tutorials. Now that I think about it, I rather like the idea of
! patterns as well. They make ~ patterns seem more natural by
contrast. Strictness can on occasion be just as important as laziness,
and this notation makes it more convenient to obtain in simple cases.
How to get a similarly pretty notation for more structured strictness
annotations is a bit of a concern. I wonder whether some of the
Control.Parallel.Strategies library should be more strategically
located? :)

 - Cale

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Translations: Gintama 625 by kewl0210 , One Piece 855 by cnet128

One Piece 550

Marine Headquarters

+ posted by cnet128 as translation on Jul 16, 2009 06:58 | Go to One Piece

-> RTS Page for One Piece 550

Guidelines For Using My Translations

One Piece
Chapter 550: Marine Headquarters
Short-Term Focused Serial 15: Usopp's I'll-Die-If-I'm-On-My-Own Disease
Vol. 1: The Boin Archepelago: A Forest of Gluttony

[Box: South Blue]
People: Only three hours to go... / You think Whitebeard's shown up yet? // Who knows... // You think he really will appear?! I mean, even Whitebeard must be getting pretty old these days... // Yeah... he hasn't made any kind of big news for years now...
[Box: East Blue]
People: Whitebeard's old news these days, surely? / Like hell Marine HQ could lose to him! // Win or lose...... there are sure to be many deaths... // We should just pray he fails to appear at all. // If the execution simply goes ahead... that's best for everyone.

[Box: North Blue]
People: Whoa, whoa, pops!! I need my drink~~~~!!! // You're telling me to do business on a day like this?!! Away with you!! // If there's still a world to open it in tomorrow, we'll open shop then! // Please, you've gotta sell me some drink at least!! I can't take this without it!!!
[Box: West Blue]
People: Don't think of him as just some old guy. / He hasn't weakened one bit...!! Why, just a year ago... // Just seeing him sitting there doing nothing was enough to make every last one of us... / ...give up on our lives!
[Box: Grand Line]
People: Even the children know it... listen to them sing as they skip that rope...
Children: Old Pirate Whitebeard~!♪ / Scarier than demons~!♪
People: O God above... what is to become of this world...?

[Box: On the isle of Marinford, where Marine Headquarters resides... // ...lies a large city primarily inhabited by the families of Marine soldiers. // Currently, all residents have been recommended to evacuate... // ...and so via monitors on the nearby Shabondy Archipelago... // ...the people stand and watch as the public execution comes ever closer... // Reporters and cameramen from far and wide, too... // ...are gathered here ready to deliver the breaking news to the world as efficiently as possible.]
People: Hey - check it out!! Ace has appeared!!

[Box: Patrol ships are sent forth by the Marines one by one, and one by one, they are sunk... // There has yet to be a confirmed sighting of Whitebeard... and tension in Marinford is on the rise...]
Ace: .........
[Box: ...as the time remaining until the execution... // ...passes the three-hour mark...]

[Box: Grand Line / Marinford / Marine Headquarters]
Marines: Do not let your guards down!!! // No matter what happens, in three hours time...
[Box: Famed Marine soldiers, gathered from around the world...]
Marines: ...this will all be over!!!
[Box: ...around one hundred thousand elite troops in all... // ...await the battle that lies before them...]

[Box: Surrounding the crescent bay and the island as a whole... // ...stand fifty Marine vessels. // Along the coast stand countless heavy cannons... // ...and visible upon the coast, at the very fore of the Marine troops... // ...stand the five twisted pirates who may determine the outcome of this battle... // ...the Royal Shichibukai.]

[Box: ...Meanwhile, at the very rear of the plaza, upon the towering execution platform itself... // ...the central figure of this conflict, Second Division Commander of the Whitebeard Pirates... // ...Portgas D Ace awaits his fate... // ...and watching sternly over him... / ...stand Marine Headquarters' greatest military force... // ...the three Marine Admirals. // Marine Headquarters Admiral / AOKIJI / (Kuzan) // Marine Headquarters Admiral / AKAINU / (Sakazuki) // Marine Headquarters Admiral / KIZARU / (Borsalino)]

[Box: All the forces of justice imaginable at this moment in time... // ...await the arrival of the Whitebeard Pirates... / ...ready to prevent the retrieval of Ace. // The Tarai Current]
Lufy: Oi~~~, Jimbei!! // They're coming into sight! The Gates of Justice!! Man, that was fast~~~!!
Jimbei: Not as fast as we might have liked... if the wind had been with us, we could have arrived sooner still. / Now then, how do we plan on penetrating those Gates?
Buggy: It's coming, men!!! Coming ever closer!!! Hm?! What exactly is coming, you ask...?!
People: The time when Captain Buggy rules the world!!!
Buggy: You got that right!!!

[Box: Marinford]
Sengoku: Garp... I am going to tell them everything.
Garp: Do as you like... I'll be down below.
Sengoku: Move aside a moment, men.
Marines: Yessir! // Fleet Admiral Sengoku!!
Sengoku: The Den-Den Mushi...
Marines: What's this? // ?

Sengoku: Men, I have something crucial to tell you all. // Something about the true meaning of Portgas D Ace... / ...meeting his end here today.........!!
Smoker: ?
Momonga: .........
Tsuru: The sin rests not with you......
Garp: Bwahahah! You can get awful kind sometimes, can't you, ol' Tsuru-chan!
Sengoku: Ace. / Tell me the name of your father!!
Ace: ! // ........................!!

Ace: My father? // Huh... at a time like this... // My father... / ...is Whitebeard!!
Sengoku: He is not!!!
Ace: Yes, he is!! Whitebeard is my only father!!! I have no other!!!
Sengoku: Back then, we searched as though our lives depended on it. / Searching for the possibility that there existed on that island a child of that man. // Based on nothing but the tiniest of leads from Cipher Pol... / ...we investigated all newborn children, all children who were yet to be born, and all of their mothers, but ultimately found nothing.

Sengoku: Or so we thought... // But out of pure obstinacy, your mother had risked her life... / ...to perform a certain trick with regard to your birth.........!! // And it was this trick that deceived our eyes...... // ...no... the eyes of the world...!! // In the South Blue, there lies an island by the name of Baterilla. // Your mother's name was Portgas D Rouge.

Sengoku: She performed a feat that we could never have hoped to imagine... // ...and out of devotion to her child, bore him in her womb... / ...for a full twenty months!! // And when the birth finally came, her strength all but spent... // ...she left this world as you entered it. // One year and three months from the father's death... / ...a child was born bearing the most accursed blood to be found in this world. / That child is you. // Do not claim you are not aware......!!

Sengoku: Your father is none other... // ...than Pirate King, Gold Roger!!!!
Marines: ?!! // ...............?!! / ...............!!!
Garp: ...............!!
Flashback!Roger: A child who is yet to be born... / ...bears no sin, Garp!! // I leave my child in your hands!
[Insert text: The stunning truth!!]

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#1. by cloneofsnake ()
Posted on Jul 16, 2009
OMFG! Did not see that one coming...

Thanks cnet!
#2. by cnet128 (MH's Best Translator)
Posted on Jul 16, 2009
For bonus points, re-read my translation of Chapter 525!

...Heck, I was shocked at how accurate my translation was, looking back...
#3. by Alabanda ()
Posted on Jul 16, 2009
What a chapter... Thanks cnet!

Now that I read 525 again, it seems Garp had tried to or wanted to tell Ace who his father really is...
#4. by zidane ()
Posted on Jul 16, 2009
thank you very much, cnet
#5. by cnet128 (MH's Best Translator)
Posted on Jul 16, 2009
Quote by Alabanda:
Now that I read 525 again, it seems Garp had tried to or wanted to tell Ace who his father really is...
Hm? I see no reason to doubt that Ace knew who his father was >_<
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Feb 19, 2017 There Goes... 61 en Willeke...


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Translations: Gintama 625 by kewl0210 , One Piece 855 by cnet128

Gakkou Kaidan 6

+ posted by nyanpyou as translation on May 12, 2009 18:04 | Go to Gakkou Kaidan

-> RTS Page for Gakkou Kaidan 6

Page 1
Title: Chapter 6
Title: Doll

Page 2

Teacher: Hey Yuuki
Yuuki: Good morning
Yuuki: Ah, if it isn’t the professor.
Teacher: I’ve told you countless times.
Teacher: You can’t bring your stuffed animal to school.
Yuuki: But~~~
Yuuki: I can’t live without her~
Yuuki: We’re always together.
Yuuki: Please? Professor.

Page 3

Teacher: Well… Even if you say please…
Teacher: Really…
SFX: How cute~
Yuuki: Thanks!
Yuuki: See you later, professor.
Teacher: Hey you can’t…
Teacher: Um… Hey~~
Teacher: Haha…
Teacher: Really~~
Teacher: People must call those types the ultimate cute-posers~ Aha…ahaha.

Page 4

Teacher: Hey Yuuki.
Teacher: At least keep it out of the classroom.
Teacher: Put it in the locker.
Yuuki: But~~
Teacher: There is no but.
Teacher: Please professor.
Teacher: Stop saying that.
Yuuki: I… I.
Yuuki: I don’t want to be separated with her~~!!
SFX: tear
Teacher: Ugh~~!!
Teacher: I-I’ll allow it because you’re cute!!
SFX: shiver shiver

Page 5

Girl 1: Hey look.
Girl 1: Here comes the girl who loves stuffed animals.
Girl 2: But~~~
Girl 1: I can’t live without her~~~
Girl 3: Please teacher~~
Girl 3: tear tear~~
Girl 1: Stop kidding around.
Girl 1: Get a hold of yourself!!
Yuuki: Ahn no~~!

Page 6

Girl 1: What’s with this doll.
SFX: pluck
Yuuki: Ah, stop it!
Yuuki: Stop!
Yuuki: Please don’t take her…
Yuuki: I..I…
SFX: waver
SFX: thud

Page 7
Girl 2: Huh?
Girl 1: What?
Girl 3: What’s happened?
Girl 2: Hey! She’s not breathing!
Girl 1: No way!
Girl 3: Seriously!?
Girl 2: I didn’t see a thing~~…
Girl 1: Me too!
Girl 3: I didn’t either!

Page 8
Father: Hey Nanako.
Father: What are you doing at a place like this?
Yuuki: Mm…
Yuuki: Ah.
Yuuki: Papa.
Father: Are you returning from school?
Father: Let’s go back together.
Yuuki: You got off early today, papa.
Father: Yep.

Page 9
Yuuki: I’m home mama!
Mother: Welcome back Nanako.
Mother: Oh, papa is with you too?
Mother: How early today.

Page 10
Yuuki: I was almost taken away by the girls in my class today.
Father: Papa almost got taken away by the office lady too.
Mother: You two be careful now.
Mother: Is papa going for seconds?
Father: Yes, I will.
Yuuki: Me too!

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Marathi Theatre.com

Renuka finds mom’s novel perfect for Marathi film

Posted in Latest Events by marathitheatre on सप्टेंबर 1, 2009

Jackie Shroff is set to debut in Marathi films with actress Renuka Shahane’s directorial venture, Rita. Adapted from a Marathi novel, Rita Welingkar, the film will have Jackie playing the role of a mentor.The novel has been written by Renuka’s mother and critic Shanta Gokhale. Renuka believes the novel lends itself as a beautiful screenplay for a film.

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Trio of St. Johns underclassmen land first offers

St. John's High in D.C. is loaded with underclassmen prospects, including upwards of six Division-I recruits in the class of 2014. In fact, four current sophomores already claim verbal offers. Line...

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Impact Post Brexit

united kingdom exit from europe relative image

What do I do now that we’re looking at leaving the EU?

In short: press on.

The referendum last Thursday will undoubtedly have long lasting repercussions on everyone in the UK no matter which way they voted.

What does this mean for research funding?

We know that “British universities currently gain about £1.2 billion a year and benefit from networks of international researchers” and that “[c]ollectively, the EU remains the world leader in terms of its global share of science researchers (22.2%), ahead of China (19.1%) and the US (16.7%),” so it seems fair to be concerned about the role that UK research will play going forward. How will research funding be impacted by the vote to leave the EU?

At the moment, it is business as usual. In a statement published on Monday, Jo Johnson (Minister of State for Universities and Science) wrote the following:

The referendum result has no immediate effect on those applying to or participating in Horizon 2020. UK participants can continue to apply to the programme in the usual way. The future of UK access to European science funding will be a matter for future discussions. Government is determined to ensure that the UK continues to play a leading role in European and international research.

Also, ERASMUS+ published the following on their website:

There is no immediate change to the UK’s participation in the Erasmus+ programme following the EU referendum result and the UK National Agency will continue to manage and deliver the programme across the UK.

All participants and beneficiaries should continue with their Erasmus+ funded activities and preparation for the published application deadlines in 2016 and 2017.

Middlesex University’s Vice-Chancellor, Tim Blackman, has told us that

The UK’s decision to leave the European Union will pose challenges for universities, but the result does not mean any immediate material change to the UK university sector’s participation in EU programmes such as Horizon 2020 and Erasmus+.

So… business as usual.

However, despite reassurances, we are starting to see researchers around the UK beginning to wonder what happens in two years and how those changes will be reflected in the funding landscape. There is uncertainty in what this new landscape will look like and this is being reflected informally, in conversations and across social media:

However, these informal channels are ways that we express frustration with uncertainty and should not be representative of any concrete plans moving forward. Instead, let us focus on certainties.

We know that the best research happens in collaboration. That networks need to be maintained and encouraged across cities, regions, and nations. We know that, now more than ever, we need to reassure (and be reassured in turn) our partners that we are committed to excellent research and the resultant impact. Impact, as well as research, relies on collaboration and cooperation; impact will not happen in a vacuum. We need to pursue opportunities to engage with the best people and groups, no matter from what corner of the earth they hail.

We also know that there is a disjunct between the research(ers) in the UK and the non-academic general population. Whether you see this disjunct as the inevitable result of university culture itself being at odds with the priorities of the British public, the consequence of academics holding themselves at arm’s length from the public through elitist attitudes of moral disdain, or a public that needs more information to clearly understand the role that research plays in policy, academia, and everyday lives.

We know that “people in this country” have “had enough of experts” (Michael Gove); expertise has been so derided, in fact, that it becomes clear that there is a miscommunication between the experts and the public. This miscommunication is obvious in statements like the following:

So, how to repair this rupture between academics and the public?

In short: press on.

There are no easy answers to these questions, but we must remember that there is as much value in communicating research as there is in research itself.

Impact is intended to demonstrate value for money with regards to research. It is intended to bridge divides and benefit people. So, we carry on with our impact, and we recognize the need to be open and transparent in our dealings. We need to build relationships and maintain them, no matter what happens in the future.

Of course, there is always some humour to had…

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Archive for May, 2007

Facebook Marketplace stirs up old dreams

Posted on May 14, 2007. Filed under: Uncategorized |

So today the day finally came when facebook launched their marketplace. While the launch of FB marketplace wasn’t particularly surprising my reaction to it has been. As you probably know I was a co-founder of, the first attempt at a national marketplace for students in the UK (and from everything I’ve seen, still the most succesful one by some distance). However it’s coming up to four months now since Kul and I decided to change direction and get out of the student marketplace space and until the online auction space with auctomatic. So with that in mind the release of FB does not impact on me in any way at all (so long as they stay out of building tools for eBay sellers I’ll be fine). However I still can’t stop thinking about it and on some level it still feels like being punched in the gut and here’s my attempt at explaining why (and then I’ll talk about what I think FB marketplace means for the student classifieds sector).

So boso did quite simply change my life. If it wasn’t for starting up boso while at university, I wouldn’t have seen how amazing doing a start up is and things may well have worked out very differently. It’s not surprising then that I had a HUGE amount of emotional attachment to boso – who doesn’t get attached to their first start up? Even though it’s no longer the project I’m working on when I saw facebook marketplace, my initial reaction was still the same as if boso was still my life. I suppose that by virtue of doing a web start-up you have to accept the fact you’re always sailing pretty close to the wind. With such a low barrier to entry and big boys in the space you face a bewildering range of threats to your livelihood. I can imagine just how seriously it would have hurt to have seen FB marketplace if I were still working on boso and it’s something I guess you just have to face up to as an entrepreneur, sometimes the big boys can just decide to crush you.

The other thing that makes it all slightly surreal is actually seeing and using the facebook marketplace in real life. As facebook continued to grow we always knew it was a potentially serious threat. I reached a stage with boso where I had a quick comeback for any criticisms of the boso concept but the one I always knew I was fudging was “what would you do if facebook did this?”. So after expending latent mental energy on trying to answer that question (if only to myself) now actually seeing it as a living breathing entity is strange.

Having the relief factor of not being in the space is obviously comforting but in a way that’s just coincidental this time around. There’s a seriously big chance that next time I won’t be lucky and it’ll actually be my livelihood being threatened by someone. If that day comes then I’ll have to decide whether to knuckle down and get ready for the fight or call it a day.

One thing I won’t do is start remaining “emotionally detached” from my startup. I’ve heard people give that advice before but that’s no way to run a startup. I do believe you need to reach a level of emotional balance where you’re not continually swinging high and low but that doesn’t mean you’re in any way detached. If I wanted to be emotionally detached I’d work in a bank. I want to do a startup so I can carry on dreaming (and executing on) changing the world in some way.

Anyway so my personal feelings aside, what do I think about FB marketplace itself? Well I don’t think it was always going to be an instant success. Norms of behaviour are important on the web and facebook has always been careful about which ones they promote. The reason I think marketplace will be massive now is because the users have started using it for that purpose. I’ve seen my friends start using facebook notes to list things they’re trying to sell or putting the names of items they want in their status updates. That’s not what they used facebook for a year ago (if marketplace had launched then I still think it would have been beatable but maybe my vision is a little clouded on this one) but that is what they’re using it for now. For me that was the final nail in the coffin and I’ve been expecting to see this development since.

As with all facebook features it’s been very slickly implemented and it’s hard to imagine how you’d compete with it (though I wish they’d make it easier to just see a whole facebook marketplace with all listings on facebook, marketplaces need to at least give the impression of liquidity and I’d be happier starting from the position of a generic marketplace and then drilling down into the networks I wanted rather than vice versa). You could try and focus on facilitating the trades themselves in a way that facebook couldn’t replicate but a lot of the sales will be low value items which are suited to quick and easy trades anyway.

What I might be interested to see is the potential for API spinoffs (assuming the developers who tried using the API to build their own classifieds solutions aren’t too disheartended of course). Maybe you could mashup ticket sales for events on facebook with the marketplace and make that trading experience better than facebook can, like StubHub did to eBay, though once you start getting into niches of niches you’re getting further away from big business.

As far as I’m concerned, sites like Chegg or DormItem (college classifieds) should stop trying to compete with FB and see if they can do something complimentary to the marketplace service. Otherwise they’re in big big trouble.

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Suddenly, We’re Ubiquitous

As photos flood the Web and photo recognition technology becomes more widespread and precise, are we approaching an unsettling tipping point?

One day you may wake up and there will be thousands of photos of you, which you didn’t know existed, available to anyone with just a few keystrokes.

Now, what does that possibility mean for you?

I started writing this piece 5 years ago in 2008, when I’d been thinking about the wealth of photography flooding the web, as well as the emerging facial recognition technology. Returning to the subject now in 2013, these thoughts seem at once less novel, but all the more relevant: As we immerse ourselves more deeply online, as we share ourselves more willingly, as technology evolves, which allows us both to create content anywhere we go, at any time, and to recognize patterns (and specifically people) in data, we’re approaching some sort of tipping point in which much about ourselves, which we thought private is suddenly going to become public. We may be approaching a point where content about us we didn’t even know existed is suddenly, easily available on the web. Suddenly, we will be ubiquitous.

What do I mean?

We’ve been enjoying (or enduring depending on your perspective) a continuing explosion in the social networking arena for a while now. But if you think social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have brought extraordinary scrutiny to your personal details in exchange for an efficient means to communicate with your life’s collection of friends, business associates, acquaintances and hangers-on, well, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

In this period when digital cameras and mobile devices have proliferated, it’s not unusual to see folks snapping away at any lunch, brunch, dinner, party, or intersection of bodies coming through the rye. But have you ever considered that often when it’s not you or your friends taking the photos that you’re still making cameos in other people’s photos? Then what happens to those photos? We don’t know, so we usually don’t give it much more thought than that. Probably they end up on someone’s computer, maybe get circulated among a handful of friends. We shrug. Maybe they even get uploaded to Flickr or Twitter or Facebook, but who cares, right? Because those people don’t know your name, so they can’t tag you in the photo, so no one will ever find you.

What does this mean?

Well, it might mean that there are dozens of photos of you on the Internet you don’t know about. If you really get around, it may mean hundreds. Thousands? Who knows. (No, literally. Who knows?) If you live in a city like New York and walk through Times Square regularly, how many tourist photos do you think you end up appearing in ?

Your mug might be in [who knows how many places] on the Web and you wouldn't even know it. And to a certain extent, who cares right? No one’s like to ever stumble across those photos and if they did, no big deal. Good for a laugh.

But what if there were a systematic way to search photos and to recognize and label people within them? That really doesn't sound far-fetched to you anymore, does it? (It may have 5 years ago, when I first started this piece.) After all, Facebook and Instagram recognize where faces appear in photos now and ask if you want to label them. Apple’s iPhoto recognizes and suggests tags for specific people. Google’s Picasa app started doing this in 2008.

What seemed a bit like something out a Bourne movie a handful of years ago is becoming increasingly pedestrian. Of course, this technology has existed since the 1960s and has become increasingly more refined ever since. It was used somewhat controversially in the 2001 Superbowl (consider that this was pre-9/11) to identify potential criminals and terrorists, apparently resulting in 19 arrests. It’s been coupled to the CCTV system in the London Borough of Newham since 1998, despite criticism of its efficacy. It was used after the recent Boston Marathon bombings with little success. However, this study argues that law enforcement should have taken greater advantage of facial recognition software to more quickly identify the bombers, specifically Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. New technology allows faces to be recognized even with a few pixels. So you don’t even need a clear photo to identify people.

The technology is based on simple pattern recognition. Our brains do it for us: That’s how you recognize your friend when he’s headed down the sidewalk or your lover’s face lying beside you in bed or Barack Obama behind a podium on TV. And computers are learning to do the same thing awfully well. A facial recognition program can analyze some 80 points on your face, as well as the distances between them to arrive at what can be a highly accurate match. The result is a “faceprint.” And facial recognition software has evolved to the point that it’s something you can download to your computer. Now, imagine a point not too far down the road: In addition to Instagram, you can install a facial recognition app. Or imagine Google image search with facial recognition. Then you simply enter someone’s name or a photo of them or both and it trolls the Internet for any photo or video including their appearance across the entire Internet. If you give it a name, it matches that name against any existing photos of that person it can access on the Web. But you don’t need a name. You just upload a photo from your desktop and it starts spitting back photos of that person, including many, many photos that person didn't even know existed.

Now, some of us are saying — perhaps especially our more exhibitionist Gen Y friends — “No biggie, I got nothing to hide.” In fact, in response to the recent Snowden leak about the NSA’s activities in this country, many are saying exactly that. Someone created an account to cover such mentions on Twitter, of course. “Nothing to hide”? Well, good for you. I’d probably, generally fit into that category myself. But what about the closeted gay person, who can now be seen dancing in a gay club? Someone whose family may not speak to them again after finding such photos. What about the tourist traveling abroad who drinks a beer or visits a strip club only to return to a country, whose religious leaders punish people for such activities? What about the woman caught on camera stepping into an abortion clinic? Hey, what about the politician or priest leaving some place he or she would rather not be seen leaving? Now they can be named and perhaps their paths even traced.

If this technology blossoms into the user-friendly mobile or desktop app, which it almost certainly will, its use will be an extraordinary step forward for a surveillance society. (Don’t forget to introduce Google Glass into the equation, either.) So far we've been willing to make trade-offs. We allow acquaintances to see some personal things about us on Facebook — folks we may have little in common with and with whom we’d normally not share much information — in exchange for quick, economical, efficient, cheap communication across a wide network through a single channel. But there’s a lot of other information — and images — about you and me out there that simply hasn't been tagged or recognized yet. Soon — any day, any minute maybe — the opportunity will exist for all of that content to be found and tagged.

So, one morning you may wake up to find the Internet flooded with photos of you, which you didn’t even know existed.

Consider that this effect would be retroactive: Images could be surfaced of you, from the past, which you were never aware of. If you took steps right now to somehow ensure your photo were never taken again, there may still be hundreds, thousands of images of you extant on the web. You’re virtually (digitally) ubiquitous, whether you like it or not. At a concert. In the park. At a restaurant. On the sidewalk. At the beach. Out shopping. On vacation. In your church. Got your Facebook locked down? Got an avatar instead of an ID photo on your Twitter profile? Doesn’t matter. All that’s needed is one image of you on the Internet coupled to your name and every image on the Internet can be coupled to you. And if you’ve so much as stepped outside in the last 10 years, your image is almost certainly on the Internet.

Something else important to remember then: I probably won’t need your name to uncover your identity: If I have your image, I can find your name. In an excellent his presentation “Privacy in the Age of Augmented Reality” at SXSW this March, Carnegie Mellon professor Alessandro Acquisti showed how with a single photo he could track down, not only someone’s name via facial recognition (all he needed was one tagged image on Facebook), but given an image and a name, he could quite quickly get most of a social security number. And often without much work, he could find more.

Is it all coming clear? Perhaps, we as a culture need to have a conversation about where all of this perfect storm, this collision of social media, digital photography and facial recognition is headed. Because the privacy implications are monumental.

Now for the really portentous stuff. I ask this somewhat seriously. Are we on the verge unwittingly replacing “God” with our own secular, collective observer in the form of incessant digital monitoring?* An Orwellian “god device” which trains an unblinking eye upon us? Potentially, keeping us in line? Potentially, smacking us for our non-conformity or for our misdeeds? (For something as simple picking your nose in public. For something as integral to your identity as being gay. For thinking you were incognito when acting against expectations in public. Choose your poison.) Well, this scenario would be Orwellian, except for one important difference: We've not been forced to surrender to some sort of fascist government’s rule a la 1984 in order to enable this ever-watching eye. No, we've willingly, gradually submitted to it our selves. Transactionally. We've traded our privacy for dribs and drabs of entertaining data, for the ability to share ourselves. Can we really complain if there’s a little blowback coming our way?

*Jeremy Benthem’s panopticon comes to mind also, of course.

Further Reading:

Call It Super Bowl Face Scan I — Wired, 02/02/01

Revamped Google Picasa site identifies photo faces — CNET, 02/09/08

Engineers Test Highly Accurate Face Recognition — Wired, 03/24/08

More Than Facial Recognition — Carnegie Mellon University, Summer 2011

“Hallucinating” a face, new software could have ID’d Boston bomber — Ars Technica, 05/29/13

A Case Study on Unconstrained Facial Recognition Using the Boston Marathon Bombings Suspects [PDF] — Joshua C. Klontz & Anil K. Jain, Michigan State University, 05/30/13

Google Irks Developers with Ruling on Facial-Recognition Apps — MIT Technology Review, 06/10/13

Upcoming Biometric System in Helsinki: Pay With Your Face — Core77, 07/22/13

You can listen to a podcast of my discussion on this subject with University of Wisconsin — Madison students. Recorded July 24, 2013.

Cover Photo: Astor Place Morning by Robert Stribley


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Seeking Professional Help

The biological clock runs even if we are not aware of it and in other cases, other infertility issues take over which needs professional help. There are many causes of infertility today for example desire for higher studies, blocked Fallopian tubes, low sperm count and Pelvic Inflammatory Disease which wasn’t the case in the past years.

Assisted Reproductive techniques for example IVF have been around since 1979 and they have helped many couples conceive. One of the techniques used is IUI or call it Intrauterine Insemination. It is a highly successful procedure and the chances of pregnancy can be increased with IVF.

In IUI, the sperms of the husband are injected into the woman’s husband when the eggs are ready mostly on the first day of her periods or a day before. This increases the chances of conceiving especially the husband with sperm problems. The sperms are harvested from the man and then screened for any further tests.

Before the woman gets to the final step, multiple checkups and treatments are administered in order to stimulate hormones and keep them in balance. The woman has to be monitored throughout treatment time and after conception. You can acquire the best fertility treatment from the best infertility center in Ludhiana, India.


text:
Buyouts and Bootstraps

The microphone was old-fashioned, the kind with a ball of steel mesh on top. It made Alex feel silly, holding it; it was like a prop from some sort of seventies period piece. It was, he supposed, some sort of miracle that it didn’t have an actual cord on it. He raised it to his mouth, wishing he’d taken the time to practice with it.

He looked up. The office didn’t have a proper all-hands area, so they were holding this one in the lobby; people were standing around him, and lining the stairs and the railing of the upper floor, looking bored but curious. Apparently the old CEO hadn’t had all hands meetings, so everyone in support and IT was figuring this out.

“Welcome,” he said. There was a nasty echo from the mic; he winced, and there was a scramble from where the IT people were standing. His secretary, who’d come with him, made a gesture that he interpreted as “move the mic further from your face.”

He moved the mic further from his face. Someone was doing something with the soundboard.

Alex gave a winning grin. A CEO should be able to be graceful under fire, he told himself.

Friday night, he’d gone back to his hotel room after dark. He was new to the city, and didn’t have a place of his own yet, so he was living in the hotel across the street from the office; even that commute, down the elevator, across the cross walk, and up the elevator, had exhausted him.

It had been an exhausting week.

Could it, he wondered, really have been just a week that he’d been at this? He’d always said that when opportunity knocked, the winners of history were those who answered and answered quickly, but the sheer speed with which this had happened had swept him up.

The previous week, he’d been sitting in a restaurant in Baltimore, having lunch with a friend, Roger, and talking vaguely about what was next, when the news had come across the TV in the restaurant: A small corporate jet had crashed, three of the five board members of Auden Technologies aboard.

The two men and looked at one another, obviously with the same thought in mind.

It had been surprisingly easy: A classic leveraged buyout, borrowing enough money against Auden’s value to buy enough stock to put him in the CEOs chair and he and Roger and a third friend, Doug, in Board seats.

The hotel room was one of those slide-cards that were starting to feel old-fashioned; everything else in Alex’s life was a touch-pad with a card or fob. Something about the light going green, though, and the CHUNK sound, made his shoulders un-knot. He’d lie down, watch something mindless on TV, go to sleep, and in the morning there’d be breakfast.

A light went on, in the far corner of the room. There was a well, if somberly, dressed woman sitting in a chair beside the window

“Mister Michaels,” said the woman. “My name is Martin.” She pronounced it “Mar-teen,” and Alex knew who she was: Head of a department inside Auden called “External Security,” which had a ridiculous budget and an extremely murky remit which didn’t seem to have much to do with security. “I’m here to provide your weekly briefing.”

It was all very dramatic, he had to admit; fine stage craft.

As far as Alex could tell, External Security was some sort of internal spy agency. The company had spent two decades producing knockoff products at the last possible minute: Some other company would bring an amazing technology to market, having spent years researching and developing it, only to find Auden delivering something remarkably similar, the same week.

Auden had a reputation as an amazing innovator; Alex was learning the truth, that they were simply skilled at corporate espionage.

“Ms Martin,” he said, catching his breath. “I’m glad you’re, here, we need to talk.”

Alex took a deep breath, and looked up at the people staring down at him from the top rows. “So that’s it,” he said. “From now on, it’s just us: we’ll have to do it on our own, without spooks and cheats. We’re going to behave like a real tech company, do real research, create real products. And if we can’t…”

Well, if they couldn’t, then Alex was on the hook for quite a bit of money.

He looked around at his people, at his company, letting it hang there for a long beat.

“We’re entering a new era,” he said. “We will be strong, we will be quick, and we will create something like the world has never seen, but I need all of you to be clear that this is not the same company you’ve been working for: Our future is staked, now, on innovation; our security is dependent on our quickness, our strenghth.

“But I know that together, we’ll make this work.”

He lowered the mic, looked up, around. Everybody stared back.

The stock is down 30%.”

“At least it’s stabilized. It was in free fall at first.”

The two men were sitting in a cafe, across a small table from one another. The place was an oasis of light and tranquility in the otherwise-bustling downtown; there were a lot of free tables, in the middle of the afternoon, and the people who were here seemed to be serious, mostly, about whatever they were reading or clicking on.

“It was so… weird,” said Alex. “I can’t… it was like someone sold a big chunk of our stock, but I can’t see… none of the big shareholders seem to have shifted. I mean. It’s like thousands of the smaller shareholders all suddenly sold shares to one another, at reduced price, right *before* I made the announcement…”

“So, something spooky happened, is what you’re saying.”

Alex nodded miserably.

“So, didn’t you just stomp on a spook in your organization? It doesn’t seem like it’s that hard to put this two and that two together to come up with four.”

“If Ms. Martin had the kind of money we’re talking about, I can’t understand what she’s doing working for an obscure branch of a small tech company…”

Roger shrugged, expansively. His traditional role in these arguments was to argue for the simple path, the easy answer; Alex’s role was to poke holes in it. Whoever turned out to be right, it was a useful exercise when running across a strange problem; lots of times the answer was not to waste resources doing anything, and that was Roger’s default position.

There was something happening by the door that was getting more and more distracting: A group of people had come in, all wearing expensive-looking matching white bathrobes; they seemed to be walking around examining things, as though they were in a museum.

Looking out the big windows, Roger could see that the street seemed to be full of white bathrobes.

He grinned. He had heard about the big random art things that happened here, and had been looking forward to seeing one for himself; certainly nothing like this happened in Baltimore.

“Alex,” he said, and pointed at the bathrobe-people with his chin. Alex turned and looked, but didn’t seem to take any joy in the spectacle.

“I’m glad some people have the leisure time to engage in… antics,” he said, somewhat waspishly.

Roger realized that he was grinning like a rube at the bathrobe people, and that they’d noticed and were reacting appropriately: by pretending to ignore him. He approved.

“Roger, what am I supposed to do? I took a big gamble with this deal, making this company into a real, you know, thing, an innovator, and it turns out that they don’t have untapped reserves of insight or whatever, they just have spies that tell them what to make next so…”

“My,” said someone standing suddenly very close by, “Aren’t they lifelike. So… businesssy. I love the lack of ties, it’s very daring. They must be tech.”

Roger looked up at a tall, thin, blonde man with a beard who looked exactly like the popular conception of someone who lived on a trust fund and played tennis all day.

If it was a characterization, it was amazing. Roger wondered whether doing weird art stuff was the new tennis, for trust fund people.

The blonde man’s companion, a matching slender blonde woman with long, wavy hair and pink bunny slippers under her bathrobe, leaned over and picked up a placard off of Roger and Alex’s table. Roger would have sworn it hadn’t been here before.

“Businessmen,” she read off the placard. “Resin, stress and bull feces, executed this year by O. VerVorked and N. Visibule, Amsterdam.” She looked up at the two men, critically. “They’re so lifelike, Erik. Can we get them? They’d look so good in the beach condo in St. Moritz.” She handed the placard to the man, Erik.

The man stared at them critically for a second and then called, “Excuse me, proprietor, are these easily shipped? And can I have them charged to our rooms?”

The exasperated barista, who appeared not to be in on the joke, shouted back, “You can’t charge anything to your room, you don’t have a room here.”

Erik’s mouth made a slight downward curve, his eyebrows doing something disapproving, and then he shrugged. “Well,” he said, “That’s that, you can’t always get what you want, in a place like this.” He set the placard down on the table.

The woman looked like she was close to throwing some sort of temper tantrum, but let herself be led away, out of the coffee shop.

“Wow,” said Roger. “That was super.” He picked up the placard; it looked just like something you’d see attached to a piece of sculpture in a museum.

“Well, I’m glad you’re amused,” said Alex, gathering his things. “I have to get back to work, there are actual people who notice if I’m not in…” he stopped, suddenly, staring at a card.

“What?” Roger set the museum placard back down on the table, then reached over and took the card from Alex’s hand.

It was glossy black on one side, and had a fancy-looking governmental seal — he’d seen it before: the Eagle’s head and sunburst on a shield, with “Central Intelligence Agency” around the outside. The card was for someone identified as “Ragnar Danneskjold,” who was apparently assistant to the Director of Operations.

The back of the card was plain white; someone with extremely good penmanship had written “Are you sure? Call me,” in thick blue ink.

Look, I just can’t turn the ship this fast.” Alan Wong, head of App development was in full rant mode. “We’ve been doing things a certain way for, oh, I don’t know, a decade! I can’t just say, ‘yeah, we don’t do it like that anymore’ and have everybody just jump right on that. The way we were doing things before was stupid, and the new way we’re supposed to do things looks stupid to a lot of people; getting everybody to change over from one stupid way of doing things to another stupid way of doing things isn’t the easiest thing in the world.”

“Just because it’s an unintuitive methodology doesn’t mean it’s stupid.” Andy Edwards, head of product, one of Alex’s New Faces, whom he’d brought in specifically to fix the problems in App development. “I’m not trying to get in anybody’s…”

Alan slapped the table.

“I’m not saying… look, I see what’s what, right? I know we need to change, and I see the sense of the new way of doing things, but a lot of my people do not, and the ones who thought that the old way of doing things was full of shit are the ones who have the biggest problems with the new way, because they just see it as more bullshit. I don’t need a different system, I just need a way to convince my people…”

“Get different people.” Keith Johnson, Infrastructure. Blunt. Plain spoken. Kind of a dick.

“Yeah? Where do you propose I get them from? If we have a big round of people quitting right now, what do you think that’ll do for our image?” Alan was out of his seat now, leaning over the table.

“Actually,” a calm voice said from the other side of he room, “I’d like to talk about the decision to disband External security.”

Dietrich Amble, head of finance. Calm and cool and level, and not at all interested in software development methodologies.

Based on his limited interactions with the man, Alex expected him to be extremely bottom line focused. He’d been prepared for someone to bring up External Security, and their subsequent stock problems, but… well, given what the stock issues did to their credit liquidity, perhaps he should have expected Dietrich to bring it up.

“I’m not prepared to discuss that in this meeting,” said Alex. The mysterious business card from yesterday seemed to heat up in his pocket. “I’ll have a meeting later in the week where we can have it out; right now I think the pressing problem is…”

The door to the conference room burst open and one of the receptionists burst in. To Alex’s everlasting shame he hadn’t managed to learn any of their names yet; they genuinely all did seem to look alike, to the extent that he suspected that his predecessor had hired exclusively on that basis.

She handed a folded note to Alan Wong, and then retreated, making quiet apologies.

Alan cursed, and stood up. “Sorry,” he said, “I’ve got something that won’t wait.” And he scooped up his laptop and was off.

“Well, I was saying that I wanted to focus on the problems we’re having with the App teams and getting them focused and working on a reasonable process, but…” Alex looked at the empty chair where Alan had been sitting.

“I think we can talk process to some degree without Alex,” said Keith Johnson. “At least, we can talk about what we need from Alan’s team, so we have some sort of united front when he gets back…”

He’s going to say “hysteria” or something, thought Alex. He didn’t know whether Alan Wong was gay, but the man was certainly high-strung, and he tended to… well, to flounce, if he didn’t get his way. Alex narrowed his eyes at Keith, who stuck his chin up defiantly but shut up.

“It’s not fair to talk about Alan’s team while he’s not in the room,” said Andy Edwards. “We can wait a few…”

Keith’s phone made some sort of mechanical sound. Keith looked at it and said, “Damn, I’ll just be a minute…”

On the way out of the room, he nearly collided with one of Andy’s minions, who was looking urgent and pleading. Andy shot Alex a look, and Alex gave him an exasperated nod, and Andy, too, was gone to fight whatever fire seemed to be consuming everyone.

“Well,” said Dietrich, “Now do you think it would be a good time to talk about External Security?”

Karen Teague, of Technical Operations — which, for reasons completely non-obvious to Alex, was distinct from Infrastructure — Teague closed her laptop with an audible ‘snap’ and suddenly Alex had her full attention for the first time… well, ever. He looked back forth between the two department heads and sighed.

“Fine,” he said. “What would you like to know?”

There were a couple of dozen restaurants either on the way from the office to Alex’s hotel or within a block of being on the way. Somehow he’d ended up going to an amazing steakhouse the first night he was in town, and he’d ended up going back every night since. It was comforting, a little pool of calm sanity with leather on the booth seats and polite wait staff; he’d even started to have a “regular” booth, in the center, about halfway back.

He’d found that in times in his life when he was going through big changes, stressful or just meaningful, it helped to have a steady, stable place in his life. At some point, he’d probably settle in — find an apartment and himself a more permanent routine — and then he’d never come back to this place again; or when he did, it would seem somehow alien and new.

But for now, it was home, every night for forty minutes to an hour, a glass of house red and a thick medium-rare porterhouse to keep him company.

Usually it was a crowded place, but tonight the general buzz was softer than usual. He looked around, realized that a lot of the tables were empty and there was nobody seated at the bar; as he watched, another couple finished their meal and stepped out.

Alex kept mechanically cutting his steak and taking bites, washing it back with a little sip of the wine, but his attention was now on the restaurant, which seemed to be closing; he watched as the maitre d’ turned some people away; they were too far away for Alex to be able to overhear them, but he maitre d’ seemed apologetic yet firm: He wasn’t seating anyone.

Looking around for his waiter, Alex realized that he didn’t see any staff except the maitre d’ — who was himself now gone, vanished in just the way that very good waiters can vanish. There didn’t seem to be any more diners, either.

Alex sat, alone, in the restaurant, wondering if he should just finish his steak, or if the fact that everyone else had left was one of those good indicators that he should get up and leave as well.

Someone stepped out from behind him — the bathrooms, thought Alex, were that direction — and slid into the boot across from him.

“So nice to meet you, Alex,” he said. “It’s not at all the same, hearing about someone second- or third- hand.”

He held out his hand to shake; Alex stared at it. The juxtaposition of the offer of the handshake with the phrase ‘third-hand’ made his already over-tired and slightly paranoid brain do flip-flops.

Eventually the man took his hand back with a sigh.

“When I was a kid,” the man said, “My dad worked as a consulting engineer, sort of freelance, see? Clients all over the place. He used to have a desk at the offices of this construction company; didn’t work for them, you see, just had a desk there. In exchange for the desk, he was on-hand if they ever needed his services.” He looked intently into Alex’s eyes. “My dad didn’t have to pay rent, or have his name on a lease, and the construction company always had an engineer close to hand: Mutually beneficial, you understand?”

Alex was nodding, indicating that he was following the little story.

“What do you know about spies, Mr. Michaels?” The pleasant little man was now paying attention to him, rather than telling a story. Alex felt a little whiplashed.

“Well,” he said, “Nothing, really.” He sat still a moment. “I’ve seem some James Bond movies…”

The little man laughed politely. “Nothing like that in real life,” he said. “I mean, we’re not really in the business of shootouts and skydiving. It’s more like.. .working for the world’s most secretive and limited-subscription newspaper.”

We, thought Alex.

“The world of Operations is divided into what are called Officers and what are called Agents,” said the little man. “Officers work for the CIA, and are in charge of taking care of a certain number of Agents: The number is usually three or four. Agents are contractors, paid for the information they can provide; think of an informant within an organization we’d like tabs kept on — they write us up reports about what’s going on within that organization, they deliver those reports to their Officer, they answer questions.

“In exchange they’re paid a salary, in addition to the one they draw from their regular organization.”

Alex was nodding. “So this is the huge chunk of my budget that goes to Auden’s External Security division,” he said. “A couple of officers — Ms. Martin and her fellows — and then a lot of agents, in other companies, right? All reporting back to you. And in exchange for hosting Ms. Martin’s desk, we get access to the world’s most private newspaper?”

“Some of it,” said the little man. “The parts that are of use to you. I assure you, the value we provide is more than…”

“Sir,” said Alex, realizing he hadn’t gotten a name from the man. He reached into the pocket of his jacket, pulled out the card from the other afternoon, checked it.

“Mister Danneskjold,” he said. He suddenly remembered where he recognized the name from, and grimaced. “Oh,” he said, “Cute.”

The little man shrugged, smiled acknowledgement.

“Mister Danneskjold,” said Alex, “I bought this company — a majority share — in order to have a leg up at producing something really interesting, a genuine market disruptor. Instead, I’ve found that we’re entirely a, a parasite, feeding at the teat of the information your people produce, content with that and nothing more. It’s crippling. I don’t want it.”

Danneskjold was nodding. “The value we return,” he said, “is twofold: First, we give you the opportunity to peek inside the opposition’s and, so to speak; but consider this.” The little man spread his hands. “If Ms. Martin wasn’t sitting comfortably at a desk at Auden, she’d certainly be somewhere else; and then they’d have access to all the information we provide.

“How many agents do you think work inside Auden, Mr. Michaels?”

Alex closed his eyes; the whole conversation was giving him a headache. He wondered how fast he could put the company onto a track that would let him sell for more than he’d bought it for and maybe go start something from scratch. He pressed his forehead, just over his right eye, with his thumb; that always helped, a little.

When he opened his eyes, Danneskjold was gone. Of course.

Alex sat at the table, slowly finishing his tepid steak, while the staff of the restaurant began seating people around him.

The microphone did exactly the same thing again when he turned it on, that prolonged squeal; he just smiled and rode it out.

He took the time to look up and down the rows of faces lining the rails. He grinned, not the boyish, overconfident grin of a couple of weeks ago, but a rueful grin, a grin that sympathized with the fact that they had to be here in the middle of an afternoon.

The IT person finally gave him the thumbs up to try again. He raised the microphone to his mouth and exhaled slightly, listening for the sound of it over the speakers.

“They say it takes a big man to admit that they’re wrong,” he said, trying to look rueful but serious. “I think they say that because it feels awful, and you want there to be some sort of compensation.”

There was a round of weak laughter from around the room.

His name can’t possibly actually be Ragnar Danneskjold.”

Martin just stared at him, her froggy features not moving.

She didn’t actually look like a frog. Her face was square and her lips were wide, but the fact that she never, ever seemed give anything away about her emotional state, good or bad, made him want to read a lot into what little he had to go on.

If he let himself, he could think of her as a froggy Velma in late middle age, Scoob and the Gang a distant memory, or maybe a Facebook friend group. It wasn’t kind, however, and he recognized that he was painting a mental picture of her that made him feel better about having been forced into a position he didn’t like.

He leaned forward across his desk and folded his hands. “Okay,” he said, “Let’s hear it.”

She stared at him for a second, like she was trying to mentally translate what he’d said into a foreign language and back, and then opened the folder in her lap.

What the hell are we doing this for, anyway?”

Roger and Alex, sitting in a cafe in Baltimore, having coffee before they tried to drive their separate ways home. There’d been long days of wrangling: Calling this and that contact, pulling this or that string. It was all lined up; they’d sign documents tomorrow morning, and then it was just a matter of running a company.

Alex took a deep breath, prepared to launch into the elevator pitch he’d spent the past days perfecting: Auden was a great investment, showed great potential, could easily turn into the centerpiece of a portfolio of tech companies, vertically integrated and competitive with the likes of…

That was not, he sensed, what Roger wanted to know.

“You’ve seen the profits graph, for Auden?”

Roger shrugged. “Sure,” he said. It was almost as though it had been designed to keep the company going but not provoke the interests of outside money: Not quite flat, but not steep enough up and to the right to be really juicy.

“Someday, a year or so from now, that graph is going to have a sharp bend in it, where it suddenly starts going up. And that bend is going have a little annotation on it: “Alex Michaels hired as CEO.”

Roger, still too drunk to drive, stared at his coffee.

“So,” he said, “Ego.”

Alex stared at Roger, blinked a couple of times.

“Yeah,” he said. “I suppose so. Ego.”

Firestone is going to make a social play,” said Martin. Her voice was pinched and disapproving. It was hard to find things to like about her.

“Firestone, the tire company.”

“They’re a general mechanic’s service these days,” said Martin. “They’re going to do a sort of… something like a professional services social thing. Where you friend your mechanic, and your friends friend your mechanic, sort of thing. Built in billing relationship.”

Martin found himself nodding along. He could, in fact, see where it was a good idea: Especially if you eschewed the big, national companies — like Firestone, he thought wryly — doing business was a lot more like having a social network than…

He found himself thinking about what he could do to make a social shopping network dovetail with Auden’s existing product line.

In fact,” said Alex, the microphone amplifying the intensity he was putting into his voice, “It’s easy for us to forget how valuable a safety net like External Security can provide. Going forward, we’re going to be making some decisions that put us in precarious positions; we’re going to take risks, because without taking great risks we cannot hope to reap great rewards.

“Having something like External Security along gives us the extra bit of insurance that might be the difference between success and failure.”

He looked around, up and down, at the faces of the people who were going to make his dream a reality. Or not.

“I’d like to thank those who helped me to see that I was making a bad decision,” he said. “I’ll need you all, in the days and weeks to come, as we make thousands and thousands of decisions, each more difficult than the last.

“But I know that together, we’ll make this work.”

He lowered the mic, looked up, around. Everybody stared back.

Then there was applause.


text:
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NIH MedlinePlus the Magazine, Trusted Health Information from the National Institutes of Health

NIBIB Robotics

College Athlete Stands Again…On His Own!

Rob Summers standing on his own

Rob Summers standing, on his own
Photo: NBIB

Rob Summers standing again

See Rob Summers Standing Again.
For video of Rob Summers standing and stepping, click here.
Photo: NBIB

Shortly after pitching his Oregon State University baseball team to the 2006 College World Series championship, Rob Summers was struck and paralyzed from the chest down by a hit-and-run driver.

But now, thanks to an experimental mix of physical therapy and electrical stimulation of the spinal cord, he can do something he never dreamed of doing again: stand and voluntarily make some leg movements.

"It was completely unexpected," says V. Reggie Edgerton, professor of integrative biology and physiology, and neurobiology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Until Summers, scientists believed that patients with a completely severed spinal cord would never be able to regain voluntary control of their paralyzed limbs.

To see if spinal cord stimulation could be successful in people, Edgerton and his collaborator, Dr. Susan Harkema at the University of Louisville, implanted an electrode array normally used to treat back pain in Summers' lower back. Harkema led the clinical study, which was supported by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, and the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation.

After years of being bound to his wheelchair, Summers can now push himself up and remain standing for a few minutes while receiving stimulation. With the support of a harness and help from therapists, he also can make stepping motions on the treadmill. Other functions impaired by his injury have improved, too: body temperature regulation, bladder and bowel control, and sexual function.

Edgerton thinks connections between Summers' brain and the part of the spinal cord below the point of his injury may have been spared, or that the therapy encouraged nerve cells to make new connections.

Read More "NIBIB Robotics" Articles

Progress for the Paralyzed / College Athlete Stands Again…On His Own! / Coffee to Go: Woman "Thinks" First Cup in 15 Years

Spring 2013 Issue: Volume 8 Number 1 Page 11


text:
journal entry for 050511

May 5, 2011
in my bedroom

Dear Jesus,

Thank you Lord for this wonderful day. ‘Wonderful’ in the sense na another day has been given for me to live and witness your beautiful blessings. Yesterday e galing si papa sa isang pastor’s meeting at Life Giver Church. When he went home, me dala na xang book and a file of paper about 10-page long. He told me to read that one. I hesitated for a moment thinking that it will just be another waste of time to read something that long. Ayun, i became interested once i knew what the file is all about. It was about a girl from Ecuador whom God has given a chance to visit Hell and Heaven for 23 hours. God had given her a mission to evanglize to all people that Hell is real and to repent and go back to the old path. She described what she had seen on her journey. Jesus is with her during that time and she even saw many known people like Selena, Michael Jackson, and even Pope John Paul II.

I finished reading the file and when i still have the time, i visited the homepage of the website indicated on it. There are also many other file about witnessing that Heaven and Hell are real by many different people from different races.

That’s was yesterday. I believe that what i have read are all true and that Jesus is the only way for us to be saved from sin and to be with Him in Heaven. I know that Hell is real. God created it for satan and the demons, but it was not meant for God’s people. Repentance is a very deep word, an act to turn away from sin and know that we are all sinner and go back to the old path, to God who is the one to be worshipped alone. The end is near. There is no more time to be double-minded about salvation. It is not a game.

For this day, it has been a very hot day. Maybe tomorrow i’ll wash my laundry if i can. Aun, um-attend aq ng Bible Study kna Tita Eva,me sopas at Gelatin. Yum. 🙂 the topic was “Magpapatuloy ka ba talaga?” (Will you really continue?). Ouch. Sakto. Gnun naman tlga ang Word of God. Pg di aq nasaktan, wala ng epekto skn ibg sbhn, i’m glad i’m hit by His Word and that means that He has a message for me. Let His will be done for me.

Lord, thank You. I Love You and i know You Love me, too. Bless my family, my parents, my relatives, my church mates, my friends. All the earthlings. 🙂

Salamat po Lord God dhil You alone are the God who saves, because IKAW lng nmn po tlga ang Diyos na Buhay. Salamat po. 🙂

——* Melody J. Mular

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text:
Welcome !

My research activities are about the modeling and simulation of complex systems with multiagent models. They are organized aroung three key themes:

  • better understand the relationship between individual behaviors and collectives properties,
  • study in which extend the result of a simulation is sensible to modelingand simulation  choices (scheduling policies, time and space representation, etc.)
  • integrate heterogeneous models and make them interact to represent and simulate  a system

Link to my previous (old) website


text:
++ed by:

28 PAUSE users
23 non-PAUSE users.

Vyacheslav Matyukhin

Ubic::Manual::FAQ - frequently asked questions about Ubic

version 1.38_01

I changed my service's user, and now it fails with "Permission denied" error. Please help!

You have to chown your service files manually. Try this:

    find /var/lib/ubic -name '*MY_SERVICE_NAME*' | xargs chown -R MY_NEW_USER

In the future, this one-liner will be reimplemented as "ubic fix-permissions" command. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I'm trying to add service with the dot in its name, but it doesn't show in ubic status list, what's wrong?

Dot is a reserved symbol, it separates service name parts in service tree (like / separates directories in unix filesystems). So, if you really want the service foo.bar, put its description in /etc/ubic/service/foo/bar.

By the way, this behavior is consistent with many classic unix programs, such as cron and logrotate.

Why did ubic edit my crontab?

Ubic uses cron as the way to bootstrap all its services. This crontab entry will bring the ubic.watchdog up if it ever goes down, and it will then start all other services as necessary.

Even though watchdog itself is very robust, this mechanism is also useful on host reboots.

If you really don't like it, you can pass --no-crontab option to ubic-admin setup command while configuring ubic instance (or just answer no to the appropriate question).

What is this ubic-guardian process I see in my "ps aux" output?

This process guards any daemon started with Ubic::Daemon module.

Optionally, ubic-guardian can write some information to its log, for example, the exit code or signal in case of service failure. Despite its name, ubic-guardian *does not* restart the service on failures. It's the job for the completely different program, ubic-watchdog.

It also holds the lock on pidfile for a whole lifetime, which theoretically makes daemons more secure, but it's more of a historical nuance than the necessity.

It's probable that ubic-guardian will become optional in the future (i.e. it will only be created if service asks for ubic_log). Anyway, don't worry about it, it's completely harmless.

What does ubic.update service do?

ubic.update service (and ubic-update script) updates portmap - local { port = service-name }> mapping. It makes possible to check a service status via ubic.ping using service port instead of its name:

    $ wget -q -O - 'http://localhost:12345/status/port/12345'

Resolving of service by port can't be done on-the-fly by ubic.ping, because all service definitions are cached internally by Ubic.pm (Ubic::Multiservice, actually, but you don't have to know the difference), since constant reloading of service definition can cause memory leaks. So ubic.ping just loads portmap generated by ubic.update instead, resolves service name by port, and loads cached service status from another local file.

In other words, if you don't use ubic.ping, you can stop both ubic.update and ubic.ping services.

How is ubic compatible with SysV-style /etc/rcX.d/ symlinks?

No, it is not. It's recommended that you don't use chkconfig or update-rc.d or similar tools for installing runlevel symlinks at all.

In ubic, desired service status is stored at JSON files at /var/lib/ubic/status/ dir. There is no support for runlevels. After reboot, ubic.watchdog will simply start all your services which were started earlier.

This can be fixed in the future by adding abstraction layer to status storage. If you really need runlevels (or chkconfig compatibility), feel free ask again (or implement this abstraction layer yourself).

Why is it called "ubic", anyway?

It's called after "Ubik" - science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. I spelled it incorrectly in early releases, because "c" and "k" are indistinguishable in Russian language, and now it's too late to fix this stupid typo (and I'll be very thankful to anyone who'll invent appropriate backronym).

Why is it called after "Ubik"? Well, these two quotes can hint to some suggestions:

  "This substance, whose name is derived from the word "ubiquity", has the property of preserving people who are in half-life."
  "Ubik is a metaphor for God. Ubik is all-powerful and all-knowing, and Ubik is everywhere."

Vyacheslav Matyukhin <mmcleric@yandex-team.ru>

This software is copyright (c) 2012 by Yandex LLC.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.