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- Black Star Rising - http://rising.blackstar.com -

Why Photodisc is a Deadbeat

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A number of Photodisc [2] photographers have become increasingly upset at the non-payment of royalties for almost two years — and Getty is in a legal situation where it can’t do much to resolve the problem. A little history is important here.

When PhotoDisc, Inc. started back in the early 1990s, the owners went to the Seattle-based stock agency Weststock to get some of the early images they used in their product. Weststock had a large stable of photographers who had been offering their images to customers on a RM basis. The owners of Weststock — Rick Groman and Mark Karras — went to their photographers, told them about this new opportunity to sell images on disk, and asked if they would let some of their images be used in this way.

Some photographers said they didn’t want any part of this business model, but a number agreed to produce images that Weststock could supply to Photodisc. By contract, Photodisc would pay Weststock a royalty on each disc sold, and Weststock would pay the photographers a percentage of what they received.

Everything went along fine for several years as Photodisc grew, Getty Images purchased them [3], and Getty was now the company paying Weststock. Photographers continued to receive monthly royalty checks. Then in 2000, Weststock was sold to Sheldon Marshall’s GlobalState Holdings. As a result, Getty was required to pay future Photodisc revenues to Global State, and it became GlobalState’s responsibility to pay the photographers their royalties. For a while everything continued to move along smoothly, and the photographers continued to be paid.

GlobalState, also known as Convergence, had three divisions: ImageState, VideoState and MusicState. Marshall’s partners eventually became dissatisfied with his management, threw him out and renamed the company ImageState [4]. Getty was now obligated to send the royalties generated by the sale of Photodisc images to ImageState. The photographers continued to receive payments, but often not in the timely manner their contracts stipulated.

The new operators of ImageState continued to have problems; they plowed huge amounts of cash into the company to try to upgrade technology and make the company competitive with the industry leaders. Despite these efforts, ImageState began to fall deeper into debt. As the debt mounted, payments to the image creators became much more erratic; presumably, the little money coming in was being used to keep the doors open. Meanwhile, Getty Images continued to pay the Photodisc royalties to ImageState on a regular monthly basis as required by contract.

In spring 2006, ImageState filed for bankruptcy, and Sheldon Marshall re-entered the picture [5]. At this point Sheldon is executive chairman of Heritage Partners. His company acquired the assets and brand of ImageState. From what we can determine, he has taken over no portion of the royalties that Getty has been regularly paying to ImageState, which have been shared with the photographers who created the images.

Many photographers say they have not received any payments from Photodisc for more than two years. Their images are still on Gettyimages.com and on CDs that Getty is marketing. Many of these images were very good sellers for a number of years, and it seems highly unlikely that all sales would instantly stop, but the photographers have absolutely no way of knowing which images, if any, have been licensed. Getty knows, but can’t tell, given the terms in its contracts with Weststock/GlobalState Holding/ImageState. Sheldon Marshall is not telling.

The royalty share that photographers agreed to way back in the 1990s was very low and helped establish the precedent for the 20 percent share of RF sales that is the industry standard today. Part of the argument back then was that Photodisc had huge production and marketing costs, and thus could not afford to pay the traditional 50 percent to the image creators.

Over the years, the cost argument changed quite a bit when the RF people started selling images online, much of the hard goods cost was eliminated, and the massive mailings of CD catalogs were no longer needed to generate sales. Online search and delivery became the overwhelmingly preferred way for customers to buy RF images. Nevertheless, the standard share to the image creator remained the same.

On the other hand, even 20 percent is better than 0 percent, which is what some Photodisc photographers are getting today.

[tags]Getty Images, Photodisc, ImageState, Jim Pickerell[/tags]

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1 Comment To "Why Photodisc is a Deadbeat"

#1 Comment By David Ponton On April 2, 2010 @ 11:54 pm

I found your article with a google search "Imagestate problems." I have tried repeatedly to contact them about my RM images that they still have up, having gone past the original contract and the transition to new ownership, and a dishonored check. There are usually no replies, occasionally a reply asking for more information, then nothing when information is supplied, no reply to follow-ups. Then a year later, same thing with another person. No payments since the takeover. I would like my images taken down and transparencies returned (ha ha).

I would like to connect with or hear about any other photographers with these kinds of problems with Imagestate.


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Tuesday, 22 October 2013

Spiritualist Shaves 17 year Old Girl's Private Part To Help Her Secure A Man!!!

Wahab Seidu pictured above is a popular spiritualist has been arrested for allegedly shaving the private part of a seventeen year old girl and raping her. The girl had told the spiritualist that she was desperate to have a man in her life so he asked her to bring her pubic hair, vaginal fluid, cotton, sperms, cosmetic powder and money so that he would prepare some rituals to solve her problems. The girl was able to procure all other items except the sperm and pubic hair which he offered to produce on her behalf. He then lured her to a guest house where he slept with her twice to enable him get the sperm for the ritual (smart Alec). He has since been arrested after full disclosure from the victim to her mother. (they should release the man please, she needed a man and he is one so why cry wolf...?)

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Tag Archives: quitting

Unconventional Thinking

A few years ago, when Angry Birds were super popular, my children decided to craft a slingshot and pig hovel to shoot down. (For those unfamiliar with Angry Birds, you use a slingshot to shoot angry birds at things constructed … Continue reading

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By | 22.08.2017

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Ten Things About Sympathy Gift Ideas You Have To Experience It Yourself

For someone who has misplaced a beloved one, sympathy messages from different people may imply rather a lot. From casket or standing sprays to spherical or coronary heart-formed wreaths, the flowers within the yellow assortment shall be an uplifting sight on a day of sorrow. This is among the the explanation why our lavender flower arrangements, in addition to all of the preparations in our sympathy assortment sympathy gift ideas, are available at inexpensive costs. Our customer service group is also out there to supply solutions to any questions that you could have about ordering or the delivery of the flowers to the funeral home. Younger women, for example, might be good candidates for the supply of pastel sympathy bouquets. Sending sympathy flowers online has by no means been so simple, elegant, and private.

Whenever you wish to make sure that your expression of sympathy is traditional and elegant, white flower arrangements could be the right selection. Deciding on flowers for a funeral is usually a personal expertise, however the universal great thing about pastels makes them an ideal selection for someone who needs to contribute a shocking memorial merchandise to a good friend or member of the family’s funeral service. At this level, you may present the family that you are still desirous about them during their time of loss. To ensure that the suitable coloration scheme is being chosen, the most effective step that you may take is to consult the family or a good friend of the household. Funeral flowers are a simple yet classy method to present respect towards someone who has just lately passed away.

Conventional funeral flowers include lilies, gladioli, roses, carnations, chrysanthemums, hydrangeas, and orchids. From You Flowers provides a big selection of sympathy floral bouquets to be despatched to a church, funeral residence or residence to show your love and assist. At inexpensive costs, our plants can be found for supply right this moment, tomorrow, or for a extra correct time in the future. It is also a colour that’s gender-neutral, making it a sensible alternative no matter whether the funeral is for a man or a girl. Our white floral preparations is perhaps the perfect coloration if you’re searching for something that will symbolize purity and peace. Crops for condolences are available many varieties together with unique plant deliveries and budding crops with flowers too. They carry a lot coloration into the world that once they cross away, the world seems much less vibrant. Upon supply, your yellow flowers will probably be contemporary, fragrant, and in good condition.

They are also a coloration scheme that is part of the sympathy collection of funeral flowers offered right here at Avas Flowers. Avas Flowers could be your one-cease on-line vacation spot for your entire wants when it comes to sympathy flowers. We make it straightforward to ship funeral flowers on-line, even when your delivery goes to another state or across the country. White flowers are additionally found in varied shade schemes and combinations, as white flowers normally stand for purity, innocence, and elegance when given in sympathy.

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Publication Details

Ren, Q. Y., Hutchison, W. D., Wang, J. L., Studer, A. J. & Campbell, S. J. (2017). First-order magneto-structural transition and magnetocaloric effect in Mn(Co0.96Fe0.04)Ge. Journal of Alloys and Compounds, 693 32-39.

The magnetic properties and magnetic structure of an as-prepared Mn(Co0.96Fe0.04)Ge sample has been investigated by powder neutron diffraction as well as X-ray diffraction and magnetisation measurements. The sample has a ferromagnetic structure in the low-temperature orthorhombic phase and a magneto-structural transition at 299 (1) K to the high-temperature paramagnetic hexagonal phase. This transition occurs at a higher temperature than for as-prepared (Mn0.96Fe0.04)CoGe (TM = 239 (1) K). Increased occupancy by Fe of the Co (4c) site rather than the Mn (4c) site results in this smaller suppression of the structural transition temperature away from that of undoped MnCoGe. It was found that chemical pressure increased the Curie temperature View the MathML sourceTCorth in the orthorhombic phase from 355 (5) K in Mn(Co0.96Fe0.04)Ge to 379 (6) K in MnCoGe. Mn(Co0.96Fe0.04)Ge exhibits a large magnetocaloric effect around the magneto-structural transition, View the MathML source−ΔSmpeak = 11 (2) J kg−1 K−1 and RC = 187 (30) J kg−1 with μ0ΔH = 5 T. The magneto-structural transition is a first order transition as demonstrated by master curve analysis.

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Available for download on Sunday, September 17, 2017


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Publication Details

This peer-reviewed paper was originally published as Kaewunruen, S and Remennikov, AM, An Experimental Evaluation of the Attenuation Effect of Rail Pad on Flexural Behaviour of Railway Concrete Sleeper under Severe Impact Loads. In E. F.. Gad & B. Wong (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2008 Australasian Structural Engineering Conference (ASEC) (p. [10]), Melbourne, Australia, June 26-27, 2008. Melbourne: The Meeting Planners. Copyright Engineers Australia 2008.

Interactions between the wheel of rolling stocks and the rail often generate interfacial impact forces to railway tracks. The dynamic impact loads are of very high magnitude but short duration, and are caused by either wheel or rail abnormalities such as flat wheels, dipped rails, etc. Although the possibility of the large impact loading to cause an extreme failure to an insitu concrete sleeper could be very low about once or twice in the design life cycle, the damage of track components especially for the concrete sleepers is often observed. The railway sleeper is a major component of railway tracks. Its role is to distribute the load from the rails to the underlying ballast bed. Up to current knowledge, the behaviour of the in-situ prestressed concrete sleepers under the impact loading has not yet been thoroughly comprehended. In order to evaluate the resistance of railway concrete sleepers to impact loads, a high-capacity drop-weight impact testing machine was thus constructed at the University of Wollongong. It is currently the largest one of its kind in Australia with the maximum drop height of 6m. This paper demonstrates the experimental investigations, in order to evaluate the attenuation effect of rail pads on the impact behaviour of railway concrete sleepers. The impact tests were carried out using the prestressed concrete sleepers manufactured in Australia. This study enables and enhances the methodology to analyse and design for the prestressed concrete sleepers at ultimate limit states.

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Publication Details

This paper originally appeared as: Premaratne, P and Burnett, I, Role of wavelet transforms in image restoration, TENCON 2004. IEEE Region 10 Conference, 21-24 November 2004, vol A, 243-246. Copyright IEEE 2004.

Image processing techniques including image restoration rely heavily on discrete Fourier transform (DFT) for frequency domain representation for analysis of its frequency content. Even though wavelet analysis has been around for more than a decade, much of its potential as a tool to analyze time-frequency localization of signal has not been properly tapped. In blind iterative deconvolution where a degraded image is restored with minimum a priori information about the original image or the point spread function (PSF), it is almost impossible to evaluate whether a restoration is achieved or not without human observation. We propose a new approach using wavelet decomposition to assess an image being restored or not automatically.


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Publication Details

Fan, Y., Leslie, D. S. & Wand, M. P. (2008). Generalised linear mixed model analysis via sequential Monte Carlo sampling. Electronic Journal of Statistics, 2, 916-938.

We present a sequential Monte Carlo sampler algorithm for the Bayesian analysis of generalised linear mixed models (GLMMs). These models support a variety of interesting regression-type analyses, but performing inference is often extremely difficult, even when using the Bayesian approach combined with Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). The Sequential Monte Carlo sampler (SMC) is a new and general method for producing samples from posterior distributions. In this article we demonstrate use of the SMC method for performing inference for GLMMs. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the method on both simulated and real data, and find that sequential Monte Carlo is a competitive alternative to the available MCMC techniques.

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Sunday, May 30, 2010

Hope Filled

Hope Filled

Trinity Sunday, May 30, 2010

©copyright 2010 Robert J. Elder

Romans 5:1-5

Since we are justified by faith

we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ...

and hope does not disappoint us,

because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

In these computerized times, when what was once called typing has become a potentially error-free sort of thing we refer to now as “word processing,” I remember the old days when writing term papers and graduate theses meant dealing with typewriters with ribbons, and those maddening little bits of white, chalky paper which could be found in any office, and which could blanch out mistyped letters and words. I remember spending a good deal of my time while seeking higher education also seeking well-used little slips of correcting paper for blank spots to eradicate those term paper typos. One task I never even tried to master, though I knew secretaries who were very adept at it, was justifying the right hand margin of a typescript page.

Now justifying the left hand margin is no big trick. Unless you accidentally hit the tab key, the old typewriter carriage would always return to the same spot on the left hand side of the page. But the right hand side is a different matter. For those extra-special documents that some people wanted to look as crisp and finished as possible, secretaries had to master the multiple tasks of typing out a rough draft with a ragged right edge, counting spaces on lines of typescript, then retyping while adding enough additional spaces to make the right hand margin look as even as the left. These were no small tasks, and one little misspelled word could ruin a whole page, along with an entire afternoon’s work.

Now, with computers, justifying margins, right or left, even centering – which was for me the most thankless of all tasks on a typewriter – is no big trick. It can be done automatically, accomplished with the click of a button. So I’ve often thought it was strange that computer word processing programs include fonts by which documents can be printed in an undetectable imitation of a typewriter, including the option for the old ragged, non-justified right hand margin of typewriter days. Why this deliberate regression? Actually, though I use a computer every day, I have gone back to using the ragged right hand margin, I just kind of like it. I have supposed that those who send us clever solicitations in the mail with a typewriter-type font probably do this to try and make us think that their letter was hand-typed especially for us. I wonder if anyone is really fooled by this any more? If a company actually wanted to send out hand-typed letters today, where would they go to find such a machine? Or people who could operate them?

Anyway, in the old days, justification in the printing business had to do with lining words up in a right relationship with the page on which they are printed and with each other. Frederick Buechner once reminded his readers that the religious sense of the word “justification” is very close to this old print-shop jargon. Being justified means being brought into a relationship which can best be described as “right,” correctly lined up.

When Paul was still a Pharisee named Saul, and still believed that the rumor about Jesus rising from the dead was just that – a rumor, he was knocked down one day while on his way to see about locking up some of these new Christians. And though the voice that spoke to him that day belonged to the One whose resurrection he had disbelieved, the One whose church he had taken up wrecking, the One who had every reason to fry him on the spot, what he heard the voice saying to him was not “And now you’re going to get what’s coming to you, you wretch!” but, instead, “Now I need you as a witness.”

Paul never got over it, the sheer gift of it, the way in which it arrived totally unannounced and clearly without any meritorious acts on his part. This told Paul a lot of things about the person of Jesus Christ, among them was the fact that Christ could use even those who at one time had scorned him, that he was quite willing to put his finger on those who had done nothing to deserve being chosen. It’s more than a little unsettling when we think about it, isn’t it? From Paul’s experience we learn that we are not safe from the call of God even we are deep in a self-declared apostasy, that Jesus will not even disdain those who have made a profession out of disdaining him.

Apparently there is nothing we can do or be to merit this attention from God. It’s on the house. It is justification freely given to those who only need to receive it in order to have it. God has justified us, lined us up, made us right. It’s even a bigger miracle than computers.

Well, this is a great thing to know, but where does it lead us? Paul says being justified by faith leads to peace with God. Now that’s not some little personal, prayer-closet peace which stands for a lack of conflict, but the old Hebrew “shalom,” a peace, a serenity which stands for a life so in relationship with God that no matter what suffering or tragedy, or hoplessness or violence life might bring, there still exists a deep assurance of God’s love undergirding all of life.

The mid-twentieth century theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, is often credited1 with having written what has become one of the world’s most famous prayers. The first part of the prayer is the part that is familiar as the “Serenity Prayer” to 12 step folks, indeed, to people the world over:

God grant us the grace to accept with serenity the things which cannot be changed,

courage to change the things that should be changed,

and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.

Whether Niebuhr originated that little prayer or not, it is less well-known that Niebuhr finished the prayer with the following, seldom-quoted lines:

Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as the pathway to peace; taking, as [Jesus] did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will. That I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with Him forever in the next.

Today is Trinity Sunday on the church calendar, so here is some trinitarian thinking to stand alongside that prayer. Ending with only the first sentence of the prayer, serenity or peace could be understood as a sort of indirect affirmation of the power of positive thinking. The second part of Niebuhr’s version of the prayer is so key to understanding that the person who authors the peace that passes understanding is God himself through Jesus Christ. And here we can see the wisdom of thinking of God as Trinity: Father, Son, and Spirit, faith, love, and hope. For the person of God the Father reminds us that we may have faith because God has proven faithful from the very first dawn of creation and the experiences of the people Israel in the whole of the Old and New Testaments; the person of God the Son has expressed the ultimate nature of the love of God by going to the cross for our sakes; the person of God the Spirit expresses the hope that fills us, knowing the God of faith and love will also be the God of hope who moves with us into the future.

Later on in his letter to the Romans, Paul declared that those who live in the relationship of peace and serenity which God has granted can be assured of the love of Christ in any and every circumstance. Such peace can turn the suffering we may know back on itself. Instead of bringing the horrors we may expect suffering to bring, the gift of the shalom of God’s justification means any suffering we may come to know can bring something quite unexpected:

  • Instead of causing us to live with a perpetually short fuse... unexpectedly, suffering redeemed by God’s shalom could even bring us patience, serenity, and endurance!
  • Instead of making us into small, mean little people... suffering, infused with God’s shalom, can actually produce good character!
  • Instead of the despondency and depression we might expect, suffering in light of God’s shalom can actually, serendipitously, bring hope!

None of these possibilities in a life justified by the peace of God are spoken prescriptively. That is, Paul is not unloading a container of guilt on those who in suffering have occasionally felt short-tempered, mean, and despondent. Rather, he is saying that while those may seem like the only possible fruits of suffering, the peace of God can produce a new thing, an unexpected thing. The accent is not on our work but on God’s gift. If Christ can save even someone like Paul, a thug who once persecuted the church, imagine what he might do for us!

As we look into our lives, what is the good news we least expect to hear ever again? Could it be that the gift of God’s life-transforming peace means that that might be just the news that is coming our way? That, rather than despair, our lives might be hope-filled?

Copyright © 2010 Robert J. Elder, all rights reserved

1 Justice and Mercy: Reinhold Niebuhr, Ursula M. Niebuhr, ed., Harper & Row, 1974, title pages.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

© 2010, Robert J. Elder, Pastor
Pentecost Sunday, May 23, 2010
Acts 2:1-21

How can we know if ours is a Spirit-filled church? If we are Spirit-filled people? The very first two verses of the second chapter of Acts give us a significant clue: Here the evidence of the presence and power of the Spirit of God is both as audible as a mighty wind and as visible as flames of fire. The work of the Spirit is heard - as in mighty winds and in the brave proclamation of the message of the apostles to an unbelieving world, and seen - as in the tongues of fire distributed to every believer and in the lives of incredible compassion and risk which the the believers undertook from that Pentecost Day onward.

Whatever else we may know when we read this particular passage, we may be assured that where we neither hear nor see evidence of the Holy Spirit, we can be reasonably certain that the Spirit of Christ has not yet successfully invaded that person or gathering. Not yet. By the same token, where we hear and see Spirit-empowered ministries of proclamation and care taking place, we may be assured that the Spirit of Christ has graced that person or gathering.

Isn't it somehow surprising - given a natural tendency to human activism - that instead of concocting a plan of attack and inflicting themselves on the world by sheer human effort, the church began instead by withdrawing to wait and pray to see what God had in store and to ask that God live up to God's promises? “The next move was up to God, and the church recognized the wisdom of waiting for God's time to act.”1 When we pray the Lord's prayer, we are simply praying that God will be true to God's promises: “Thy kingdom come...thy will be done.” What could appear to be a swaggering or even a manipulative prayer for kingdom and power is in reality a deeply humble prayer, recognizing as it does that only God can give the church what it most desperately needs. All our human maneuvering is pointless unless it is empowered by the Spirit of God.

One preacher said, “[God] is never nearer than when [God] excavates a sense of emptiness in us.”2 Whenever we gather for the Lord's Supper, for example, our invitation includes these words like these: “And so our Savior invites us to come and feed the hunger which bread alone can never fill.”

Filled as they were with the gift of Jesus' companionship for three years of ministry, the grief of the crucifixion, the exaltation of the resurrection, one thing was lacking in the hearts of the disciples, an emptiness remained. Through the gift of the Holy Spirit, those who were disciples and apostles were empowered to become the one thing they had not been: witnesses. And what is witnessing, really, but the audible and visible willingness to say what we believe to be true, and to try to live by the guidance of that Word?

As if to give special emphasis to that dramatic empowerment, unlikely Peter - the one who, when Jesus was arrested, could not find within himself the boldness to own up to his discipleship to a serving girl in the courtyard of the High Priest's house - suddenly Peter, of all people, found within himself the courage to witness to thousands in the middle of Jerusalem on one Spring morning. Whatever else we may not be sure about, there is little question that the Holy Spirit empowers us to be what we had not had the strength within ourselves to be before.

Finding ourselves at a gathering where the good name (or even the questionable name) of someone else is being trashed, being a faithful witness to Christ might mean no more than turning away and refusing to participate in hurtful gossip, but it might also mean speaking up. Only each of us knows the call to which the Spirit is leading us. But we can rest in this assurance: No matter how bad the consequences of faithfulness in the face of opposition might seem, the Spirit continually gathers the church around us, the Spirit will never forsake us.

How can we comprehend this presence of the Holy Spirit?

Right there in the Bible it talks about it like a sort of liquid presence, “I will pour out my Spirit on everyone.” In our neat, family-kitchen-thinking we may imagine this to be a pouring like pouring a glass of milk from a pitcher. But I think that mental image is much too tidy for us to use as a mark of the work of the Holy Spirit. I think there are much better ways to conceive God's Spirit being poured over God's people. Think of other ways we generally use the word “pour”:
  1. When we have been estranged from one another, our emotions all bottled up, when we have suffered the emotionally constipating effects of a heart filled with sorrow and anxiety combined with a mind and mouth that refuses to allow us to share what consumes us from the inside, when after that the dam has finally broken and in tears we have been able to tell another human being about the fears and emotions that have been eating us alive, have let go a torrent of hurt and heartache, we call that pouring your heart out.
  2. When our team is ahead of the other team 65 to 7 and there is only one minute left in the final period, and we score yet another touchdown, and the coach sends in the play from the sideline telling his team to go for 2 extra points instead of 1, the fans turn to each other and say, “Wow, they're really pouring it on!”
  3. When the sky turns not grey but black, the lightning creases the thunderheads, the thunder cracks like a volley of canon fire, we run for cover, saying to each other, “We'd better hurry; any minute it will be pouring down rain.”
Pouring, as it is used in the second chapter of Acts, has nothing to do with pouring into a glass from a pitcher. It is more like pouring into the glass from Niagra Falls. Either way the glass gets filled, but by the second method there can never be any doubt about whether there will be enough.
Pouring out his Spirit, God gives to people the power of God's love not in sufficiency, but in superabundance. There is enough, there is more than enough of God's Spirit to empower the work of the church. It is not a zero sum game. God's Spirit is available in such plenty that to be touched by it can mean being overwhelmed by it and changed completely and absolutely.

The late Clinton Marsh served for years as president of Johnson C. Smith Theolgical Seminary in Atlanta, and was once moderator of our Presbyterian Church's General Assembly. Jokingly, he characterized himself as one half Presbyterian, and one half African American. About 35 years ago at the meeting of the General Assembly I heard Dr. Marsh say to the assembly that he hoped the Spirit would change us so that, if we could not be one half Presbyterian and one half African American, some of us could at least develop a little better suntan. The Spirit, poured over the people, drenches us, changes us, so that we are not the same people we once were.

Dr. Martin Marty has served for decades as a contributing editor of Christian Century magazine, a journal highly respected among clergy and lay leaders. He also once taught second grade Church School - one wonders which is the greater honor! He tells a story that shows the pouring-out of the Spirit can even come upon 8 year-olds, demonstrating that the Spirit is alive and working in places we might never expect. His story is about an 8 year-old boy who once attended his classes. Stephen was a special child, and by the time he had reached second grade, his progressive mental and physical disabilityies had become obvious to his friends. Dr. Marty said that one of his greatest concerns in teaching Stephen's class was whether the other eight students could hold on to their love for Stephen as they came increasingly to realize he was falling behind them and that he was different. In April of that year, he asked his students to bring to class a small object they could hide inside one of those plastic egg-shaped containers that some products are packaged in, something that represented the gift of new life. But because he was afraid Stephen might not have understood, he placed all the unmarked containers in the center of the table, and asked Stephen to open them, one at a time.

The first one held a crocus, and one of the students erupted with the pride of possession, saying, “I brought that one!” Next came a rock which Dr. Marty thought would surely be Stephen's, since rocks don't symbolize new life. But one of the other students shouted, “That's mine! The rock has moss on it, and it has just turned green again!” A butterfly flew from the third container, and another student beamed that her choice had been the best so far.

But the fourth container was empty. Dr. Marty thought it had to be Stephen's and was going to move quickly to the next egg, but Stephen objected and said, “Don't skip mine!” You know how second graders can be; they all shouted with one voice, “But it's empty!” “That's right,” Stephen said. “The tomb was empty. New life for everyone!” Stephen knew.

That Summer, Stephen died. At the grave, mourners found eight small egg containers. All of them empty. The story is true. So is the mystery, and Stephen knew.

What Stephen knew was that when God's Spirit is poured out, there is no controlling it. The black, the white, the blind, the lame, the healthy, the sick, the disabled, the frail, the husky, the slender, every one can be drenched in the Spirit. It was poured out on all believers without discrimination. There's more than enough. There's no limit to the power of God's Spirit to reach us and make us understand, even by means we might never have anticipated.

The disciples were drenched in the Spirit that first Pentecost day. Not dribbled, not sprinkled, aerosolled, misted, dampened, daubed or dipped, but drenched. They were overcome with the power of God's Spirit, poured out upon them. May God drench our fellowship with his Spirit in our own day, in our own times.

1 Acts, by William Willimon, John Knox, 1988, p. 27.
2 Drumbeat of Love, by Lloyd Ogilvie, Word Books, 1976, p. 23.


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Property Information

4005 Bayshore Blvd, Tampa, Florida 33611

Buildable Residential Lot with Direct Views of Hillsborough Bay!

Price:                        $499,000 or Best Offer!

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  • Lot Dimensions:   55' on Bayshore by 162' in depth
  • Zoning:                 RES-60
  • Subject Lot has Direct Views of Hillsborough Bay
  • Flood Zone X
  • Letter from the City of Tampa stating that Lot is Buildable
  • Coveted School District including Plant High School, Coleman Middle School & Roosevelt Elementary
  • Over 4,000 sq ft home has been designed for this lot.
  • City of Tampa Utilities
  • Letter from the City of Tampa stating this is a buildable lot.

Bayshore Blvd:   Links South Tampa and Downtown, shirts Tampa Bay and boasts the world's longest continous sidewalk, about four and a half miles.  One side of the drive is lined with stately historic homes and modern towering condominiums while the other offers views of Tampa Bay which the joggers, skaters and bikers enjoy each day utilitizing the continuous scenic sidewalk.

Seller will entertain offers in he low $400's!


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Today we open at 08:00 am

Not content with enhancing our Land Rover services, Robertson Gemini are proud to be part of the 'Motor Codes' scheme.

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Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Mood Eating

By Dr. John Berardi

Most people eat based on their mood and/or some subjective feelings of hunger. They don’t eat based on what their bodies need. Think of it this way: you’re about to take a long drive on a stretch of highway with no gas station. Do you fail to stop for gas before you hit the road because you’re "not in the mood?" Of course not. Think of eating in the same way. Eating fuels your metabolic engine. So it’s time to start feeling like eating so that you can stop feeling like you’re scrawny.

If you like this tip and want to learn more about JB and his products, check out his Precision Nutrition website.

Mike Robertson

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Saturday, May 2, 2009

And this is why you will never see this linked on my Facebook.

When I started this blog, I had the general idea that I was going to keep it separate from my "Real" life. By which I mean that the people I encourage to read it (and by "encourage to read" I mean that I have a link in my forum signature) are not those I interact with face to face. I've never been particularly ashamed of my geekdom, hell I'd shout it from the rooftops, but I also know that a lot of folk don't want to hear about it, for one. For two, there's a few things I really enjoy that are...difficult to explain to normal folk*, and I'd honestly rather not go through all the trouble. Trying to explain why I enjoy Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha or Mahou Sensei Negima without coming across as a huge pedophile/pervert** tends not to work the entiere time. However, I still try when I'm feeling optimistic.

But This? Dude, I'm not gonna even bother. Katawa Shoujo is an Original English Language Visual Novel. Visual Novels, for those of you not in the know, are a rather odd form of video game. Essentially, there's no game. Even in the rare case of the games where you are fighting monsters (the most famous of these being Type-Moon's Tsukihime and Fate/Stay Night. If you want to see them without bothering with downloading/patching/whatever, check out Seorin's Lets Plays for added snarky commentary. You've got to be a Goon to see the Fate/Stay Night one for a while), you don't actually control anything about the combat. There's no party management, no level growth, no FPS action, nothing. You sit back and read what's going on, and occasionally you're offered a choice. In essence, I think something like 95% of these games are dating sims. Boy is pushed into a situation with inordinate numbers of attractive single women, player makes various choices that hopefully lead to boy picking one girl, boy has a substantially high chance of getting laid and/or falling in love. If he's really lucky, he can pick the harem ending and mack on all of 'em. Depends on the game, really.

Aaaanyways (I have a ton of work to do, I really should keep this brief), Katawa Shoujo was spawned in the dark, dank sewers of the internet called 4chan. Ok, Ok, 4chan's not that bad. /b/ is the board that gets all the attention, but there are a fuckton of other ones, and from what I've seen, most of them are your fairly typical internet board, just bigger. I still don't plan on visiting (largely because I've got enough to distract me for one, and for two I don't like anonymous posting), but they're not the true evil. As this product proves. Anyways, a few years back, some japanese doujin artist posted up a brief page with several girls with disabilities- one blind, one deaf, one chick with burns on half her face, a girl missing her lower legs, and a girl with no arms. He mentioned that if someone made a dating sim about this, he'd be on it like white on rice. Somehow /a/, the anime board, got enamoured with the idea and actually put serious thought into the entire concept. They formed their own boards to discuss the idea, and, as of a few days ago, posted the first act, which they say is roughly 15-20% of the game.

So this is a game about disabled people. Your main character's got arrythmia, so he can't do too much strenous physical activity, or take a hit to the chest, or else his heart will explode. He ends up at a special school for folk with various problems, and from there, he meets several girls. There's the tsundere-esque deaf, mute chick and her bubbly friend who try and rope you into the student council (consisting solely of the two of them). There's the legless track girl*** who doesn't let anything, not even her conspicuous lack of feet, slow her down, and her friend, the enigmatic, absolutley crazy painter with no arms. There's the serene, aloof, kindly blind chick, and her friend, a girl with burns on her face from a terrible accident who's so shy and scared of people that she makes early-Negima Nodoka look extroverted. You take the dude through his first week at the new school, up to the school festival, where you either get to hang out with one particular girl (in essence, I assume, selecting her "path" and eventually getting to the whole dating/sex and whatnot) or you fucked up royally and go get drunk with your blind, misandrist roommate and then fall to your death. I did that the first time out of a couple of mistakes, and grumbled a bit that I wasted so much time.

And you know what? This is really good. I admit to not having played a visual novel of the high school dating sim variety (closest I've come is watching the first season of "Clannad"), but I really liked playing it. I admit, some of it's the whole wish fulfillment thing that comes from the scenario of having a large number of attractive anime girls to pick from whom you know are going to fall for you eventually (I've been single for YEARS, man.) , but the writing is really good- funny at times, the art is great, and they handle the plot with seriousness and realism. And the girls are really cute, too. Shizune, the deaf girl, has an awesomely cute tsundere vibe coming off of her, but my god, despite the burns, Hanako is so goddamn Moe that it hurts at times. You just want to pick that girl up, give her a great big hug, and say something to the effect of "You're beautiful. I love you." and then go take her off to a carnival or something and have fun.

And with my enjoyment of this game, I'm realizing that I am turning into one of them. A stereotypical moe fanboy. The sort of sexual pervert who has an unrealistic view of women, and who, as a consequence, is never going to get any and lives in his own little fantasy world, and not to mention is ten kinds of creepy. When you stare into the abyss for too long, it stares back, man. I need to be careful about this.

*On a random tangent, I find myself using the word "Folk"- singular- as an all-purpose substitute for "people". I think I picked it up from Firefly.
** I am quite obviously not a pedophile, but I'd probably be lying to myself if I said that none of the whole "nekkid bits" of Negima were ever appealing.
*** Honestly, that isn't very surprising. I've read an article about how a dude with no legs was banned from racing in the Olympics- and not the para- or special Olympics, because his mechanical legs gave him too much of an edge. Take from that what you will.

1 comment:

  1. Yea, I was as well pleasantly surprised 4chan could handle something like this maturely. It was refreshing as well.

    Also, yea, mechanical legs properly made are more efficient than flesh and bone. Less energy is wasted moving the body, so you can go faster for longer periods of time.


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Friday, November 26, 2010

Happy Turkey Day and December Releases

Happy Turkey Day, everybody!!! I hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving. I know we sure did. Hubby and I went to my Uncle's place and he lives on a farm. The kids wore themselves out feeding the pigs, riding horses and chasing the dog. We're city folk, so we don't commune with nature nearly enough. I practically had to drag the kids inside when it was time to eat dinner, they wanted to spend every moment outside that they could.  Below is Annabelle and Jake on my Uncle's horse.

On to the important stuff, like giving thanks to book publishers and authors for keeping me entertained. Coming up in December I have just a few books in which I am looking forward to their release.

Dirk and Steele Series - Book 10

Contemporary Erotic
What about you?  What's on your wishlist?

Sugarbeat said...

Happy Saturday! I have an award for you :)…d-my-1st-award/

nath said...

Happy belated Thanksgiving, Jill!! The kids look so happy! and at least, the weather allows them to be outside and enjoy it... unlike here! LOL.

Not many books coming out in December. So boring :(

Leslie said...

Your holiday sounds like a wonderful treat for all. Your kids are adorable!

The Goodman is the only one I can think of. Maybe I'll have a chance to work on the tbr pile next month. :)

Jill D. said...

Sugarbeat - Thank you for the award. That is so very nice of you. It's always good to know people are out there enjoying my blog!

Nath - Yeah, we are lucky with warm weather here in Florida. It was in the high 70s F.

Leslie and Nath - I know, can you believe how little is out in the stores this month? Crazy isn't it, but at least I will be able to catch up on my TBR!


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Thursday, December 2, 2010

UAE National day

Happy UAE 39th national Day to everyone.
Its holiday today Dec.2 and tomorrow is Friday so its a long weekend.
I took these pictures last year. Sana sipagin ako mamaya para makapunta ng City makigulo at makisaya sa lahat.

Emirate boy in a happy mood displaying UAE colors

Its one of the most celebrated day in the Emirat.Locals took time to repaint their cars of the UAE color making noises and dancing, light and sound display in the road.Including Free concert everywhere.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Corniche Abu dhabi

Bukas Novemeber 16, ay umpisa ng mahabang holiday sa UAE apat na araw yon. kaya for sure ang mga pinoy kanya kanyang lakad. Ito ang parang pasko dito. Di ako masyadong excited kasi naka leave naman ako. Sa Muslim country ito ang maganda pag holiday wala talagang pasok.mahilig sila sa mga long holiday.

kuha ko ito sa corniche park sa Abu dhabi noong September walang masyadong tao pero bukas puno-puno ito.

sa ordinaryong araw wala kang makikitang pinoy dito. mga Bangali at Indians marami take note mga naka long sleeve ang mga yan.

mga pakistani sa kanilang paboritong kasuotan.

ang mga local sa dagat mo makikita.

at nag iisang pinoy sa araw na ito. Myself

ito ang sikat na Corniche beach sa Abu dhabi

happy holiday sa mga kasamahang pinoy sa UAE.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Annual Vacation Grande- Byahing Qatar airways (part 1)

last year vacation ko sa pinas I made some mistakes.Pero na enjoy ko parin naman ito.
This year it's going to be better.

Planning the flight months ahead will give you extra fun on your travel along the way in between destination.Una sa lahat mag pa book ng maaga. 5x ang airfare ticket pag peak season na at pag biglaang ang flight.In this case use your credit card. mas mura ang booking online. try expedia.

Magpahinga,Matulog,wag over excited bago ang flight. para di ngarag pag lapag sa airport.Wear red para masaya.

Wag mag bitbit ng madami. e- pa cargo or airfreight mo ng advanced ang mga pasalubong mo kung meron man for hassle free.

kung di ka nag mamadali try mo ang mga connecting flights at pa delay ka ng isa or dalawang araw to enjoy the country of your choice.

Alamin ang details ng iyong flight transfers tamang gate no. at oras. Keep your ticket and passport accessible to you. Magtanong at wag hihiwalay sa mga kasabay.

Wag kalilimutang magdala ng camera para makuhanan ang mga view.

Pwede namang gawing SM ang Duty Free , Mag malling sa loob ng airport.But be aware of your time ng di napagiiwanan.Kumuha ng ka buddy buddy para may nakakaalam tungkol sayo.Be friendly.

Enjoy the flight. Wag na wag magpapakamatay sa eroplano or kayaý manganganak na parang tumae lang sa toilet nito.

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Corregidor Island Philippines Watching the Sunrise (Part 3)

The morning after..

Na miss ko ito ng husto. Kay tagal na ng panahon lumipas ngayon ko ulit ito nagawa ang abangan ang pagsikat ng araw.Kaysarap mangarap at mabuhay.

This is life. The real life malayo sa gulo.We need it and we deserve it.

This is not the best photo of a sunrise but being on the spot at that moment it was something else.

at sa muling pamamaalam, ako ay babalik sa iyong kandungan.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Corregidor Island Philippines by the Moon Light (Part 3)

I found new love.
Falling in love over and over again.

Bumabalik tanaw sa mga larawan.Umaapaw ang paghanga sa natatanging taglay niyang kagandahan.

The outcry for freedom, the many battles she endured and lives who perished on this rock those "scars of war"on the face of Corregidor constitutes a rich history of the Island.
Scars so beautiful in my eyes.

I realized in some way this is one good reason of blogging. Reaping pure joy of satisfaction sa pagbabahagi ng mga ito. The experiences the photos as I recall them and write today are interestingly "One acre of Diamond" in comparison.

Sa pag papatuloy ng aking Corregidor Island hopping.

Next activity after the tour.The sunset sight viewing on top of the hills followed by the Night tunnel exploration under the ground after the sunset.Para makisalamuha sa mga dead spirits of corregidor.Exciting.
Here are the photos.

Day tour end around 2:30pm at the North dock to get on board bound to manila

Because I took the overnight package tour I'm riding back to the hotel

Enjoying the cool breeze of one beautiful afternoon by the sea road along the way to hotel.

View overlooking the the island of Caballo

road by the Hill

Caballo Island another view angle

The driver dropped me in this spot.Taken from the viranda of the hotel entrance.Majestic view.

I meet the other 2 over night tourist from the the early trip who have enjoyed free time starting 12 pm exlporing the Island by themselves.
This is room#210 on the 2nd flr. at the left corner with two windows & a balcony.I like everything on it.the dark wood panels ,floor, capiz window, native blinds and the clean white bed sheets and towels.

That was the first day. living in the mountain side by the beach.

Napasarap ang tulog ko, so I missed the sunset.

So,the last activity was the tunnel exploration under ground.I'm not really a fan wanderer of darkness but this will complete the corregidor experience.

The silence was deafening. Only some constant drippings could be heard from a distance.One visitor said " it is the most stygian blackness imaginable, a darkness so total it can paralyze all the senses."

We stumbled on some pieces of bones left around and meet unusual living creatures crawling on the ground. a strange coldness touching your skin somewhat this tour is mysterious and one should not be missed by those who come to visit. Momentarily we were disconnected from outside world alone with the dead.This is it. The corregidor experience of world war 2.

With our flashlight and helmet on we dangerously climbed both narrow and wide openings and lost on our way out. Ofcourse it was a joke.

the tunnel is 835 ft long East -west passage 24 ft wide height 18 ft branching into 13 laterals on its north and 11 on the south side.It is under solid rock.

a lonesome sea creatures crawling on the ground
not surprisingly, bones sighting

with our helmet and flaslight trying to climb the opening up above
Other photos

We end the night with a sumptous dinner at the terrace by the moon light over looking malinta hills and south china sea.
I forgot to take photo.

Monday, September 27, 2010

Corregidor Island Philippines- Majestic Ocean View (Part 2)

On the first day, Sa pag papatuloy na aking Corregidor Island hopping.Ang kagandahan ng karagatan at mga bundok sa paligid nito ay nagdulot sa akin ng kakaibang gaan sa pakiramdam. Beauty beyond words. You wanted to capture the majestic view in your mind to share it to all. Sana kasama ko ang lahat ng taong mahalaga sa akin to share this majestic experience. Instantly you are connected sa nature at diyos na may likha ng lahat.You are in awe.Tama ang aking kaibigan kulang ang mga salita para ilarawan ang ganda ng paligid.I never really thought na ganito kaganda ng Corregidor Island. It is a must to visit. Include it to your plan. Sun Cruises offered tour packages hassle free.Napansin ko most of the tourist are foreigners from around the world.Kunti lang ang mga pinoy.kung meron man mga Filipino Veterans or OFW na nangungulila sa kagandahan ni inang bayan.

Here are the photos from my point and shoot digital cam canonIxus60 without editing

From afar is the small Caballo Island.Known as one of impregnate fortress defense. Corregidor Island is part of other smaller Island that forms a crater.Formation believed to be of a volcanic origin a million years ago.

It allows you to see from a distance Manila and Cavite

The ruins of war, the mile long barracks and structures tell a moving story of heroism.Tatayo ang balahibo mo sa mga kwento ng kabayanihan,the struggles for freedom.

The Pacific War Memorial (PWM) in honor of the Filipino and Americn servicemen who participated in the Pacific War

The Altar

The writing in the silent deep of the sea

The window of eternal light by looking at it your spirit soars along with them.

Eternal Flame of Freedom a large sculpture which symbolizes the flame of freedom burning eternally. This reminds that all men will fight as one to defend nation's liberty.

The Guns

The Malinta Tunnel.It had been dug through a solid rock and offered complete protection from air attack.It houses 1,000 bed capacity hospital,Douglas Mc Arthur headquarters and storage of foods and ammunitions

Today,all visitors can experience the thrills of Malinta Tunnel in the vividly staged light and sound by national artist Lamberto Abellana called "The Malinta Experience"

Corregidor Hotel

The view from my window is endless.

The nearby beach

The Malinta Hills.Nakita niyo yong opening yan ang malinta tunnel.

The North dock and Bataan from a far

Corregidor Island tour is alluring and captivating of endless panoramic beauty.

Watch out for the continuation the 3rd part : The suns dramatic ascent above the horizon the morning after.

On board Sun cruises bound to Corregidor Island (Part 1)

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2nd of March 2013

it sucks!


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No one true path for PhDs

So, there’s a nice little op-ed piece up at the Chronicle for Higher Education. (For the non-academics out there, it’s sort of like People magazine, but with History professors instead of Kardashians.) It was written by Jon Bardin, a current PhD student at Cornell Med School, who is planning to abandon the canonical academic path. Unfortunately, it’s behind the Chronicle paywall, but basically he argues against the idea (much hyped, recently) that there is an over-production of PhD students. At least in the sciences.

He mentions the common complaint that graduate school has become a sort of pyramid scheme, where huge numbers of PhD students enter, with the implicit promise of a tenure-track position waiting at the other end of the tunnel, while there are not nearly enough such positions available.

This is true, but he argues that we should look at the situation from a different perspective.

First, he argues that there are many alternative careers for PhDs. Of course, we all knew this already. After all, Starbucks is almost always hiring. But, actually, he argues that the skills that you develop in grad school are widely applicable. He talks specifically about the humbling experience of having his first manuscript rejected:

Through this and subsequent experiences, I learned to absorb the sting of harsh rejection, to ingest criticism, to accept its value, and to turn it to my advantage. These are life skills, not scientific skills, and rejection was only the beginning. Since then, I have had to devise and adopt quick, practical solutions to unexpected problems, to communicate clearly and concisely in front of crowds, to think on my feet in response to an unexpected question, and to pick my battles within my own research group. Perhaps most important, I have learned to approach problems by reducing them to their component parts and solving them one by one.

These are experiences and skills that will carry me through many dark days as a writer. But the same skills would have benefited me if I were leaving for the pharmaceutical industry, or for consulting, or to open a microbrewery. Everyone needs a problem solver, an articulate communicator, a thoughtful arbitrator. If graduate students can learn to approach their education as a series of learning opportunities rather than a five-year-long job interview, I think many who choose to leave would find that they had not wasted their time but rather that they had learned a great deal in a safe environment, while being paid, to boot.

These are great points. Now, the availability of funding varies a lot from field to field, but, at least in the sciences, I think the typical graduate student stipend is somewhere on the order of $30,000 per year. Now, that’s not huge money, but it is enough to provide a comfortable living. Add in the fact that grad school is a great social environment (at least, it is if you’re a dork, and you like hanging out with other dorks, which, if you’re reading this, you probably are, and probably do), and you’ve got the makings of a pleasant and rewarding five years.

The trick, of course, is to find an advisor who’s not a jerk, but that’s a topic for another post.

The other point that Bardin makes is that the problem is not one of the availability of a certain type of job, but of the perception that the tenure-track path is the only honorable one. What is needed is a change in attitude, from the students themselves, and from the advisors responsible for them. In Bardin’s words:

Such a change in attitude should start with graduate advisers, who must fulfill their role as true mentors, helping students explore the range of opportunities that their training has enabled, both inside and outside the box. Crucially, they must make it clear that leaving academe does not suddenly brand them a waste of their mentor’s time; graduate students—and their older siblings, the postdocs—by virtue of being cheap, productive labor, are anything but a waste of time.

In a way, maybe we need to start viewing graduate school more like undergrad. After all, professors don’t resent teaching undergraduates who are smart and engaged, but who are going to do something other than academia.

Or, rather, most probably don’t. I’m sure there are some who do. (Those are also the ones you want to avoid when choosing an advisor.) But, they probably also resent the students who are going to follow in their footsteps, just for different reasons. What are you going to do? Resenters gonna resent.

h/t to Ronin Kristina Killgrove.

Lessons from a 40 year old

So, this was posted on Boing Boing last week, but I only just got a chance to watch it. This is a talk at “Webstock,” by Matt Haughey, the guy who started Metafilter. (He also has a cool blog called A Whole Lotta Nothing.) He talks about the value of maintaining work-life balance, and avoiding the pitfalls that come with the raise-huge-money-and-grow-really-fast model that everyone in the tech industry seems to want to pursue. Instead, he favors a model where you work reasonable hours, build a quality product, and focus on a long-term strategy.

A lot of this resonates with some of the things we’re trying to do with the Ronin Institute. Of course, academia isn’t exactly plagued by a get-rich-quick mentality. However, there are some analogous traps that a lot of people fall into. Younger scholars often feel like they have to score the big paper in Science or Nature, and beat themselves up for doing work that is good, solid research, but not the sort that grabs headline. Faculty often feel a pressure to bring in large grants, and will sometimes let this drive their research agenda, rather than letting the research questions be the driver.

I like to imagine that the independent scholar is following the Metafilter model rather than the Facebook model. Because, you know what’s cooler than a billion dollars? A million dollars, and your soul.

Anyway, this is well worth a watch when you’re chilling out, or when you’ve just set up a batch of simulations. While the mapping from Silicon Valley to the Ivory Tower is not one-to-one, there is enough similarity there to make the talk thought provoking for anyone who wants to ponder how to integrate scholarship into their life.

Webstock ’12: Matt Haughey – Lessons from a 40 year old from Webstock on Vimeo.

Calamities of Nature, RIP

Nature got a little bit less calamitous last week when Tony Piro announced that he would no longer be updating his absolutely superb webcomic Calamities of Nature. Fortunately, he has announced that he intends to keep the site up, so you can peruse the archive of over 650 of the smartest meditations on science, philosophy, religion, and bacon that you’ll find anywhere.

I’m writing about this here because of something that he said in the post where he announced the end of the strip:

Today is my last update for Calamities of Nature. And I’ll be perfectly frank about the reasons. My full-time career is in academics, and I need to put everything I have into it if I’m going to have any chance of keeping it that way. As much as I love this comic, I can’t have it taking precious time away from my work. It’s time to move on.

Now, I hope, for Tony’s sake that he had also grown tired of maintaining his updating schedule, that he felt that five years was long enough, and that he is happy committing his efforts full-time to his academic career.

But, whatever the actual situation in this particular case, there is no question that he has hit on an unfortunate truth about academia. The fact is, it is extremely difficult to establish and maintain a traditional academic career while devoting time to other interests. Once you add in family (Tony also mentions that he has two kids), traditional academia basically demands that all of your time not spent sleeping or parenting be devoted to a very specific, constrained set of activities.

I think this is a shame. Certainly, there are people out there for whom this is the ideal lifestyle, people whose interest line up neatly with the demands of an academic career. I’m glad that they exist, and hope that they will continue to populate our Universities. But, for a lot of people, a more piece-meal career with time devoted to a broader range of activities would be more compelling, more fun, and would lead to their doing higher quality work over all.

Calamities of Nature is consistently smart and thoughtful, and it has a huge readership (roughly 5% the traffic of the mega-popular xkcd, according to alexa). It has probably engaged more people with ideas from science and philosophy than most academics do over the course of their entire careers. It seems criminal to me that the all-or-nothing structure of traditional academia means that someone with this much talent, and this great a platform, has to abandon it in order to maintain their career.

This is one of the things that the Ronin Institute aims to change. We are building an alternative model of scholarly research, one where scholars would be able to scale their commitment to research based on their personal interests and constraints. I imagine an ideal world in which someone like Tony Piro could commit, say, two-thirds of his time and effort to traditional scholarship, and one third to maintaining Calamities of Nature. I’m putting words in his mouth, of course, and I don’t know whether or not this is something that the real Tony Piro would want, but I think the world is full of Tony-Piro-esque scholars out there, who have other talents and interests that they have had to set aside in order to commit themselves to academia.

Of course, a part of this alternative model is that the two-thirds-time scholar would only be paid, say, two thirds as much as the full-time scholar. For people whose outside interests also made money, this would likely be an ideal scenario. For people whose other interests have no corresponding income stream, full-time academia might be the only way to pay the mortgage. However, I suspect that there are a lot of academics and would-be academics out there who would gladly trade a portion of their paycheck for a saner and more well rounded life.

Here’s the final Calamities of Nature strip. When you have a chance, go check out the whole archive.

Best of luck to Tony Piro in his all his future endeavors, academic and otherwise.

Short-term job opportunity for a Ronin Anthropologist

So, on my recent visit to the Colorado School of Mines, one of the people I got to meet was David Muñoz, who recently retired as a professor there. He has started a cool initiative that he calls “Humanitarian Engineering.” I will write more about it when I understand it better, but, briefly, he wants to instill a greater sense of service, and a greater awareness of cultural issues, in tomorrow’s engineers.

You can read some more about it here.

But here’s today’s action item: Dr. Muñoz has been working to build a water system for a village in Honduras. The village dates back only to 1998, when it was founded by refugees from Hurricane Mitch. The “Humanitarian Engineering” angle means that this project is not just about creating the infrastructure, but also about integrating it into the existing social/cultural milieu. He had a cultural anthropologist on board with with project, but this person had to drop out unexpectedly at the last minute.

This creates a perfect opportunity for the Ronin Anthropologists out there: if you have the right set of skills, and you are currently un- or under-employed, you might be able to fill in.

If you are interested, you need to be a cultural and/or social anthropolgist. You need to be pretty fluent in Spanish. And, you need to be willing and able to go soon. The job would involve going down to Honduras ASAP (ideally sometime in the next few weeks) and staying for a couple of months. Dr. Muñoz has funds to cover travel and expenses, as well as a modest stipend (something on the order of $4000).

If this is something that you might, possibly, be interested in, contact Dr. Muñoz for details: If you have friends (or colleagues, or family members, or former students) who might be a match, please forward this information on to them.


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Sarah Arnd Linder

Political is Personal (PiP) was founded in April 2015 and is an initiative of in-depth interviews conducted with Israeli Jewish and Palestinian women, who share how their lives have been affected by the conflict. Stories of each interviewee are published on PiP’s website.

PiP sees as its mission to provide:

– Valuable data for study for academics, policy and decision makers
– Human validation, empathy and affirmation for women living out the conflict on the ground
– An avenue for others around the world to view this conflict through a new, more complete lens.

Sarah Arnd Linder, founder of PiP is partnering with two other Israeli scholars to write a research paper focusing on the experiences and everyday lives of Israeli Jewish and Palestinian women based on a sample of the interviews conducted with PiP to this date.

To find out more, visit

Or visit Sarah’s personal blog at

Contact Sarah at sarah <dot> linder at ronininstitute [dot] org


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Friday, September 19, 2008

International Talk Like a Pirate Day

Today (Sept 19th) be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, so avast there mattie and swabs me poop deck while I missin this mast... or something like that!

Here is a great cartoon from PVP from last year poking fun at one of my all time favorite movies, the Pirate Movie from 1982. I saw the movie 10 times when it was in the theater back in '82 (I broke that record with 12 when Disney's Atlantis came to theaters in 2001). I own the laser disc of the movie, the 2 LP soundtrack, the official and unofficial DVD releases and am looking to add a promo poster to my collection.

Monday, September 01, 2008

Little Golden Book Monday #64

Today's Little Golden Book, is a pair of books. The original 1957 Sleeping Beauty book along with a 1970 reprint of the book. The 1957 book has "A Little Golden Book" across the top, while the 1970 version has a Golden Book logo at the bottom right.
As I may or may not have said before, I am a huge fan of the Sleeping Beauty film. I think the artwork and look of the film are amazing, and Malicifant is one of my favorite Disney characters. As far as Disney princesses go, Aurora is my favorite, and the soundtrack to the film has some great music.
As a child, my favorite books were by Bill Peet, and years after I had decided that Sleeping Beauty was my favorite Disney film, I found out that Bill Peet had worked on Sleeping Beauty, and now when I look a the film, I can really see his creative style and input.
So, being as Sleeping Beauty is my favorite 'classic' Disney film (my favorite newer Disney film is Atlantis), I love adding anything Sleeping Beauty to my collection. I actually found these two books at the same antique mall, and funny enough the 1970 reissue was $5, while the original 1957 version was only $3.
Other than the covers, the only other real difference is the back cover which has the 1957 version offing Golden Stamp Books, while the 1970 version simply tells us that "More than one billion Golden Books have gone into the homes of children of all nations", and "They are far and away the best-known series of books for young people every published."


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Rosetta Code:Village Pump/Please appoint more Moderators!

From Rosetta Code
Please appoint more Moderators!
This is a particular discussion thread among many which consider Rosetta Code.

The number of active bureaucrats / moderators appears to be 1. 2!

Of the listed bureaucrats and moderators, it appears that only 4 have been active in the past year and only 2 (including Short Circuit) in 2016.

Don't get me wrong Rdm is doing a great job cleaning up after spammers, but he seems to be the only bureaucrat logging in regularly lately.

Please appoint some new bureaucrats / moderators, or at least set up a low permissions user group that can do a 24 hour editing block on users who are spamming the site until a higher perms user can make a decision on what to do. There have been several occasions in the past few weeks where I was actually logged on the site while a spam attack was in progress but could do nothing to stop it or even slow it down other than delete page content and mark the page for removal. Meanwhile the spammers continued to just make new pages. Very frustrating.

For what it is worth, I would volunteer for such a role. I have been active on the site for over 5 years and have made hundreds of edits so I have a track record. Thanks. --Thundergnat (talk) 18:00, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Turns out I have sufficient rights to bump up your privs, so I'm making you an admin. Thanks for the efforts. Let me know if you (or other helpful folk) need further rights. Thanks again. --Rdm (talk) 09:45, 10 March 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for the vote of confidence. It is very satisfying to be able to actually shut down the spammers. I know AndiPersti has expressed interest in helping with spam in the past. (See the bottom of your talk page.) Horsth has helped by marking pages as spam on occasion. I don't know whether (s)he would be interested in doing moderation though. --Thundergnat (talk) 20:36, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
If you need another helping hand I'm still interested. --Andreas Perstinger (talk) 06:35, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
I'm not interested in getting moderator.I thought, marking as a soon as possible as spam, would keep spammers from doing so.But would it be not much easier to filter the title of a new created site after spam-buzzwords like "phone" "support" "800" "+1" "001" etc and let those site to be approved by one of the admins? --Horsth
That would not deal with PH0NE, *p*h*o*n*e* and so on... That said, currently, we're doing just fine, though it probably is worth thinking about how we are going to deal with the next attack. Just having more people ready to stand against them helps, of course.
From a wikisoftware point of view, the tools I was wishing for had to do with making it easier for me to clean up the mess, and making it harder (but not impossible - impossible is impossible to achieve, and a waste of time - also, people make mistakes even if they are administrators) for them to spam us. For example, it would be great if I could just delete a user and have all their contributions removed also. This would need some limitations (exercising that against a useful contributor would be awful, and more than once when I was looking at user contributions and seeing a bunch of spam pages at the top, I belatedly noticed that these were "marked as spam" edits, that would have been bad...). Still, the pattern seems to be that spammers use throwaway accounts (they kind of need to, since they are dedicated to making their welcome go away), so something focussed on removing history from recently created accounts would probably be a good thing. --Rdm (talk) 14:29, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
In my opinion the key to fighting spam is to move the burden of effort towards the spammer. The only way I can see that happen is when we disable automatic account creation and invite serious new contributors to drop us a line or meet us for a chat session. There are only a handful of serious new contributors per month, I think, the others are bogus, so the burden for admins would likely be less. Making regular contributions to Rosetta code will take many hours. Surely a serious contributor should be willing to deal with a small threshold. Fwend (talk) 14:45, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
Maybe have prospective members submit a solution to one of the tasks by form so that we can have a quick look at it before their account is enabled. This should be easy for a serious contributor because that's what they intend to do anyway, but quite a burden for the spammer. Fwend (talk) 15:04, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
It looks like there is an extension available which does what you want: Extension:Nuke. And it should be bundled with our current wiki version. So Mike would need to enable it.
In my experience using a blocklist works pretty well. On the Zsh Wiki there was a long-time spammer who always posted the same links on several pages. After suggesting to the admin that he should add some of the links to a blocklist the spammer quickly gave up.
All of the recent spam pages had a huge wall of text thus I think it shouldn't be to hard to find one or two words (or word sequences) which would trigger the filter. Then it doesn't matter if the spammer for example obfuscates the page title.
The MediaWiki software has builtin spam protection using a regex but again you must have access to the server to enable it. But if that option will ever be enabled I suggest to change the default text which mentions the reason for the block (i.e. the word which triggered the filter) because I don't think we want to let the spammers know what words they should avoid in their spam attempts :-) --Andreas Perstinger (talk) 17:50, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
Mmm... that sounds promising.
That said, spammers are something of a distraction - and I think we have bigger problems. I was looking at a summary of tasks solved per language, and I noticed that over the course of a year or two, J had lost several hundred entries (from the count) - this was despite a variety of new task implementations being added over that time.
Now, I don't know if that reflects a bug in the counting process, a bug in the wiki implementation, hardware failures, the consequence of malware, password stealing, or any of a variety of other possible explanations. (These are not even mutually exclusive.)
Anyways, regardless of causes and people's motivations, ultimately the integrity of the site comes down to the personal efforts put in by its contributors. Spammers serve as a reminder that there are billions of people out there, and not all of them are nice people. --Rdm (talk) 18:10, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
Is it known why the other 2 admins, Paddy3118 and Mwn3d, are not active? Fwend (talk) 14:18, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
I presume they are busy. Contributing here is a voluntary activity, and sometimes people need to deal with other things. I know I've gone and been busy elsewhere sometimes for months at a time. Real life is like that sometimes... --Rdm (talk) 14:29, 12 March 2016 (UTC)
Busy due to personal circumstances, but I still, most strongly, want RC to do well. Thanks guys - it's a great community :-)
--Paddy3118 (talk) 07:45, 30 March 2016 (UTC)


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Preview Mode Links will not work in preview mode

May 30, 2010

Review of Melbourne's new Rectangular Stadium (AAMI Park)

We will be playing highlights from our tour of the new building with Patrick Ness and Jonothan Gardiner from COX Archtitects and Planners

Archigram archive up and running

NEXT WAVE: Huge Smoke Ring Generator by Scott Mitchell + Year 7 kids as part of the 2010 Next Wave Festival - at the Meat Market. SEE A VIDEO


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Thursday, 6 October 2011

Les Girls

Not the neatest of painting, you'll agree, I will have to try a smaller paintbrush, and my hands may not be as sure as they used to be, but once I started a felt the call of "The Makings" stirring deep inside me. I think they are too small to film really, if they have to make any sudden moves. I could see if there are bigger pegs available - or use wooden spoons...! or maybe I should hark back to the rag doll I made for a friend (it was a Mag Doll as her name is Magda - gro-o-oan, I'm amazed that it was such a poor joke that spurred me onto such a long winded project... see below!) I also now have the urge to do a Swat Peg - or a So Peg!
Anyway, these Babes, should be dressed, we'll see what happens. Meantime I'm still looking for a cast for our "Pillowman" fairy-tales.

Looked through my pictures of the aforementioned Mag Doll and found a picture I took as I was putting the finishing touches to her. Oh lordy does this mean I have to make another rag doll - or several!

Tuesday, 4 October 2011

The Pillowman Project Starteth

Will be starting rehearsals for our production of Martin McDonagh's "The Pillowman" at the end of December (our run is Febuary 6th to 11th 2012) and have been cogitating our "style set". I'd already designed some posters (I will have to have the full set done by the beginning of December for the publication of the semi-annual programme for the IP, so I was getting in there early), and it was only after some talking with my co-director that I realised we could go down the "Wizard of Oz colour explosion shattering the interrogation grey with an exuberance of odd and maybe slightly disturbing toys" route rather than the "black and white Carl Dreyer meets Watch with Mother" route or even the "animated scratchy pen and ink doodles" route which I had been toying with.... animation would have been nice, but will take longer than I can afford at the moment...

anyway, we need a "cast" for our projection, I've put a call out to various friends and I had a thought as I was going to sleep last night - I'd been thinking of fairy tales, lace cushions and bobbins (erm???) and suddenly I remembered Dolly Pegs.

Unfortunately much smaller than I remembered, and the ladies in Mortens (hardware store) concurred. Painting a face on one of these babes reminds me of the buttons I used to paint with my old partner in music, David but I will have to revisit with another set of pictures later. It's going to be fiddly to say the least.


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Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Ronan's School Work

Ronan was very proud of his "All About Me" homework.  He decorated it all by himself and wrote most of the answers (with help on the spelling).  It's been so fun for us to see his focus on reading and writing grow this year!  It's hard to believe we're nearing the end of kindergarten--it has gone by so fast!
The Mother's Day card that Ronan made for me at school:
Awhile ago I bought these Star Wars wipe-off coloring sheets and Ronan hadn't shown much interest in them until now.  One morning he was at his desk in his room for a long time and when he came out he showed me what he had been working on.  I was so impressed because he used to not care to spend much time coloring.  Last year, in preschool, his teacher said he would use one color and make a few marks on his page during art time.  He has grown so much in a year!
 Keep it up, Ronan!  Mommy & Daddy are so proud of you!

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An amateur rugby player has won £250,000 ($420,000) in a half-time competition to kick a ball from 30m out and hit the crossbar of the goalposts at London’s Wembley Stadium.

You lucky, lucky bastard

Employment center worker Stuart Tinner, who lives at home with his parents, hit the bar with an amazing shot – and all he wore on his feet were socks.

The competition was held at half-time during English rugby club Saracens’ 24-23 victory over South Africa yesterday.

The 24-year-old, who plays hooker for Welwyn RFC fifth team in Hertfordshire, was the first of three supporters picked at random from the 46,000 crowd after applying to take part in the competition by text message.

He told Sky Sports: “I guess I just kicked it as hard as I could and I don’t really believe what happened.”

After a few drinks with the Saracens team he said: “This is the second best day of my life – the best was when I lost my virginity.”