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Home > Topics > About China
WB: China should complete market-economy transition
China should complete its transition to a market economy in order to achieve its goal of becoming a high-income society, according to a report jointly issued by the Chinese government and the World Bank.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
The report said China should carry out enterprise, land, labor and financial reform as part of its effort to create a new structure for economic growth. It also said China needs to strengthen its private sector, open its markets in order to foster competition and innovation, and ensure equality of opportunity to achieve its goals.
Chinese policymakers should also shift from focusing only on the amount of growth to focusing on the quality of growth as well, said the report.
The assessment warned of possible risks faced by China over the next 20 years, including the risk of a hard landing in the short term. It said China also faces challenges posed by an ageing and shrinking workforce, rising inequality, environmental stress, and external imbalances.
"China's leaders have recognized that the country's growth model, which has been so successful for the past 30 years, will need to be changed to accommodate new challenges," said World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick.
He said the country "has an opportunity to avoid the middle-income trap, promote inclusive growth, without further intruding on the environment, and continue its progress towards becoming a responsible stakeholder in the international economy."
The report, "China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious, and Creative High-Income Society" was issued Monday by the World Bank and the Development Research Center of the State Council in Beijing.
· WB: China should complete market-economy transition


The Indulgence Plush bed by True Comfort mattress features an 6" super premium pocket spring coil for minimum partner disturbance and maximum comfort. This mattress has 3 zones to provide suitable support where you need it most. The memory foam inlay gently cradles your body, and the Sealy-wool layer helps to maintain an even temperature throughout the night. This is the firm model however in this range all 3 feels are at one price- you choose your comfort.


In the current panorama of education across Europe we find that technology is increasingly present in the classroom. On the one hand, we have government programs that provide classrooms with a technological infrastructure. On the other hand, students themselves, usually have mobile devices—such as smartphones and tablets—and carry them everywhere, including the classroom. In this context, it is born the Innovative Technologies for an Engaging Classroom (iTEC) project, which is the flagship FP7 project in the education area, financed by the European Commission with 12 million Euros. The iTEC tries to contribute to the conception of the classroom of the future, in which technology is complemented with the most innovative pedagogical approaches, which entail a major level of dynamism in the educational practice. Thus, the iTEC promotes an educational practice, in which students interact in small projects including a participation in events, speeches with experts, and all that seasoned with the use of technology. In the iTEC, The Eduteka is a toolkit of technologies for advanced learning activity design. The components of the Eduteka provide support for the iTEC pedagogical approach. Those are thoroughly presented in this chapter.


Choose either a sterling silver chain or 14k gold-filled chain to pair with the real 14k gold Italian horn charm, 1" tall pendant. They say that wearing an Italian horn charm brings good luck -- take advantage of this charming layering necklace. Available in 16", 18", 20" or 24" long.


Conjecture If a finite set of unit balls in is rearranged so that the distance between each pair of centers does not decrease, then the volume of the union of the balls does not decrease.
This problem dates from the mid-1950's. The planar case was solved by Bezdek and Connelly in 2003, who also showed that the area of the intersection does not increase, and that the result holds even if the disks have unequal radii. In higher dimensions the problem remains open.
The conjecture is known to hold if the rearrangement can be executed by a continuous motion such that the distance between every pair of centers monotonically increases throughout the motion.
*[BC] K. Bezdek and R. Connelly, Pushing disks apart: The Kneser-Poulsen conjecture in the plane, J. Reine Angew. Math. 553 (2002), 221--236.
*[K] M. Kneser, Einige Bemerkungen über das Minkowskische Flächenmass, Arch. Math. 6 (1955), 382--390.
*[P] E. T. Poulsen, Problem 10, Math. Scand. 2 (1954), 346.


Blockchain Based Secure Mobile Calls and Internet. This is a SIM-card based solution that works with any GSM phone/smartphone. One need not to download an app or stay online in order to use most of the features. All the controlling goes with USSD-commands.
Secured communication - Private communications were not meant to be subject to surveillance, rather it was designed to make one's life Easier: to share information, to communicate with each other, to remain oneself.
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Onion routing -In order to cover tracks all local outgoing calls are routed first to another country, where it is lost due to our tor-alike technology, and eventually the call is returned back. And all of these in a snap of a finger.


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Kirsten O'Brien Doesn't Get Topless (Big News)
Kids TV presenter Kirsten O'Brien is way more media savy than the premise of the program suggests.
She expertly has concocted an hour long conceit about showing her breasts to the world without actually doing so.
Consequently the marketing opportunities for pictures of her breasts are 10 times the size they were yesterday.
And the lads mags can start to speculate about whether she will or won't.
Its a massive TEASE!
As the wisdom from Pooh bear reminds us, although hunny is very good, the moment just before you eat the hunny is even better.
Strangely the show was titled "Kirsten's Topless Ambition" when a much more obvious and appropriate title would have been "Kirsten's Naked Ambition". I'm guessing they thought that was too blatant. But in a show that is all about being Too Blatant, while at the same that show is itself being Too Blatant, it seems to me only fitting to have a title that is equally Too Blatant.
Today the student forums and discussion sites are therefore crammed full of chat about her.
Yesterday most of us had never heard of her.
Here are just a few examples:
The buzz about Kirsten O'Brien
... and more (including completely misleading headline)
... on and on and on and on and on.
(Even I'm doing it!)
Today everyone's talking about her!
What's worse from my point of view is that she has got me talking about her.
The whole premise of this show is wrong.
You don't get your tits out because you want to be famous.
You get your tits out because you want to show people your tits.
If Vogue magazine would allow me to show my body to the nation, I personally wouldn't hesitate.
My tragedy is that there is no market for pictures of my naked body.
Flirting on the edge of questions about sexual politics, celebrity and popular culture, the show pricks at all kinds of worrying cultural currencies.
The BBC web site programme notes start with
"Kirsten O'Brien is facing a huge decision" ... and this is where the con begins.
Before the programme has even begun, we are already being sold something which is not true.
The promo is sneaking in the idea that the decision is "huge" - and notice how that line slips by without really being questioned.
Actually the decision is trivial, and makes almost no difference to anything.
A much more interesting question is: how do you get BBC 3 THREE 3 to commission you to make a program about your own media profile, which thereby massively raises your media profile?
This really is a question for all of us, and one that Kisten clearly knows the answer to. All power to her! 8-)
What was really interesting about this show, apart from that Kirsten O'Brien didn't show us her breasts, was all the other things that she didn't show us:
She didn't show us the conversations that led up to her being commissioned to produce the programme: how did she wangle that? She didn't show us all the set up that went in to filming set-pieces like when she appears to walk in unaware on Amii Grove doing a topless shoot, like as though the people in the room weren't expecting her to arrive at precisely that moment.
We did briefly get to see an agent calling up the lads mags to see if they would be interested in her doing a "shoot" for them. But only briefly. For the most part Kirsten also didn't show us the conversations wherein she negotiated "interviews" with leading lights in the UK's celebrity fame game, but I can imagine how those conversations went...
"Hello, this is Peter Stringfellow"
"Hello, this is Kirsten O'Brien. You probably have never heard of me, but I have been a children's TV presenter for 10 years, and I have wangled an hour to boost my media profile on BBC Three at 9pm on a weekday. If you are willing to have an interview with me, then it will boost both my media profile and yours. How's about it?"
Similar conversations were doubtless had with the various other celebrity movers and shakers, that she did interviews with.
With the power of having a primetime slot on BBC TV to broadcast the interviews behind her, Kirsten had just the leverage that she needed. It was just the ticket. But the ticket wasn't to a show about radically changing her career path, although it was presented as such. It was a ticket to a show about doing precisely what she was doing. It was a ticket to get interviews with a load of leading lights in the UK's celebrity fame game. Those people are precisely the contacts that she needed to be speaking to to raise her profile, and now that she had some cameras on her, they were obviously all going to be happy to talk to her - because it would boost their own profile to do so as well.
Whether or not Kirsten realised it, she had at the moment she got the contract from BBC Three, already accomplished the objective that she had set herself.
For more of an analysis of this kind of deceit, you can read the post on the Ecstatic Union blog: "How did this blog become so popular?"
If you didn't see or hear about the program you could read this to get you up to speed:
Summary of the programme
or if you are living in a place where you can watch this:
Watch the programme on IPlayer - not available in all countries
(although the first five minutes is enough).
If you really want to see Kirsten O'Brien's boobs, I'm guessing this is about as close as you are likely to get
Addenda - 16 August 2009
Well what a surprise.
Kirsten O'Brien's flagging career has (as predicted) been given a boost by her 60 Minute Tease-athon.
All of a sudden she is popping up doing stuff like this:
Kirsten O'Brien one of two presenters at World Freerun Championship from London's Trafalgar Square
Addenda - 2 September 2009
Ah whaddaya know!
Since teasing us with the prospect her breasts, Kirsten's flagging career has really started to zing.
More exposure from BBC Three... someone on the inside? think you?
Kirsten O'Brien doing yet more "presenting".
Posted by Andrew at 3:32 am
Saw the programme and my only observation is that Kirsten was trying to work on the outside to change her current image instead of working from the 'inside'. Most people who try a new image fail miserably if theyre only working on the outside. The changes should be made in the subconscious. The outside reflects the inside....
illegal drugs: prohibition vs. regulation

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


"Salaried, Non-Exempt:" When Hourly Rate is "Flexible"
My classification was Salary Non-Exempt, and I am being told that I will not receive time and one half pay for these hours, such as a Non-Exempt employee would have, but only "Half Time" due to the Salary Non-Exempt classification.
Half Time is calculated by taking the weekly salary amount ($800.00) and dividing it by 40 hours in the work week; which equals $20.00 per hour. For any time worked over the 40 (example: 10 hours worked over 40 in a week for a total of 50 hours) and dividing it into the normal salary amount of $800.00, giving $16.00 per hour, then dividing the $16.00 by half resulting in $8.00 per hour for any hour worked over 40, or "Half Time" versus the traditional time and one half, in this example $30.00/hour for time and one half.
Is this accurate? Legal? Do I have any recourse? I answered the phone and supervised no one, swept the floors and cleaned the toilets. Is Salary Non-Exempt even accurate and should I consider a separate complaint to correct it to Non-Exempt?
When I first read this, I thought paying only $8/hour for overtime had to be illegal under federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) regulations.
However, I was wrong: the above pay is legal under federal law. In this post, as previously promised, I will address how salary, non-exempt, pay works.
Wondering if you should be earning $20/hour for answering phones and cleaning toilets? Use the PayScale Salary Calculator to find out.
I am still not a lawyer, and this post is not legal advice. State laws are often much more stringent than federal law on pay practices. If you are an employer thinking of using the "salary, non-exempt" trick to save money, consult a labor lawyer.
See the previous posts for caveats and sources. See even earlier posts for the difference between exempt (hourly) and non-exempt (salaried) workers under Federal law, in particular the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).
The regulations make no statement about when the "regular rate" is set. In fact, for non-exempt workers, it can change every week. As long as the "regular rate" in any week does not drop below the federal minimum wage, it can have any value.
This is the trick with "salaried, non-exempt" pay: A worker only knows her hourly wage at the end of the week when she works overtime.
So for 10 hours, the worker gets an additional $8/hour, or $80 total for the week, for overtime.
With Salaried, non-exempt, jobs, as long as the "regular rate" does not go below minimum wage, all is legal under FLSA.
The net result is that, the more overtime a worker works, the less the worker costs per hour. Even with overtime, the employee was only paid $880 for 50 hours of work, or $17.60/hour.
By working 10 hours overtime, the salary, non-exempt worker gets a 12% per hour pay cut!
This does seem like a bad deal for the employee, but is clearly a good one for the employer.
If I had 5 salaried, non-exempt employees, working 40 hours a week for $800/week, I would fire one and make the other 4 work 50 hours a week. This would save me $800/week for the 5th employee, at the cost of paying 4x$80 = $320 per week in "overtime" for the other four.
Note that, if there is not enough work, "salaried, non-exempt" workers can be sent home, and have their wages docked, e.g., at $20/hour, for hours not worked.
"Salaried" in "salaried, non-exempt" just means no agreement between the employer and employee up front on the hourly wage. It does not mean an "exempt" position, with the FLSA requirements of no fixed hours for a work week, and no ability to dock pay for lack of work when the exempt employee is available to work.
What if the Hourly Wage is Fixed?
It is wise for employees not to agree to a "salaried, non-exempt" contract. Even if the job does not usually require overtime, it is better to have the agreement be "hourly, non-exempt".
The difference is you agree with your employer on the "regular rate" hourly wage up front, rather than having it fluctuate from week to week.
How much more money is this worth? In the case above, an "hourly, exempt" job at $20/hour would pay $800 in a normal week, the same as the "salary, non-exempt" position.
However, if 10 hours of overtime are needed, then the pay is $30/hour for the extra hours, since the "regular rate" was set, by agreement, at $20 per hour.
It also has the desired effect of the federal overtime law: employees only have to work 40 hours a week. Because the hourly wage is higher with overtime, employers will tend to favor hiring more workers, rather than working existing workers longer hours.
With or without overtime, are you being paid what your worth? When you want powerful salary data and comparisons customized for your exact position or job offer, be sure to build a complete profile by taking PayScale's full salary survey.
You forgot about taxes, which take away 30-40% of our income. THANKS ERR'BODY FOR VOTING IN OBAMA!


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Tracey is the heir-apparent to the "Grand Dame" of the convention-style pianists, carrying on the mantle passed down by her legendary mother, Eloise Phillips.
If you're a fan of Southern Gospel Music, you've likely seen Tracey on a Gaither Homecoming video, with Ernie Haase & Signature Sound, or at the Stamps-Baxter School of Music.
Tracey graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Music Theory/Composition from Middle Tennessee State University, and remains active in the music program there.
When Tracey's not performing with an orchestra or playing in church, you'll likely find her giving a piano lesson.
The Latest...
Tracey's Christmas CD, "...to kids from 1 to 92" was awarded the
Gospel Music Association's
Dove Award for Instrumental Album of the Year for 2014.
In addition, it received a nomination for Christmas Album of the Year.
Tracey is asked to play an impromptu version of "How Great Thou Art" for The Nelons at the Stamps-Baxter School of Music.
At 5:02, she is accompanying on the piano for the Red Back Hymnal singing. For those who don't have the page numbers memorized, this song--"We'll Soon Be Done With Troubles and Trials"--is page number 30. So many of us who grew up singing songs from out of this hymnal know the page numbers just as well as we know the songs.
At 8:40, she accompanies Ben Speer and the Stamps-Baxter School choir singing "Till The Storm Passes By" at Nashville First Church of the Nazarene.
Keep in touch with Tracey and the world of convention music by email


19 year old blonde Zoe Clark can't get one on one with her boyfriend without her father constantly interrupting them. It's obvious that the old man doesn't want the teen girlfriend going too far with her older boyfriend. Finally, Zoe desperately gives head to Bambino, hiding behind the kitchen bar.


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Franciscus Bossinensis född 1485, död 1535 var en lutenist-kompositör aktiv i renässansens Italien på 1500-talet. Han var förmodligen född i staden Srebrenik i dåtidens Bosnien, någon gång på 1400-talet. Han bodde och arbetade i Venedig och publicerade två samlingar av lutmusik (innehållande 126 frottolas och 46 ricercares), tryckta av den venetianska tryckeriet Ottaviano Petrucci.

Referenser

Födda 1485
Avlidna 1535
Bosniska kompositörer
Män

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Get swept away to the beautiful and breezy Isle of Palms with New York Times bestselling author Mary Alice Monroe's return to her "exceptional and heartwarming" (Publishers Weekly) Beach House series, set in South Carolina's lowcountry.
Two women. One summer. One very special beach house.
Cara Rutledge rents her quaint cottage on Isle of Palms to Heather Fordham for the entire summer. As beautiful as the Isle of Palms is, Heather's anxiety keeps her indoors with her caged canaries as she paints birds for postage stamps. Eventually, however, the shore birds—and a man who rescues them—lure her outside.
As the summer progresses and Heather begins to blossom, Cara's life reels with sudden tragedy. She wants only to return home but Heather refuses to budge from her sanctuary. As everything around the ladies is coming apart, they discover they can only rely on each other. Now, the two women who don't really know each other are forced to live together and support each other as they navigate the next chapter of their lives.
Featuring Monroe's signature "lyrical, emotional, and gripping" (RT Book Reviews), Beach House for Rent demonstrates the power and strength of female friendships.
THE BEACH HOUSE sat perched on a dune overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Small and yellow, it blended in with the waves of sweetgrass and sea oats and the delicate yellow primroses for which the cottage was named. For eighty-five years it had endured the fury of hurricanes, the rush of tidal surges, and the ravages of the salt-tinged air. It had withstood the test of time.
The beach house was a survivor.
As was she, Cara Rutledge thought, staring up at the house. She held a paintbrush in one hand and, shading her eyes from the gentle rays of the sun with the other, surveyed the fresh coat of gleaming white paint she'd just finished applying to the front porch and railings. How many times had she painted these porches? she wondered. Or repaired the pergola, fixed the plumbing, trimmed the shrubs and trees? Living by the sea was a constant exercise in the art of nip and tuck, especially for an old cottage like Primrose. But she didn't mind the time or expense. She would repair and paint it every year she could still lift a paintbrush or afford a plumber. Because even more than the historic house on Tradd Street in Charleston, or the treasured, centuries-old family antiques that filled the Rutledge family's home, this modest 1930s beach house held the real memories of her family.
Only the good memories, she corrected herself with a wistful smile as her thoughts floated back to the halcyon days of her childhood.
When she was growing up, summer meant leaving the bustle and noise of Charleston and coming out to Primrose Cottage on the Isle of Palms with her mother, Olivia, and older brother, Palmer. It might have been only a trip across the Grace Bridge, some twenty miles, but back in the day, the change was so significant they might as well have journeyed to another country. Many of the girls she knew from school spent summers at family cottages on Sullivan's Island. But her mother claimed she preferred the relative isolation and the maritime forest on Isle of Palms. Cara, too, had preferred the Huck Finn lifestyle of Isle of Palms, where her mother would open the screen door and let her children run wild till the dinner bell at 5 p.m.
Cara sighed, slipping into the vortex of memories. Her gaze scanned the quaint cottage under the brilliant azure sky. She had achieved many lifetime firsts here. She'd learned to swim on the beach just beyond the house, kissed her first boyfriend on the back porch, confided secrets with her best friend, Emmi, over cookies and sweet tea in the kitchen, broken her first bone falling from the live oak tree that thrived until Hurricane Hugo blew it down. She'd caught her first fish from Hamlin Creek on the back of the island, and made love with Brett amid the clicking sea oats on the dunes. Of all her memories, those of the man she'd fallen in love with late in life, married, and forged a new life with here on Isle of Palms were the sweetest.
Cara closed her eyes and took a deep breath, inhaling the sweet sea air. She heard the sounds of the island—the soft humming of bees, the purr of the ocean. She felt the caress of a breeze ruffle her hair. Whenever she had memories of the beach house, the image of her mother formed in her mind. Olivia Rutledge, affectionately known as Lovie—slight, ageless, her blond hair pulled back into a stylish chignon, her blue eyes shining with warmth. Opening her eyes, Cara almost expected to see her mother walking around the corner carrying the red turtle team bucket.
Primrose Cottage had been her mother's beach house. No, Cara thought on reflection. More than her house. The cottage had been her mother's sanctuary. Her place of refuge. Her source of inspiration. Lovie had come here to escape the burdens of her social obligations in Charleston. On the island she was free to pursue her passion—sea turtles. Lovie had been the Isle of Palms's first "sea turtle lady." She'd formed the first turtle team. She'd even named her only daughter Caretta, after the Latin name for the loggerhead, much to Cara's lifelong chagrin.
They'd been close when she was young, but as Cara grew tall and statuesque, her opinions matured as well. She'd found herself growing increasingly distant from her mother—in fact, from both her parents.
When Cara was eighteen, to her traditional father Stratton Rutledge's disappointment, she had refused to become the southern belle she was expected to be. Her hair was too dark, her feet too big. She was too tall, too bookish, and far too independent-minded. After graduating high school with honors, Cara had informed her parents, in a tone of voice that implied she was well aware they would not approve, that she wasn't going to the local college they'd selected for her but would instead attend a northeastern college. Perhaps Boston University. Maybe even Harvard. She was proud she'd been accepted. Her father, however, wasn't accustomed to back talk, especially from his daughter.
But Cara was more like her father than he'd realized. She'd turned heel and run as far away from her parents, that house, Charleston, and all the expectations and demands of a southern woman from South of Broad as she could get, heading to points north to seek her freedom, fame, and fortune. Her father was as good as his word. He'd cut her off and never looked back. He refused to pay her tuition, so she'd never gone to a prestigious Boston college. Instead she'd nailed an interview for an entry-level position at an advertising firm in Chicago, and had gone to night school for seven years while working full-time, finally earning her degree in communications. She'd climbed the corporate ladder and, though she wasn't wealthy, she'd achieved success on her own merit. Cara had come home only once, for her brother's wedding, and sent a handful of Christmas and birthday cards over the years. There was the occasional phone call with her mother. Her relationship with her family was polite at best.
When her father died, Cara returned home for his funeral. Like the man he'd been throughout his lifetime, his will was cold and vindictive. As Stratton had sworn all those years ago, he didn't leave her as much as a stick of furniture. Cara had neither expected nor wanted anything from him. But the silence from her mother upon finding out that he'd made good on his pledge had hurt.
Then, on Cara's fortieth birthday, her mother had written asking her to come home for a visit. And she'd obliged. A weekend at the beach house had turned into a summer of reconciliation.
"Oh, Mama," she whispered so softly that her voice was carried off by the breeze. Cara had lost Lovie again to cancer right after they'd found each other once more. Even after ten years, Cara's heart yearned for her.
Her father had left everything to Palmer. But the beach house was her mother's, and when Lovie died she'd left it to Cara, knowing she would care for Primrose Cottage—and all the secrets associated with it—with the love and attention to detail that Lovie herself had exhibited. And Cara had fulfilled that promise.
Studying the beach house in the softening light of day's end, Cara shook her head ruefully. If someone had told her when she was eighteen that decades later she'd be back on the Isle of Palms as mistress of Primrose Cottage, she would have laughed out loud with disbelief.
But here she was, turning fifty, living on the Isle of Palms again, married to the love of her life and giving Primrose Cottage yet another coat of paint. "What goes around comes around," her mother used to say. Cara chortled and shook her head. As usual, her mother was right.
Cara rolled her stiff shoulders, then traipsed across the sand and wildflowers to the waiting bucket of soapy water. She set her brush to soak, then put her hands on her back and once again stretched her aching muscles. Fifty certainly wasn't the new forty, not in Cara's opinion anyway.
No more daydreaming, she told herself as her usual practical, no-nonsense attitude kicked in. Rental season was around the corner and there was a lot left to do—and she couldn't afford to hire anyone else. She was committed to keeping the beach house up to the standards set by her mother. Still, she'd miscalculated the strength of the early spring sun and she could feel the pinpricks of sunburn on her arms.
The sound of a car pulling up the gravel driveway distracted her. She stopped studying her arm and looked over her shoulder to see her brother's gleaming white Mercedes sedan easing to a stop. He gave a gentle toot of the horn to herald his arrival. She chuckled, thinking Palmer always arrived with fanfare. She removed the man's denim shirt irretrievably splattered with paint, one of Brett's rejects, from over her black T-shirt and tossed it on a nearby wheelbarrow. The front car door swung open and one polished slip-on tasseled loafer peeked out from the car, then Palmer Rutledge hoisted himself out with a muffled grunt.
At fifty-two, Palmer was two years older than Cara, but he looked a good decade older, thanks to the bloated, florid face and the paunch at his waist from his lifestyle as a businessman and successful real estate maven. While his habits had led to a less-than-healthy physique, Cara couldn't deny that Palmer had an enviable sense of style. Even as a boy he'd always been an impeccable dresser, a sharp contrast to Cara's tattered, beachy sartorial choices. Today he wore a tan golf jacket over a polo shirt and pressed khakis. Cara wiped the flecks of paint from her hands onto her torn jeans and took a step toward him, a smile of welcome spread across her tanned face.
Her brother held out his arms and she walked into them for a bear hug, highlighting the physical ease and sense of closeness that they shared as children remained. Cara believed their mother's death had made them not simply orphans, but all too aware of their own mortality.
"That man sure is handy," Palmer said as he followed her.
Cara knew he meant it as a compliment. Palmer had tried for years to get Brett involved in flipping houses, especially on the islands. But Brett was as stubborn as he was talented. He truly loved working with wood. He was as much a craftsman as a builder. Like so much else in his life, he did things his own way and wouldn't be hurried.
She led the way around the cottage, her shoes crunching in the dry sand and shells. Cara kept the property wild, as nature had intended. Only palm trees, wild grasses, and flowers sprouted on her property, especially in the spring, when the island was practically bursting with life. Wildflowers colored the dunes with soft yellows, vibrant blues, and fiery oranges. In the trees birds sang out mating calls, while overhead migrating birds soared, returning home from southern climes.
This side of the beach house faced the long stretch of dunes that reached out to the Atlantic Ocean. The mighty sea reflected the mood of the sky—sometimes dark, turbulent, and gloomy, other times a soft, introspective gray-blue. Today the water was the color of unbridled joy and hope, a blue so vivid the horizon line disappeared where sea met sky, creating an infinite stretch of blue. Sunlight danced on the ocean, making it appear a living, breathing thing. Cara paused to stare out in awe. The dazzling sea always had the power to take her breath away.
"Beautiful day," Palmer said with gusto, rocking back on his heels and echoing her thoughts.
"It is," she replied softly, sharing the moment with her brother.
His words broke through her quiet reverie as she realized Palmer wasn't appreciating the spiritual quality of the view, but rather the commercial value. He spoke as if she didn't realize all these fine points of her own home. Going for the hard sell, as always. She turned her head to scrutinize him.
Her brother was, in fact, wearing business attire, she suddenly realized, not the sporty shorts and Tommy Bahama shirts he wore for leisure. His gold signet ring caught the sunlight and drew her attention to the papers he was carrying in his doughy hand. Cara sighed inwardly, even as she steeled her resolve.
This wasn't a social call. Palmer had come on business. Without speaking, she turned the corner of the house toward the back.
She nodded as she surveyed the thick, treated wood of the pergola. Once it was sun-cured, she'd paint it a glistening white.
The sound of hammering drew her gaze upward. Brett was perched on top of a paint-splattered ladder, hammering nails into the pergola with focus. Brett was a big man, broad-shouldered and fit. He wore ragged tan shorts, a faded plaid shirt with rolled-up sleeves, and scuffed work boots, revealing the leathery, tawny skin of a seaman. Her mind flashed back to when she'd returned home that fateful summer and had seen him hanging on the nets of a shrimp boat, every bit as dashing as Errol Flynn. Brett Beauchamps was the love of her life, and even after ten years of marriage, bits of gray hair notwithstanding, the sight of him could still make her swoon.
The hammering stopped and he turned her way. She couldn't see his eyes behind his Ray-Ban sunglasses.
One of Brett's strengths was his work ethic. He was tireless, pushing himself without pause. She knew he wouldn't stop until the job was done, and done right.
Palmer followed her as they crossed the work zone, his gait slow and measured. Cara watched as Palmer walked around the sunroom, his head swinging from left to right to take in the new glass doors, swung wide open to admit the balmy breeze of the mercurial spring weather, the Mexican tile on the floor, the tall green plants and white wicker chairs with cushy, bright blue cushions. She'd decorated the space in clean lines to allow the undistracted eye to seek out the ocean beyond. This view was what the tourists came for, she knew. Twenty years as a successful advertising executive in Chicago had taught her a few lessons.
Cara couldn't stand his patronizing tone, but didn't want to get into another round of debate on the reality of climate change with her older brother. It wasn't worth it, and she only ended up infuriating herself. He'd say the moon was a wheel of cheese if it sold a house. She allowed him the final word.
She led Palmer from the sunroom into the main house. Here nothing had changed since their youth, save perhaps for there being fewer of the knickknacks, family photographs, and books that her mother had cluttered the house with. Like many women of her generation, the older Lovie had got, the more reluctant she became to throw anything away. Every photo had to be saved, every memento ensconced on a shelf. When Cara inherited the house she'd promptly cleared away the clutter, painted the rooms a soft ocean blue trimmed neatly with clean white, replaced the family oriental rugs with ones made of grass, and selected only a few pieces from her mother's vast art collection to remain on the walls. But she'd kept the timeless chintz chairs and sofa with their Palm Beachy flowered pattern. The result was a house still filled with her mother's furniture, art, and most prized possessions, but with a younger, fresher feel.
"The place looks good, Sister," Palmer said.
"Why thanks," she said, striding with her long legs to the small galley kitchen.
Here changes had been made as well from when the house had been under Lovie's purview. Even while her mama was still alive, Cara had repainted the old white wooden cabinets, but over the past few years she'd replaced all the old appliances with gleaming stainless steel ones. She opened the fridge and pulled out the pitcher of tea. Although she'd provided a new set of white dishes for the rentals, she still kept her mother's old china locked in an out-of-the way cabinet for her own use on the few nights she came here to sleep in her mother's bed. Cara retrieved a key from the back of a drawer and unlocked the cabinet. Smiling at seeing the mismatched china and crystal her mother had enjoyed using at the beach house, Cara reached for two of the old Waterford cut-crystal tall glasses. She quickly added ice, poured two glasses of tea, and handed one to Palmer. She watched, pleased, as he drank thirstily. When he finished, he released a long, satisfied sigh.
He laughed, a low, throaty chortle that prompted her to join in even as she inwardly agreed with Julia. Her brother had gained at least fifteen pounds in the last decade, but Cara wasn't going to be the one to tell him. She suspected Julia told him often enough as it was.
Cara groaned loudly, shaking her head. Here we go, she thought. Their mama had once told her that Palmer was the sort of person who was always hungry for more, in both a literal and a figurative sense. He was never satisfied. Palmer was like their father this way. Palmer had been angry when he'd learned that Mama was leaving Cara the beach house, even though he'd already inherited the big house on Tradd Street and all its expensive contents. But Palmer wanted the beach house, too. Not because he loved it, but because he'd always had big plans for developing the property.
"We might could get around that," he said with a dismissive wave. Whenever her brother slipped into the vernacular, she knew he was deep in thought. Palmer looked out at the empty lot in front of them the way Cara looked at the ocean. Where she saw beauty and felt a near-spiritual sense of awakening, he saw dollar signs.
Cara didn't grace him with a reply. She picked up her glass and turned her head away to look out the window as she sipped her tea.
He paused and waited for her to look back at him. His eyes gleamed.
Cara listened, chewing her lip. She'd love nothing more than to get in early on a deal like this. Palmer had good contacts that went deep in the city's politics. The kind that were forged in school days. God knew, she and Brett needed the money. But their financial situation wasn't such that they could consider big investments.
When her brother talked like this, his tone and body language eerily reminded her of their father's. And a more pugnacious, proud, callous man she'd never met.
"Palmer, just stop," she shot back in a tone that brooked no argument.
Brett stood at the sunroom entrance, a lazy grin on his handsome face. His long arms stretched out as he leaned against the doorframe. The man filled the doorway with his size. His face was flushed from exertion, but Cara immediately recognized the relaxed manner that always came from having finished a tough job to his satisfaction.
Palmer walked toward his brother-in-law with his hand extended and the two men shook hands warmly. Friends since they'd been surfing buddies in their youth, they'd followed diverging paths as adults when Palmer assumed his role in old Charleston society and Brett, indifferent to the social hierarchy, followed his passion as a boat captain on the sea.
"Brother, don't you have any control over your wife?" Palmer asked jovially.
Brett dropped his arm from Cara and put his hand on his hip and looked at Palmer more attentively.
"Brett," Cara interjected testily, trying to ward him off the topic.
"No harm in asking," Brett said.
Palmer was like any fisherman who feels the first tug on the line. He rubbed his jaw and took a step closer to Brett. When he spoke, it was in that man-to-man tone that set Cara's teeth on edge. Palmer didn't even realize he'd turned his back on Cara.
Or, more likely, he absolutely did.
Cara swallowed hard. These rooms signified more than a house to her. This house was not just her mother's touchstone, she realized. It was hers as well. If she sold the beach house, she'd be selling a part of herself. The best part.
If Palmer had left it at that, peace would have prevailed.
The pain came so quick and sharp Cara sucked in her breath. She felt Brett's arm settle on her shoulder with a reassuring squeeze. Palmer was unaware of the dagger he'd thrown. The father of two children, he couldn't understand her and Brett's sense of loss. Not having children was their single greatest regret.
Cara couldn't stop the anger that sparked from the comment. She stepped out of Brett's hold toward her brother. At five feet ten inches, Cara was eye-to-eye with her brother. Cara had moved on from her corporate life. Even though in the past ten years she had adopted Brett's more laid-back lowcountry lifestyle, vestiges of her former ball-busting self still emerged when pushed. Cara stared Palmer down with an icy glare that would have sent shivers through her former colleagues in the boardroom at Leo Burnett.
This reading group guide for Beach House for Rent includes an introduction, discussion questions, and ideas for enhancing your book club. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Two women of different generations are bound together one summer by a very special beach house.
Since returning to Isle of Palms ten years ago, Cara Rutledge, 50, has settled into a quiet, slower-paced life with Brett, her husband. She finds comfort living close to the beloved home she inherited from her mother—the same home she rents out for the summer to 26-year-old Heather Wyatt.
Heather is an artist who travels to Isle of Palms to paint shorebirds commissioned by the US Postal Service. Since her mother's death years earlier, Heather's anxiety has kept her indoors at her father's home. But living alone on the island, going out to the beach every day in search of shore birds, feeling the ocean waves at her feet, the sun on her face—and meeting a gentle young man working on the beach house—chip away at her fears and open her up to new possibilities.
As the summer progresses, these two women's paths suddenly collide, presenting challenges and opportunities that will change not only the course of their summer, but the rest of their lives.
1. In the first two chapters, we learn of Cara's young adulthood—particularly, of her troubled past with her family and her late-in-life reconciliation with her mother. Can you relate to Cara's experiences? Is it ever too late to reconcile with someone after years of absence?
2. Heather's anxiety makes her resistant to change. How do you react to changes that occur in your life? Do you understand Heather's trepidation to move to Isle of Palms for the summer? Is her father's insistence that Heather move out an example of tough love?
3. Turning fifty is a milestone that stirs up lots of emotions for Cara. She's searching for the passion that she feels is missing in her life—and which she sees in Heather. After years of putting aside her dreams, she doubts whether she can find it again. Discuss how her infertility struggles and working for Brett's business prevented her from exploring her own career interests. Is Cara experiencing a midlife crisis? Has a milestone birthday or event ever made you reassess your plans? How important is it to continue pursuing your passions amidst the challenges of our daily lives?
4. Heather is very attached to her canaries. She says her mother's pet canary "saved her" after her mother passed (p. 71). Discuss how animals can offer stability and love to their owners in times of need Do you have any pets that help you through changes in your life?
5. Heather claims she felt the presence of Cara's mother, Olivia Rutledge, on her first night at the beach house. Do you believe this could happen? What do you make of Cara's reaction? Is she jealous, as Brett suggested, or does her response run deeper?
6. Cara's connection to her mother is closely tied to her involvement with sea turtles. Discuss the impact of the pivotal scene on the beach when Cara witnesses the mother sea turtle come ashore.
7. "Her fear kept her as caged as her canaries. The glass windows were no different than their metal bars" (p. 128). Describe Heather's struggles with anxiety. How does it affect her? What steps does she take to overcome her fears? Do you suffer from anxiety or know someone who does? How do you, or they, handle it?
8. Mary Alice Monroe often writes about the disconnect many people feel with nature. Heather is cut off from nature by her anxiety. Is this fear of going outdoors to experience nature or the wild common today? Discuss the metaphor of Heather's mental cage and whether you think many people are also trapped indoors or are shut-ins.
9. Primrose Cottage (the beach house) is beloved by both women, but for different reasons. What does the house symbolize to each of them? Do you have a place that represents something special to you, too? How does the beach house setting influence the course of events in the novel?
10. Trauma and grief are major themes in this novel. Consider Cara's and Heather's experiences with death. How did they each come to terms with their loss? Discuss the methods they use to help each other. Do they ever come to a place of healing?
11. Navigating a romantic relationship is anxious territory for Heather. How does her anxiety interfere with developing any relationship? Discuss how common the negative voices in our heads are when we feel vulnerable or faced with confrontation. Do you have a worry stone?
12. The novel is rich with descriptions of nature and its healing powers. Heather quickly becomes enchanted by the island's beauty after settling into her new beach rental. "Suddenly the path opened up, and she stood before the vast vista of sea and sky as dawn broke around her. Great shafts of rosy light spread across the gray sky. The beach below, washed clean by the tide, shimmered in the pearly tints of the sunrise" (p. 134). How is nature a source of strength for Heather, or to other characters in the novel? Is there a particular scene or passage that stood out for you? Does nature play a role in your life?
13. Discuss the structure of the novel. Cara's and Heather's stories approached the themes of grief, anxiety, and passion from different viewpoints, allowing varying perspectives of age and experience. What parts of their past helped you better understand their present selves? Who did you relate to more?
14. Cara believes that when she moved back to Isle of Palms ten years ago to care for her mother "she could see that thinking of another person made her open up and heal herself" (p. 210). Acknowledging this, how can Cara heal herself once more? Is moving back to the beach house the best way to mend her grief? Do you think her plan is inconsiderate to Heather? What would you do if you were Cara? What do you make of the two women's resolution?
15. Beach House for Rent is set against the backdrop of shorebirds. Monroe introduces readers to different species and the threats. When you go to your favorite beach, how will this novel influence your appreciation as well as your actions? Discuss the birds in your area. How many species can you name? How can you help protect them?
1. Incorporate art into your next book club meeting! If you live near an ocean or park, go with your book club members to paint or draw some of nature's treasures. You could also venture to a Paint and Sip class for a more organized (and instructional) group activity.
2. Visit Isle of Palms! The wonder and peaceful beauty of this southern beach destination comes to life through the pages of Beach House for Rent. Plan a summer vacation with your family or friends to explore the island's exquisite beaches and charming town.
3. Read The Summer Girls, the first book in Mary Alice Monroe's Lowcountry Summer series, for your next book club meeting. And to find more books by Mary Alice Monroe, visit http://maryalicemonroe.com/.
4. Beach House for Rent can be read alone, but it is also the fourth book in the Beach House series. To go back and read more of the Rutledge family of Charleston read Mary Alice Monroe's The Beach House, Beach House Memories, and Swimming Lessons.
5. Beach House for Rent offers a glimpse into the life of someone struggling with social anxiety. What have you learned about social anxiety from reading the novel? Discuss with your book club. To learn more about anxiety, visit the Anxiety and Depression Association of America's website at https://www.adaa.org/.


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text:
import redis = require('redis');

const value: any = 'any value';
const commandArr: any[][] = [];
const num = 0;
const str = 'any string';
const err: Error = new Error();
const args: any[] = [];
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const numCallback: (err: Error | null, res: number) => void = () => {};
const strCallback: (err: Error | null, res: string) => void = () => {};
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const messageHandler: (channel: string, message: any) => void = () => {};

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redis.print(err, value);

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  host: 'localhost',
  port: 6379,
};
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  // If the properties of the interface changes, the variables below will also need to be adapted.
  const error: Error = options.error;
  const total_retry_time: number = options.total_retry_time;
  const times_connected: number = options.times_connected;
  const attempt: number = options.attempt;
  return 5000;
}
function retryStrategyError(options: redis.RetryStrategyOptions): Error {
  return new Error('Foo');
}
client = redis.createClient({
  retry_strategy: retryStrategyNumber
});
client = redis.createClient({
  retry_strategy: retryStrategyError
});
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const retry_backoff: number = client.retry_backoff;
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const offline_queue: any[] = client.offline_queue;
const info: redis.ServerInfo = client.server_info;

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client.unref();

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client.bitcount(str, numCallback);
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client.set('test', 'test', okCallback);
client.mset(args, resCallback);

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client.hmset(str, str, str, str, str, okCallback);
client.hmset(str, [str, str, str, str]);
client.hmset(str, [str, value, str, value], okCallback);

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client.publish(str, value);
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  .scard(str)
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client.addCommand('my other command');

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client.set(str, str, redis.print);
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client.INCRBYFLOAT('a', 1.5, (error, value) => value.startsWith('1'));
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client.HINCRBYFLOAT('a', 'b', 1.5, (error, value) => value.startsWith('1'));
client.zincrby('a', 1, 'b', strCallback);
client.ZINCRBY('a', 1, 'b', strCallback);

client.flushdb(okCallback);

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


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text:
IFP ExclusiveAmericasSelectedTranslated by IFPViews
"US' Unilateralism Could Trigger World War III"
A top Iranian official says the Trump administration's unilateralism could push the world towards a third World War.
Nahavandian
Iranian Vice-President for Economic Affairs Mohammad Nahavandian has, in an article published by Khabar Online, weighed in on the ramifications of Washington's unilateral approaches. The full text of the analytical piece follows.
Friday, July 6, marks the anniversary of the adoption of the Bayonet Constitution in Hawaii in the United States in the late 1900s. One-hundred thirty-one years ago (in 1887) on such a day, Kalakaua, the monarch of the tiny kingdom of Hawaii, had to sign the constitution under the force of the bayonet and threat of terror by a pressure group organized and armed by the Americans and other foreigners residing in Hawaii as well as the CEOs of foreign sugar companies. The constitution gave the Americans and Europeans the right to vote, but set limitations and the condition of being rich for aborigines in Hawaii! Consequently, American troops openly backed by the then US secretary of state quashed any objection by Hawaiian aborigines to this blatant foreign interference. Years later, the US changed the government of Hawaii before occupying it due to its strategic importance in the waters of south Pacific Ocean. The Americans refused to give residents of their neighbouring island the same rights that the US had recognized in the country's constitution for its own people a hundred years before, i.e. in 1788. Despite all their humanitarian rhetoric, the US reserved the right to use force and determine the fate of others. Based on that mind-set, the US would put its interests before those of others, and give itself more rights than others.
Eighty-nine years ago in 1929, the US Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act which slapped the highest-level duties on imports into the US in the country's history. Then US President Herbert Clark Hoover had just won the 1928 presidential election with the slogan of support for local production and employment for American farmers on the threshold of the severe worldwide economic downturn known as the Great Depression (1929-1939). An economic forum of the League of Nations in 1927 in Geneva, which saw signs of a global economic slowdown, urged all states to set aside tariffs and boost international trade to give fresh impetus to economic growth. Some 1,028 American legislators also wrote a letter to Hoover expressing their opposition to trade restrictions. However, Hoover, under pressure from Congress, enforced the 59-percent tariffs on imported goods. Immediately, other countries imposed similar duties on American commodities in a retaliatory move, leading to 61-percent drop in American exports and a decrease in the country's GDP to less than a half during the following four years. The unemployment rate, which stood at 8% at the time the tariffs were ratified, jumped to 25% in three years. Many historians and economists believe the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act and the United States' policy of unilateralism during that period, which led to a 33-percent decline in global trade, were the key contributors to the fueling an perpetuation of the global economic downturn and set the scene for World War II at the end of the 1930s. Senator Smoot and legislator Hawley, despite populist slogans, could not even maintain their seats in Congress in the congressional elections two years later. American statesmen's selfish and unilateral mentalities once again plunged the US and the rest of the world into an unprecedented crisis and conflict. A mentality which prioritized American interests brought humanity to a crisis whose human cost was to strip 60 million people of the right to live worldwide.
Today, the world has once again faced a new wave of common unilateralism among American politicians. It is a current which claims prioritizes American people's interests, but is not against the rights of others. Nevertheless, the first steps taken by this current was to counter the international Paris Agreement on climate change, disrupt regional trade agreements, namely the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), slap high tariffs on imports of aluminium, steel and automobiles, and pull out of the multilateral nuclear deal with Iran. Such moves violate the rights of people of other countries, harm global environment and trade, and result in a global trade war, setting the stage for a global downturn, which poses a threat to world security. The root cause of this dangerous approach is not only profiteering in the trade domain, but is the egoistic approach which considers the US superior to others and gives it the right to determine others' fate. This arrogant point of view is clearly manifested in Trump's decision to ban travellers of certain Muslim countries from entering the US and to separate children of illegal immigrants from their parents.
However, the important difference between our era and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is the widespread awareness of incidents and policies. The global virtual world, even if it has shortcomings, has a major advantage, and that is, it provides for transparency and enables people to put forward their demands immediately and on a large scale. The old and threadbare mentalities of the 19th century have less chance of success in the era of information explosion. Their long-term consequences can be seen in a shorter period of time. Today, everybody in the world understands the true reality of "everybody should be sacrificed for powerful Americans" and react to it. Currently, all across the world, namely inside the United States, have a more widespread awareness of, and show reaction to the disastrous repercussions of the US government's policies. Other countries, too, have begun reacting to Washington's unilateral moves, namely the tariff war. November elections in the United States will show to what extent American voters are aware of this global danger. Governments and nations need to show serious and firm reaction to Washington's unilateral approach and policies in order to ward off a global catastrophe. Those who are familiar with the past and can see the future shoulder the onerous responsibility of contributing to the world public opinion.
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text:
Archived Sections, Reviews
Living into God's image
Charles P. Lutz / March 28, 2014
Lonnie Branch's Reflections of Light
Reflections of Light: The Odyssey of a Black American Lutheran Pastor During the Civil Rights Years. Lonnie L. Branch. Minneapolis: Kirk House Publishers. 2014. $15.95, paperback. 266 pages. www.kirkhouse.com.
Lonnie Branch's personal memoir, titled Reflections of Light, offers powerful reflections on both church and society. The author has lived 82 years, just over half of them as a Lutheran pastor. He writes movingly of God's love as a light that beams healing and justice into a culture whose racism reigns also in communities of faith.
Branch's early life divides into four decade-long segments: 1932-42 childhood in Memphis; 1942-53 reaching adulthood in Chicago; 1953-62 marriage, family, early work in Chicago; 1962-71 civil-rights era and becoming Lutheran.
For his first three decades, Branch lived loosely in the black Baptist tradition. Just a few days shy of turning 20 he was baptized at a Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago; a year later he and wife Doris were married there.
In 1962 the Branches moved to the Cabrini-Green public housing complex in north Chicago. They soon became involved with nearby Holy Family Lutheran, a new congregation of The American Lutheran Church (ALC) that had both white and black members. Its young white pastor, Fred Downing, encouraged Branch into lay leadership at Holy Family, then helped him hear God's call to become "a fisher of human beings."
The 1960s civil-rights movement was moving U.S. Lutherans, overwhelmingly white, to seek more racial inclusiveness. In 1967, with financial support from ALC, Branch began seminary study at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. After a final year at Wartburg Seminary in Dubuque, Iowa, he was ordained in 1971 upon call to a new congregation start in Houston, Texas. He was the ninth African-American pastor on the ALC clergy roster.
In the image of God
After three years in Texas, Branch was called by Lutheran Social Service of Iowa to be the first black chaplain in the Iowa penal system. He served three years at the Men's Reformatory in Anamosa.
In 1976 he returned to parish ministry when called by Prince of Glory Lutheran Church, a mixed-race congregation located in a north Minneapolis public housing community. He served there with a young first-call pastor named Mark Hanson. (Yes, it was "the Mark Hanson" who later served as regional bishop in St. Paul and as presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.) As co-pastors, their first priority, Branch writes, was to be "role models [by sharing] equally pastoral duties."
In 1983 Branch returned to the South, accepting a call to a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod congregation in Mobile, Alabama. Then he served Atonement Lutheran (ELCA) in Atlanta, Georgia, from 1989 to 1996. While there he became president of the ELCA Southeastern Synod Black Pastors Conference. In that role he was "a chief advisor and invaluable colleague," says Harold Skillrud, first bishop of the new ELCA's Atlanta-based synod.
Branch in 1996 returned to corrections chaplaincy — and to Minnesota. He was called by the Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches to be chaplain at Hennepin County's Adult Correctional Facility in Plymouth, Minnesota, where he served for three years.
Since 1996 Lonnie and Doris Branch have lived in Brooklyn Center and have been members at St. Olaf Lutheran Church in north Minneapolis, where he served part-time as visitation pastor following his chaplaincy retirement in 1999.
In all his ministry calls, covering more than three decades, Lonnie Branch says he had one controlling goal: "to define African — black — Americans as people created in God's image."
Black Americans, he concludes, "must continue to pursue a place at the table of socio-economic and political equality. To do less ignores the sacrifices of our forebears and flies in the face of being created in God's image."
Charles P. Lutz is editor emeritus of Metro Lutheran. He is a member of Lutheran Church of Christ the Redeemer in Minneapolis.
Tags: ALC, Atonement Lutheran Church Atlanta, Cabrini-Green, Charles P. Lutz, Doris Branch, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Fred Downing, Harold Skillrud, Hennepin County's Adult Correctional Facility, Holy Family Lutheran Church Chicago, Kirk House Publishers, Lonnie Branch, Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, Lutheran Social Service of Iowa, Mark Hanson, Men's Reformatory in Anamosa, Missionary Baptist Church Chicago, Prince of Glory Lutheran Church Minneapolis, Reflections of Light, Southeastern Synod Black Pastors Conference, St. Olaf Lutheran Church Minneapolis, The American Lutheran Church, Wartburg Seminary


text:
East London Advertiser > News > Crime
Security lights and SmartWater installed to protect Poplar community garden
Pc Dave Warlow hands Smartwater kit to Tom Gleed [photos: Sandra Rowse] - Credit: Archant
Security has been tightened with solar lighting and SmartWater kits to mark property at the community garden in London's East End that intruders have raided five times.
The community rallied round to protect their public garden lovingly tended by Britain's greenest tenant, Tom Gleed, after reading about the break-ins in the East London Advertiser.
Members of the local police liaison forum presented Tom with a Smartwater kit to mark his property and returned at the weekend to fix solar-energy security lights to deter intruders on Poplar's Brownfields housing estate, next to the Blackwall Tunnel, after raiders stole all his tools.
Mile End Panel chairman Andy Ager was up the ladder bright and early on Saturday to fix the solar light to Tom's chicken shack. There wasn't a moment to lose.
The lights are part of a programme to protect vulnerable and isolated people which has received funding from the Mayor of London.
The high-tech CSI-type SmartWater kit is also included, which has individually-traceable liquid that Tom can apply to almost any item of value to deter theft and to help identify culprits. The liquid leaves a unique, long-lasting 'identifier' that's invisible to the naked eye, except under an ultraviolet light, and each batch has its own specific 'signature' that can identify the real owner.
SmartWater kits have been distributed free to households in burglary hot-spots around Mile End and Bromley-by-Bow since the beginning of the year. Latest crime data shows a "substantial reduction of burglaries" in the area since then.
Tom Gleed was presented with his Greenest Tenant in Britain title in October by explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, in the Chartered Institute of Housing awards, for helping to transform wasteland near the A12 Blackwall Tunnel Approach into a thriving, sustainable "people's garden" and looking after it in all weathers.


text:
Q: Enable WCF calls in a Windows Phone Mango I developed a WCF in a Managed Windows Service, based on this tutorial
This is how my interface are defined :
namespace HomeAutomationWindowsService
{
    [ServiceContract]
    public interface IHomeAutomation
    {
        [OperationContract]
        string connect();

        [OperationContract]
        Boolean sendAction(string address, string command);
    }
}

And my App.config file is like this :
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<configuration>

  <system.web>
    <compilation debug="true" targetFramework="4.0" />
  </system.web>
  <system.serviceModel>
    <bindings>
      <wsHttpBinding>
        <binding name="Unsecured">
          <security mode="None" />
        </binding>
      </wsHttpBinding>
    </bindings>
    <services>
      <service name="HomeAutomationWindowsService.HomeAutomationService"
               behaviorConfiguration="HomeAutomationServiceBehavior">
      <host>
          <baseAddresses>
              <add baseAddress="http://192.168.11.178:8000/service"/>
          </baseAddresses>
      </host>
        <!-- this endpoint is exposed at the base address provided by     host: http://localhost:8000/service  -->
        <endpoint address=""
                  contract="HomeAutomationWindowsService.IHomeAutomation"
                  binding="wsHttpBinding"
                  bindingConfiguration="Unsecured" />
        <!-- the mex endpoint is explosed at http://192.168.11.178:8000/    mex -->
        <endpoint address="mex"
                  binding="mexHttpBinding"
                  contract="IMetadataExchange" />
      </service>
    </services>
    <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior name="HomeAutomationServiceBehavior">
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true"/>
          <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="False"/>
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
    </behaviors>
  </system.serviceModel>

When I make a call from a Console or a WPF App I can see the public methods, but when I do it using Windows Phone I can't see anything.
What I should do to make my WCF or Windows Phone communicating together.

A: I think WsHttpBinding is not supported by WP7. Try using BasicHttpBinding:
Web.config:
  <system.serviceModel>
    <services>
      <service name="MyProject.MyService" behaviorConfiguration="behavior">
        <endpoint address="" binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="binding" contract="MyProject.MyService" />
      </service>
    </services>
    <behaviors>
      <serviceBehaviors>
        <behavior name="behavior">
          <serviceMetadata httpGetEnabled="true" />
          <serviceDebug includeExceptionDetailInFaults="true" />
        </behavior>
      </serviceBehaviors>
    </behaviors>
    <bindings>
      <basicHttpBinding>
        <binding name="binding">
        </binding>
      </basicHttpBinding>
    </bindings>
  </system.serviceModel>

After adding the webservice to your WP7 project (add service reference) the ServiceReferences.ClientConfig should look like (adding web service with WsHttpBinding generates an empty file):
<configuration>
    <system.serviceModel>
        <bindings>
            <basicHttpBinding>
                <binding name="BasicHttpBinding_DataService" maxBufferSize="2147483647"
                    maxReceivedMessageSize="2147483647">
            </basicHttpBinding>
        </bindings>
        <client>
            <endpoint address="https://localhost:44300/Services/DataService.svc"
                binding="basicHttpBinding" bindingConfiguration="BasicHttpBinding_DataService"
                contract="DataService.DataService" name="BasicHttpBinding_DataService" />
        </client>
    </system.serviceModel>
</configuration>

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
The Monthly Christian Spectator. 1851-1859
must co-operate in setting forth what needs to be done, and what means for doing it exist, or can be invented. Many mistakes, and failures even, must precede the adoption of our cardinal · Suggestions.' For all wide and productive movements are, to human apprehension, slow, and their phases are many. But we will not despair respecting the final accomplishment of our desire ; and we will consider ourselves abundantly rewarded, if by what we have said, the possibility of effecting larger and more enduring good by Sunday-schools, than they have ever yet been employed to secure, should be admitted by those to whom we have offered these remarks.
Words for the Wise.
Faithful are the wounds of a friend.'--Solomox,
Ego autem neminem nomino ; quare irasci mihi nemo poterit,
nisi qui ante de se voluerit confiteri.'-Cicero.
M'ORANGE had been the speaker, and these the last words of his closing appeal. The hall was still ringing with applause, and I had turned to leave, when my attention was arrested for a moment by the smile which mantled upon a face at my elbow. The face itself was quite a study, and I pleased myself with reading all I could of my neighbour's history in its lines. You are an artizan,' I said, mentally. * Your weekly earnings may be some 21., which you regularly entrust to your wife's care. You never enter a gin-palace, nor an ale-house. You sometimes look at the Dispatch, but it does not teach your creed. Your wife may have a sitting at the Methodist chapel, but if so, you seldom accompany her thither. You shun the district church. The preacher at the Baptist chapel is more to your taste, and occasionally you have been there, but every one has looked so well-dressed, and the whole affair has smacked so strongly of middle-class respectability, that you have felt out of your element, and have gradually withdrawn to your own fire-side. You believe the Bible, however, revere the Great Teacher, and count yourself a Christian and a Protestant; but for the rampant Protestantism of the day, it liketh you not. It hath an odour of some certain sects you have read of in the Inspired Books. It may be sincere, you think; but, like old Gobbo, it is more than sand-blind.
And what the lights of the Dissenting churches can be doing on the platform—the Samaritans worshipping at Jerusalem-would puzzle you grievously, if you were not in some respects more astute than they. Surely you have seen the face of that speaker at an Anti-statechurch meeting, where his text was "a clear stage and no favour;" and now he is bawling with the loudest of them. You smile again, and turn away. You will digest these thoughts at your leisure.'
This took place more than a year ago. The nation at that time was, or pretended to be, in a fever. The Prime Minister had stooped to give the alarm; and every churchwarden in the country was cheering him to the echo. The country gentlemen, mindful of their churchlivings, were mustering in the shire-halls, and the shopkeepers of London, at many a tumultuous vestry meeting, were making a noisy demonstration-against Puseyism. The Times' was rallying all good Protestants to the old war-cry; and the Reverend Melchizedek M-Orange, like the peripatetic orator that he is, was hurrying from place to place to preach his crusade. The fever has abated since then; but what with Maynooth and Dr. Achilli, we dare not be too sanguine. Unpleasant symptoms recur from time to time; and whilst the elections have been in progress, I have been reminded so often and so eloquently of our common Protestantism,' that I am sorely tempted to ask what the meaning of the phrase may be.
But where to ask, and of whom? What, indeed, are we to understand by · Protestantism' itself? Who shall define for us this somewhat hazy abstraction? Shall we put history to the question ? Shall we inquire for the origin of this singular appellation? Shall we go back to the Diet of Spires in 1529 ? Shall we listen to the Imperial edict which was read there and then? To the muttered complaints of the Saxon elector, that no former emperor had dared to use such language : To the whisper amongst the princes, that he who had ventured upon it now ought to be told, that their rights were more ancient than the elevation of his own house? Shall we see the German followers of the Swiss Zwingli joining hands with Luther for the occasion, and urging the indignant leaders to found and deliver in their Protest? If so, we shall discover that, on the 19th of April in that year, some of the states and princes of the German Confederacy took political action in a certain matter, and that these courageous men earned for themselves thereby the name of Protestants. So much is clearly discernible amidst the confusions of the time. But beyond this we shall not be able to make much progress. The negative term expands in a most perplexing manner; crosses the Rhine, the Alps, the sea; and is found, ere long, to cover and comprehend the most singular varieties of opinion, and the most diverse modes of action. It reminds one of the description which travellers have given of certain rivers. For a short time, they tell us, the stream flows steadily along its channel, and its course may be defined with sufficient clearness. But soon the sluggish waters begin to ooze through the dissolving banks. They diffuse themselves gradually over a wider extent of surface; until, at length, both stream and bank disappear. The traveller feels that if he attempt to follow its course, he will inevitably be lost; and the Queen's own hydrographer, puzzled to define its bounaries, would have to shade off the lazy expanse into infinite space. History, therefore, will not help us. There is nothing for it but to
take our stand here and now; and in the heart of England, and in the middle of the nineteenth century, to ask,' What is - Protestantism," and who are the " Protestants ?"" Singular question; which the compositor looks at in a dubious, hesitating manner. But necessary, it appears ; and, coûte qui coûte, I must endeavour to answer it. Well for M.Orange if he makes aught of the sentences which follow.
The Archbishop of Canterbury then is a Protestant, of course ; and so likewise is Philosopher Single-Speech; and so I presume are the excellent reviewers who investigate his books. Harry of Exeter, also, is a · Protestant;' and eke my Lord Plantagenet, as well as Dr. Pliable, and the two new members for Liverpool. Signor Giacinto Achilli again is a . Protestant;' so was the judge who tried him ; so were the twelve gentlemen who found no fault in him; and so, it may be, was the writer in the • Times,' who doomed them all, next mo
morning, to everlasting infamy. But why go on? Is not England a Protestant country?' Her authorized Churchmen, from the dignified Primate who may not say grace'even, save in the ear of royalty, down, through innumerable grades, to the Tractarian curate who feels, for the first time to-day, a mysterious . virtue tingling at his fingers' ends, are • Protestants,' to a man, Her Evangelicals are Protestants;' from M'Orange himself (quantum immane discrepat) to my poor friend Discipulus. Most of her politicians even, from the clever gentleman who believes in the second part of the Jewish religion,' down to the meanest rioter who flung stones (on the right side) at Stockport, are sound Protestants. Litterateurs and lawyers, bishops and Dissenting deputies, Unitarian preachers and stockjobbers, believers and blasphemers, men who will sign anything and men who will sign nothing; only think, good reader, what a comprehensive term that must be which is used to denote the religious opinions or the religious condition of all these!
Or is it of our Protestant Establishment,' exclusively, that M'Orange speaks? Scarcely of that even. For he himself has been heard to affirm that several thousands of the clergymen whom it feeds are Papists, and not · Protestants.' True, he challenges their right to be there; and but by his own admission they are there, and that is enough. It can hardly be our Great Establishment, therefore, which is meant by our bewildered friend. As if indeed the three co-heirs, Laud, Cranmer, and Erastus, who divide amongst them that prodigious estate, could have anything in common,'-unless, perhaps, a common
. interest, or, better still the word, reader, is no invention of mine), a common incumbency!
• But are there not the Protestant Dissenters?' asks one; "and have not they Yes indeed, they have; to their shame be it spoken. Will posterity believe, that in 1850, two hundred years after Milton's time, the English Dissenters came forward, under pretexts ever so colourable, to join hands with the bishops in defence of English prelacy? Will it believe that they shouted, with might and main, for the supremacy of the Crown in matters ecclesiastical? Well, perhaps it may. Perhaps it will believe anything of a generation which reads
the 'Windbag.' But even these far-seeing Dissenters do not mean what you mean.
No, no. They have no intention of shouting for your « Protestantism.' They would take away your tithes and your Prayer-book to-morrow if they could. Oh, M'Orange, you are not a shadow yourself; for you were, when I last saw you, rather stout; but • what shadows' you 'pursue,'
• Credule ! Quid frustra simulacra fugacia captas ?
QUOD PETIS EST NUSQUAM,' The truth is, that our common Protestantism' is but a euphemism for ' No Popery.' It means that, or it means nothing. And as birds build their nests in spring on the scarecrows of the preceding autumn, so, if we must have a bugbear, it is some consolation to know that we have to do with a familiar one. For England knows that cry, and has determined already, with some misgivings, perhaps, that she can afford to smile at it; and refers it to the dead scarecrows of bygone years. Right or wrong, England has decided, on the whole, that Popery shall be allowed to try its strength upon her soil. The Manchester school will have it so.
The Peel-statesmen are of the same mind. The Irish brigade is recruiting its ranks. Even Oxford sends one representative to affirm the decree ; and the sharpshooters of Parliament, who acknowledge no leader, and agree in little else, agree to a man in this, that the Cardinal is no worthy mark for their Miniés. The Times' itself has left off favouring the gaping public with its property-thunderstorms. And as for the Whig leader, who sounded the note of alarm so vehemently in the Durham Letter,' all the world knows how swiftly he tightened the ligaments of his glottis, and let his lusty English cry go up into an Italian falsetto. He began, sure enough, with the voce di petto, as they say in Italy, the voice from the chest; but he ended in the voce di testa, the voice from the head, and even that seemed at one time about to leave off piping and whistling in its sound. If, then, I wished ever so to join in the No-Popery' cry, this fact alone would suffice to deter me, that it is now too late. Every one has heard of the seven reasons assigned by some good man for not lending a capote ; of which the seventh and last was, that he had not got one. Sensible people asked why he should have taken the trouble to name the other six, since that alone would have been sufficient. Even so M'Orange, are there seven good reasons why I should not shout · No Popery;' but the seventh may suffice,– It will be of no use.'
Perhaps, after all, the chief danger to be apprehended at present does not lie in the direction of Rome. Perhaps, if we could but see it, the storm with which, as many think, the air is already thick, is gathering in another quarter. Perhaps, in the matter of religion, men are casting off authority at the present moment, rather than invoking it; and it may be, that they will not distinguish accurately between the precepts of the priest and the restraints of Heaven. I, for one, think that what Discipulus has here written may be better worth attention than the eloquence of M.Orange. • Wise men,' says hē, 'must work whilst it is called to-day-yet in
VOL. II.
the intervals of their toil they can scarcely choose but think of the morrow. And passionately, as in former times, so now, and never more passionately than now, are these endeavouring to question the dumb future. What new phase is society destined to present next? From the dead" belief in believing," which has by courtesy been called religion, the ardent and the thoughtful are beginning to turn away. Whither will they go ? For, go where they may, they will draw after them, for a time, the populations of the world. So much, as by an irresistible law, is decreed already. Will they, then, find a living Christianity, or will they have to wander for a generation or two in the mazes of doubt? The question of questions at this moment in men's minds !
Or again, somewhat abruptly, he exclaims, "A" common Protestantism?" Say rather, a common materialism! A common terror ! A common distrust of everything but the Queen's Bench! Prate about it as we may, old names have lost their significance in these new times. For the present, men will not list under the banner of Loyola; no, nor under Luther's; but, if at all, under Christ's. The old struggle between free thought and authority will go on; but on neither side will the combatants rally to the old watch-words. How should they indeed, when the very language of the Church is changing on her lips ? Not that Christianity itself can change. Men will always find it, where the martyrs and confessors of former ages found it, in the intercessory prayer of Christ, and the profound arguments of Paul. But it will put on new forms. It will learn more and more to dispense with forms. It will be seen by all, as it is now seen by some, to be not a system, but a life. And then, and not till then, we may look for something better than this stern " Individualism," which is all that is at present left us. Organization in the name of the Gospel may become something more than a mere aggregation of dead units. There will be no need of a "common Protestantism," for we shall have a common Christianity, the fellowship of believers, the commuNION OF SAINTS.'
X. Y. Z.
The Primrunl Prriod of Britain.
History, it has been said, is the geology of the human world. The analogy is more correct than in the majority of imaginative utterances. It is, at least, admitted by the very unimaginative author of the work named below,* who rejects the usual expressions, an age of stone, an age of bronze, and an age of iron,' as divisions having no meaning in history, which cannot,' he says, be treated as a physical science,
The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon; a History of the Early Inhabitants of Britain, down to the Conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. Wus