I have been married for nineteen years and I can say with hand on heart that my husband and I have a true soulmate relationship. He is my best friend, we totally support each other and our relationship helps us both on a daily basis to grow into the best people we can be.
But it has not always been easy for me and before I met my husband I had a string of highly dissatisfying relationships. Only after researching this topic for many years and eliminating in myself all the faulty attitudes that led to these problematic relationships have I been able to create this deeply satisfying relationship.
Because I had so many problems in this area myself, I had to be very clear what works in a relationship and what doesn't. It is exactly this conscious personal growth that enables me now to help countless clients to find their soulmate or transform their existing relationship into a soulmate relationship.
The most important thing in a soulmate relationship is a deep commitment to grow in love. Love means the heartfelt wish for one's partner to be happy. Once this motivation is in place, all practical disagreements can be dealt with by simply becoming creative until a compromise has been found that feels good to both partners.
It is interesting that virtually everybody believes that they are a loving person. Nobody really wants to admit that they are consciously and maliciously selfish. But all conflicts in relationships are due to the fact that one partner puts their own needs above the needs of the other person.
If this selfishness is denied and concealed then it is impossible to deal with it. But as soon as these selfish patterns have been brought into the daylight they can be corrected.
Obviously it is very painful to admit that one has acted in a selfish way and ask for forgiveness. But it is exactly this humility that is the basis of a true soulmate relationship.
I have found in my own relationship and also in the relationships of my clients that you can only be happy if you have an even deal with your partner. This means that the overall give and take between two people roughly evens out and that both partners feel that they are giving as much as they are getting out of the relationship.
But most people do not like thinking about romantic relationships in terms of a deal because it just feels too calculating. Particularly women are fond of the idea of unconditional love. It is therefore not surprising that it is usually women who complain about the selfishness of their boyfriends and husbands. They have allowed the even deal to get out of balance to their own disadvantage and cannot understand why their partner does not want to reciprocate.
I see this dynamic in roughly 95% of my female clients with relationship problems. It is therefore an extremely important lesson to learn for most women to stop over-caring and to ask their partner to give as much as they take. Usually their boyfriend or husband will comply because, as explained above, nobody likes to be consciously selfish.
I have found that you can observe the essential pattern in a relationship virtually from the very first meetings with a new partner. Like a seed these first one or two meetings already show all the dynamics that will evolve in the years to come.
It is therefore paramount to learn to spot the early warning signs and to take them seriously. Dating is NOT a time for positive thinking!
One of the questions you should ask yourself early on is whether you would like to become like your potential partner. If the answer is 'no', you should speedily abandon the idea of getting seriously involved with this person. The reason for this dynamic is that over time we will take on more and more character traits from our partner, whether we like it or not.
If our partner is angry and depressed, for example, we will become more angry and depressed as well. And if our potential partner is very loving and joyful then our own life will become more loving and fun-filled after being with this person for some time.


TOKYO, Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd. and Fujitsu Limited today announced the development of technology that can automate the design of magnetic material geometries, using AI to minimize energy loss. To design magnetic materials, which are common components in electronic devices, developers previously worked under conditions where they had to spend large amounts of time and money conducting tests based on trial and error. The new technology automates and digitizes the development of prototypes, significantly improving R&D efficiency. In addition, this technology is expected to enable geometric designs for magnets, even without specialized expertise, in a variety of R&D fields, such as power electronics and electric vehicle motors. Fujitsu aims to make design services incorporating this technology available through the cloud in 2020.


of enabling and empowering citizens to participate.
but with no muscles, with no real change or right to decide.
hear customers' voices (suggestions and complaints) that can drive the change.
centricity by involving large numbers of people and the fact that it has a benefit as a business model.
completely a voluntary work of undertaking a certain task.
twitter and Facebook became more convenient channels for customers and not for governments.
the end user (the customer) with the update and sustain customer satisfaction.
Crowdsensing = Crowdsourcing + Analytics + IoT.
order to back your solution with the Analytics arm and the IoT flavor.
5. Use the power of data to analyse the customer voice with other complaints from the same location and correlate customer demographic information with customer insights.
6. To sustain the solution and maintain proactivity, innovative IoT solutions are used to monitor the location and sustain the solution.


text:
Township of Upper Hanover, PA
Ch 7 Authorities
Ch 47 Local Government Investment Trust
§ 47-1 Settlor of trust.
§ 47-2 Purchase of shares.
§ 47-3 Custody of funds.
§ 47-4 Findings.
Ch 52 Manager, Township
Ch 59 Mutual Aid
Ch 65 Official Map
Ch 71 Pensions
Ch 77 Planning Commission
Ch 92 School Crossing Guards
Ch 120 Alarm Systems
Ch 144 Buildings, Dangerous
Ch 159 Cable Television Systems
Ch 187 Disturbing the Peace
Ch 196 Driveways and Lanes, Private
Ch 208 Engine Brake Retarders
Ch 231 Fire Protection District
Ch 240 Floodplain Management
Ch 271 Key Boxes
Ch 302 Municipal Claims and Liens
Ch 328 Parks and Recreation Rules and Regulations
Ch 383 Sewers and Sewage Disposal
Ch 425 Subdivision and Land Development
Ch 451 Truss Construction Identification
Township of Upper Hanover, PA / Part I: Administrative Legislation
Chapter 47 Local Government Investment Trust
[HISTORY: Adopted by the Board of Supervisors of the Township of Upper Hanover 5-9-1989 by Ord. No. 89-2. Amendments noted where applicable.]
This governmental unit shall join with other local governmental units in accordance with the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act[1] by becoming a settlor of the trusts and entering into the declarations of trust for the trusts, which are adopted by reference with the same effect as if such declarations of trust had been set out verbatim in this section and copies of which shall be filed with the minutes of the meeting at which this chapter was adopted.
Editor's Note: See 53 Pa.C.S.A. § 2301 et seq,
This governmental unit is authorized to purchase shares in the trusts from time to time with available funds, and to redeem some or all of those shares from time to time as funds are needed for other purposes, subject to the terms and restrictions of the declarations of trust referred to in § 47-1. These actions are to be taken by the officers designated for this purpose, pursuant to general or specific instructions by the governing body of this governmental unit.
The trustees of each trust are designated as having official custody of this governmental unit's funds which are invested by the purchase of shares in such trust.
As required by the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act, the following matters are specifically found and determined:
The conditions of the agreement with respect to each trust are set forth in the respective declaration of trust referred to in § 47-1;
This governmental unit's participation in each trust shall be terminable at any time by ordinance/resolution, subject to the terms and restrictions of the respective declaration of trust referred to in § 47-1;
With respect to each trust, the declaration of trust and the purchase of its shares are for the purpose of investing this governmental unit's funds in obligations which are otherwise legal investments, as part of a pooled arrangement with other local governmental units, thereby achieving economic and other advantages of pooled investments, and the powers and scope of authority delegated are set forth in the declaration of trust referred to in § 47-1;
It is not necessary to finance the agreement authorized herein from funds of this governmental unit except through the purchase of shares in the trusts;
Each trust shall be managed by a board of trustees as set forth in the respective declaration of trust referred to in § 47-1 and the respective bylaws provided for therein;
Shares of each trust may be purchased and redeemed from time to time as this governmental unit may determine to be necessary or appropriate to meet its cash investment requirements and in accordance with the terms and restrictions of the respective declarations of trust referred to in § 47-1; and
Each trust shall be empowered to enter into contracts for policies of group insurance and employee benefits, including social security, for its employees.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Bader, Christine., Itzcovitz, Rose., hoopla digital.
hoopla:MWT11373523|eAudiobook|Audio Books|Unabridged.|English|Gildan Audio ,|2014.|1 online resource (1 audio file (6hr., 45 min.)) : digital., hoopla:MWT11443969|eBook|eBook||English|Bibliomotion, Inc.,|2014.|1 online resource, hoopla:MWT11988322|eBook|eBook||English|Bibliomotion, Inc.,|2014.|1 online resource, ils:.b21808697|Book|Books||English|Bibliomotion,||xxii, 242 pages ; 23 cm.


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If you're a member of ACM, you have access to about 1200 books online through Safari and Books24x7. Safari's catalog is here, Books24x7 is here. Just login using your ACM ID & password. I can't say the book selection is that exciting, some are half a decade old or older (bad for books about APIs), though there are few that might be of interest. If nothing else, there are some guides to popular packages and languages that might help you out.
Worth a reminder: if you're an ACM SIGGRAPH member, you also get access to essentially all computer graphics papers in the ACM's Digital Library. I took a peek today to see if the I3D 2012 papers were up yet (the conference runs this weekend) – no joy there, though 2011's are available. At least, I'm pretty sure 2012's are not up. Personally, I find their searcher kind of poor if you want to search through proceedings, but is otherwise serviceable for individual articles. As usual, Ke Sen Huang's page is the place to go to get most of the latest articles (with no membership needed).
Oh, just to reel off some other free books that might be of interest: Autodesk's "Imagine Design Create" book, a free PDF. More for designers but full of pretty pictures and there's stuff on game graphic design, along with films and much else. If you'd rather have the coffee-table version, get it on Amazon.
Me, I just finished the crowd-sourced sci-fi "Machine of Death" compilation, which has nothing to do with computer graphics but was an interesting bedtime read. Free as an ebook or audiobook, or again in physical form from Amazon.
Besides the technical sessions, I3D is a great opportunity to meet and talk to some of the top experts in real-time graphics; if you're local and not already planning to attend, I warmly recommend it.
The Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games (I3D) has long been one of my favorite conferences. Best described as a "real-time focused mini-SIGGRAPH", I3D is a typical smaller conference in that it's single-track (no worries about overlapping sessions), and the attendance is low enough (around 200 people) that you have a hope of meeting and talking to most of the people.
This year, the conference schedule has been structured to be especially friendly to game developers that are either flying into San Francisco the previous week to attend GDC or that are based close to the conference venue in Costa Mesa. If you belong to either of these two groups, you would do well to include I3D in your plans – the content is very strong this year.
The first day of I3D overlaps GDC, but the organizers were kind enough to occupy that day with content primarily targeted at other industries; game developers who fly down from GDC to catch the last two days of I3D over the weekend will get almost all of the relevant content. This scheduling is also useful to local game developers who aren't going to GDC, since they won't need to miss a day of work.
I3D's papers have typically been of high quality (on average much more likely to be useful to game developers than SIGGRAPH papers), and this year is no exception. As usual, Ke-Sen Huang has a preprints links page up, and most of the papers are already available.
The most interesting paper sessions for game developers in my opinion are "GPU Rendering" (with the papers A Reconstruction Filter for Plausible Motion Blur, Decoupled Deferred Shading for Hardware Rasterization, and Rectilinear Texture Warping for Fast Adaptive Shadow Mapping), "Surfaces and Textures" (with the papers Surface Based Anti-Aliasing, Efficient Pixel-Accurate Rendering of Curved Surfaces, and Multiresolution Attributes for Tessellated Meshes), and "Global Illumination and Ray Tracing" (with the papers Real-Time Bidirectional Path Tracing via Rasterization, Delta Radiance Transfer, and Fast, Effective BVH Updates for Animated Scenes). Other paper sessions with material of interest to game developers include "Scattering and Reflection" and "Motion Capture and Animation". All of these paper sessions are on the last two days.
Besides papers, I3D 2012 will also feature a keynote by Prof. Dinesh Pai (a prominent sensorimotor researcher at the University of British Columbia), a CAD industry talk by Mauricio Vives (a graphics software engineer at Autodesk), a banquet dinner including a talk by a yet-to-be-determined speaker from NVIDIA, poster presentations, and a game industry session (the details of which have not yet been announced, but from what I've heard it promises to be very good). All of these sessions except for the keynote are on the last two days.
Ke-Sen Huang, who in a perfect world would be given a stipend just to maintain his wonderful pages, has been on the job collecting I3D 2012 papers. See them here.
GDC has put a bit of a hiatus in my I3D posts; I better get them done soon so I can move onto the GDC posts.
This post describes a talk that David Luebke (Director of Research at NVIDIA) gave during the I3D banquet titled GPU Computing: Past, Present, and Future. Although the slides for the I3D talk are not available, parts of this talk appear to be similar to one David gave a few months ago, which does have video and slides available.
I'll summarize the talk here; anyone interested in more detail can view the materials linked above.
A "photonic fence" that zaps mosquitoes with lasers, to reduce the incidence of malaria in third world countries. This application needs fast computer vision combined with low power consumption, which was achieved by using GPUs.
A military vehicle which detects Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) using computer vision techniques. The speedup afforded by using GPUs enables the vehicle to drive much faster (an obvious advantage when surrounded by hostile insurgents) while still reliably detecting IEDs.
A method for processing CT scans that enables much reduced radiation exposure for the patient. When running on CPUs, the algorithm was impractically slow; GPUs enabled it to run fast enough to be used in practice.
A motion compensation technique that enables surgery on a beating heart. The video of the heart is motion-compensated to appear static to the surgeon, who operates through a surgical robot that translates the surgeon's motions into the moving frame of the heart.
David started the next part of the talk (which is very similar to the earlier version linked above) by going over the heritage of GPU computing. He did so by going over three separate historical threads: graphics hardware, supercomputing, and finally GPU Computing.
The "history of graphics hardware" section started with a brief mention of a different kind of hardware: Dürer's perspective machine. The history of electronic graphics hardware started with Ivan Sutherland's SketchPad and continues through the development of the graphics pipeline by SGI: Geometry Engine (1982), RealityEngine (1993), and InfiniteReality (1997). In the early days, the graphics pipeline was an actual description of the physical hardware structure: each stage was a separate chip or board, with the data flow fixed by the routing of wires between them. Currently, the graphics pipeline is an abstraction; the stages are different threads running on a shared pool of cores, as seen in modern GPU designs such as the GeForce 8, GT200, and Fermi.
The second historical thread was the development of supercomputers. David covered the early development of three ways to build a parallel machine: SIMD (Goddard MPP, Maspar MP-1, Thinking Machines CM-1 and CM-2), hardware multithreading (Tera MTA) and symmetric multiprocessing (SGI Challenge, Sun Enterprise) before returning to Fermi as an example of a design that combines all three.
"GPU computing 1.0" was the use (or abuse) of graphics pipelines and APIs to do general-purpose computing, culminating with BrookGPU. CUDA ushered in "GPU computing 2.0" with an API designed for that purpose. The hardware supported branching and looping, and hid thread divergence from the programmer. David claimed that now GPU computing is in a "3.0" stage, supported by a full ecosystem (multiple APIs, languages, algorithms, tools, IDEs, production lines, etc.). David estimated that there are about 100,000 active GPU compute developers in the world. Currently CUDA includes features such as "GPU Direct" (direct GPU-to-GPU transfer via a unified address space), full C++ support, and a template library.
The "future" part of the talk discussed the workloads that will drive future GPUs. Besides current graphics and high performance computing workloads, David believes a new type of workload, which he calls computational graphics, will be important. In some cases this will be the use of GPU compute to improve (via better performance or flexibility) algorithms typically performed using the graphics pipeline (image histogram analysis for HDR tone mapping, depth of field, bloom, texture-space diffusion for subsurface scattering, tessellation), and in others it will be to perform algorithms for which the graphics pipeline is not well-suited: ray tracing, stochastic rasterization, or dynamic object-space ambient occlusion.
David believes that the next stage of GPU computing ("4.0") poses challenges to APIs (such as CUDA), to researchers, and to the education community. CUDA needs to be able to elegantly express programming models beyond simple parallelism, it needs to better express locality, and the development environment needs to improve and mature. Researchers need to foster new high-level libraries, languages, and platforms, as well as rethinking their algorithms. Finally, computer science curricula need to start teaching parallel computing in the first year.
An industry session kicked off the second day of I3D (there were papers on the first day that I'm skipping over since I'll do a paper roundup post later).
This session was comprised of two talks by game industry speakers – Dan Baker (Firaxis), and Chris Hecker (currently working on the indie game SpyParty). I'll summarize each talk as well as the discussion that followed.
Dan started by stressing that although most interactive graphics research has games as the primary target application, researcher's priorities and the needs of the game industry are often misaligned. Game developers prize papers that enable increasing visual quality and/or productivity, describe techniques that are art-directable, and that inspire further work.
Dan complained that researchers appear to prize novelty over practicality. Often papers intended to inspire future research instead create things nobody needs, like a cheese grater-mousetrap combination (an actual patent registration). Papers are judged by other researchers who often lack the background needed to determine their utility.
As Dan pointed out, the vast majority of graphics papers over the years have not been used. He illustrated this by contrasting two papers which had citation rates wildly out of step with their actual real-world impact.
It solved an already solved problem – artists were already trained to create low-polygon models and weren't looking for automatic tools which they couldn't control and which would require changes to the tool chain. Building the mesh was a relatively small part of the art asset pipeline in any case.
The process was fragile and the quality of the final result varied.
Hardware advances rapidly reduced the importance of vertex and triangle throughput as bottlenecks.
In contrast, a paper on vertex cache optimization (written by the same author – Hughes Hoppe) had very low citation rates. However, it had a profound impact in practice. Almost every game pipeline implements similar techniques – it is considered professional negligence at this point not to. Why is this paper so heavily used by game developers?
It was easy to implement and integrate into the asset pipeline.
It did not impact visual quality.
It increased performance across the board.
It remained valuable in the face of ongoing hardware changes.
Hardware advances can rapidly render techniques irrelevant, but this can typically be predicted based on current trends.
Give developers something they need – an incremental improvement to something useful is better than a profound advance in an esoteric area.
Radical changes in the way things are done are difficult to sell.
Chris recorded the audio of his talk, and has a flash animation of the slides synchronized to the audio (as well as separate downloads) on his website.
One comment Chris made resonated with me, although it was unrelated to the main topic of his talk. He said he thought games are around where films were in 1905 in terms of development. I've been looking a lot into the history of films lately, and that sounds about right to me – games still have a long way to go. Anyway, back to the theme of stuff game developers want from researchers. Chris stated that although it is commonly thought that the top (indeed only) priority for game developers is performance, the top three game technology priorities in his opinion are robustness, simplicity, and performance, in that order. He went into some more detail on each of these.
Robustness: this is important because of interactivity. Players can get arbitrarily close to things, look at them from different angles, etc. and everything needs to hold up. Chris describes several dimensions of robustness: what are the edge cases (when does it break), what are the failure modes (how does it break), what are the downsides to using the technique, is the parameter space simply connected (i.e. can you tweak and interpolate the parameters and get reasonable results), and are the negative results described (things the researchers tried that didn't work). Published papers in particular have a robustness problem – when game developers try to implement them they typically don't work. Page limits mitigate against a proper analysis of drawbacks, implementation tips, etc. Now that most journals and conference proceedings are going paperless, Chris claimed that there is no reason to have these restrictive page limits.
Simplicity: Chris stated that games are always at the edge of systemic complexity failure. If the toolchain is not on the edge of collapse, that means the game developers missed out on an opportunity to add more stuff. It's the classic "straw that breaks the camel's back" problem – the added complexity needed to implement a given technique might not seem large by itself, but the existing complexity of the system needs to be taken into account. If the technique does not provide a 10X improvement in some important metric, adding any complexity is not worth it. Simplicity, even crudeness, is a virtue in game development. Like robustness, simplicity also has many dimensions: are the implications of the technique explainable to artists, does it have few parameters, is the output intuitive, are the results art-directable, is it easy to integrate into the tools pipeline, what dependencies (code, preprocessing, markup, order, compatibility) does the technique have, etc.
Performance: As Chris described it, this is different than classic computer science performance. The constant matters, typically more than the O() notation. Researchers need to specify the time it takes for their technique to operate in milliseconds, instead of giving a frames-per-second count that is useless since it includes overheads for rendering some arbitrary scene. It's important to discuss worst case performance and optimize for that, rather than for the average case. Researchers should not just focus on embarrassingly parallel algorithms, and should do real comparisons of their technique's performance. A "real comparison" means comparing against real techniques used in practice, against real (typically highly optimized) implementations used in the field, using real inputs, real scenes and real working set sizes. The issue of "real scenes" in particular is more nuanced than commonly thought – it's not enough to have the same triangle count as a game scene. Any given game scene will have a particular distribution of triangle sizes, and particular "flavors" of overdraw, materials, shadows, lighting, etc. that all have significant performance implications.
Chris talked about the importance of providing source code. Researchers typically think about their paper as being rigorous, and their source code as being "dirty" or "hacky". However, the source code is the most rigorous description of the algorithm. You can't handwave details or gloss over edge cases in source code. Availability of source code greatly increases the chance of games developers using the technique. Given that only a small fraction of papers are relevant to game developers (and a small fraction of those work as advertised), the cost of implementing each paper just to figure out if it works is prohibitively high.
As for what to research, Chris stated that researchers should avoid "solutions looking for problems" – they should talk to game developers to find out what the actual urgent problems are. If the research is in the area of graphics, it needs to integrate well with everything else. AI research is especially tricky since AI is game design; the algorithm's behavior will directly affect the gameplay experience. In the case of animation research, it is important to remember that interactivity is king; the nicest looking animation is a failure if it doesn't respond fluidly to player commands. Perceptual models and metrics are an important area of research – what is important when it comes to visuals?
Don't patent! If you do, warn us in the abstract so we can skip reading the paper.
Put the paper online, not behind a paywall.
Publish negative results – knowing what didn't work is as important as knowing what did.
Answer emails – often developers have questions about the technique (not covered in the paper due to page limits).
Play games! Without seeing examples of what games are doing now, it's hard to know what they will need in the future.
These two talks sparked lots of discussion in the Q&A sections and during subsequent breaks. The primary feeling among the researchers was that game developers have a very one-sided view of the relationship. While researchers do want their research to have a practical impact, they also have more direct needs, such as funding. Computer graphics research used to be largely funded by the military; this source dried up a while ago and many researchers are struggling for funding. If it's true that games are the primary benefactor of research into computer graphics research, shouldn't the game industry be the primary funding source as well?
Regarding the use of "real" data, most of the researchers are anxious to do so, but very few game companies will provide it! Valve is a notable exception, and indeed several of the papers at I3D used level data from Left 4 Dead 2. More game developers need to provide their data, if they hope for research which works well on their games.
Companies in other industries do a much better job of working with academic researchers, establishing mutually beneficial relationships. Industry R&D groups (Disney Research, HP Labs, Adobe's Advanced Technology Labs, Microsoft Research, Intel Research, NVIDIA Research, etc.) are a key interface between industry and academia; if more game companies established such groups, that could help.
Provided by Mauricio Vives: feast your squinties. Lots of headshots, which I'm sure the speakers (and their moms) will appreciate. I certainly do; it's great putting a face to a name.
Also, save the date: as the last slide shows, March 9-11 2012 is the next I3D, in Costa Mesa, California. I'm suitably impressed that next year's co-chairs (Sung-Eui Yoon and Gopi Meenakshisundaram) already have a place and date. This was possible since they're colocating I3D to directly follow IEEE VR, which is March 4-8.
Today was the first day of I3D 2011. I3D (full name: ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games) is a great little conference – it's small enough so you can talk to most of the people attending, and the percentage of useful papers is relatively high.
I'll split my I3D report into several smaller blog posts to ensure timely updates; this one will focus on the opening keynote.
The keynote was titled "Image-Based Rendering: A 15-Year Retrospective", presented by Richard Szeliski (Microsoft Research), who's been involved with a lot of the important research in this area. He started with a retrospective of the research in this area, and then followed with a discussion of a specific application: panoramic image stitching. Early research in this area lead to QuickTime VR, and panoramic stitching is now supported in many cameras as a basic feature. Gigapixel panoramas are common – see a great example of one from Obama's inaugural address by Gigapan (360 cities is another good panorama site). Street-level views such as Google Street View and Bing's upcoming Street Slide feature use sequences of panoramas.
Richard then discussed the mathematical basis of image-based rendering: a 4D space of light rays (reliant on the fact that radiance is constant over a ray – in participating media this no longer holds and you have to go to a full 5D plenoptic field). Having some geometric scene information is important, it is hard to get good results with just a 4D collection of rays (this was the main difference between the first two implementations – lumigraphs and light fields). Several variants of these were developed over the years (e.g. unstructured lumigraphs and surface light fields).
Several successful developments used lower-dimensional "2.5D" representations such as layered depth images (a "depth image" is an image with a depth value as well as a color associated with each pixel). Richard remarked that Microsoft's Kinect has revolutionized this area by making depth cameras (which used to cost many thousands of dollars) into $150 commodities; a lot of academic research is now being done using Kinect cameras.
Image-based modeling started primarily with Paul Debevec's "Facade" work in 1996. The idea was to augment a very simple geometric model (which back then was created manually) with "view dependent textures" that combine images from several directions to remove occluded pixels and provide additional parallax. Now this can be done automatically at a large scale – Richard showed an aerial model of the city of Graz which was automatically generated in 2009 from several airplane flyovers – it allowed for photorealistic renders with free camera motion in any direction.
Richard also discussed environment matting, as well as video-based techniques such as video rewrite, video matting, and video textures. This last paper in particular seems to me like it should be revisited for possible game applications – it's a powerful extension of the common practice of looping a short sequence of images on a sprite or particle.
Richard next talked about cases where showing the results of image-based rendering in a less realistic or lower-fidelity way can actually be better – similar to the "uncanny valley" in human animation.
The keynote ended by summarizing the areas where image-based rendering is currently working well, and areas where more work is needed. Automatic 3D pose estimation of the camera from images is pretty robust, as well as automatic aerial and manually augmented ground-level modeling. However, some challenges remain: accurate boundaries and matting, reflections & transparency, integration with recognition algorithms, and user-generated content.
For anyone interested in more in-depth research into these topics, Richard has written a computer vision book, which is also available freely online.
Ke-Sen's I3D 2011 papers page now has the full list. At the moment there are only 8 author preprints available out of 24 papers, but I'm sure more will appear soon. Some of the paper titles look very intriguing – I'll write a followup blog post about them soon.
In addition, the I3D conference registration page is now up. Early registration prices range from $200-550, depending on whether you are a student, ACM member, etc. Judging from previous years, the quality of the conference is likely to be well worth the cost of attending, especially if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area and don't have to worry about airfare and hotels.
By phone: call 1-800-525-0956 and ask for the ACM Group rate.
Online: go to the hotel registration webpage, enter your arrival/departure dates, Marriott reward number (if applicable), and then one of the following three codes in the 'Group code' option: ASSASSA (for single/double occupancy), ASSASSB (for triple occupancy), or ASSASSC (for quadruple occupancy).


text:
Anthropological Measurements of Philosophical Research
No. 21 (2022) /
THE MAN IN TECHNOSPHERE
Revising Anthropocentrism of Technics in the Light of the 21st Century New Anthropological Models
V. P. Melnyk Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5972-9301
U. I. Lushch-Purii Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, CSO "The Ukrainian Institute for Happiness Research", Ukraine https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3213-595X
https://doi.org/10.15802/ampr.v0i21.260334
людська сутність, технологія, техніка, homo technologicus, homo digitalis
Purpose. To substantiate the definition of technics as the attributive characteristics of a human being and the necessity of its orientation towards human flourishing in the context of new anthropological models of the 21st century. Theoretical basis. Correlation between technics, technology and the human essence is examined. The role of technics is traced at different historical stages of human development. Negative and positive effects of digital technology development upon a contemporary human being is analysed in the light of new anthropological models: homo technologicus, homo digitalis and homo eudaimonicus. The content of a new worldview-value paradigm of defining goals of technology is outlined. Originality. Transformation of the role of technics correlates with value and worldview shifts in person's understanding of his/her purpose in both natural and social worlds. Nowadays, philosophical analysis of anthropological dimension of technics and technology opens a horizon for seeking effective solutions in the face of the contemporary challenges and anti-utopian threats by means of focusing on the fact that, indeed, technological development is subordinate to the humanist goal that is flourishing, wellbeing and comprehensive development of a human being. Conclusions. The essence of technology reveals not through its functional but anthropogenic definitions in a sense of a source of institutionalization and in a sense of a source of realization of a human way of self-identification and self-objectification of human subjectivity. Technics/technology is the attributive characteristics of human essence and being: a human being is as much human as much he/she is a creator of technics. The purpose of technics is not to master the nature and to transform the world; technics is, above all, a tool of human self-improvement and self-creation through broadening the horizon of human capacities. The analysis of new modern anthropological models shows that it is the orientation of technology/technology towards human flourishing that is, on the one hand, a response to the existential demands of modern man, and on the other hand, a way of preventing future threats related to technological development.
Boichenko, M. I. (2021). Human Evolution: the Limits of Technocentrism. Anthropological Measurements of Philosophical Research, (19), 15-22. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15802/ampr.v0i19.235956 (in English)
Eede, Y. van den. (2019). The Beauty of Detours: A Batesonian Philosophy of Technology. Albany: State University of New York. (in English)
Fabris, A. (2018). Ethics of Information and Communication Technologies. Springer. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75511-3 (in English)
Fabris, A. (2021). Ethics and ICTs Beyond Analytic and Continental Philosophy. In S. Chiodo & V. Schiaffonati (Eds.), Italian Philosophy of Technology: Socio-Cultural, Legal, Scientific and Aesthetic Perspectives on Technology (pp. 31-43). Springer. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54522-2_3 (in English)
Ferraris, M. (2021). Oedipus' Stick. In S. Chiodo & V. Schiaffonati (Eds.), Italian Philosophy of Technology: Socio-Cultural, Legal, Scientific and Aesthetic Perspectives on Technology (pp. 13-29). Springer. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54522-2_2 (in English)
Grewe-Salfeld, M. (2021). Biohacking, Bodies and Do-It-Yourself: The Cultural Politics of Hacking Life Itself. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839460047 (in English)
Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W. (2002). Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments (G. S. Noerr, Ed., E. Jephcott, Trans.). Stanford: Stanford University Press. (in English)
Khmel, I. (2021). Humanization of Virtual Communication: from Digit to Image. Philosophy and Cosmology, 27, 126-134. DOI: https://doi.org/10.29202/phil-cosm/27/9 (in English)
Kremen, V. H., & Ilin, V. V. (2021). Transformation of the Human Image in the Paradigm of Knowledge Evolution. Anthropological Measurements of Philosophical Research, (19), 5-14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15802/ampr.v0i19.235953 (in English)
Lushch-Purii, U. I. (2021). From Homo Economicus to Homo Eudaimonicus: Anthropological and Axiological Transformations of the Concept of Happiness in A Secular Age. Anthropological Measurements of Philosophical Research, (19), 61-74. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15802/ampr.v0i19.235992 (in English)
Malivskyi, A., & Khmil, V. (2019). "The Passions of the Soul" by R. Descartes as an Explication of the Anthropological and Ethical Project. Studia Warmińskie, 56, 149-160. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31648/sw.4413 (in English)
Melnyk, V. P. (2010). Filosofiia. Nauka. Tekhnika: Metodoloho-svitohliadnyi analiz: Monohrafiia. Lviv: Ivan Franko National University of Lviv. (in Ukrainian)
Mumford, L. (1972). Technics and the Nature of Man. In C. Mitcham & R. Mackey (Eds.), Philosophy and Technology: Readings in the Philosophical Problems of Technology (pp. 77-85). New York: The Free Press. (in English)
Ropolyi, L. (2019). Technology as an Aspect of Human Praxis. In M. Héder & E. Nádasi (Eds.), Essays in Post-Critical Philosophy of Technology (pp. 19-31). Vernon Press. (in English)
Voronin, А. А. (2004). Mif tekhniki. Moscow: Nauka. (in Russian)
Warwick, K. (2016). Homo Technologicus: Threat or Opportunity? Philosophies, 1(3), 199-208. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies1030199 (in English)
Melnyk, V. P., & Lushch-Purii, U. I. (2022). Revising Anthropocentrism of Technics in the Light of the 21st Century New Anthropological Models. Anthropological Measurements of Philosophical Research, (21), 72–83. https://doi.org/10.15802/ampr.v0i21.260334
No. 21 (2022)
Copyright (c) 2022 Anthropological Measurements of Philosophical Research


PokerStars says it will finally exit the Australian market by mid-September in the face of new gaming regulations in the country that did not legalize online poker. And two more online gambling sites—The Mansion Group and Genesis Global Limited—have left the Australian market in the face of new gambling regulations there. Gambling firms that have already exited the market include PokerStars, 32Red, PartyPoker, 888Poker and Vera&John.
The new gambling laws—called the Interactive Gambling Amendment Bill and passed by the country's Senate in August—essentially ban online poker as well as in-play sports betting. Legislators say the new laws essentially close a "gray" market in the country for both types of betting.
While the law allows online sports books to be licensed, by not recognizing online poker and casino games as legal, it essentially bans both types of online play as those operators cannot secure licenses. Unlicensed sites accepting Australian players would face steep fines.
The law also includes a number of consumer protections such as regulations against operators offering lines of credit to gamblers.
PokerStars has said repeatedly that it would probably leave the market if the rules went into effect. The company, part of the now-called Stars Group, did not name an exit date, but said in an e-mail to Australian players it would likely leave the market by the middle of September as the new rules go into effect.
"We've been aware of this day coming. We're proud to have seen the Australian poker community grow so strong over the last decade," the email said.


text:
Management of Cavernous Angiomas
Shin KM
Song JH
1Department of Neurosurgery, College of Medicine, Ewha Womans University, Korea.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the clinical informations(symptoms, pathophysiologic phenomena, other associated vascular malformation and outcome) in order to define the guide of the management. MATERIAL & METHODS: The authors reviewed the 54cases which were diagnosed by the high-resolution MRI and supplemented by computed tomography, from 1991 to 1996. The patho-physiologic phenomena of the CMs were classified into three groups by the finding of MRI. Surgical outcome was analysed according to the type of lesions, clinical variables, and indication of surgical management.
The mean patient age was 33.2 years, and the locations of CMs are in the cere-brum in 38 cases, basal ganglia/thalamus in 5 cases, brain stem in 16 cases, orbit in 2 cases and the spinal cord in 1case. Symptomatic hemorrhage were 25 patients(46%), seizure reported 16 patients(30%) and focal neurologic deficit 7(13%). Incidental cases were founded in 6 patients(11%) and their main complaints were headache. In 71% of the patients, the lesions were solitary and multiple in 29%. The 7 patients had coexisting venous angiomas. The A group had 24 patients(44%), B group 16 patients(30%) and the C group 14 patients(26%). Twenty nine patients who were asymptomatic or incidentally discovered lesions(6 patients) were treated conservatively. Twenty five patients(15 hemorrhage, 8 patients of intractable seizure and 2 patients of progressive neurologic deficits) underwent surgery.
This study suggest that surgical extirpation of the lesions is an effective management in accessible lesions, overt hemorrhage, medical intractable epilepsy and pro-gressive worsening focal neurologic deficits.
Cavernous malformations; Venous angioma; Guideline of treatment
Surgical Treatment of Spinal Cord Intramedullary Cavernous Angioma
Cavernous Angioma in the Falx Cerebri: A Case Report
Isolated Abducens Nerve Palsy Caused by De Novo Pontine Cavernous Angioma
Cavernous Angioma of the Oculomotor Nerve
Cavernous Angiomas of the Brain


Being sexually harassed and assaulted for doing your job shouldn't be the norm.
It's not the zombie-like wasteland you'd think.
Talk about thinking on your feet.
"This is not your mama's boring oppressed-Asians documentary."
Sorry, younger brothers and sisters: the cards are stacked against you.
What started as a typical college party, turned into another brutal example of police brutality.
A powerful statement to show they will not stand by their owner's bigotry.
Europe has never seen a pop star quite like this.
This surely won't won't solve Silicon Valley's sexism problem.
Because America needs more passionate men of color in its classrooms.
And a study projects a population of atheists and agnositics will overtake everyone by 2030.
But all that could change after his bold statement to the world.
This coming from the man behind one of the bloodiest shows on television.
Their brains actually work differently.
Who knew standing up for freedom of speech would result in this.
Not a single artifact was saved.


More than 7.73 lakh extreme poor families in all eight districts under Rajshahi division have started getting rice at a rate of Tk 10 per kilogram (kg) since Monday last.
The selected card holders will get 30 kilograms of rice every month through village ration dealers at a rate of Tk 10 per kg under the 'Food Friendly Programme'.
"Requisite number of village ration dealers has already been appointed at all unions of the division to sell the rice," said Md Muniruzzaman, regional controller of food in Rajshahi, adding "We will sell 2.31 lakh tonnes of rice through 1,385 dealers every month."
The government wants to provide food support to the extreme poor families during the crisis period.
For every 500 families, a village ration dealer has been appointed for distributing the rice smoothly while the widows and physically challenged people are getting priority in the programme.
The food controller also said that the rice selling programme at Tk 10 per kg will continue for three months from September to November. The months have been selected in view of non-availability of work for the day-labourers, he added. He, however, vowed to take punitive measures against those who will engage in any irregularities during the programme.
Meanwhile, poor and extreme poor people of the division are very happy after getting quality rice at Tk 10 per kilogram under the government's 'Food Friendly Programme'.
"We are getting quality rice this time without facing any irregularities," said Momtaj Uddin, an elderly man, who came to purchase rice at Darusha crossing under Paba upazila.
Another beneficiary Sazzad Hossain Ali, who came to buy rice at Rajabari, said the quality of rice is very good. This type of rice is being sold at least at Tk 50 per kilograms in the markets, he added.
BSS from Rangpur adds: More than 8.47 lakh beneficiary families are getting rice at Taka 10 per kilogram in Rangpur division under 'The food-friendly programme' aimed at making rice available for the ultra poor at a very low price.
"Every card holder beneficiary family is getting 30 kilogram rice monthly at Taka 10 per kilogram for five months during the lean seasons annually under the programme," Rangpur Regional Controller of Food Raihanul Kabir told BSS today.
Under the epoch-making food friendly programme, more than 25,411 tonnes of rice is being sold to the card holder beneficiaries of all eight districts under Rangpur division every month.
The beneficiary families are getting rice at Taka 10 per kilogram for September, October and November now after getting the same for March and April early this year.
"The programme has been running smoothly bringing relief to the ultra poor during the five-month lean periods every year since September 7, 2016 when Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina formally launched the initiative under the social safety net scheme," Kabir said.
The female-led families, widows, divorced or abandoned women and poor households with children, who are not beneficiaries of other social safety-net programmes, were given priority during beneficiary selection process.
Under the programme, eight lakh 47 thousand and 43 card holder beneficiary families of 534 unions under all 58 upazilas in eight districts of Rangpur division are getting the rice at Taka 10 per kilogram through 1,473 appointed village ration dealers.
"A total of 256 ration dealers have been appointed to sell the rice in Rangpur, 194 in Gaibandha, 205 in Kurigram, 131 in Lalmonirhat, 250 in Nilphamari, 239 in Dinajpur, 92 in Panchagarh and 106 in Thakurgaon districts in the division," Kabir said.
"The sale of rice at Taka 10 per kilogram is continuing now in full swing under strict supervision," Kabir said adding that stern actions would be taken for malpractice and irregularities, if any, in the process. Talking to BSS today, District Controller of Food for Rangpur Shajahan Bhuiyan said the 7-member union level beneficiary selection committee, headed by an upazila level government official as its Tag Officer, completed the beneficiary selection process.
The other six members of the union level beneficiary selection committee are: local union chairman, two union parishad members, union parishad secretary and two local elite persons.
After selecting the beneficiaries, the union level committees placed the prepared lists before the 9-member upazila level committees for final scrutiny, correction, replacement and approval.
The upazila level committee, with Member of the Parliament of the local constituency as its Chief Adviser and Upazila Chairman as Adviser, approved the selected beneficiaries and also appointed the village ration dealers for selling the rice.


Beyond Louisiana's never-ending budget arguments, some lower profile disputes over billboards and sales tax collection methods are churning in the legislative session, dividing lawmakers and creating conflicts with outside groups that hold sway at the state capitol.
Two lawmakers are proposing measures aimed at reining in the number of billboards along Louisiana roadways, and the effort has rankled Baton Rouge-based Lamar Advertising Company, one of the nation's largest outdoor advertising firms with billboards in 45 states and with nearly 500 employees in Louisiana.
The legislation sponsored by Rep. Jack McFarland, a Winnfield Republican, is scheduled for its first hearing Tuesday. He's seeking to stall the issuance of new state permits for billboards. Lamar has launched a campaign to sink the proposal, along with a similar measure by Sen. Conrad Appel, a Metairie Republican.
McFarland said he's heard from many people who believe the billboards lead to distracted driving and often contain distasteful images or messages. Until three months ago, he rented space on his own land to companies displaying four billboards. But he had them removed three months ago.
"The perception of the billboards is not a positive. Yes, they do enable businesses to advertise and I'm not against the advertisement of local businesses. But when those billboards occur so frequently, we have to question: Are we creating distracted driving? Are we creating hazards? Are we taking away from the natural beauty?" McFarland said.
But the legislation, which McFarland said would require support from two-thirds of lawmakers to pass, faces a tough road to passage. Lamar Advertising, a powerful and large Louisiana company, is heavily fighting both measures, calling them "anti-business."
"We consider it an assault on our Louisiana company and more importantly on the many Louisiana owned businesses that work with us every day," Lamar spokeswoman Allie McAlpin said in a statement.
The company says Louisiana doesn't rank in the top 10 of states when it comes to billboard inventory, and it says Lamar has cut its number of billboards in Louisiana over the last five years.
While that sparring is intensifying, Rep. Tanner Magee has launched an even larger fight, putting himself at odds with many local elected officials across Louisiana, over their oversight of the state's sales tax collections.
Magee said the tax collection method doesn't make sense anymore as businesses have grown larger across multiple parishes and states and do more sales online.
Remitting sales tax collections individually to multiple parishes is "ridiculous. It's just overly complex," he said. "What does that tell those businesses about Louisiana? We're saying we're backward. We're saying we're difficult. We're saying it's too complex to do business in Louisiana. We make things way more difficult."
Several business organizations are backing Magee's proposal, describing Louisiana's numerous sales tax collectors as cumbersome, confusing and expensive for compliance.
But local government entities are lining up to oppose the measure, saying improvements have been made in e-filing and other efficiencies while still keeping the power in the hands of local authorities who don't necessarily trust the state to properly collect and timely allocate the dollars owed to municipalities.
"Local taxing authorities possess the best knowledge and experience to properly collect their own taxes and have a proven record of proactive advancements in the areas of enforcement, audit coverage, dispute resolution, reporting technology and successful litigation," the Louisiana Municipal Association said in a recent newsletter.
Magee acknowledges the fight he's picked might not be winnable this session. That's particularly true in an election year where lawmakers often rely on the support of local elected officials to help them gain voter support.
But Magee's not giving up.
"I don't want to fight all the local government entities, and I think there's a trust issue, which I understand," he said. "It may take multiple attempts at it, but it's time to start the conversation and start pushing the ball up the hill."


There are about 1 adult day care providers in FREEPORT.
Are you looking for day-time care for your older adult loved one? Or, is your loved one looking for more opportunities to socialize with others but not ready to change his/her current living environment? Presence Life Connections adult day centers offer caregivers and families the added support they need during weekday hours, including handicap-accessible transportation. In an enriched family atmosphere, we offer socialization opportunities and a stimulating program for our adult clients, designed to maintain and improve their daily living and social skills. Currently services are offered Monday through Friday during daytime hours. With a full calendar of activities including outings to local parks and shopping centers as well as on-site activities like craft projects and games, we provide our clients with a variety of socialization opportunities. In addition, our adult day centers provide breakfast, lunch and snacks throughout the day.


As an entrepreneur, you always had your dream business in mind. Regardless of the industry or niche, something possessed you to branch out and start on your own. As your dream came to fruition, this newborn business needed a name, and so began one of the most exciting journeys for a young company.
Some business owners view naming a business like naming a baby. They realize it's an important step and don't want to be made fun of in this playground of a marketplace. I've never named a child as I dom't have any of my own yet, but my wife and I have discussed names as most couples do. Since starting Absolute Marketing Group 30 months ago, I have been a part of more than 20 new business trade name projects, so when we do decide to start a family, I'll be prepared.
There are three main reasons to name a business.
No matter what the reason that you are naming a business, I recommend having a business plan in place before naming your business if possible. The reason for this is to understand your market and how your competitors use their trade name to position themselves. Also, if you focus your efforts on creating a profitable business model, not dreaming about the name on t-shirts to pass out to all your friends, you are in better position for pure business success.
2. Professional Standard – Name, Name and Associates.
At the end of the day, your mission is to increase market share. A name is the first opportunity you have to tell your customers who you are or who you have become. Remember, just like a child, this name will be with you for a very long time. When brainstorming name ideas, here are a few attributes to keep in mind.
Does the name have a ring to it? Use verbs, adjectives, metaphors or colors to describe your company. Joe's Towing is upfront, but will you remember it?
Can you go global with the name? Whether you plan to franchise or not, it's important to know if your name will transcend barriers of culture and language. Growing up, there was a national chain of drug stores called Osco Drug. In Spanish, Asco (sounds the same) means "Yuck!" Needless to say, the name was changed in larger cities and in the South.
Remember Joe's Towing? If you didn't, thank you for proving my point about being memorable. More importantly, what happens when you retire or sell the business? If you've attached your name and face to the brand, it's harder to pass the torch without someone getting a little burned.
Obvious, generic names or names that need to be acronyms because they are too long don't brand well. Generic names just remind people of the service, which unless you are the first place that comes to mind, means you just lost that customer to the competition. Acronyms are so prevalent in today's marketplace, it's hard to know what they mean.
Can you add a service to the back end of the name if need be. Back to Joe's Towing "what you forgot again?" could that name be changed to Joe's Towing and Salvage?
Here's a list of steps involved with how Absolute Marketing Group names a company.
1. We look at the marketing plan and evaluate the competitors' names.
2. We swirl around a slew of names. Taking the top 10-20, we start to put slogans and website names to each.
3. Picking the top few of those, we search availability on state and national trade databases.
5. We orally test the name as when you say a name enough times, you may not realize your name sounds a little inappropriate. Hirtz Dental or Maggie Sue Insurance may face some challenges.
6. We present the 5-10 final available names, slogans and website domains to the client and a decision is made by the appropriate key players.
7. We advise you to consult your lawyer/accountant about securing the trade name in the proper states, filing for the proper business type (LLC, Ltd and Inc.), and registering the DBA to not include the business type tag in the name for marketing communications. Logos usually look cleaner without those tags.
8. We secure your domain name and get your email addresses set up.
9. Now we begin the logo design process and put those words into action with imagery.
The naming process is vital to the success of a business. However, it is just the beginning. It's even more important to build your brand name reputation with consistent positive customer experiences. You need to give your baby trade name the chance to grow into a healthy mature brand.


text:
Welcome to AusVotes 2019
AusVotes 2019
Making sense of the #AusVotes2019 madness
Campaign, Lobby and interest groups, Social media, Voters
Federal Election 2019: Meme Edition
Date: March 27, 2019Author: Aisling 0 Comments
Memes; the joke format utilised widely across the internet; have long been a source of entertainment for those online. As a millennial I was born with a computer in one hand and a plate of smashed avo in the other; I've grown up on the internet and can rattle off a list of my favourite memes with ease. Memes have become almost another form of communication to generate jokes relating to world events and send them back and forth – liking, retweeting and sharing them widely.
In Australia, a crucial part of our national identity is that we don't take things too seriously, and memes fit right into that category of gently mocking ourselves and others in a good natured way. Facebook "meme" groups are common; and Australian politics is no exception with fan-made meme groups such as ALP Spicy Meme Stash, Innovative and Agile Memes, and Australian Green Memes for Actually Progressive Teens attracting thousands of members who create, share, and laugh at memes about our nation's politics as a way of discussing and processing the politics that many feel disengaged from.
credit: ALP Spicy Meme Stash via Facebook
Political memes are a natural progression – as more of our important conversations are conducted across the internet, the language of the internet comes to shape how we engage with these conversations, and it's not necessarily a bad thing. A good meme can take the wind out of the sails of hateful rhetoric; embarrass a bigot mouthing off on national TV; and unite disparate and disillusioned individuals.
I love memes, and yet I find myself growing increasingly concerned by the way that our love of a joke can equally excuse or belittle bad behaviour; the ways in which meme-savvy partisan groups can wield great power over the internet; and our enthusiasm for more entertainment can blind us to what's really happening in the world.
In 2016 Clive Palmer announced his resignation from politics and seemed set to take a step back after the collapse of Queensland Nickel, but by mid-2017 he was making international headlines for a string of unusual poems published both on Facebook and Twitter. His online content at the time saw an uptick in his online engagement with millennials who otherwise were offered little by his politics – at a brief glance 30 of my Facebook friends from inner Melbourne have liked his official Facebook page, and a group called "S*** Clive Palmer Says" has garnered over 20 000 members, claiming he is the "best thing to happen to Australian political humour since Paul Keating".
Young people thought he was hilarious, a genius, trolling us all or maybe just having a nervous breakdown but either way were entertained and ready for more. While on the surface, much of Australia viewed Palmer as a joke; he had our attention. In this way, Palmer has maintained his public profile and arguably revived his political career in 2019 by remaining a source of amusement during his sabbatical from politics, and continues to communicate via a combination of videos and memes on his official page today.
Although the major parties have been dabbling for some time, few politicians have embraced memes in the same way that Palmer has – the closest comparison is Kevin Rudd's appearances on Rove Live. Both performances proved the same point – that these politicians understand young people.
Globally, we have already seen the potential for memes to be harnessed to spread a political message, as the popular frog meme "Pepe" became co-opted by white supremacist and antisemetic groups in 2016, and more recently memes of white supremacist groups hand signalling have been disseminated through the internet – spearheaded by longtime meme powerhouse/home base for trolls: 4chan.
credit: The Young Greens via facebook
But memes can also blind us to what is happening offline. In the days following the recent Christchurch terrorist attack which killed 51 people, a teenager was rocketed to viral meme status as he made news around the world for hitting Senator Fraser Anning in the head with an egg. While the young man has since said in an interview that he wasn't trying to gain notoriety, fame or wealth (after a fundraiser was started in his name, he has donated all the proceeds to the families of victims); his actions sparked memes and the popularity of those memes quickly superseded the tragic event that brought them into existence. In the 24 hours after "Egg Boy" first made headlines, the online world was all too happy to become distracted from the seemingly endless death and destruction being broadcast from Christchurch – and who could blame them? It was an uncomfortable, devastating, exhausting time to be online.
While Egg Boy himself acted out of empathy for the Muslim community of New Zealand and in opposition to the Islamophobic rhetoric of Fraser Anning, the way in which memes quickly spawned and overtook the event itself is indicative of how the way that we use social media can lead to burying our heads in the sand. The memes aren't the problem, but becoming distracted by them and forgetting the real world events happening around us – is. Connolly's convictions should be celebrated absolutely (his actions are still being hotly debated), and Anning's racist rhetoric should be sneered at as it has been, but we also shouldn't lose sight of the tragedy at the heart of the memes. As a global community, we have an obligation to feel the weight of tragedies such as this, and to learn from them.
Whether in this election or one yet to come, it wouldn't be surprising to see memes become a more common platform for campaigning and engaging with young voters in Australia; who are becoming a powerful political demographic to be tapped into.
It is important as this happens, to remember that political memes, like all media, shouldn't be taken at face value. Not to take all the joy out of an offhand joke, but when that joke is being delivered into the palm of your hand by politicians leading up to a federal election where they rely on your vote – ask 'what is it for?'
When the Australian public allows itself to be distracted from the real issues in politics by memes and the endless stream of jokes the actions of our politicians can generate, we belittle at best and neglect at worst the serious issues affecting Australia and the rest of the world. Leading up to a federal election – those issues are make or break.
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The juice category is all the same. Cute stop-go animations of fruits and vegetables going into bottles. But for Suja's first ever national campaign, we wanted to own something bigger: plants. All of them. Because they're amazing and we're obsessed with them and we want to put all their magical power inside our bodies.


text:
Healthy Eating Habits That Will Change Your Life
Josie Green
Last Updated: April 9, 2020 1:21 pm
Source: Petar Chernaev / Getty Images
1. Prepare meals from scratch whenever you can
When you cook for yourself using whole, fresh ingredients, you can monitor your sodium, sugar, and fat levels — something that is difficult to do when you eat out or buy prepared food. Preparing meals at home is also cheaper than eating out.
Besides ensuring that you get adequate nutrition, preparing meals from whole foods may also impact your mood. Studies have suggested a possible link between eating heavily processed foods — such as fast food and processed baked goods — and an increased risk of depression. Other studies, alternately, suggest that diets high in vegetables, whole grains, fruits, and fish may be associated with reduced risk of depression. More studies, however, are needed on the link between depression and diet.
Source: Xsandra / Getty Images
2. Eat smaller portions (on smaller plates)
Restaurant portions are often enough for two or three people. Control your portion size by ordering an appetizer or a small plate instead of an entree, or by sharing an entree with a friend.
At home, serve meals on small plates, which can make your portion feel larger. Studies have shown that people are more likely to overeat when they are eating from larger plates.
ALSO READ: The Healthiest City in Every State
Source: LeszekCzerwonka / Getty Images
3. Avoid sugary drinks (including fruit juice)
Daily drinking of sugary drinks such as soda and fruit juice increases the risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. In addition, the fructose in these drinks does not make the body feel full, so soda drinkers tend to consume more total calories than those who do not drink soda.
Source: loooby / Getty Images
4. Drink coffee (in moderation and without sugar)
Coffee drinking is associated with lower risk of type 2 diabetes, and may be associated with lower risk of dementia, and Alzheimer's, although adding sugar can negate some of the health benefits.
While drinking too much coffee can cause anxiety and insomnia in some people — largely depending on genetics — a recent study out of Linus Pauling Institute, Oregon State University, suggests that for adults consuming three to four cups of coffee per day, "there is little evidence of health risks and some evidence of health benefits.
Source: Caymia / Getty Images
5. Plan meals and make extra for leftovers
Meal planning helps you keep an eye on nutrients and ensure you are getting a well-balanced diet. Plan a few meals a week around recipes you and your family like, and shop for those ingredients.
It sounds like a no-brainer, but how many times have you been caught hungry with an empty fridge and ended up ordering delivery or going out to eat? Make enough food to have leftovers for another day or two and you'll only need to cook two or three days a week.
Read more: Special Report, Behavior
30 Reasons Walking Is the Best Exercise
10 Health Benefits of Having a Beard in the Winter
States With the Highest and Lowest Vaccination Rates
11 Things You Should Never Do When It's Hot Outside


The "Uptown Funk" just keeps coming, and now it's left the Muggle world!
Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars' infectious hit "Uptown Funk" has already been taken on by flight attendants, the elderly, Glee, and even Family Guy! The song has completely taken over 2014 and 2015, and you just think it'd be over by now.
But it's not over 'til He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named says it is!
That's right Harry Potter fans, Lord Voldemort has an "Uptown Funk" parody now.
It has all the cleverness of Tom Marvolo Riddle himself.
He may be the most evil wizard ever, but he's done Bruno Mars proud today!


Update: As of early August 2018 the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) has also confirmed that public lighting services in SA will now be regulated and classified as Alternative Control Services (ACS). Want to knoiw what this means? See our full explanation here.
Well it's been a big, big, big few months in South Australian street lighting. We've had a few LED projects start and some of the larger ones like Onkaparinga wrap-up (ahead of time!). In the last few weeks alone the Cities of Unley and Campbelltown have both resolved to changeover to LEDs through the PLC tariff. And of course, the LGA have announced that they are no longer progressing on their bid to establish a public lighting company to own, operate and manage street lighting.
On the 14th of June Ironbark Sustainability ran a webinar in which Australia's foremost street lighting experts covered everything you need to know to get up to speed. The webinar covered planning your projects; connecting to the smart city pilots around Australia; tariff negotiations; how to direct key stakeholders and more.
The webinar is now available online!
The webinar also covered smart lighting pilots that have been delivered by Australian councils and released an Expression of Interest to the attendees to become involved. This EOI is now available to all Australian councils and we are locking in several additional councils as we speak.
Click here to register your interest in the Smart Lighting Pilots.
Your smart lighting pilots will answer the question of "What is the value of smart lighting and how can this value be realised?"
Each pilot will be designed to create new knowledge and build on the work of other pilots and projects around the country.
It's an exciting time for technology and its' great to see that councils are at the centre of this change!
So, wrote Steve Prestwich and so sang the mighty Cold Chisel. The relationship between key public lighting stakeholders has often been sour as power imbalances, spilt-incentives and disagreements played out behind closed doors and occasionally in public.
But wow has this changed recently.
Over the next few years representatives from Charles Sturt, Marion and Onkaparinga (supported by Ironbark) met with SAPN under the guise of the Safe and Sustainable Street Lighting (SSSL) Bulk Replacement Project to develop LED tariffs and terms and approved technology and improve relationships. Once relationships improve, anything can happen, as SAPN's Tom Walker, who was an integral part of the discussions, said at the Smart Lighting Summit in September 2017, "It was all about relationships and trust developed along the way. It only happened because we all wanted the same thing". While councils and DNSPs will always have disagreements, common ground can be found. Charles Sturt's Phillip Hewitt said pretty much the same thing a few years earlier when negotiations were in their infancy.
Those SSSL meetings were regular and comprehensive with discussions and decisions made around service levels, luminaire ownership, funding models, recycling, AS1158 compliance and multitudes of other issues. To see LEDs now being installed in their tens of thousands only a few years later, those enlightened local government staff who did the heavy lifting in the face of a divided sector deserve acknowledgement.
Since being engaged to facilitate the SSSL discussions we've been developing business cases for the councils who are now installing LEDs. This includes Charles Sturt, Marion, Onkaparinga, Mitcham, Tea Tree Gully, Port Pirie, Holdfast Bay, Victor Harbor, Campbelltown, Unley, Burnside and a few more just begun. The development of a robust business case is the first step to determine the costs, savings, emissions reductions, legal issues, risks and other opportunities this project presents.
Following on from that we've been providing briefings to councillors who have understandably faced some conflicting information over the last few years. These sessions sometimes run well into the night but they give elected members and senior management the chance to ask every last question and make sure they're satisfied with progressing a project – most recently this has included Charles Sturt, Onkaparinga and Ironbark's workshop with a combined meeting with Unley and Campbelltown councillors. Get the right experts in front of the right people at the right time and you'll see results.
Now that we have a critical mass of projects over the line, the South Australian Smart Lighting Program is ready. This Program ensures the project incorporates a systematic approach to project preparation, design and management and delivers best practice technical and financial outcomes. The projects also learn from the mistakes of LED bulk changeover projects locally and across the country. When we say, "learn from the projects around Australia" we mean learn from these 106 councils who have already undertaken LED bulk changeover projects, otherwise you're just reinventing the wheel and prone to making the same old (really quite annoying) mistakes.


text:
| Washington Wrap |
Has Joe Biden's Time Passed?
By Omri Nahmias | July 3, 2019
The Democratic field feels different this year — gone are the niceties of the past
oe Biden looked old and Kamala Harris looked bold.
That, in one sentence, is the takeaway from the first Democratic Party debate, a contest in which the senator for California put the former vice president, and the entire country, on notice that she is a serious contender for the presidency.
The Democratic field feels different this year — gone are the niceties of the past. The tone feels more aggressive and urgent, as if a great task must be accomplished. We are witnessing a generational shift, in which elder statesmen like Joe Biden are being overtaken by younger and more woke competitors.
Biden has been a public figure for 50 years. Throughout his long career he has made his share of mistakes, stumbled over his words, and voted many times in ways that he now regrets. Yes, it's true that he was once collegial with segregationist lawmakers. But so was nearly everyone else.
Here's the problem for the Democrats: While the base rallies around Harris and Buttigieg and Warren, all progressives in their own right, every poll shows Biden is the candidate most likely to defeat Donald Trump. But last week, Biden really did look like "Sleepy Joe," President Trump's favorite epithet for the Democratic front-runner. To win the nomination, Biden will have to figure out a way to deflect challenges from his younger opponents and keep his progressive base happy, while still appealing to the center. And if he fails?
This is a group of candidates who make Barack Obama look conservative. The dilemma will be how a candidate like Sen. Kamala Harris wins not only the progressive precincts of New York City and Berkeley, California, but also the small towns of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. While candidates like Buttigieg and Warren can fire up the crowds on campus, those aren't the swing votes a Democrat needs to win the election.
Has Joe Biden's time passed? Perhaps. But that could bode poorly for the Democratic party.
Winners and Losers: China-US Trade Talks
resident Trump and President Xi of China agreed last week to take another whirl at the trade talks dance. The immediate effect: Trump will not impose a new round of tariffs on China. That's excellent news for Beijing, of course, but it's also a significant development for consumers in the United States who weren't eager to see higher prices on consumer goods.
As part of the understanding, Trump agreed to ease some restrictions on US companies selling products to Chinese telecommunication giant Huawei. Lawmakers have accused China of using the maker of mobile phones and telecommunications networks to spy on individuals and countries. In response to Trump's decision, Sen. Marco Rubio commented that Trump has made a "catastrophic mistake."
"It will destroy the credibility of his administration's warnings about the threat posed by the company," Rubio said. "No one will ever again take them seriously." Rubio, a 2016 rival who is now a sometimes ally of the president, also threatened to impose restrictions on the company through legislation. Trump, from his end, promised that the national security of the United States would not be compromised by the new sales.
Trump stunned the world when he convinced North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un to meet him at the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas and was the first sitting president to cross the line to the totalitarian north. It is a historic act and a significant development after months of radio silence between the two.
The surprise meeting was the third sit-down between the two leaders, but so far, there has been no breakthrough. The photo-op works well for Trump politically and likely raises Kim's standing in the world, but the question remains: Is there any substance to the negotiations?
Beltway Briefings: What happened in Washington and why it matters
wo recent Supreme Court rulings will dramatically influence the result of the 2020 elections. One decision pleased the Democrats, while the other favored the Republicans. In both cases — what a surprise — the losing side is furious and claims a constitutional crisis. John Roberts, chief justice of the Supreme Court, cast the deciding vote in both cases.
In the first case, the Court decided not to intervene in two cases concerning gerrymandering, or the practice of electoral districts being drawn to favor one political party over another. The court essentially declined to involve itself in ruling on partisan gerrymandering. Every state is divided into electoral districts according to the size of its population, and each district sends a lawmaker to the United States House of Representatives. Every ten years there is a nationwide census, and the district boundaries are redrawn based on the population numbers.
In 37 out of 50 states, legislators draw the electoral boundaries. Since Republicans control the state governments in most of them, the GOP has won the right to draw lines that favor its party. Of course, the sword is two-sided and cuts both ways.
In the second case, the Court rejected a move by the Department of Commerce to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts questioned the administration's motive in seeking the addition, but said that if Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross could justify the question, it might pass muster with the court.
Liberal activists claim that adding the question discriminates against minorities, especially Latinos, who are engaged in a prolonged citizenship process. When conducting a census, they say, one should take into account not only current citizens but also those likely to become citizens in the future. If these minorities are struck out of the census lists, their interests will not be represented in Congress.
On the other hand, Republicans are seeking to limit the influence of noncitizens, who have no legal right to vote. It is unclear at this point whether the issue can be resolved before the census must begin in October.
(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 767)
| Global View |
Gershon Burstyn
Omri Nahmias
As the Crowd Swells for Trump
Big crowd at DC parade shows Trump on the rise
Coffee Break with Ambassador Dani Dayan
" I'm not the person who looks for anti-Semites under every rock, but now, for the first time, I am worried"
President Prudent
What is Trump's plan as Iran plays hardball?
The Parley without the Palestinians
Peace not on the agenda as Abbas boycotts Bahrain
Blame, Blame, and More Blame
The path to combating anti-Semitism is unity, not division
A Three-Way Security Conference in Jerusalem
The US, Israel, and Russia will meet to discuss Iran's plans to entrench itself in Syria and the withdrawal of American troops from that country
Tagged: Washington Wrap


text:
Home > Speeches > Speech of Baruch Te...
Speech of Baruch Tenembaum, Founder of the IRWF
Baruch Tenembaum
My Dear Sisters and Brothers,
I apologize for not being able to address my feelings in German, the language of Heinrich Heine, Moshe Mendelsohn, Franz Kafka, Goethe and so many others renowned artists and intellectuals. Since I was told that delivering my little speech in English will make it I follow therefore the instruction of my Jewish roots that says: "Whatever your host asks, just obey"
I came to Berlin 3 years ago. In the course of a visit I paid to the then President Rau we exchanged views on the best way of strengthening bonds among people of good will. Since he was well aware of the efforts of the Wallenberg Foundation to promote the values of understanding, solidarity, dialogue and civic courage, keeping alive the memory of the tragedies of the past and simultaneously stimulating humanitarian values for the future, I underlined to Mister Rau the importance of the colossal ingredient that solidifies the future: I am referring to the concept of Hope.
My dear sister and brothers: we are now CELEBRATING this very moment.
It may sound strange but, as I said, it was three years ago when we started to walk this long and difficult road. Three years of hard perseverance, starting at the very moment I told President Rau that we must find a Church, precisely in Germany, precisely in Berlin, where to place the seed of Memory and Hope, where to place this Mural created in Buenos Aires and unveiled in 1997 at the Metropolitan Cathedral, the main Catholic Church of Argentina, thanks to the courage and wisdom of the then Primate Cardinal, Antonio Quarracino.
Cardinal Quarracino asked in a posthumous letter to be buried beside the Mural just a few weeks before his death, as you may read in one of those panels fixed to the wall as well as in the brochure you were given a few moments ago. And there Cardinal Quarracino rests in peace.
Within the same letter Cardinal Quarracino also expressed his wish that all the Jewish people that visit the Mural inside the Cathedral may cover their heads. That was another clear signal of accepting the right of everybody to be different Not just tolerate the other but accept him/her.
We celebrate these signals of brotherhood!
We do celebrate together something that is greeted by some as a miracle, saluted by Heads of State, Nobel Prize Laureates and intellectuals from around the globe.
Therefore, this Mural is in itself a symbol of celebration.
So, in that same year of 2001, as I was telling you, I went to see Dr Joachim Gartner at the main offices of the Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland in Berlin just after my meeting with President Rau was over. Dr Gartner welcomed the idea warmly and from that very moment, March 2001, we began to work hard with the only purpose of crystallizing the idea, something that all of you today are fortunately witnessing.
Allow me to salute today a few people, some of them present, some not.
I welcome the Minister of Interior, Mr Otto Schily, Bishop Wolfgang Huber, Dr David Gill, Dr Joachim Gartner, the Argentine Ambassador to Berlin, Enrique Candioti, the Deputy Ambassador of Israel, Ilan Mor, the Secretary General of the Central Jewish Community, Mr Stephan Kramer, Mayor Karin Schubert, Dr. Karl-Heinrich Lutcke, Cantor Isaac Scheffer, Ambassador Herzl Inbar and Dr Natalio Wengrower, Vicepresident of the Wallenberg Foundation.
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Wallenberg Foundation has among its members 62 Heads of State, including the King of an Islamic country and the Chancellor of Germany. In spite of this fact, let me tell you, we do not ask and did not receive any government participation.
The daily work of the Foundation is carried out by volunteers, believers and agnostics, educational organizations and other social factors. Its President is Father Horacio Moreno, a Catholic Priest. We accept everybody as long as he/she accepts everybody who accepts everybody. We love love and we do not hate even hate.
You may know that Wallenberg's sister, Mrs. Nina Lagergren, is at this very moment in Budapest inaugurating a school that will bear the name of the "Hero without a Grave" as Dr. Yoav Tenembaum defined Wallenberg.
That is why Nina can not be here today and I can not be there. But she sent us a nice letter of endorsement. Nina is the mother of Nane Annan, wife of Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations … but, strange as it may sound, you will not find our Foundation involved in mundane politics.
So, as I stated a while ago, the first Mural was placed inside a Catholic temple while the second is unveiled in a Protestant one. Buenos Aires and Berlin, sister cities, are in this way united by a strong bond for the years to come.
Pastor Werner is persuaded that we met each other just a couple of days ago which is a certain fact of the calendar, but nevertheless I am convinced that our souls know each other for generations, we two both bear the responsibility of continuing a dialogue which started between David and Jonathan.
We, the Jewish people, assumed that we participated in all the steps of the past and, therefore, we are responsible for each other in the future.
We, the Jewish People of the present times were slaves in Egypt, all of us strolled in the desert, received the Commandments, built the Temples, went to exile to Babylon, arrived to Europe and went again to the exile after the expulsion, came back and were the victims of the Shoah.
The Book of Genesis tells us that the Creator asked Cain: "Where is Abel, your brother?", and Cain answered: "Am I my brother's keeper?"
Yes!, my sisters and brothers, we celebrate this moment because we are the builders of a new world in which we are all of us keepers of all our sisters and brothers!!
Let us not permit that children be used as shields in the battlefields, let us not permit that schools be used as tools of blackmailing! Let us not allow that Hope be destroyed!
Children are the future!
I was given 10 minutes to deliver my speech and I am going to obey. But, please, my sisters and brothers, think for a moment: The killers, beside being criminals, are naïve! Yes, naïve! Because they can kill and destroy a body but they can never destroy the spirit. You can not kill ideas!
Listen criminals! You are naïve! The spirit will survive but you will vanish… you will dissappear from the face of the earth!
Listen criminals! Do not be naïve! Do not waste your time, do not waste your life, do not waste your hope, do not be naïve!
Instead, join us, put your energies at the service of a meaningful life! And be the keepers of our sisters and brothers!
Be part of those who feel that they were once slaves and now are liberated.
There are things in life that are more important than life itself, PEACE, LOVE AND RECONCILIATION.
Thank you very much for your kind attention.
Next article: Speech of Karin Schubert, Vice-Mayor of Berlin.