Held in Sydney at est. (as well as other places in Australia), this masterclass provided the experience of top benchmarking wines all in one setting, including Voyager Estate from Margaret River. The international benchmarking tasting explored special sites around the world that are acclaimed for producing iconic Chardonnay, Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon predominant wines. Hosted by Voyager Estate's manager of winemaking and viticulture, Steve James and winemaker Travis Lemm, it was interesting to see how all wines presented individually distinct character from different wine sites.
There were many great wines tasted including the top French, Italian and USA examples but I would like to provide a quick snapshot of the Australian/NZ wines included for your interest… All these wines have good ageing potential for their variety.
Craggy Range Les Beaux Cailloux Chardonnay 2007 – from Hawkes Bay in New Zealand, great for Chardonnay. This is from the Gimblett Gravels vineyard (known as great vineyards for Bordeaux-style reds and Syrah from new Zealand), giving a prominent minerality that lasts through to the finish. Rrp around $60.
Leeuwin Estate 'Art Series' Chardonnay 2007 – From Margaret River (WA), and one of the most iconic examples of Chardonnay in Australia, this wine shows a citrus fragrance, with a powerful palate of white stone fruit and grapefruit, linear acidity and a hint of oak. The length is long and smooth. Great collector item. Rrp around $95.
Voyager Estate Chardonnay 2007 – Also from Margaret River. Good body, stone fruit, melon and fresh acidity and a hint of nuttiness. Great length. Rrp around $40.
Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier 2008 – One of my favourite wines. Premium example from Canberra, and of the Shiraz and Viognier blend in Australia. Young, fragrant red fruits and floral notes, with some earthy characters that give the wine depth. Palate is intense and further shows its depth, with plenty of opulent fruits and smooth silky tannins, in a length and structure that demands attention. Aged in French oak which re-assures the elegance of this wine. One of the top collected wines in Australia. Can cellar for about 15+ years (from vintage year) 🙂 Rrp around $95.
Dalwhinnie Moonambel Shiraz 2008 – Also a collectible, from Pyrenees (Vic). An attractive wine perfumed with dark spices and earthy characters, blackberries and black cherries. Palate provides plenty of juicy fruit accompanied with great texture through well integrated tannins and oak. Superb length that leaves you very satisfied. Cellar for about 15+ years. 🙂 Rrp around $60.
Shaw & Smith Adelaide Hills Shiraz 2008 – South Australia. Attractive Shiraz with warmth, spices, ripeness and well integrated oak. Rrp around $38.
Balnaves The Tally Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2005 – Coonawarra (SA). Intense wine with cassis, ripe currants, dark spices (think licorice and pepper), in a very firm structure. Rrp around $80.
Cullen Diana Madeline 2005 – Margaret River (WA). A top biodynamic example and cabernet blend – Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec, Cabernet Franc and a dash of Petit Verdot. Great depth, with intense ripe fruit, savouriness, black cherries, smooth tannins and well integrated oak. Persistent and elegant finish. Cellar for about 12+ years. 🙂 Rrp around $90.
Mount Mary Quintet 2005 – From Yarra Valley (Vic). Another superb Bordeaux/French blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot. Displays both ripe red and black fruits adding fruity and savoury tones to the nose and palate. Silky tannins and fruit are well rounded in an elegant style and very long finish. Cellar for about 15 years. 🙂 Rrp around $100.
Voyager Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot 2005 – Margaret River does many fine examples of Cabernet and Merlot blends, and Voyager estate is among the top of these. Both red and black fruits are displayed in rich flavour, along with well integrated tannins and oak, all in balance and a long and solid but smooth finish. Cellars for about 20 years… Rrp around $60.


text:
By king or cobbler
A thoughtful reflection on the psychology of the New Year, published in 1895 by the acclaimed essayist Charles Lamb in his collection The Essays of Elia.
Every man has two birth-days: two days at least, in every year, which set him upon revolving the lapse of time, as it affects his mortal duration. The one is that which in an especial manner he termeth his. In the gradual desuetude of old observances, this custom of solemnising our proper birth-day hath nearly passed away, or is left to children, who reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor understand anything in it beyond cake and orange. But the birth of a New Year is of an interest too wide to be pretermitted by king or cobbler. No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam.
Charles Lamb was one of the most celebrated writers of his generation although struggled with mental illness for much of his life and directed a great deal of his energies to caring for his sister, Mary, who was similarly affected by mental disorder and an exceptional talent for literature.
Link to Wikipedia page on Charles Lamb.
Author vaughanbellPosted on December 31, 2009 Categories Other PeopleLeave a comment on By king or cobbler
Undercover in Accra Psychiatric Hospital
Award winning journalist Anas Aremeyaw Anas went undercover in Ghana's Accra Psychiatric Hospital and has published a hard hitting report on the appalling conditions in one of the country's main institutions for treating mental illness.
In a spectacular piece of investigative reporting Anas posed as a patient, a trader, a baker and a taxi driver and has reported on institution-wide problems that include drug dealing, abuse, maltreatment, thieving, and medical negligence leading to the deaths of patients.
One of the most striking parts of the report is where he notes a few of the staff members who carry out their roles with due diligence and genuine compassion for the patients in the midst of the systemic failure of the institution.
The neglect, abuse and maltreatment of patients by nurses in the hospital remain one of the most disturbing aspects of life within the hospital. On many occasions, this reporter filmed instances where patients suffering severe fits were left to lie at the mercy of the weather, with nurses totally apathetic. Some nurses were captured beating patients who lay on the ground helpless and writhing in pain. On one occasion, a male patient is seen helping a female patient suffering from epilepsy to get on her feet. After many futile attempts to help the ailing girl, the male patient leaves her on the ground close to a nurse's office and moves on. Minutes later, a nurse passes by without offering any assistance to the patient. Not far from the patient, three nurses could be seen chatting idly as the epileptic patient lies in pain. When help finally arrives, the patient is beaten mercilessly by the nurses amidst shouts of "get up", "foolish girl", "if we beat her she would get up".
The attitude of nurses is generally so outrageous that the hard work and conscientious disposition of Ken Wholley Brantuo, Alex Baah and a few others shone forth like torch in pitch- darkness.
Francisca Ntow, a young nurse at the hospital epitomised the spirit of care and love that accompanies nursing. With beaming smiles each day, she tries her best to give attention to patients and to find out their state of being. Her shining example gives hope to the future of psychiatric nursing in the country.
If you check out nothing else I recommend listening to a gripping interview with Anas where he discusses his undercover investigation on Ghana's Super Morning Show
His follow-up piece on abuse of people with mental illness by traditional healers and prayer camps is also a powerful piece of reporting.
Probably one of the most remarkable pieces of mental health reporting you are likely to encounter for a very long time. Truly excellent work.
Link to Exposed: Inside Ghana's "Mad House" (via TWS).
Link to interview with Anas Aremeyaw Anas on his investigation.
Link to 'Investigative report: Lies of prayer camps and traditional healers'.
Author vaughanbellPosted on December 31, 2009 Categories News3 Comments on Undercover in Accra Psychiatric Hospital
A year in science and sex
Dr Petra has two great posts, one looking at the best and worst of sex and science stories from 2009, and another revisiting her annual predictions for the year in sexuality and sexual health.
The best and worst include everything from clitorocentric conspiracies, informed sex education, the Ugandan government, female sex drugs and Shakira (who is clearly still too shy to call).
Additionally, Petra will shortly post her predictions for the coming year online, so you can see how 2010 might shape up.
Link to 'The best and worst sex (and science) stories of 2009'.
Link to 'Revisiting my sex predictions for 2009'.
Author vaughanbellPosted on December 31, 2009 Categories NewsLeave a comment on A year in science and sex
Personals from psychologists
Adverts from psychologists in the Personals section of the New York Magazine.
Marriage-Minded Jewish Doctor – Successful. 43-year-old behavioral psychologist and entrepreneur. I'm 5'11", slim, considered handsome, and have many diversified social and cultural interests. More importantly, others judge me to be warm, sensitive, romantic, altruistic and capable of great love and devotion. I'd love to hear from you if you are a highly educated, emotionally mature woman, interested in a relationship leading to marriage. 9896
Slender, Dark-Haired, Very Pretty – Bright, funny psychologist, young 37, blues and jazz fan, seeks witty, sane, attractive man, 30-45. NYM M182
Your Mother's Dream: 28, handsome, caring Jewish psychologist. Into Jazz, arts, sports. Seeks and interesting attractive woman. Photo/phone. NYM H108
Dynamic, Attractive Psychologist – Seeks secure Jewish man: 30's. Be sincere, successful and witty. Enjoy NYC and nature. Bio/photo/phone. NYM S910
Tall, Slender, Attractive – Intelligent Black woman, 36, PhD psychologist, seeks warm, emotionally mature, active, successful, professional man, 30-46. Nationality unimportant. Please send letter, photo, phone. NYM B395
Affectionate, Attractive, Caring – Older NJ psychologist seeks attractive woman for a loving, enduring relationship. Please include photo and phone. NYM B341
Beautiful, Slim Jewish Divorcee – 45, successful female media psychologist with private practice, seeks male with usual demographics – but believes in chemistry above all. 9778
Handsome Psychologist – Sincere, down-to-earth, looking for bright attractive woman, 30-45. Photo. 4338
Very Attractive Single Woman – Psychologist / writer, seeks leftist man who is fit, funny and fortyish. NYM P036
Tanglewood anyone? – Lovely picnic, Boston Symphony… Engaging, cheeky LI psychologist, pretty, trim, 60s, understated, seeks like male. 5209
Woman Psychologist – 37, blond, sexy, great sense of humor, optimistic, love to cook and loves the outdoors, down-to-earth, voracious reader, whimsical. I am looking for a sensitive, sexy, successful, witty, generous, smart, kind man who wants an intimate relationship. If this is you, please send a note. 8477
True Romance – Desired by psychologist 44, 5'7″, brown hair, serious artist – with pretty woman, intelligent, passionate, self-reliant, beautiful eyes, sexy smile, any race or age. Please write. 6806
Sensual-Spirited Psychologist – 40something, 5'5″ brunette seeks handsome, humorous, honest professional with strong Jewish consciousness, family values and love of the arts – for joyful, marriage-minded relationship. 4148
Slim Pretty, Jewish Widow – Psychologist, 48; strong cultural interests, liberal politics. Enjoys country, beach. Intelligent, sensitive, emotionally stable woman seeks make counterpart to share life. Photo?/bio/phone. NYM G404
Attractive Psychologist, Male – 38, warm, funny, smart and successful would like to meet a truly beautiful woman (both inside and outside) under 34. Photo much appreciated. NYM G423
Successful Male, PhD, Psychologist – 41, 5'10", slim, warm, caring, sensitive, health conscious, non-smoker, Jewish (not religious). Seeks vivacious, tender, professionally accomplished woman with depth and emotional resources open to becoming best friend/lover/wife. NYM V320
Pretty School Psychologist – Caring, slim, Jewish woman, 36, with zest for the outdoors, seeks thoughtful, active, attractive, professional man, 35-45, for long-term. Note/photo please. 8624
"How But In Custom – And in ceremony are innocence and beauty born?" Jewish psychologist, 36, bright, verbal, attractive, a lover of Yeats, seeks man with romantic heart and high values. NYM K142
Send No Photo – Warm, loving, attractive, sexy psychologist, mother, 47, seeks professional man, 45-58, who values honesty, closeness, simple pleasures. Appreciate meaningful reply. NYM R372
Author vaughanbellPosted on December 29, 2009 Categories TogethernessLeave a comment on Personals from psychologists
Ten to know
The Brainspin blog has a list of 'Ten Psychology Studies from 2009 Worth Knowing About' that covers a mix of well-known studies and hidden gems from the last year.
The descriptions, as you might expect, are a little brief and give just the punchline without some of the possible drawbacks but all are linked to the original study so you can them in full (well, at least as far as your access allows).
One of my favourites was number 7, which provides evidence against the common idea that people who connect better with others might be better at detecting lies:
A study in the journal Psychological Science tested the hypothesis that emotional mimicry—the tendency to mirror the emotions of someone we're interacting with—makes it difficult to identify liars. Nonmimickers were significantly better at identifying liars than mimickers, and thus were harder to fool with the old flim flam sales routine. The reason is that mimicry reduces psychological distance and lowers defenses. Even if someone probably isn't lying to you, it's best to keep the cushion in place just in case.
Link to 'Ten Psychology Studies from 2009 Worth Knowing About'.
Author vaughanbellPosted on December 29, 2009 Categories NewsLeave a comment on Ten to know
The New York Times has an sensitive and in-depth article about the difficult decision to administer strong sedative drugs to terminally ill patients to ease their suffering at the expensive of potentially quickening their death.
It is, in all but one respect, a very good article, however it does contain a monumentally stupid paragraph:
For pain, the guidelines list opioid drugs, including morphine, methadone and fentanyl.
Doctors say that other drugs used for sedation are ketamine, an anesthetic and sedative popular at rave parties, and propofol, an anesthetic, which was ruled, with lorazepam, to have caused Michael Jackson's death. In very high doses, sodium thiopental is used as a sedative in the three-drug combination used for lethal injections.
You could link almost any drug (or indeed, any substance – table salt – for example) to some nefarious use or lethal outcome. In fact, some of the most demonised street drugs – heroin and cocaine – have common and legitimate medical uses.
Medicine is always a case of balancing the positive and negatives of any treatment for the benefit of the patient. Context-less examples tell us nothing about this balance.
Other than that, the article is very good and really gets to the core of why end-of-life sedation is such as difficult topic, both emotionally and medically.
Link to NYT article 'Hard Choice for a Comfortable Death: Sedation'.
Author vaughanbellPosted on December 29, 2009 Categories TogethernessLeave a comment on Going gently
The isolation contagion
The Boston Globe covers an interesting new study finding, seemingly paradoxically, that loneliness can be spread from person-to-person and can work its way through social networks.
The paradox is resolved by the important point, outlined by one of the study's authors, John Cacioppo, that 'ÄúLoneliness isn'Äôt being alone, it'Äôs feeling alone". In other words, it's not about having social contact but about feeling like you have meaningful relationships.
This feeling, it turns out, was increased or was more likely to occur when one person had contact with a person who already reported themselves to be feeling lonely.
The paper Cacioppo co-wrote with Christakis and Fowler, published in the current issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, found that having a friend who reports feeling lonely makes a person 52 percent more likely to feel lonely. In another measure, they found that, for each additional day per week a person reported feeling lonely, his friends reported an additional lonely day per month. Not only that, having a friend who has a friend who feels lonely makes a person 25 percent more likely to feel lonely, and at three degrees of separation (a friend of a friend of a friend) the odds are still increased by 15 percent…
The spread of loneliness seems to have its own particular characteristics. Women, for example, seem to be more susceptible than men. Also, the more lonely people a person knows, the more likely she herself is to become lonely. That trait distinguishes loneliness from something like alcoholism: Having an alcoholic friend increases your odds of becoming an alcoholic, but having three alcoholic friends makes you no more likely than having just one…
Distance also seems to matter to the spread of loneliness. The authors found that living close to a lonely friend was more likely to make their loneliness contagious Рif the friends lived more than a mile apart there was no significant effect. This was in contrast to obesity, which, Christakis and Fowler have found, doesn't require physical proximity to spread. In other work, the two have found that an obese friend who lives in the next state can still make you more likely to gain weight.
Not mentioned by the Globe article was the interesting finding that loneliness spreads most strongly through mutual friends but only weakly through family members.
The study, which you can read the study in full as a pdf, was drawn from data from the famous Framington Heart Study which tracked the health of a small community over many years and, rather fortuitously, asked who was related to and friends with who, initially for the purposes of tracking people down if the researchers lost contact.
Link to Boston Globe article 'The loneliness network'.
Link to PubMed entry for loneliness study.
pdf of full text of study.
Author vaughanbellPosted on December 28, 2009 Categories TogethernessLeave a comment on The isolation contagion
The Edison Brainmeter
The Psychologist has a fantastic article on one of the first psychological ability measures, created not by a psychologist but by the inventor of the domestic light bulb, Thomas Edison, who devised his trivia-based 'brainmeter' test as a way of selecting employees.
Although earlier tests had been in use, such as the prototype of the modern IQ test created by French psychologist Alfred Binet, they were designed to detect disability rather than ability – specifically, to identify children with learning difficulties.
Edison's test was quite different though. It consisted of a 163 seemingly unconnected obscure general knowledge questions of which the pass mark was arbitrarily set at 70%.
The test was considered by be nonsense by psychologists of the day, lacking both statistically validity and a proven connection with other mental abilities, but it became wildly popular and became a frequent media topic:
After the complete test was leaked to newspapers, the questions spread across the country in a national craze. 'If You Cannot Answer These You're Ignorant, Edison Says,' declared one Pennsylvania newspaper, while police in Massachusetts picked up a deranged young man claiming that he was on the run from assassins who were after his book of Edison test answers, 'valued at $1,000,000'.
Journalists gleefully sprang Edison questions on politicians, professors and captains of industry. New York'Äôs governor failed; so did the mayor of New York City, its police commissioner and, rather alarmingly, its superintendent of schools. One particularly enterprising reporter tracked down Edison's son Theodore, a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He also failed. 'ÄòDad would find me amazingly ignorant,'Äô the younger Edison admitted.
His father faced a media circus: the Fox movie studio ran mock Edison tests of biblical trivia to advertise its 'super-screen spectacle' The Queen of Sheba, while ads for Vogue magazine assured women readers 'Never mind the Edison questions! All you need to know is how to be becomingly dressed'. Others were more seriously interested in its value: within days, the Eastman Kodak company announced a similar test for its employees, and the elite Groton School in Massachusetts extended its use to applicants.
The article goes on to explain that Edison's 'brainmeter' test was the inspiration for the American college entry exam, the SAT, which is still in use today.
There turns out to be a few articles on Edison's test in the archives of The New York Times, my favourite, from 1921, being titled "EDISON BRAINMETER DIVIDES THE CRITICS; Comments on Questionnaire Continue and About One-Half Are From Scorners. COLLEGE MEN NOT SOOTHED Suggestion That Chess Game Would Be a Better Test Meets With Favor From Players."
Link to The Psychologist article '163 ways to lose your job'.
Full disclosure: I am an unpaid associate editor and occasional columnist for The Psychologist and I file all knowledge under the categories 'psychology/neuroscience' and 'miscellaneous'.
Author vaughanbellPosted on December 28, 2009 Categories Remembering1 Comment on The Edison Brainmeter
Trend setters may only be visible in rear view mirror
I've just found this excellent Fast Company article from last year challenging the idea that there is a 'tipping point' in fashions or trends driven by small numbers of highly connected people who have a disproportionate influence over which new products or ideas become popular.
The piece is based on work by Duncan Watts, a physicist and sociologist, who created numerous computer simulations of how trends move through society in a similar way to how medical scientists model how diseases spread.
One study has suggested that the role of key highly influential people in starting fashions or trends is likely to have been vastly overstated. This conclusion has rattled the cages of many in the marketing world who have been focussed on identifying and targeting 'trend setters' for many years.
Watts set the test in motion by randomly picking one person as a trendsetter, then sat back to see if the trend would spread. He did so thousands of times in a row.
The results were deeply counterintuitive. The experiment did produce several hundred societywide infections. But in the large majority of cases, the cascade began with an average Joe (although in cases where an Influential touched off the trend, it spread much further). To stack the deck in favor of Influentials, Watts changed the simulation, making them 10 times more connected. Now they could infect 40 times more people than the average citizen (and again, when they kicked off a cascade, it was substantially larger). But the rank-and-file citizen was still far more likely to start a contagion…
Mind you, Watts does agree that some people are more instrumental than others. He simply doesn't think it's possible to will a trend into existence by recruiting highly social people. The network effects in society, he argues, are too complex–too weird and unpredictable–to work that way. If it were just a matter of tipping the crucial first adopters, why can't most companies do it reliably?
As Watts points out, viral thinkers analyze trends after they've broken out. "They start with an existing trend, like Hush Puppies, and they go backward until they've identified the people who did it first, and then they go, 'Okay, these are the Influentials!'" But who's to say those aren't just Watts's accidental Influentials, random smokers who walked, unwittingly, into a dry forest? East Village hipsters were wearing lots of cool things in the fall of 1994. But, as Watts wondered, why did only Hush Puppies take off? Why didn't their other clothing choices reach a tipping point too?
However, Watts' work is largely based on computer simulations. These have the advantage of having to be based on very explicit well-defined descriptions of the phenomenon, which many of the more popular accounts are not, but have the disadvantage or having to include various assumptions and simplifications about what actually happens when people pass on ideas.
The Fast Company article is interesting as it looks at how some core marketing ideas are being tested by Watts, and how the public relations world is reacting to having some of their assumptions questioned.
Link to Fast Company article 'Is the Tipping Point Toast?'
Author vaughanbellPosted on December 26, 2009 Categories TogethernessLeave a comment on Trend setters may only be visible in rear view mirror
The obscure tools of language
The Economist has an article based on rather a daft premise ('in search of the world's hardest language') that nevertheless manages to cover numerous interesting ways in which diverse languages demand mental somersaults from the speaker or require that the speaker has to think about the world in specific ways.
Beyond Europe things grow more complicated. Take gender. Twain's joke about German gender shows that in most languages it often has little to do with physical sex. "Gender" is related to "genre", and means merely a group of nouns lumped together for grammatical purposes.
Linguists talk instead of "noun classes", which may have to do with shape or size, or whether the noun is animate, but often rules are hard to see. George Lakoff, a linguist, memorably described a noun class of Dyirbal (spoken in north-eastern Australia) as including "women, fire and dangerous things". To the extent that genders are idiosyncratic, they are hard to learn. Bora, spoken in Peru, has more than 350 of them.
The article is clearly inspired by psychologist Lera Boroditsky's recent article for Edge on how language affects how we reason about the world, but it has a wider scope and is a fascinating look at the diversity of the spoken word.
Link to The Economist article 'Tongue Twisters'.
Author vaughanbellPosted on December 26, 2009 September 14, 2010 Categories Hearing and LanguageLeave a comment on The obscure tools of language
New issue of Contemporary Psychotherapy
A new issue of the sleek internet magazine Contemporary Psychotherapy has just appeared online and is well worth checking out if you're interested in the art of psychological treatment.
The magazine is aimed at psychotherapists and deals with everything from the bricks-and-mortar issues of running a practice to relationship dynamics in couples and families.
However, it doesn't wander off into the thickets of theoretical jargon and makes a good read if you're just interested in the world of therapy.
Link to Contemporary Psychotherapy.
Author vaughanbellPosted on December 26, 2009 Categories NewsLeave a comment on New issue of Contemporary Psychotherapy
Dealing with data of the damned
There's an interesting article in Wired about how scientists deal with data that conflicts with their expectations and whether biases in how the brain deals with contradictory information might influence scientific reasoning.
The piece is based on the work of Kevin Dunbar who combines the sociology of science with the cognitive neuroscience of scientific reasoning.
In other words, he's trying to understand what scientists actually do to make their discoveries (rather than what they say they do, or what they say they should do) and whether there are specific features of the way the brain handles reasoning that might encourage these practices.
One of his main findings is that when experimental results appear that can't be explained, they're often discounted as being useless. The researchers might say that the experiment was designed badly, the equipment faulty, and so on.
It may indeed be the case the faults occurred, but it could also be the case when consistent information emerges, but these possibilities are rarely investigated when the data agrees with pre-existing assumptions, leading to possible biases in how data is interpreted.
Dunbar is not the first to tackle this issue. In fact, the first to do so is probably one of the most important but unrecognised philosophers of science, Charles Fort, who is typically associated with 'Fortean' or anomalous phenomena – such as fish falling from the sky.
Fort did indeed collect reports of all types of anomalous phenomena (interestingly, almost all from scientific journals) and used them as a critique of the scientific method – noting that while scientists say they reason from the data to theories about the world, what they actually do is filter the data in light of their theories and frequently ignore information that contradicts existing assumptions – hence, 'damning' some data as unacceptable.
This was later echoed when philosophers and sociologists started studying the scientific community in the 20th century, noting that the scientific method was not a clear practice but more of a tool in a wider consensus-forming toolbox.
Probably the most important thinker in this regard, not mentioned in the Wired article, was the philosopher Paul Feyerabend who noted that researchers regularly violate the 'rules' of science and this actually promotes progress rather than impedes it.
The article goes on to discuss research suggesting that part of this bias for information consistent with our assumptions may be due to differences in the way the brain handles this information.
Curiously, the piece mentions a 2003 study, where students were apparently asked to select the more accurate representation of gravity in an fMRI scanner, but unfortunately, I can find no trace of it.
However, a 2005 study by the same team, where participants where asked to match theories supported to different degrees by the data they'd seen (to do with how drugs relieve depression), came to similar conclusions. Namely, that brain activity is markedly different when we receive information that confirms our theories compared to when we receive information that challenges them.
In particular, contradictory information seems to activate an area deep in the frontal lobe (the ACC) often associated with 'conflict monitoring', along with an outer area of the frontal lobe (the DLPFC) associated with sorting out conflicting information, likely by filtering out some of the incompatible data so it is less likely to be registered or remembered.
There is clearly much more to scientific reasoning than this, as it is vast and complex both within individual researchers and between groups of people. I was particularly interested to read that breakthroughs were most likely to come from group discussions:
While the scientific process is typically seen as a lonely pursuit — researchers solve problems by themselves — Dunbar found that most new scientific ideas emerged from lab meetings, those weekly sessions in which people publicly present their data. Interestingly, the most important element of the lab meeting wasn't the presentation — it was the debate that followed. Dunbar observed that the skeptical (and sometimes heated) questions asked during a group session frequently triggered breakthroughs, as the scientists were forced to reconsider data they'd previously ignored. The new theory was a product of spontaneous conversation, not solitude; a single bracing query was enough to turn scientists into temporary outsiders, able to look anew at their own work.
Although it turns out that discussion with people from a diverse range of people is most important – having a room full of people who share assumptions and expertise tends not to lead to creative scientific insights.
Link to Wired article on scientific reasoning.
Author vaughanbellPosted on December 23, 2009 Categories ReasoningLeave a comment on Dealing with data of the damned
Kim Peek has left the building
Nature.com reports that the remarkable Kim Peek, inspiration for Dustin Hoffman's character in the 1988 film Rain Main, has passed away.
Despite clear and disabling difficulties in day-to-day living, Peek accumulated an encyclopaedic knowledge of numerous subjects areas, could read two pages of a book at once and could instantly calculate the day of the week for any given date.
For many years Peek was thought to have autism, but scans completed in 1988 by neuroscientist Daniel Christensen and colleagues indicated that there were significant brain abnormalities, most strikingly a malformed cerebellum and an absence of the corpus callosum – the bundle of fibres that connect the two hemispheres of the brain.
Among other findings, this suggested that the most likely diagnosis was a genetic condition called FG syndrome.
Perhaps the best profile of Peek, co-written by Christensen, appeared in Scientific American [pdf] which captured both the man himself and discussed the science behind his remarkable abilities.
He was also the subject of numerous documentaries and you can view one of the best of them, Kim Peek – The Real Rain Man, on YouTube.
UPDATE: SciAm have made their article on Kim Peek freely available on their website as a tribute.
Link to announcement from Nature.com.
pdf of excellent SciAm article 'Inside the mind of a savant'.
Link to documentary Kim Peek – The Real Rain Man.
Author vaughanbellPosted on December 23, 2009 Categories RememberingLeave a comment on Kim Peek has left the building
Sampling from the stream of consciousness
The New York Times has a fascinating article revisiting a classic problem in psychology of whether our accounts of our individual 'streams of consciousness' have any useful role in the scientific understanding the mind.
Many of the early studies in psychology relied on people simply reporting 'what they thought' and got a bad reputation due to the rather haphazard ways in which studies were conducted.
In part, this led to a swing in the other direction, where the extremes of behaviourism suggested that not only were these methods useless but that the 'stream of consciousness' played no causal role in our behaviour – in effect, it was seen as uninteresting mental fluff.
Thankfully, mainstream psychology has moved on and now often tries to integrate conscious experience with objective observational data, but this isn't always the easiest of tasks either practically or theoretically (indeed, the difficulty is the basis of the 'hard problem' of consciousness).
Recently, psychologists have developed the experience sampling method to try and make sample the stream of consciousness a little more systematic. It involves giving someone a device that beeps randomly and when it sounds, they have to record exactly what they were thinking about or have to rate a certain aspect of the current psychological state.
The resulting mental freeze-frames are remarkably diverse.
On the third day of Melanie's experiment, as her boyfriend was asking her a question about insurance, she was trying to remember the word "periodontist." On the fourth day, she was having a strong urge to go scuba diving. On the sixth day, she was picking flower petals from the sink while hearing echoes of the phrase "nice long time" in her head.
These dispatches from the front lines of consciousness might be useful to a novelist seeking authentic material. But can they contribute to a scientific understanding of the mind?
…Eric Schwitzgebel, a philosopher at the University of California, Riverside, says after-the-fact interviews should be treated with caution: one cannot assume the subjects will be honest, or that they are not twisting their answers to conform with their own biases, or telling the experimenter what they think he wants to hear, or simply filling in details they forgot.
The article is riffing on the recent book by Hurlburt and Schwitzgebel called Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic and a recent article in the Journal of Consciousness Studies where the debate was opened out to a range of cognitive scientists for their views.
Link to NYT piece 'Taking Mental Snapshots to Plumb Our Inner Selves'.
Author vaughanbellPosted on December 22, 2009 Categories IntegratingLeave a comment on Sampling from the stream of consciousness
Super thinker
Superman in the pose of Rodin's statue The Thinker outside the headquarters of Bancolombia in Medellín.
I'm not quite sure about the intention of the statue as in the UK it would probably be considered an ironic take on the stereotype of the financial whiz kid and unfortunately I found it on the weekend so there was no-one around to ask.
However, popular culture is well represented in serious art here, in a large part due to the influence of Medellín's most famous artist, the painter and sculptor Fernando Botero.
Author vaughanbellPosted on December 22, 2009 Categories NonsenseLeave a comment on Super thinker
The psychological effects of brain theories
The Frontal Cortex has an interesting piece on how giving people information suggesting that neuroscience undermines our everyday concept of free will can alter our ethical behaviour.
The post discusses two experiments where participants had been given information suggesting that free will was an illusion – one passage taken from Francis Crick's book The Astonishing Hypothesis that argues against the everyday concept of free will on the basis of neurobiology.
It seems even these relatively brief encounters with information arguing against free-will had a noticeable effect on behaviour:
It turned out that students who had read the anti-free will quote were significantly more likely to cheat on the mental arithmetic test; their exposure to some basic scientific spin – your soul is a piece of meat – led to an increase in amorality. Of course, this is a relatively mild ethical lapse – as Schooler notes, "None of the participants exposed to the anti-free will message assaulted the experimenter or ran off with the payment kitty" – but it still demonstrates that even seemingly banal materialist concepts can alter our ethical behavior.
In another study, information on a "disbelief in free will" reduced people's willingness to help others and increased the amount of unhelpful behaviour toward others.
The issue of free will in neuroscience is complex, but it is interesting that the information provided doesn't bear directly on the issue of whether it is best to help other people or not.
Clearly though, biological explanations have an association with the idea that people are less in control of their actions, as we also know from other studies.
Science tends to assume that theories are not neutral in that they affect how we look at the world as researchers, but it is interesting to find out that this also happens on a personal psychological level as well.
Link to Frontal Cortex on 'Free Will and Ethics'.
Author vaughanbellPosted on December 19, 2009 Categories Reasoning1 Comment on The psychological effects of brain theories

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


If you are unable to find a Dealer, please contact our office at +1(800) 879-7575 or sales@flexbar.com for assistance.
Wallace Machinery & Tool Co. Ltd.
Empire Machinery & Tool Ltd.
Tool & Cutter Supply Co.
4407 N. County Rd. W.
C.W. Rod Tool Company, Inc.
Marshall Tool & Supply Corp.
One Way Industrial Supply Inc.


text:
"""Exceptions raised by PyMongo."""

from bson.errors import *

try:
    from ssl import CertificateError
except ImportError:
    from pymongo.ssl_match_hostname import CertificateError

class PyMongoError(Exception):
    """Base class for all PyMongo exceptions.

    .. versionadded:: 1.4
    """

class ConnectionFailure(PyMongoError):
    """Raised when a connection to the database cannot be made or is lost.
    """

class AutoReconnect(ConnectionFailure):
    """Raised when a connection to the database is lost and an attempt to
    auto-reconnect will be made.

    In order to auto-reconnect you must handle this exception, recognizing that
    the operation which caused it has not necessarily succeeded. Future
    operations will attempt to open a new connection to the database (and
    will continue to raise this exception until the first successful
    connection is made).
    """
    def __init__(self, message='', errors=None):
        self.errors = errors or []
        ConnectionFailure.__init__(self, message)

class ConfigurationError(PyMongoError):
    """Raised when something is incorrectly configured.
    """

class OperationFailure(PyMongoError):
    """Raised when a database operation fails.

    .. versionadded:: 1.8
       The :attr:`code` attribute.
    """

    def __init__(self, error, code=None):
        self.code = code
        PyMongoError.__init__(self, error)

class TimeoutError(OperationFailure):
    """Raised when a database operation times out.

    .. versionadded:: 1.8
    """

class DuplicateKeyError(OperationFailure):
    """Raised when a safe insert or update fails due to a duplicate key error.

    .. note:: Requires server version **>= 1.3.0**

    .. versionadded:: 1.4
    """

class InvalidOperation(PyMongoError):
    """Raised when a client attempts to perform an invalid operation.
    """

class InvalidName(PyMongoError):
    """Raised when an invalid name is used.
    """

class CollectionInvalid(PyMongoError):
    """Raised when collection validation fails.
    """

class InvalidURI(ConfigurationError):
    """Raised when trying to parse an invalid mongodb URI.

    .. versionadded:: 1.5
    """

class UnsupportedOption(ConfigurationError):
    """Exception for unsupported options.

    .. versionadded:: 2.0
    """

class ExceededMaxWaiters(Exception):
    """Raised when a thread tries to get a connection from a pool and
    ``max_pool_size * waitQueueMultiple`` threads are already waiting.

    .. versionadded:: 2.6
    """
    pass

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
module MnoEnterprise
  class Jpi::V1::Impac::DashboardsController < Jpi::V1::BaseResourceController
    include MnoEnterprise::Concerns::Controllers::Jpi::V1::Impac::DashboardsController
  end
end


Cattaneo Commercial investment department have sold an office investment at Thames House and Thames Mews, Esher to an Off-Shore Trust for a sum of £4.6 million i.e. 7.75% net yield. Thames House provides 15,225 sq ft of offices in 5 self contained buildings, with up to 60 car parking spaces. Cattaneo represented a private investor in the sale.


Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, cryptocurrency, Blockchain buzz all the rage at Surfers Paradise, Gold Coast; Fool's Gold or the real deal?
Bitcoin is topic of conversation is basically ever region of Australia, and in just about every corner of the globe for that matter.
On the shores of Surfers Paradise and up Gold Coast way it would have to be the leading subject of conversation in Uber's and Taxi's, and a high (in the region of 20 to 30%) of Uber drivers own and trade Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is a phenom, but the billion dollar question is - Will the stock keep rising, or will the dreaded B word (Bubble) eventually burst?
World of the street, as well as in major Australian newspapers is that now Bitcoin Cash may be seen as a wiser investment that Bitcoin, if the business of Bitcoin is your thing that is.
We're hearing and reading a few things about houses for sale that will accept Bitcoin as part payment, but various Australian based newspapers are reporting these as little more than publicity stunts. We don't hold the deeds and don't know for certain, so we're just reiterating some print reports.


One of my twitter followers had mentioned this movie yesterday, I had forgotten all about it, I'm not sure why as I remember it as being one I really enjoyed... and watched more than once. Maybe you'll enjoy it too . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4L6ruTF5qE "Here comes the boom"
I haven't seen to many this year that had a lasting impression. I did like "Mary Queen of Scots", "Bohemian Rhapsody". "Green Book". and "Can you ever forgiveme", they were all good and worth watching, imo.


text:
RIP Freddie Hubbard (1938 – 2008)
Moanin' with Freddie Hubbard
Freddie Hubbard (1938 – 2008) was an American jazz trumpeter.
He was primarily known as a sideman to Art Blakey in the latter's Jazz Messengers and many other jazzmen's bands but achieved his greatest personal success in the 1970s with a series of albums for smooth jazz record label CTI Records. Although his early 1970s jazz albums Red Clay, First Light, Straight Life, and Sky Dive were particularly well received and considered among his best work, the albums he recorded later in the decade were bashed by critics for their commercialism.
Polar AC
A particularly accomplished track is Gibraltar, compiled by Ashley Beedle on the Grass Roots album.
This entry was posted in African American culture, American culture, black music, death, music, world music classics on December 30, 2008 by jahsonic.
RIP Ann Savage (1921 – 2008)
RIP American actress Ann Savage at age 87, best-known for her iconic bad girl role in Detour.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFXQqEoNofA]
Ann Savage discusses Detour
Ann Savage (1921 – 2008) is mainly remembered as the cigarette-puffing femme fatale in Detour (1945) and other Hollywood B-movies and film noirs of the 1940s.
When it became public domain, Detour was often run on syndicated television and several versions were released on VHS home video. Although made on a small budget and containing only rudimentary sets and camera work, the film has garnered substantial praise through the years and is held in high regard. Director Wim Wenders called her work in Detour "at least 15 years ahead of its time". The film's ending is notable as an exemplum of involuntary manslaughter.
Ann most recently earned rave reviews in all media for her stunning performance as Canadian director Guy Maddin's mother in his most acclaimed film My Winnipeg (2008).
This entry was posted in 1001 things to do before you die, American culture, fiction, film, world cinema classics on December 29, 2008 by jahsonic.
Introducing Japanese photographer Manabu Yamanaka
"Gyahtei,"[1]
Manabu Yamanaka is a Japanese contemporary artist. He lives and works in Tokyo, was born in Hyogo, Japan, in 1959. His photographs have been exhibited throughout Europe and North America.
His exhibition, "Gyahtei,"[1] a Buddhist term meaning "great age," consisting of a series of black and white photographs of old people brought him to international attention.
He also did the cover art to Coin Locker Babies[2].
This entry was posted in 1001 things to do before you die, art, nature, subversion, visual culture, voyeurism on December 28, 2008 by jahsonic.
Lucy, a hypothetical primate
The butler[0] told me that yesterday at Düsseldorf he also saw Transplant[1] by Otto Dix. The print reminded me of Italian comic artist Liberatore's Frankensteinesque[2] vision RanXerox[3], [4], [5], one of the most neglected comic book series of the 21st century.
Lucy, l'espoir (2007) illustrated by Liberatore and written by Patrick Norbert.
To my surprise — I know that Liberatore has not made an album since 1996, not counting Femmes[6] which has no story — I stumbled on Lucy, l'espoir a 2007 graphic novel illustrated by Liberatore, many times called the Michelangelo of comic art, but probably more kin to Goltzius (compare the depiction of exaggerated muscle mass in[7], [8] and [9])
On the cover[10] of Lucy, l'espoir' (En: Lucy, the hope) is an ape mother holding a baby and looking skywards to the moon on a clear night. On a second plate[11], one ape fights another and they both seem to fall off a cliff. The ape on the cover is Lucy, an Australopithecus afarensis specimen discovered 1974, at one time considered the missing link.
This entry was posted in 1001 things to do before you die, art, eye candy, fantastique on December 28, 2008 by jahsonic.
RIP Eartha Kitt (1927 – 2008)
RIP Eartha Kitt
Eartha Mae Kitt (1927 – 2008) was an American actress, singer, and cabaret star. She was perhaps best known for her 1953 Christmas song "Santa Baby". Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in the world". She is internationally known for such songs as "I Want to Be Evil" (1957) and Where Is My Man (1983) (UK #36), the first a prime example of American cabaret, the second a gay anthem. She is an archetypical cat woman.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQ5VaBgXzuM&]
"I Want to Be Evil"
As for "I Want to Be Evil," I just discovered the song today. The version on Youtube depicted was recorded for a Swedish television show called Kaskade or Kaskad, Swedish for waterfall.
The song was written by Lester Judson and Raymond Taylor, first recorded in 1953, taken from the album That Bad Eartha with space-age pop musician Henri René and his Orchestra.
This entry was posted in 1001 things to do before you die, death, music on December 27, 2008 by jahsonic.
What the Butler Saw in Düsseldorf
The butler visited Diana und Actaeon – Der verbotene Blick auf die Nacktheit with a fellow butler and a maid.
He was thrilled to see Étant donnés[1] by Marcel Duchamp. And he did not realize it also looked like this[2]. He saw the famous metal doll sculpture[3] by Hans Bellmer and Bad Boy by Eric Fischl. He saw the most beautiful penis in post-war photography, yes he meant the Robert Mapplethorpe one[4].
He saw and liked photographs[5] of the Linley Sambourne collection, paintings by French figuratist Jean Rustin[6], paintings by Michael Kirkham[7], his first viewing of the fauvist Erich Heckel[8], Phryne[9] by French academic cult painter Jean-Léon Gérôme, waxworks by Belgian sculptor Berlinde De Bruyckere[10], and paintings by Roland Delcol[11].
The butler was also very much taken by Johannes Hüppi[12]; his first viewing of his fave John Currin[13]; his first real Félix Vallotton; and a Lisa Yuskavage[14]. But not that one.
Butler wants you to know that the works he pointed to are for reference only and may not correspond to the works at the exhibition. He also wants you to know that some of the links may be NSFW.
This entry was posted in 1001 things to do before you die, absurd, art, culture, eroticism, eye candy, fantastique, female sexuality, Icons of erotic art, juxtapoetry, miscellaneity, photography, postmodernism, sexual revolution, transgression, visual culture, voyeurism on December 27, 2008 by jahsonic.
RIP Harold Pinter (1930 – 2008)
Harold Pinter is dead @78
Harold Pinter (1930 – 2008) is the man I know from his auctorial descriptive Pinteresque, his connection to the Theatre of the Absurd and his screenplay work on other writers' novels, such as The Servant (1963), The Go-Between (1970), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1980), and especially The Comfort of Strangers[1][2] (1990), one of the more devastating film experiences of the eighties.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjdKxVFd_K8]
Outside of theatre, Pinter's most popular lemma is the title of his play The Birthday Party, which survives to this day as Nick Cave's band The Birthday Party.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5I2vEcVC_I&]
"Nick The Stripper" (1981) by The Birthday Party
Harold Pinter is a defining playwright of the 1962-coined Theatre of the Absurd theatrical movement along with French Eugène Ionesco, British Samuel Beckett, French Jean Genet, and Russian Arthur Adamov. The movement's avant-la-lettre predecessors include Alfred Jarry, Luigi Pirandello, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, Guillaume Apollinaire, and the Surrealists. Other playwrights associated are Tom Stoppard, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Fernando Arrabal and Edward Albee.
Pinteresque
I don't know what to think of Pinteresque. I feel as if Pinter and Buñuel share a set of the same sensibilities but I wonder. If one does a Celebrity Deathmatch between Pinteresque[3] and Buñuelian[4], Pinter wins with 19000+ vs 6000+ for Bunuel. Which is a pity, because I find Buñuelian absurdism a fuller experience than the Pinteresque, Buñuel manages to add spiritualism, humor and sensuality to his work whereas Pinter seems to bog down in kitchen-sink-naturalism. But Pinteresque is clearly the winner here, with Wikipedia defining Pinteresque in their separate article characteristics of Harold Pinter's work and clearly no Buñuelian counterpart.
The Pinter pause
Another interesting aspect of Pinter's work is his use of pauses, typographically represented by ellipses. Pinter uses it to such an extent that it has gained fame as the "Pinter pause", a theatrical technique used for example to great effect in the water dripping faucet seduction scene in The Servant (1963).
The following exchange between Aston and Davies in The Caretaker is typical of the Pinter pause:
ASTON. More or less exactly what you…
DAVIES. That's it … that's what I'm getting at is … I mean, what sort of jobs … (Pause.)
ASTON. Well, there's things like the stairs … and the … the bells …
DAVIES. But it'd be a matter … wouldn't it … it'd be a matter of a broom … isn't it?
Still, I prefer my ellipses by Céline (although he shares Pinter's pessimism), who famously used them in Death on the Installment Plan in 1936, and which then became his trademark style, giving innovative, chaotic, and antiheroic visions of human suffering. In Death on the Installment Plan, he extensively uses ellipses scattered all throughout the text to enhance the rhythm and to emphasise the style of speech.
An example of Céline's ellipses:
"So I start moseying down the Boulevard Sebastopol, then the rue de Rivoli . . . I've kind of lost track. It's so stifling you can hardly move . . . I drag myself through the arcades . . . along the shop fronts . . . "How about the Bois de Boulogne!" I says to myself . . . I kept on walking quite a while . . . But it was getting to be unbearable . . . unbearable . . . When I see the gates of the Tuileries, I turn off … across the street and into the gardens . . . There was a hell of a crowd already." —Death on the Installment Plan
This entry was posted in 1001 things to do before you die, absurd, experimental, fiction, grotesque, irrationalism, Luis Buñuel, modernism, theory, transgression, verisimilitude on December 25, 2008 by jahsonic.
Baby Jesus in detail[1], from a larger painting[2] by Georges de La Tour.
This entry was posted in 1001 things to do before you die on December 24, 2008 by jahsonic.
RIP Adrian Mitchell (1932 – 2008)
RIP Adrian Mitchell
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmMCObgu_jc]
Adrian Mitchell (24 October 1932 – 20 December 2008) was an English poet, novelist and playwright, best-known for his poem To Whom It May Concern[1].
Connecting lemmas for Mitchell include London Oz, Tom Phillips (artist), International Poetry Incarnation, SOMA Research Association, Wholly Communion, To Whom It May Concern (poem), Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain and Penguin Modern Poets.
The poem To Whom It May Concern is known by its iconic phrase: "Tell me lies about Vietnam." A piece of cult poetry if there ever was one.
This entry was posted in 1001 things to do before you die, death, poetry, subculture, subversion on December 23, 2008 by jahsonic.
Introducing the blog E-L-I-S-E
Introducing E-L-I-S-E[1],[2], a visual culture blog.
This entry was posted in 1001 things to do before you die, blogroll, eye candy, gratuitous nudity, visual culture on December 23, 2008 by jahsonic.


text:
package org.fhcrc.cpl.viewer.commandline.modules;

import org.fhcrc.cpl.toolbox.commandline.arguments.*;
import org.fhcrc.cpl.toolbox.proteomics.feature.FeatureSet;
import org.fhcrc.cpl.toolbox.proteomics.feature.Feature;
import org.fhcrc.cpl.toolbox.proteomics.feature.FeatureMassCalibrationUtilities;
import org.fhcrc.cpl.toolbox.proteomics.MassCalibrationUtilities;
import org.fhcrc.cpl.toolbox.gui.chart.PanelWithBoxAndWhiskerChart;
import org.fhcrc.cpl.toolbox.gui.chart.PanelWithScatterPlot;
import org.fhcrc.cpl.toolbox.commandline.CommandLineModuleExecutionException;
import org.fhcrc.cpl.toolbox.commandline.CommandLineModule;
import org.apache.log4j.Logger;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.ArrayList;

/**
 * Command linemodule for plotting the mass calibration of a feature file
 */
public class PlotMassCalibrationCLM extends BaseViewerCommandLineModuleImpl
        implements CommandLineModule
{
    protected static Logger _log = Logger.getLogger(PlotMassCalibrationCLM.class);

    protected FeatureSet[] featureSets;

    protected File outFile;
    protected File outBoxWhiskersPlotFile;

    protected double theoreticalMassWavelength =
            MassCalibrationUtilities.DEFAULT_THEORETICAL_MASS_WAVELENGTH;

    protected boolean displayPPMLine = false;
    protected double ppmForLine = -1;
    protected boolean showCharts=true;
    protected boolean useMz = false;

    protected PanelWithScatterPlot scatterPlotChartPanel = null;
    protected PanelWithBoxAndWhiskerChart boxWhiskersChartPanel = null;

    public PlotMassCalibrationCLM()
    {
        init();
    }

    protected void init()
    {
        mCommandName = "plotmasscalibration";
        mShortDescription = "Visualizes the mass calibration of a feature file as a scatterplot";
        mHelpMessage = "Visualizes the mass calibration of a feature file as a scatterplot, based on work by Wolski et al., 2006.  X axis is feature mass.  Y axis is the distance from the nearest theoretical mass cluster.\n" +
                       " Optionally display lines indicating a given ppm deviation from theoretical mass";

        CommandLineArgumentDefinition[] argDefs =
                {
                        createUnnamedSeriesFeatureFileArgumentDefinition(false, null),
                        new DirectoryToReadArgumentDefinition("indir",false, "Directory containing input files, all of which will be used"),
                        new FileToWriteArgumentDefinition("out",false, null),
                        new DecimalArgumentDefinition("theoreticalwavelength",false,
                                "Theoretical mass cluster wavelength",
                                theoreticalMassWavelength),
                        new DecimalArgumentDefinition("ppmline", false,
                                "PPM cutoff to display on plot (default none)", ppmForLine),
                        new FileToWriteArgumentDefinition("outboxwhiskersplot",false, "File to save box-and-whiskers plot to"),
                        new BooleanArgumentDefinition("showcharts",false,"Show charts?", showCharts),
                        new BooleanArgumentDefinition("usemz",false,"Plot m/z instead of mass", useMz),
                };
        addArgumentDefinitions(argDefs);
    }

    public void assignArgumentValues()
            throws ArgumentValidationException
    {
        Object[] featureSetObjects = getUnnamedSeriesArgumentValues();
        if (featureSetObjects != null)
        {
            assertArgumentAbsent("indir");
            featureSets = new FeatureSet[featureSetObjects.length];
            for (int i=0; i<featureSetObjects.length; i++)
                featureSets[i] = (FeatureSet) featureSetObjects[i];
        }
        else
        {
            assertArgumentPresent("indir");
            File[] featureFiles = getFileArgumentValue("indir").listFiles();
            List<FeatureSet> featureSetsList = new ArrayList<FeatureSet>();
            for (File possibleFeatureFile : featureFiles)
            {
                if (possibleFeatureFile.isDirectory())
                    continue;
                try
                {
                    featureSetsList.add(new FeatureSet(possibleFeatureFile));
                }
                catch (Exception e)
                {
                    throw new ArgumentValidationException("Error loading feature file " + possibleFeatureFile.getName(), e);
                }
            }
            featureSets = featureSetsList.toArray(new FeatureSet[featureSetsList.size()]);
        }

        outFile = getFileArgumentValue("out");
        outBoxWhiskersPlotFile = getFileArgumentValue("outboxwhiskersplot");
        showCharts = getBooleanArgumentValue("showcharts");
        useMz = getBooleanArgumentValue("usemz");

        theoreticalMassWavelength = getDoubleArgumentValue("theoreticalwavelength");

        ppmForLine = getDoubleArgumentValue("ppmline");
        if (ppmForLine >= 0)
            displayPPMLine = true;

    }

    /**
     * do the actual work
     */
    public void execute() throws CommandLineModuleExecutionException
    {
        List<Feature[]> featureArrayList = new ArrayList<Feature[]>(featureSets.length);
        for (FeatureSet featureSet : featureSets)
            featureArrayList.add(featureSet.getFeatures());

        scatterPlotChartPanel = FeatureMassCalibrationUtilities.plotMassDefectDeviation(
                featureArrayList, theoreticalMassWavelength, displayPPMLine, ppmForLine, useMz);
        scatterPlotChartPanel.setName("By mass");

        if (showCharts)
            scatterPlotChartPanel.displayInTab();
        if (outFile != null)
        {
            try
            {
                scatterPlotChartPanel.saveChartToImageFile(outFile);
                System.err.println("Saved output image");
            }
            catch (IOException e)
            {
                throw new CommandLineModuleExecutionException(e);
            }
        }

        PanelWithScatterPlot pwspScan = new PanelWithScatterPlot();

        boxWhiskersChartPanel =
                new PanelWithBoxAndWhiskerChart("Mass cluster deviation (Da)");

        for (int i=0; i<featureArrayList.size(); i++)
        {
            Feature[] features = featureArrayList.get(i);
            double[][] scatterPlotData = new double[2][features.length];

            for (int j=0; j<features.length; j++)
            {
                int scan = features[j].getScan();

                float mass = features[j].getMass();
                if (useMz)
                    mass = features[j].getMz();
                double massOffset = (mass -  MassCalibrationUtilities.THEORETICAL_MASS_DEFECT_INTERCEPT)
                        % theoreticalMassWavelength;

                if (massOffset >= 0.5)
                    massOffset -= 1;
                scatterPlotData[0][j] = (float) (scan);
                scatterPlotData[1][j] = (float) massOffset;
            }
            pwspScan.addData(scatterPlotData[0], scatterPlotData[1], "Set " + (i+1) + " (" + featureSets[i].getSourceFile().getName() + ")");
            boxWhiskersChartPanel.addData(scatterPlotData[1], "Set " + (i+1) + " (" + featureSets[i].getSourceFile().getName() + ")");
        }

        pwspScan.setAxisLabels("Scan","Mass Cluster Deviation (Da)");
        pwspScan.setName("By scan");
        if (showCharts)
            pwspScan.displayInTab();

        if (showCharts && featureSets.length > 1)
            boxWhiskersChartPanel.displayInTab();
        if (outBoxWhiskersPlotFile != null)
            try
            {
                boxWhiskersChartPanel.saveChartToImageFile(outBoxWhiskersPlotFile);
            }
            catch (IOException e)
            {
                throw new CommandLineModuleExecutionException("Failed to save box-and-whiskers plot to file",e);
            }
    }

    public PanelWithBoxAndWhiskerChart getBoxWhiskersChartPanel() {
        return boxWhiskersChartPanel;
    }

    public PanelWithScatterPlot getScatterPlotChartPanel() {
        return scatterPlotChartPanel;
    }
}


This is what I've been working on today. It's a lot closer to being done that it was.
This is how Renee lost her phone and gained an obsession.
She was in the park near work. It was a sunny day, on the edge of cold, the wind carrying autumn with it like an accessory it was trying on before settling for it for good.
She set her phone down on the bench beside her as she unfolded her bento box, levering back metal flaps to reveal still-steaming rice, a quivering piece of tofu.
Movement caught her eye. She pulled her feet away as a creature leaped up onto the bench slats beside her, an elastic band snap's worth of fear as it grabbed the phone, half as large as the creature itself, and moved to the other end of the bench.
The bento box clattered as it hit the concrete, rice grains spilling across the grey.
She'd thought it an animal at first, but it was actually a small robot, a can-opener that had been greatly and somewhat inexpertly augmented, modified. It had two corkscrew claws, and grasshopper legs made from nutcrackers to augment the tiny wheels on its base that had once let it move to hand as needed in a kitchen. Frayed raffia wrapped its handles, scratchy strands feathering out to weathered fuzz. Its original plastic had been some sort of blue, faded now to match the concrete beneath her sensible shoes.
The bench jerked as the robot leaped again, moving behind the trash barrel, still carrying her phone. She stood, stepping over the spilled rice to try to get to the phone, but the leaves still on the rhododendrons thrashed and stilled, and her phone was gone.
This entry was posted in teasers and tagged red in tooth and cog, short stories, snippets, teasers, wip. Bookmark the permalink.


text:
HCT Group Media contacts Search
This section of the website records our recent news releases. For more information on a particular story or issue, please see the media contacts section for how to get in touch.
CT Plus starts Route 20
CT Plus, which is a part of the HCT Group, has successfully begun service on its latest TfL red bus route – Route 20.
Posted: 25 Mar 2019
Route 20, which is operated form our Walthamstow Avenue depot, runs from Walthamstow Central Station to Debden Station. It will operate on double deck vehicles with a Peak Vehicle Requirement of 10.
Lawrence Wilson, Director of London for HCT Group, said "I'd like to congratulate our red bus team for a successful start to the route – and the work they have put it to make everything happen.
"I'd also like to extend the warmest possible welcome to the 14 new colleagues who have joined us to work on the routes – I'm sure you'll enjoy your new career at CT Plus."
HCT Group at a glance »
1st Floor, 141 Curtain Road


Dyn faced multiple DDoS attacks that caused much of the internet to come to a halt on Oct. 21.
While much of the internet was frantically trying to refresh their browsers on Friday, the folks at Dyn were facing a huge digital assault that appeared to be coming from just about everywhere.
Their servers were swamped and, because Dyn provides domain name services to many of the most popular sites on the internet, that's all the online community was talking about.
The attack — known as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) — was indeed bad. DDoS attacks are defined by a flood of "junk data" that clogs a specific site so legitimate users can't get through.
DDoS attacks flood servers with "junk" traffic, preventing legitimate users from gaining access.
Someone — Dyn won't comment on who, but more on that later — had hacked a significant number of video cameras and digital video recorders hooked up to the internet, and hurled that junk data at Dyn.
The domino effect left websites such as Twitter, Spotify and others sluggish or unreachable to the average user, so users naturally refreshed their pages again and again.
That was all legitimate traffic, but according to a Wednesday post on Dyn's website, it was hard to distinguish legitimate from malicious traffic at the time. They thought they were defending themselves from something even greater, as many IP addresses generated 10 to 20 times their normal amount of traffic.
"When DNS traffic congestion occurs, legitimate retries can further contribute to traffic volume," Scott Hilton, the executive vice president of product at Dyn, wrote in Wednesday's post. "We saw both attack and legitimate traffic coming from millions of IPs across all geographies. It appears the malicious attacks were sourced from at least one botnet, with the retry storm providing a false indicator of a significantly larger set of endpoints than we now know it to be."
Dyn is still looking into the roots of the attack.
Dyn now estimates the attack came from around 100,000 "malicious endpoints," rather than millions as previously expected.
Though they're not saying who hacked the devices needed to mount the attack, Dyn and Flashpoint, a cybersecurity firm, have confirmed that the hackers used a malware known as Mirai to break into the cameras and DVRs.
Flashpoint hasn't confirmed a perpetrator either, but they have reason to believe the attack came from a hacker or group of hackers who just wanted to show off.
The cybersecurity firm found the attackers also hit a video game company while they were sending waves of junk data at Dyn, something that's not typical of a state actor or a group trying to steal money.
Instead, Flashpoint believes the hacker or the group is "likely connected to the English-language hacking forum community, specifically users and readers of the forum 'hackforums[.]net,'" a forum frequented by hackers who often launch similar types of attacks.


Ballet Costume makers/renters in London?
Hi all, I was just wondering if anyone knows of a good dressmaker in London who has experience with ballet costumes? OR: Someone who rents out good quality ballet costumes? I need a giselle-style(act 1) costume for a festival , one with a lot of movement in the skirt (i.e no stiff-netting)... anyone know of anything? I've been searching on the internet for hours and hours , trying to find something suitable... but no luck! I would love something similar to Miko Fogarty's costume (sorry, I don't know how to add a link), though I don't think my budget-£150- would permit it . Any help would be much appreciated! Thanks.


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Brexit Day. "Those who bet against Britain are going to lose their shirts".
By Paul Goodman
Follow @PaulGoodmanCH
In which election did a party win its highest share of the vote since the war? The answer is the European elections of 1979. The Conservatives took over 50 per cent of it.
They sent to Strasbourg what was surely most pro-federalist intake of any British party ever. Members included such committed pro-Europeans as Peter Price, Bill Newton-Dunn, Tom Spencer, David Curry and Edward Heath's old friend Madron Seligman.
What happened during the next half-century or so? How did the more euro-enthusiast of the two main parties become overwhelmingly euro-sceptic? And why has it come about that Britain is leaving the EU today?
One version of history begins at an end of its spectrum by observing that Britain's centre-right papers became increasingly hostile to the European project. It ends at the other by claiming that the EU referendum was fixed by Russian gold, sinister billionaires, dark advertising, big data and all the ephemara of Cadwalladrism.
If you believe that the world is conspiracy-driven and that voters are fundamentally stupid, there is nothing we could possibly write to disabuse you.
Even that truth about the change in Fleet Street should provoke discussion. What came first: the anti-federalist take of proprietors or that of voters? Which drove which? Which was the chicken and which the egg? In any event, the papers have long been a power in decline. And what about the pro-EU slant of our national broadcaster?
No, the fundamental shift within the Conservative Party and among the British people is better explained by the coming-together of an old habit and a new trend.
The old habit is British nationalism distilled through our history – in other words, in an island that hasn't been successfully invaded for a thousand years, which has a web of ancient institutions, and in which self-government has fewer of the popular negatives that haunt it among our neighbours.
The new trend is the western revolt against its elites, driven by a post-crash backlash and popular discontent with mass immigration.
This was accentuated in Britain by the expenses scandal, the Iraq War, and the Government in power at the time, Tony Blair's, which spurned post-enlargement restrictions on free movement. But the tide of public opinion had shifted against the European project long before then.
The original impetus was given by the EU openly becoming what it has always been: the federalist project for which those 1979 Tories yearned. Think Jacques Delors, the Maastricht Treaty, the Euro – and communism's collapse.
The Europe issue helped to bring down Margaret Thatcher. The putsch that removed a three-times victorious Prime Minister who was undefeated at the polls had consequences. These helped to stiffen resistance within the party to the Euro as its instinct for sovereignty intensified.
Party change, voter trends and political expediency pushed David Cameron towards that referendum. But for all the move in public opinion, Leave's victory was narrow.
That was largely because of that most persistent of electoral habits – caution. But the aftermath of the result saw the Citizens of Nowhere, as Theresa May didn't really mean to describe them, rally against the Majority for Somewhere. One seldom saw the EU flag brandished in earnest before June 23rd, 2016. That hasn't been true since.
Britain's pro-EU Ascendancy had become accustomed to ruling over the best part of 50 years. Its rage against the democratic removal of what it believed it was entitled to respected few conventions.
Those it broke included the neutrality of the Speaker, the apoliticality of the Supreme Court and the role of the legislature – which under what this site called the Real Prime Minister, Oliver Letwin, sought to usurp the role of the executive in order ultimately to thwart the voters.
Over 40 of May's Ministers resigned over Brexit one way or the other, including a holder of a great office of state – Boris Johnson, who followed David Davis out of Cabinet over the Chequers Plan.
The counter-rage of voters was terrible to behold. It reduced the Conservatives to four MEPs in last year's European elections, revived Nigel Farage and created the conditions for the Brexit Party, and drove Tory ratings down to 20 per cent or so. A second referendum loomed into view.
We believe that the consequences would have shaken even traditionally stolid and stable Britain, in which those long-standing institutions had been buttressed over time by first-past-the-post.
It seems like a dream that Boris Johnson has turned all that round in less than a year. His near-landslide last month was a demonstration of the power not of inevitability and immutable forces in history, as Marxists cling erroneously to believing, but to the force of accident and personality.
This evening, some will rejoice – including this Brexit-backing site – and some mourn. Which you do will boil down to whether you believe Britain will be prosperous and happy as a self-governing nation, as it has been for most of its history and as most countries are today.
We are with one of Johnson's first lines as Prime Minister, spoken from the podium outside Downing Street: "those who bet against Britain are going to lose their shirts".
And as you prepare for this evening, mull how this country stands today, and how others do. France has an embedded leader, Emmanuel Macron, but also yellow jackets and brutal police, whose open thuggery wouldn't last a moment here.
Germany is in transition. The endurance of its system is formidable, but the AfD has the best part of 100 Bundestag seats. Italy has Salvini, Hungary has Orban. Spain is seeing the emergence of Vox.
Trump is a force from outside the Republican mainstream. In India, one of the great success stories of mass democracy since the end of colonialism, communalism is on the rise. Some on the Right cheer some of these movements; others are suspicious of all of them – if not hostile.
Johnson's Government stands out from them because of the combination of his majority and its flavour. The back-to-the-future explosion of Brexit apart, his Government is identifiably a sign of continuity, not rupture.
It is not credible to argue that he represents a radical break from the long story of Disraeli, Baldwin, Churchill, Macmillan, Cameron and Thatcher. Though it is significant that he is repudiating her hostility to the role of the state with a commitment to its activism. If he is breaking with the inheritance of any of them, it's with hers.
At the cost of taking a complacent view of the world, Britain and Johnson, with their combination of recovered stability and mainstream politics, look not half bad at all compared to the alternatives (Corbynism especially).
We are sometimes not sufficiently thankful for what we have – even in a country with a formidable challenge to its integrity, in the form of the future of Scotland; and a mass of Just-About-Managings and downright left behinds, struggling with debt, addiction, disorderly neighbourhoods, bad schools, poor health, crime, homelessness.
These are challenges for the future, as is Part Two of the Brexit negotiation. The past has shaped where we are, both good and bad. Later today, ConservativeHome will raise a glass to Britain's old-but-new future.
Disraeli's Two Nations at a time of Covid – and, no, they're not "the rich and the poor"
Though the vaccines are here, we still need testing
Andrew Gimson's PMQs sketch: This highlight of the parliamentary week is dying from long-windedness
You're either for Trump or against him. The Republicans can't avoid a choice. And it's best made now.
Trump, Parler, bias, free speech, incitement – and regulation. Beware of the cure being worse than the disease.
More restrictions considered, as compliance with the "stay home" message drops. But which measures can be strengthened?
165 comments for: Brexit Day. "Those who bet against Britain are going to lose their shirts".


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Military Joint Chiefs issue statement condemning 'sedition and insurrection' at U.S. Capitol
Written by Holly Richardson
Category: Today At Utah Policy
The Joint Chiefs of Staff for the U.S. military issues a memo to all service members, reminding them that the "violent riot" in D.C. was a direct assault on Congress, the Capitol and our Constitutional process. They reminded service members that Joe Biden was duly elected and will become their Commander in Chief. on January 20.
The memo reads as follows:
"The American people have trusted the Armed Forces of the United States to protect them and our Constitution for almost 250 years. As we have done throughout our history, the U.S. military will obey lawful orders from civilian leadership, support civil authorities to protect lives and property, ensure public safety in accordance with the law, and remain fully committed to protecting and defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
The violent riot in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021 was a direct assualt on the U.S. Congress, the Capitol building, and our Constitutional process. We mourn the deaths of the two Capitol policement and others connected to these unprecedented events.
We witnessed actions inside the Capitol building that were inconsistent with the rule of law. The rights of freedom of speech and assembly do not give anyone the right to resort to violence, sedition and insurrection.
As Service Memberas, we must embody the values and ideals of the Nation. We support and defend the Constitution. Any act to disrupt the Constitutional process is not only against our traditions, values, and oath; it is against the law.
On January 20,2021, in accordance with the Constitution, confirmed by the states and the courts, and certified by Congress, President-elect Biden will be inaugurated and will become our 46th Commander in Chief.
To our men and women deployed and at home, safeguarding our country - stay ready, keep your eyes on the horizon, and remain focused on the mission. We honor your continued service in defense of every American.
Mark A. Milley, General U.S. Army, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
John E. Hyten, General, U.S. Air Force, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
James C. McConville, General, U.S. Army, Chief of Staff of the Army
David H. Berger, General, U.S. Marine Corps, Commandant of the Marine Corps
Michael M. Gilday, Admiral, U.S. Navy, Chief of Naval Operations
Charles Q. Brown, Jr., General, U.S. Air Force, Chief of Staff of the Air Force
John W. Raymond, General, U.S. Space Force, Chief of Space Operations
Daniel R. Hokanson, General, U.S. Army, Chief of the National Guard Bureau


In the UK we currently have a spate of historically based TV programmes. Is it odd that in a upcoming 'Time of Austerity' TV producers are seemingly prepared to remind us all that a simpler life in the past was better? There is even a new version of that old staple of TV re-runs 'The Good Life' from the 70's. Mind you – this new version is barely watchable – concentrating primarily on the personalities of the presenters rather than the substance of the content. In fact, I only managed to watch the first two programmes.
Another programme tries to recreate a series of high street shops from different eras in UK history. This could have been good. It's not for two reasons. The first is that the time given for each of the 'eras' is only a week (must take a while to change each shop ready for the next era), and the second is the 'Chamber of Commerce' – a group of people who seem to be a bit like the 'Dragon's Den' panel – who stroll into the High Street dispensing opinions and problems in equal measure. I watched two of these as well. I have given up now. Then – there is 'Downton Abbey' and 'The Edwardian Farm'.
I think that there is a lot of looking back with rose-tinted spectacles going on here. Times were better in the old days – for a very few. For the majority life was not so good. Disease was rife, money was short and living conditions could be very harsh. Things were not better for your 'average' person. I am glad that I was born into this time, in this country. That last is also an important factor – because there are places in the world where it is not much fun to be alive and where disease is still rife, money is very short and living conditions remain very harsh. So if you are warm, have shelter, aren't hungry and no one is abusing you, these are the better times.


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We Media » About "We Media"
We are at the beginning of a Golden Age of journalism — but it is not journalism as we have known it. Media futurists have predicted that by 2021, "citizens will produce 50 percent of the news peer-to-peer." However, mainstream news media have yet to meaningfully adopt or experiment with these new forms.
Historically, journalists have been charged with informing the democracy. But their future will depend not on only how well they inform but how well they encourage and enable conversations with citizens. That is the challenge.
This report details the important considerations when exploring a collaborative effort between audience and traditional media organizations.
Armed with easy-to-use Web publishing tools, always-on connections and increasingly powerful mobile devices, the online audience has the means to become an active participant in the creation and dissemination of news and information.
The Internet has caused significant changes to journalism. It remains to be see exactly how those changes will manifest themselves and how much of a change we will see. The creation of the Internet as we know it helped create media-centric lives. It has changed the dynamic of news and turned the customer into a contributor.
Participatory journalism uses a "publish, then filter" model instead of the traditional "filter, then publish" model. We examine the self correcting process, strengths and weaknesses of each of the major participatory journalisms systems or formats. These include: discussion groups, user generated content, weblogs (blogs), collaborative publishing, peer-to-peer systems and XML syndication. The various functions the audience can serve are examined and the type of participatory journalism formats these functions thrive in are also provided.
What motivates the audience to take part in participatory journalism? Social needs and how participatory journalism meets those needs are detailed. Like any social system, participatory media have developed their own rules. These rules and how they work are discussed.
Key trends shaping the future of media and journalism and impact of the Internet include: the democratization of media due to low barriers to entry, challenges to media's hegemony, a redefinition of credibility - who has it and what it takes to create it, the rise of new experts and watchdogs, changes to the economic models for media companies and the new expectations and demands of the consumer in the journalistic process.
Potential benefits to media companies and businesses that adopt participatory journalism in a meaningful way may include: increasted trust, shared responsibility in informaing democracy, creation of memorable experiences, attract younger audience and creating a stronger relationship with the community at large.
Ways for media companies to integrate participatory journalism into existing operations include: understand and build on the concept that connections equal value, make newsrooms responsive to change, give staff some level of autonomy, embrace the audience as a valued partner, embrace the customer as an innovator and share the story, don't own it.
A list of resources, from web sites to books to tools for and about We Media.
A Wikipedia-based glossry of terms related to participatory journalism and social media.
Research papers, essays, books, social bookmarking sites, articles and news stories referencing or citing We Media.
A list of classes where We Media is required reading or a subject of class discussion.


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From a Jell-O box to a chewing gum wrapper — or maybe a peanut butter sandwich…
Posted byPatrick Lamb October 19, 2021 October 15, 2021 Posted inUncategorized
You may have been following recent news stories about the arrest of two Americans for espionage in a scheme to pass nuclear submarine secrets to the Russians. The plan might have worked except that the "Russian agents" turned out to be American counter-intelligence officers.
I found this interesting because the oddball method used to transfer the top secrets was not unlike one which played out almost 75 years ago in New Mexico.
In the most recent case, secrets were passed to the faux Russian agents in the form of a memory chip enclosed in a chewing gum wrapper. There was also a report that another set of documents in a memory chip were inserted in a peanut butter sandwich and passed to the agents.
Be careful, the chips you have with this peanut butter sandwich might not be from potatoes
On June 2, 1945, Klaus Fuchs, a German physicist turned Russian spy who had been working in Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project, met with his Russian contact, Harry Gold. The two met at a small bridge over the Santa Fe River where Fuchs passed the first set of atomic bomb secrets to Gold. The bridge was torn down long ago for construction of the Paseo de Peralta loop around downtown Santa Fe. It was similar in design to the still existing Delgado Street bridge in Santa Fe, shown in the photograph below. (For many years, I was told this was the bridge where the secrets were passed.) Fuchs went on to pass more secrets to Gold, including some regarding development of the hydrogen bomb. Fuchs eventually confessed to espionage in 1950 and was convicted and served nine years in prison before he was released, whereupon he relocated in the German Democratic Republic, then part of the Soviet Union.
Delgado Street bridge in Santa Fe, similar in design to the Castillo Street Bridge where atomic secrets were passed
Fuchs' handler, Gold, also acquired secrets from a machinist on the Manhattan Project, David Greenglass. Greenglass's sister was Ethel Rosenberg, who along with her husband Julius Rosenberg, were also Soviet Union spies and the first American citizens to be executed for espionage for the passing of atomic bomb secrets to the USSR.
When the Rosenbergs were on trial, it was revealed that a pre-arranged code involving two raggedly cut parts of a Jell-O box was used to verify identities of the agents, Greenglass and Gold. The transfer of the documents occurred in the Albuquerque home of Greenglass.
Jello-O box used at Julian and Ethel Rosenburg trial, now in the National Archives
So before you try that coconut Bavarian cream Jello-O recipe, make sure there's nothing "chippy" inside the box.
A new excuse for justifying bad behavior…
Just in time for Christmas…


Self-Leveling Floors & Moisture Mitigation — Level-Tech Systems, Inc.
Self-leveling floors are most typically used in flooring repair situations. It also happens to be one of the most common types of jobs that Level-Tech Systems of Florida performs, in large part due to our well-earned reputation for turning ugly, impossible-to-work-with floors into flat surfaces. In addition to our extensive experience with self-levelers, our reputation is grounded in a partnership with Mapei Flooring Products.
As one of very few Pinnacle Installers for Mapei, we install moisture mitigation as a part of self-leveling systems. Particularly in the state of Florida, moisture mitigation is an important measure in making sure that your flat surface won't be corrupted by water.