text:
Waiting to Connect
Nov. 16, 2010 07:13 PM
Why LUS Fiber faces its most critical year yet - a behind-the-scenes look at the business' early setbacks. By Nathan Stubbs
[Editor's Note: This is part one in a two-part series on LUS Fiber - where it stands and where it's headed.]
In early October, Lafayette Utilities System Director Terry Huval went to his boss' office to deliver some bad news. After roughly 20 months in operation, LUS' fiber-to-the-home telecommunications business was going to have to raise rates for its cable TV services, in some cases by as much as 15 percent. Huval felt he had little choice. The business had staved off raising prices as long as it could, but programming costs - the cost of carrying each channel on its cable system - were scheduled to rise again in 2011. On top of that, the Federal Communications Commission had yet to respond to a complaint LUS Fiber had filed over the National Cable Television Cooperative rejecting its membership application. (LUS alleges in the complaint that its chief competitor, Cox Communications, which now sits on the board of the NCTC, has blocked its membership to the organization, which most small cable providers go through to obtain better leverage in negotiating and buying from cable programmers.)
City-Parish President Joey Durel knew the situation. And the former Durel's Pet Shop Inc owner also understood the retail business.
"It wasn't that big a deal to me," Durel recalls. "What I used to hear in retail is, Why would you complain about this going up when you don't say anything about the price of red beans going up?' The point is, it's an industry issue. Our competitor also raised rates not too long ago. As a retailer, you absorb price increases as long as you can. You try not to pass them off [to customers], but there's a point where when your suppliers are going up on you that at some point you've got to pass it on."
The news was nonetheless disheartening. Having to raise rates just before completing the citywide buildout of its fiber-to-the-home network, and offering the service to every business and residence in the city, is hardly the way LUS Fiber wanted to punctuate its prolonged rollout. "I knew it was going to be painful," Huval says. "I knew customers weren't going to like it. Customers were going to say, Well, you're doing exactly what Cox used to do.'"
LUS Director Terry Huval acknowledges LUS Fiber has struggled to meet early expectations.
Fearing the worst, Huval decided to announce the rate increases by sending a letter to every LUS customer. In that letter, dated Oct. 15, Huval begins by thanking customers for being "a loyal supporter of LUS Fiber, the only communications system actually owned by you and every citizen in Lafayette," before citing rising programming costs and denied NCTC membership as reasons for the rate hike. "A large number of smaller cable providers are saving money by purchasing their programming through this cooperative and we have not been provided any reason why LUS Fiber is being treated differently from those other providers. We have filed a formal complaint with the Federal Communications Commission seeking to address this issue. My commitment to you is that LUS Fiber will continue to provide world-class video, Internet and phone services and that we will always work to keep our prices for our services as competitive as possible."
The letter concludes by urging any customer with a question to email Huval or call him directly on his office phone.
It was the kind of local, personal touch LUS Fiber had always promised to deliver, and, so far, it appears to have largely curbed any damage from the rate hike. "I had far less than 1 percent of our customers call," Huval says. "I addressed every one. Talked to every one of them, and at this point I don't think we've lost a customer yet [over the rate increase]."
Huval recently sat down with The Independent Weekly for candid conversations about the tough decisions and challenges the LUS Fiber business has faced since its launch in February 2009. While acknowledging some major setbacks, and potential changes in the overall business plan, Huval remains upbeat and optimistic about LUS Fiber's future.
"We've had to deal with some things we wish we wouldn't have had to deal with," he says. "But we're going to get there. It's just not the path I initially laid out."
LUS Fiber technician Josh Freed installs an optical network terminal box at a new customer's home.
EARLY SETBACKS
As it worked toward its stated launch date of January 2009, LUS Fiber faced an early dilemma. The NCTC - the organization it had planned to join in order to secure all of its cable program provider agreements - had placed a moratorium on new members, leaving LUS Fiber on its own in securing those contracts. As one can imagine, calls from a small municipal utility in Lafayette, La., were hardly a priority for the top executives of a national network like ESPN. Often, the calls weren't returned at all. Doug Dawson, LUS' national telecom guru and consultant who wrote LUS Fiber's original feasibility study, stepped in to help where he could. Using his contacts, Dawson helped facilitate a number of contracts, but heading into January 2009, holdouts remained.
Huval recalls that going into January, LUS Fiber was looking at having to launch its business with several notable exceptions to its cable lineup.
"We were prepared to go ahead while still trying to put channels on our system," he says. "If we didn't have them on initially, we felt that the process was moving forward. We were now in sufficient dialogue with the programmers to where it was just down to last negotiations. The contracts, while we may not have had authorization to carry their channel yet, we could see we were getting awfully close. In fact some providers actually let us begin placing their channels on our system even before we had the contract signed, because they knew that we were pretty close to that point and we were trying to get our system started."
LUS also managed to secure other channels it was missing through an aggregator service - the same type used by hotels to secure select cable channels. The final negotiations pushed LUS back five days past its original deadline, but on Feb. 5, 2009, it began taking orders from its first customers. In securing all the programming contracts, another problem arose. Because LUS lacked the buying power of a large regional cable company or national coop, it was often at the mercy of programmers when it came to negotiating terms. Many programmers, whose fees are based on subscriber numbers, insisted that if LUS wanted their flagship channel on its expanded basic tier - the tier with the highest number of subscribers - it had to carry all their less-popular secondary channels on that tier as well. That's why you'll find the full package of five ESPN channels on LUS' expanded basic channel lineup (by comparison, Cox has only ESPN and ESPN2 on its expanded basic tier). LUS originally planned to have just over 70 channels on its expanded basic tier. It ended up having to carry 83. And because LUS had already pledged to offer rates at 20 percent less than the competition, and gone before the city council with more specific price points, it had already locked itself in on how much it could charge for each cable tier. While a good deal for consumers, this sliced further into an already wafer thin profit margin for LUS' cable service. "We ended up in a situation where we had a tier that was priced for 70 channels," Huval says, "that we had already advertised the price, and now we were carrying 83 channels."
The early difficulties with programmers were compounded by the next beast to rear it ugly head: the set-top boxes.
Consultant Doug Dawson wrote LUS' original feasibility study and continues to advise on business decisions.
Prior to the launch, LUS Fiber had been beta testing its system in select homes to work out any bugs prior to going public. Repeatedly, there were glitches that came up with LUS' set-top box for digital cable subscribers. The Motorola-made box was provided by LUS Fiber's equipment provider, Alcatel Lucent. LUS selected Alcatel from the six companies that responded to its request for proposals for an equipment provider contract worth approximately $30 million. Based in France, Alcatel has touted its involvement in more than 65 fiber to the home, business and premise projects around the world.
Early reviews on the set-top box weren't great, but LUS Fiber thought it could work through all of the issues. In most cases, LUS, working with Alcatel, found ways to fix most problem with upgrades to the middleware, the industry term for the software in the set-top box, or simple wiring corrections. But as LUS rolled out its public launch, fundamental problems with the boxes became more apparent. The box's built-in Internet browser was slow and clunky and didn't support many Web sites. Its DVR function was even more problematic. Often times, shows wouldn't record or would freeze or pixelate during playback. In one instance, a family reported that their LUS Fiber had done the exact opposite of its pledge - to deliver a 21st century "future proof" product; the family's DVR had somehow turned back the clock on their TV to the 1950s, replaying only in black and white a recorded program.
"We were forced to deal with all of these individual little issues - gremlins I call them," Huval says. True to Huval's moniker, the gremlins proved hard to eradicate. "In general, we got probably 90, 95 percent of them fixed," Huval says. "That last 5, 10 percent, it wasn't the system, and in some cases we were learning that the manufacturer just couldn't get it fixed."
Finally, the LUS director had enough. He remembers scheduling a conference call with his executive staff, executives at Alcatel and Durel. At the time Huval was attending an American Public Power Association conference in Salt Lake City. "It was around that June-July time frame," he says. "It was a very terse phone call. It was not the calm Terry Huval that many people see. I was very concerned, very upset that we were still dealing with these issues at that particular point. Generally, the explanation [from Alcatel] for the issues that needed to be dealt with were it would take a couple of weeks to get that done. And a couple of weeks, a couple of weeks and a couple of weeks and the next thing you know I'm in June and in July after having launched in February and still don't have some of these fixes."
With negative word of mouth about the problems threatening to affect business, LUS opted to lay off the accelerator with its service rollout. "We weren't trying to make a big market penetration immediately because we wanted to fix that issue," Huval says. "I think had we not had the video problems that we would probably have about 30 to 40 percent more customers today, maybe more." (The rollout recently hit another delay when LUS discovered contractors were not laying fiber wire in the appropriate right of way. The citywide buildout is still a few weeks away from completion.)
LUS Fiber technicians Lance Morgan and Josh Freed (on ladder) run an overhead fiber line to a home.
It wasn't until November of last year that LUS Fiber was able to sort through its options with Alcatel and reach a decision on a changeover of its middleware. That changeover, from the old Media Manager system to Microsoft's Media Room, didn't begin implementation until June of this year. In late June, LUS Fiber opted to change all of its subscribers over to the new set-top box system, a process it completed in late September. Alcatel supplied the initial order of new set-top boxes in the deal; LUS Fiber then began taking the old set-top boxes and converting them to the new middleware for further use. While LUS Fiber had planned for TV software upgrades in its long-term budget, the process resulted in the business incurring several hundred thousand dollars in expenses, mainly in the form of labor costs, sooner than it would have liked.
"There's still some issues we're working out with [Alcatel Lucent] because of this situation," Huval says, "and they're owning up to their responsibilities here, and that's going to assist us as we move forward. There's more support they can provide to us, some things that they can do to help us move forward and help us keep our system in good working order and offer more services down the road."
"We did everything we could do," Huval continues, "to move as quickly as we could on our end to get that [set-top box] transition taken care of, and it's a relief that we finally got to that point. But those two things back to back, the programming issues and having to deal with the premature replacement of our middleware, took a lot of planning, took a lot of thought, a lot of agonizing on how we were going to do that at a very critical stage of the game. We had some people work some tremendous hours, seven days a week, constantly trying to get this resolved. And I think because of it we're a much stronger, much more knowledgeable group."
COX TAKES ADVANTAGE
LUS Fiber's chief rival, Cox Communications, has often managed to be one step ahead of the game. Perhaps the prime example is the ongoing saga with the NCTC. Shortly after Lafayette sold the bonds for the LUS Fiber project in June 2007, the NCTC sent notice it would be instituting a moratorium on new members at the end of the year. Because of a requirement that companies must be within six months of providing service in order to join, LUS knew it would have to wait out the moratorium to join.
Despite early indications it would only last a year, the moratorium wasn't lifted until early 2009. As LUS was awaiting word on its application, it learned that Cox had managed to join the coop. The NCTC - an organization traditionally made up of smaller cable operators - allowed both Cox and another corporate telecom giant, Charter Communications, into the fold while LUS and other small companies were kept waiting. The addition of Cox and Charter more than doubled the NCTC's collective subscriber base and, as a result, its buying power from about 13 million to more than 27 million subscribers. Cox also quickly won a seat on the NCTC's board of directors.
"Cox was apparently able to join and didn't run into the delays that we encountered," Huval says. Last year, Lafayette and two other municipalities seeking to join the NCTC, Wilson, N.C., and Chattanooga, Tenn., notified the NCTC that they were preparing to file a joint complaint with the Federal Communications Commission to force the coop to let them in. The Kansas-based NCTC responded by filing suit against Lafayette, Wilson and Chattanooga in Kansas federal court to prevent them from pursuing the FCC complaint. Shortly afterward, the NCTC dropped its suit against Wilson and Chattanooga and opened the door for the two cities to join the co-op, contingent upon them dropping the issue with the FCC. LUS was notified, without explanation, that its application for membership had been denied.
Representatives from the NCTC did not return a phone message or email from The Independent requesting comment for this story.
LUS Fiber intentionally slowed its rollout while addressing technical issues.
Lafayette city-parish government had to obtain legal representation in Kansas City to fight the NCTC's suit. In June, it filed a motion to have the case dismissed, arguing that the NCTC was attempting "to drag a Louisiana municipal public utility into court on the plaintiff's home turf in an effort to avoid being held accountable for its conduct before the Federal Communications Commission."
LUS moved forward with its FCC complaint, which it filed in June. "NCTC's discrimination against LUS cannot be explained on legal or factual grounds," it states. "In fact, the only significant distinction between LUS and Chattanooga/Wilson is that LUS's major rival, Cox Communications, is NCTC's largest member as well as a prominent member of NCTC's Board of Directors, whereas Chattanooga's and Wilson's major competitors, Comcast and Time Warner, respectively, are not members of NCTC."
"Chattanooga and Lafayette are an awfully lot alike," says consultant Doug Dawson, who works for both. "On paper, you could swap these two and barely be able to tell the difference." Lafayette and Chattanooga both used their city-owned utility providers to expand into the telecommunications business. While Dawson is prevented by contract from revealing exactly how much Chattanooga or other clients saved by joining the NCTC, LUS Fiber's FCC complaint says that the business' own estimates are that its programming costs would drop approximately 20 percent. Cox Communications has denied any effort to influence the cooperative's decisions on Lafayette's membership. LUS Fiber has also maintained that there is no other viable alternative coop to the NCTC.
In the four-year time frame between LUS riding a wave of support to an election victory and the time it began offering services (multiple lawsuits against LUS contributed to this delay), Cox has also busily worked to enhance its local services and image, branding itself as "your home in the digital age" and becoming a ubiquitous sponsor of community events. It also went from offering 15 high definition channels to 80. Meanwhile, LUS' early momentum waned. Huval recognizes that success now hinges on LUS Fiber's ability to forge a solid reputation with its subscribers. "For us to succeed," he says, "it's going to be from neighbor by neighbor support of what we do. It's going to be because we have a good reputation. That's why we won the election."
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Also in Cover Story
March 2, 2017 10:34
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Karma's a Bitch
Jan. 3, 2017 10:37
Dec. 1, 2016 10:59
Influencers of the Year
Oct. 3, 2016 11:31
2016 INDStyle Awards
Sept. 2, 2016 11:03


TimeZone : Seiko » My First Grand Seiko!
Today a dream came true for me, at long last after many years of looking I am now the very happy owner of one of these beautiful watches.
I could go on about the fit and finish but it would just be repeating what everyone else has said which is absolutely accurate.
I love this particular model as 90% of my watch collection is vintage and this watch gives me the feeling of a vintage piece. On a side note the quality of the strap is absolutely first class and this is the most comfortable deployant buckle I have ever used.
This watch really bats well above its class I feel, tremendous value for money.
The model is the SBGR061.
Previous Topic: Brown or black strap?
Next Topic: New shoes for the Alpinist.


text:
// Copyright 2000-2020 JetBrains s.r.o. Use of this source code is governed by the Apache 2.0 license that can be found in the LICENSE file.
package com.intellij.lang.folding;

import com.intellij.lang.ASTNode;
import com.intellij.lang.Language;
import com.intellij.lang.LanguageExtension;
import com.intellij.openapi.diagnostic.Logger;
import com.intellij.openapi.editor.Document;
import com.intellij.openapi.extensions.ExtensionPointName;
import com.intellij.openapi.progress.ProcessCanceledException;
import com.intellij.openapi.project.DumbService;
import com.intellij.psi.PsiElement;
import com.intellij.util.KeyedLazyInstance;
import org.jetbrains.annotations.NotNull;
import org.jetbrains.annotations.Nullable;

import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.List;

/**
 * @author yole
 * @author Konstantin Bulenkov
 */
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  public static final ExtensionPointName<KeyedLazyInstance<FoldingBuilder>> EP_NAME = ExtensionPointName.create("com.intellij.lang.foldingBuilder");
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  private static final Logger LOG = Logger.getInstance(LanguageFolding.class);

  private LanguageFolding() {
    super(EP_NAME);
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   * This method is left to preserve binary compatibility.
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      return extensions.get(0);
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    else {
      return new CompositeFoldingBuilder(extensions);
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  /**
   * Only queries base language results if there are no extensions for originally requested language.
   */
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  @Override
  public List<FoldingBuilder> allForLanguage(@NotNull Language language) {
    for (Language l = language; l != null; l = l.getBaseLanguage()) {
      List<FoldingBuilder> extensions = forKey(l);
      if (!extensions.isEmpty()) {
        return extensions;
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    return Collections.emptyList();
  }

  public static FoldingDescriptor @NotNull [] buildFoldingDescriptors(@Nullable FoldingBuilder builder,
                                                                      @NotNull PsiElement root,
                                                                      @NotNull Document document,
                                                                      boolean quick) {
    FoldingDescriptor[] descriptors = buildFoldingDescriptorsNoPlaceholderCaching(builder, root, document, quick);
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Sam's Club is still offering up the best deal I've ever seen for a warehouse membership! Pay $45 for a year's Sam's Club membership, and get $45 off your first Sam's Club purchase! That's like getting the membership for FREE! If you or someone you know does not have a Sam's Club membership, this is an awesome way to get a free membership!
Just go here and enter your email to get this offer.
Sam's has some great deals on organic groceries like organic hummus, organic eggs ($3.48 lb.), organic hard boiled eggs (such a time saver!), guacamole, organic gluten free crackers, organic bread, organic chips and more! I got all of the above for $54 on my last trip to Sam's.


ASIMO amazed thousands of visitors to the California Science Center with its amazing human-like abilities.
Valentine's Day is a time for friends, families and loved ones to say, "I love you." But Valentine's Day 2004 was also a day for many to say "hello" to ASIMO, the world's most advanced humanoid robot, in its first public appearance in Los Angeles.
ASIMO kicked off its visit to Los Angeles with two days of special demonstrations on Thursday and Friday at the California Science Center for invited students from the Los Angeles area. More than 1,500 students and teachers were educated and entertained by ASIMO. The students were excited to see what a real-life robot could do. During each show, school groups cheered for their classmates on stage as they answered questions about ASIMO and danced with the robot.
Over the weekend, more than 2,600 people saw ASIMO at the California Science Center in Exposition Park during its public performances. Each morning, tickets quickly "sold out" for all of the public shows. The line for admittance to the theater wrapped around the corner of the building an hour before each show started. Each show was filled to capacity, but all who attended had a great time and learned many things about ASIMO and its amazing abilities.
During its demonstrations in Los Angeles, ASIMO became quite the celebrity, as thousands of people saw ASIMO on local TV news shows and in local newspapers. But, the luckiest people in Los Angeles were, of course, the more than 4,100 people who saw ASIMO in person during its stop at the California Science Center.
ASIMO might be headed your way. To find out if ASIMO is coming to a city near you, please check the tour schedule often for the latest venue and tour information.


text:
Everything (56520)
Serious (2104)
Lovemore (685)
Simgirls (3200)
Rosebery (29)
Personal Film Favorites: Magnum Force (youtube.com)
The official trailer for Magnum Force.
Also known as Dirty Harry 2, Magnum Force brought a very solid and successful sequel to the classic film, Dirty Harry. Released December 25'th 1973 the film would go on to gross almost $40 million.
Instead of focusing on the American Justice system, this film focuses on a vigilante system. Would it work? Would it go too far? You'll have to find out yourself in this action packed sequel.
Besides showcasing once again the S&W 29, this film also showcased the now long out of production Colt Python .357 Mag. The Python is a collectors wet dream, uber rare and to call them expensive is an understatement, these things could run you $5,000+ if they are mint condition.
Magnum Force also spawned an Arcade Cabinet with the same name, though I don't think it had anything to do with the film, I only played it once.
Magnum Force is a powerful sequel with intense scenes and blunt racism. (It's the 70's, shut the fuck up you little bitch) Gather around and watch one hell of sequel, just remember. A man's got to know his limitations.
Personal Rating: 5 out of 5
Director: Ted Post
Harry Callahan: Clint Eastwood
Lieutenant Briggs: Hal Holbrook
Music: Trailer Exclusive
Dec 9, 2017 by Fear57 in Miscellaneous
SimMan and
© 2021 FreedomWall Privacy & Terms

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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text:
The Rising "Coming Home"
The Rising - 'Coming Home'
The Rising are a country rock trio from Belfast, Ireland and are set to release their debut album Coming Home on 25th August. Featuring ten tracks, the album is their first as a trio however the band emerged from an earlier band, EXIT, looking for more of a roots sound than the rock sound EXIT had. Unfortunately I found that once I had listened to a few tracks I found myself wanting something even less rocky.
Whilst the trio are undoubtedly strong musicians and the album displays a professional sounding production, most of the songs unfortunately feel lacking in lyrical depth with a lot of phrases repeated frequently. The album as a whole also has quite a pronounced rock sound and it would be nice to see some more differentiation in the tracks.
Highway To The Lost & Found is perhaps the most overtly rock influenced track with an opening pacey electric guitar section that leaves no doubt the direction the track is going. The unrelenting nature of the production becomes a little overpowering at points, primarily through the heavy electric guitar and drum use. The vocal distortion effect at around three minutes in also ferments in my mind the overall rock sound of the track.
Debut single Still Coming Home To You is perhaps the most country sounding track on the album however the banjo and electric guitar tempo is played at two different tempos and the instruments do not work together at all. The production would benefit even more from a thinning out of the instruments in my opinion, especially considering the rest of the tracks on the album, however the track is quite catchy and serves as a good lead single, a track that will most likely be the first thing new listeners will hear from the trio.
Track listing....
1) Calling You
2) Break The Chains
3) City By The Sea
4) Still Coming Home To You
5) Dreaming & Scheming
6) Highway To The Lost & Found
7) Shadows On The Wall
8) Label Girl
9) Man On The Moon
10) Return To The Moon
I would certainly be more likely to categorise The Rising as more of a soft rock group rather than roots or country, certainly their production choices go along with that and their voices are certainly more suited to a soft rock sound. If you listen to this album, don't be expecting a country band, I would probably recommend country fans purchase the single Still Coming Home To You as, as aforementioned, the rest of the album has a strong rock focus. Not a bad album all round however not something I would personally listen to regularly.
Labels: The Rising "Coming Home"
Brad Paisley - 'Moonshine In The Trunk'
Hunter & The Bear - 'Before I Come Home'
First Aid Kit - 'Stay Gold'
C2C 2015 - my predicted line up


Bake cake per directions on box. If you have time, make cake from scratch. You can do either cake rounds or a sheet cake.
For the grape mixture: boil the honey about 3 minutes until it is dark and thickened.
Remove from heat. Add the ginger and grapes, stir to coat. We let this sit overnight. The grapes give up some moisture and the honey loses some of its overwhelming sticky sweetness. Your choice- serve immediately or wait it out!
Slice cake and drizzle grapes and honey over the top, sides and on the plate. Serves 16 with 2 cake rounds.
Grape cake can be served for a light dessert in the summer. Of course, we serve it for breakfast!
Check out other recipes here.
This lemon tart is a deliciously tangy dessert for any occasion.
There's not much we won't try for breakfast. Maybe steak and fish. Steak preparation is very personal and fish is very stinky. Otherwise? What the heck, let's give it a try!
Unpack the pie crust from the plastic wrap and let sit about 20 minutes to make it easier to unroll. Unroll pie crust into a tart or quiche pan. (A pie pan or large cake pan will also work.) Prick bottom and sides to keep from puffing up. Bake at 450 for 15-20 minutes until lightly browned. (I found this works much better than the pie weights from the Kiwi Tart recipe.) Preheat oven to 350.
While the crust is baking, zest and juice the lemons. You should have at least 2 tbsp of zest and a 1/2 c of juice. If the lemons are cold, nuke them for 5-10 seconds before juicing to get more juice out of them. If 3 lemons aren't enough, juice another.
Whisk the eggs, lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar and flour together.
Let pie shell cool a bit before pouring lemon mixture in. Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes. Center should be well set, not wiggly at all. Let cool & refrigerate. Slice into wedges, dust with powdered sugar to serve.
BIG TIP- don't forget to reduce the temp on the oven from 450 (baking pie shell) to 350 (baking tart). Yes, I learned that the hard way.
We slice this into thin slivers as it is so very tart. You can dust with powdered sugar and top with raspberries for a bit of sweet and a pop of color.


Illuminate your desk or table in style with our Stanbridge marble based table lamp. Anyone who has been to one of AA's Design Classes held in her pad will know the key role that lighting plays in transforming spaces. With its handsome lines, artful silhouette and a glam marble base what's not to love?


text:
The Excavation of Urmensch
The Human Spirit
I had not initially realized the extent of the role played by natural selection in the conversion from submission and dominance in apes to obedience and authority in humans. Under the protective shield of justice, groups of mated pair-bonds could evolve the productive benefits of coordinating and dividing the labor of childcare (Silk, 2007, Hrdy, 2006) and foraging for food. At the end of the day, those groupings of relationships that believed in the rules of this organic social structure would be naturally selected. The procreative benefits to individuals within a given group under this obedience–authority system would exceed any benefits of pursuing their own dominance.
The will to dominate in the ape mind transformed into the authority of justice in the early human (old) mind by migrating from individuals to dwelling within the thin ether of relationships between individuals; no one could see it, but all could feel it. This invisible but biologically based will could be said to possess intentions, that is, a spirit—the human spirit. Human bonds animated by this still evolving spirit ultimately would become more powerful than those of blood, tribe, or country.
Click on image for essay on:
"A Liberal Theory of Human Nature"
Emotional Fossils: Mental Illness and Human Evolution
Visit on Amazon.
Read "A Liberal Theory of Human Nature"
© 2022 John Wylie | Images by nandesign@ymail.com


Aurélia is a document of dreams, obsession, and insanity. An account of Nerval's unrequited passion for an actress and subsequent descent into madness, this book was a favorite of artist Joseph Cornell's, and its author was championed by both Marcel Proust and André Breton. One of the original self-styled 'bohemians,' Nerval was best known in his own day for parading a lobster on a pale blue ribbon through the gardens of the Palais-Royal, and for his suicide in 1855, hanging from an apron string he called the garter of the Queen of Sheba. Geoffrey Wagner's translation of Aurélia was first published by Grove Press in 1959, but has remained out of print for nearly twenty years. Included are previously untranslated stories, and poet Robert Duncan's version of the sonnet cycle 'Chimeras' making this the most complete collection of Nerval ever published in English.


An 86-year-old nursing home patient died recently after being transferred to a hospital for breathing difficulties. When he arrived at the hospital from the nursing home, hospital personnel noticed he had maggots in his left eye, an infected breathing tube, and sores on his left elbow. An article on the man's condition noted the man's care is being investigated by the state.
In the news article, a representative of the nursing home was quoted as saying the man received "constant care from multiple hospice workers and two certified nursing aides at the nursing home." Oh really?!? And what type of "constant care" by health care staff could he possibly have received? What kind of "constant care" would not have seen the maggots in his eye, the infected breathing tube, or the skin lesions (probably pressure ulcers or bed sores) on his elbow?
Maybe, when the nursing home staff was providing this man with "constant care," they looked at him but were always looking through him. Maybe they never looked him in the eyes to try to know him. Maybe they never looked at him at all.


The best way to get your small business advertised to more customers is to go to social media. Everyone is on social media. Businesses are seeing an influx of sales by having their information and advertisements on social media platforms. Let us consider some great social media platforms that are great for small businesses.
The Leading Social Media Platforms.
So, we know that Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are the top three leading social media websites. Each site has tons of people on them. This means that several people will see your listing once you become prominent on one those platforms.
There Are Areas of Failure in Socal Media.
I asked an NJ SEO Expert, Joe Balestrino, and he tells us the problem that most people encounter when building their social media site is they try to grow each of the platforms all at once. You see, it is better to pick one platform and stick to it. Once you have been on there a while and accomplished something to get more views, then you can go onto building on other social media platforms.
By putting time and energy into one site, the next site will feed from the first one that you made. So, they kind of work off each other. For this to work though, you must build one platform up at a time.
The first place that people usually go to build their small business is Facebook. There are so many people on there. In fact, there are over one billion people on Facebook. If you want to grow an audience, that is the place to start! The great thing about Facebook is, you do not have to have a large amount of experience to advertise.
Inexpensive ads for your small business.
Instagram is known to be one of the fastest growing social media platforms out today. If you want to get some notice, Instagram is the place to be. Instagram gives you the chance to show what you are selling. It is visualization. People can see what you are selling, and they will be more apt to buy or look into your business.
There are 500 million people on Instagram today. It is very simple to set up and costs nothing. Your small business will not need to invest anything to get it started! We know every dollar counts, especially if you have just started your business.
Think of branding. This is the place to do it. Instagram outs a face to the name. Below are the key features of using Instagram to grow your small business.
First- Instagram puts a face to the name. You give a visual to your small business and what you are trying to sell.
Second- You have an extremely large audience. This means more chances for traffic.
Third- It is the fastest growing social media platform by far.
Fourth- It cost nothing to get started.
Pinterest has more a woman based web site, but the difference is not that big. The amount of men on Pinterest is an average of 42 percent. A lot of people go on Pinterest to look for new ideas, find certain clothes or new trends. They have an array of topics.
Pinterest is really easy to use. You can post pictures on your Pinterest account and then if people are interested they pin it to their own account. Get it, it is like pinning things that interest you. It is simple with one click. You can buy stuff of their really easy with a touch of a button.
If you are interested in increasing sells, then Pinterest is the place to be.
Here are the key points that make Pinterest the best place to grow your small business.
One click buys. People love buying off Pinterest. It is simple and straight to the point.
You are basically advertising for the cost of nothing! With the price it takes to advertise, you know that's a steal!
People Pin their interest in you. You can see how many people are interested in what you are selling. This gives ideas and shows room if any for improvement.
As Joe told us above, never try to take on all these sites at one. Get the key essentials down pat and invest energy and time into one site. Sproutsocial.com has three leading sites with links to more information with some tips to take note on.
There are so many ways to spread the news about your small business. The best way to go is social media. It is the only place that you can get views and the word out about your business. That is where people spend a lot of their time. You can check out this great Forbes.com post for more info on small business social media platforms.


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Q: Density on Local Level Sets Suppose $M^n$ is a Riemannian manifold and $f\colon M\to \mathbb{R}$ a function on it. Take a regular point of $f$, $p$. I want to prove that there exists a positive $\epsilon$ depending on $p$ such that we have
$$\frac{\mathcal{H}^{n-1}(f^{-1}(t)\cap B_{\delta}(p))}{\omega_{n-1}\cdot\delta^{n-1}}\leq2$$
for every $t$ in $\mathbb{R}$ and $\delta<\epsilon$. Do you have any idea?

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