text:
Laurie, 1969
The moon landing and Woodstock make for an unforgettable summer for Laurie Willis and her friends and family.
Moon over Arboria
I'm lying on the base of our old slide reading America Conquers Space, which I got at the school book fair in the spring. In just a couple of days, men will be walking on the moon! I figure it's important to know as much as I can about it.
The slide is the most comfortable place to read outside. I'm trying to ignore my little brother, Teddy, and his friend Ricky Nimowicz who are playing army on the other side of the yard. They have two tents set up, a cheap plastic one from the dime store and a bigger one my dad bought for camping. Flags left over from our Fourth of July barbecue are set up around them, along with a "Fort Maple" sign.
The boys quiet down for a second, but I can hear them rustling around the larger tent. Then Ricky yells, "Reveille!" and Teddy bursts out, trying to play it on his trumpet. Horribly.
Mom opens the back door and leans out. "Theodore! You are NOT to bring that trumpet outside. We're just renting it, and if you get dirt in it before school even starts…"
Teddy sighs and brings the trumpet over to Mom.
Mom shuts the door and Ricky goes, "THEODORE! ALVIN!"
"Shut up!" Teddy yells, then chases Ricky around, "firing" his toy rifle.
I look over to the Andersons' driveway next door. The car is back, so Jane and Ellen must be home from their dentist appointment. I take my book inside and leave it on the dishwasher so Mom can see I'm being responsible.
I knock on the Andersons' back door and someone yells, "Come on in, Laurie!" because they know it has to be me. Jane's and Ellen's older sister, Connie, is sitting at the sewing machine in the dining room, cutting out a skirt pattern on some bright, flowery fabric. Mrs. Anderson is leaning over helping her. "Now remember to leave a couple of extra inches. You're not going to wear it as short as the one in the picture!" She looks up at me. "Jane's in her room."
As I walk down the hallway, Jane comes out of the bathroom. "Didja have any cavities?" I ask her. She shrugs. "One. I have to go back."
"I didn't have any!" Ellen yells from their shared room. Ellen's a year older than me, going into eighth grade, and Jane's a year younger. We three have played together for years; Barbie dolls (though not so much anymore) and kickball and Swing the Statue. Lately, though, Ellen has started thinking she's Miss It. She bosses us around and sometimes goes off to try to hang around some older girls down the street. The good part about her acting like a teen queen, though, is her parents gave her a record player, and she also buys magazines like Tiger Beat with Bobby Sherman's picture in them and stuff. We used to have to raid Connie's room for magazines like that but now Connie reads things that don't have as many Bobby Sherman stories.
"Wanna go outside?" Jane asks.
"Only if it's out front. Teddy and Ricky are making too much noise. Or we could go watch TV at my house."
Jane nods and we head out. Ellen must not have anything better to do because she tags along.
Mrs. Anderson looks up. "Laurie, tell your mom I've come up with something new for the moon party. It's…"
"Green cheese dip!" Connie yells.
"Cream cheese with green onions and some food dye. And Fred needs to know if one bushel of clams is enough, or two?"
"I'll ask her," I say. "She found a recipe for something called Lunar Punch, and she's going to get out her punch bowl."
Our parents are holding a big neighborhood party to celebrate the moon landing. The Andersons and us don't have fences, so it's like one big yard, and in the summer we're always having something: a Fourth of July cookout, or Mr. Anderson's annual birthday bash where the adults all drink too much and act goofy. Or my dad picks up a couple of farm-stand watermelons and we kids (and sometimes the adults) spit seeds at each other. Sometimes it's just our two families, or maybe the Nimowiczes too, but other times it's practically the whole block. Mr. Anderson will get clams and steam them on his barbecue grill, or we'll buy a whole car trunk full of corn on the cob and eat it with potato chips for dinner. This moon party, though, is going to be really huge. Like Mr. Anderson's birthday and Fourth of July all rolled into one.
The day of the party, there are four barbecue grills set up in our backyard. Mr. Hayes has wheeled his across the street, and Mr. Nimowicz brings a Hibachi. Our moms are setting out bags of hot dog and hamburger rolls and bowls of chips and pretzels and stuff. We're not supposed to eat anything until everybody's officially here but Teddy and Ricky are snatching pretzels when they think no one's looking and eyeing the big box of cupcakes Ricky's mom brought. My mom takes the cupcakes in the house so they won't get flies on them.
Lots of people show up, bringing potato salad and Jello molds and desserts. We actually run out of plastic cups and Mrs. Hayes goes to get more. All the kids start making the empty clamshells into spaceships.
There's also lots of beer, and people keep bringing more. I can tell Mom's had a few because she's totally ignoring us scarfing up all of Mrs. Rosen's brownies and drinking more sodas and sugary Lunar Punch than we're supposed to have. Our dog, Ringo, tips over a can of Budweiser and laps it up off the ground. Mr. Hayes thinks that's funny and gives him some more until Mom finally notices and says, "Put the dog inside for now."
Ellen's abandoned our spaceship-making and is hanging around with Dean Sullivan, who lives over on Elm Street. He came with his parents and was rolling his eyes and Ellen was rolling hers and I guess they decided to roll them together. Jane and I make kissy faces at Ellen and she turns her back on us.
As it gets dark, Mr. Anderson sets up Ellen's record player on the back step, with an extension cord going into the kitchen. He grabs a bunch of records from next to the hi-fi in the living room and plays songs with "moon" in them. The Andersons have a big record collection, and they like to dance. Pretty soon most of the grown-ups are up dancing to Elvis Presley singing "Blue Moon of Kentucky."
Ellen is holding hands with Dean. She thinks we can't see because it's dark.
"I bet she wants him to dance with her," Jane says.
Somehow Ringo's gotten outside again and Teddy and Ricky are chasing him. Dad takes him in and checks the TV while he's there. "Hey, they're on the moon NOW!"
Everyone cheers. Dad hugs Mom, and Mr. Nimowicz goes to the back of the yard and shoots off one firecracker he had left over from the Fourth.
I keep looking up at the sky as Mr. Anderson plays "Fly Me to the Moon." Mr. Taylor hollers, "Hey, how many moon songs did Sinatra sing anyway?" "Old Devil Moon," Mrs. Anderson says. "Only a Paper Moon," Mom adds.
Dad comes over to me. "Pretty strange thing, isn't it? Knowing there are men walking up there, above us."
I squint at the moon, even though I know you can't ACTUALLY see anything. "Maybe they'll send more people now, like tourists. I'd like to go."
Dad laughs. "It'll just be astronauts for a while, honey. And they're usually fighter pilots, or something. Not girls."
"Girls can't be fighter pilots?" I ask. "Anyway, they'll need scientists. Why can't girls do that?"
Dad's fumbling for his cigarettes now. "Well, I know you like science. Maybe there's some way girls can help, but I don't think they'll be sending any up."
"They should if people start living there doing experiments," I insist.
Dad laughs. "Well, they just might at that."
Mr. Anderson puts on "Moonlight Serenade." The adults start slow dancing, even my parents. Mostly they've all been jitterbugging and Lindy-hopping, and Mr. Anderson even dipped Mrs. Anderson during "How High the Moon." Now everybody's hanging all over each other. It's weird to see parents acting like that.
Mr. Hayes isn't dancing. He's getting another beer and laughing at some joke Mr. Taylor is trying to tell. Mrs. Hayes is dancing with one of the bachelor airmen who live down on the corner. The one Connie says is a dreamboat, who takes out one of the older Vanderwende girls sometimes, but now he's got his arms around Mrs. Hayes, really tight, and she's smiling and whispering in his ear.
I think Mr. Hayes cheats on his wife. I've heard my parents say some things, when they think we're not listening, about how he seems awfully friendly with his secretary or how handsy he was with a bleach-blonde lady at the Elks dance.
All of a sudden Mr. Hayes is over pulling his wife away and trying to punch the airman. I think he's had too much beer though because he misses on two swings and by then Mr. Rosen and Dad have grabbed him.
The airman says a quick goodbye and hits the pike. Mom and some other ladies surround Mrs. Hayes and walk out front with her, and the men do the same for Mr. Hayes. Jane and I start to follow but her mom pulls us back and says leave it alone or we'll have to go inside.
"Moonlight Serenade" gives way to "Pennsylvania Six Five Thousand" and "In the Mood" before everything's calmed back down. The Taylors leave but Mr. Anderson isn't ready to kill this party yet. "Hey, it's only eleven," he says to everyone. "The night is young."
Connie gets home from a movie date with Larry Albright, wearing her new flowered skirt. Her dad asks her to play "Moon River" to get people dancing again but while it's playing she runs inside and grabs "Bad Moon Rising" and puts it on next. Watching our parents trying to dance to that is even funnier than watching them be swoony. And Ellen and Dean are dancing. Jane punches me in the ribs to be sure I see them. Ellen dances behind Dean to stick her tongue out at us.
After that Connie plays "Age of Aquarius" and then her dad takes over again. He doesn't care for Connie's choice to end the evening, "Moonlight Drive," and since he's run out of moon songs, he goes with Bing Crosby singing "Swing on a Star."
People finally drift off and a few make a half-hearted attempts to help clean up. Mom says, "Oh, hell, leave it for tomorrow," and now I know for sure she's tipsy.
Dad's on afternoon shift this week, so he gets up late and spends the day reading the newspaper until Mom tells him to put the barbecue grill and the lawn chairs away so the yard doesn't look like Bourbon Street.
Mr. and Mrs. Hayes take a very sudden trip away on Tuesday. They give Mrs. Taylor their house key so she can feed the fish while they go on their "second honeymoon." "Second honeymoon, my eye," I hear Mom say to Dad in the kitchen after she talks to Mrs. Taylor. "It'll take more than a trip to the beach to fix up that marriage," and then she hears me giggling because all I can think of is Mr. Hayes holding a hammer and Mrs. Hayes a paint roller like when my parents "fixed up" the basement. Mom yells, "I thought you kids were watching TV!" like we never came in the kitchen for a drink or something.
Now Ellen's lording it over us that she's "going out" with Dean Sullivan. Well, not really, because her parents won't let her, but they talk on the phone and sometimes he comes over and stands around in the front yard looking embarrassed while Jane and I keep walking by them accidentally-on-purpose and Teddy sings, "Ellen and Dean, sittin' in a tree."
On Friday I get some more books about space from the Bookmobile. Teddy and Ricky change their sign to "Cape Maple" and pretend the big tent is a rocket ship and the little one is a lunar module. One of the books is about the people in the NASA control room and the ones who design the rockets and stuff like that. I need to find out more.
2. By the Time We Got to Maplestock
After Mr. and Mrs. Hayes get back they announce they're selling their house and moving to Meadow Gate, a new subdivision out by the Fine Foods plant. "No airmen can afford to live there," Mr. Hayes brags to my parents while they're fertilizing the lawn one day. After he leaves Dad says, "Wonder how long until he starts punching his ticket out there," and from where we're standing behind them on the porch Teddy has to blurt out, "What ticket?" Dad says, "Jesus, you kids," and Mom tells us to go out back until dinner.
But the big drama is over at the Andersons'. And for once it's not Ellen who's sulking, screaming, and slamming doors. It's Connie, the good girl who always gets top grades and is home by curfew and doesn't sass. She's so responsible that she's been our babysitter the last few years. I don't think we need a babysitter anymore, but that's another story. Anyway, Jane and Ellen told me it's because of Woodstock.
See, Connie's best friend is Tracy Rosen, and Tracy's brother, Scott, goes to college. He's friends with Larry Albright, the boy who took Connie to the movies. Scott and Larry are going up to New York State in a few weeks to camp at this music festival called Woodstock. They invited Tracy and Connie to come along, but the Andersons won't let her go. Even though Connie explained, "The girls and boys will each have their own tent!" her parents still said no, and Connie had slammed her bedroom door so hard a picture fell off the wall in the living room, Jane told me.
I see Connie out in the backyard one afternoon, lying in a lawn chair in her bathing suit with her back to the house, playing her transistor radio. I go over and ask her about this Woodstock thing.
She sighs and rubs more Coppertone on her legs. "It's three days long, outdoors. Bands play music all day and into the night, and then people camp till the next day when they start again. All the top groups will be there."
"Even the Beatles?" I ask incredulously.
"Well, not so many British bands, except for the Who. Most of them are American, like Creedence. But they're adding more all the time, so who knows? Imagine seeing so many groups all at once. It's a once in a lifetime thing, and my parents just don't understand."
I see an actual tear trickle out from under her Foster Grants. "I'm so sick of everything. This house, my summer job, my parents, Arboria Park. . . I just want to have an adventure before school starts again. Something to remember."
I'm still thinking about what she said later when Jane and Ellen are over on my front porch eating Freeze Pops and looking at the latest Tiger Beat. "I feel bad for Connie," I tell them.
"Me too," Ellen agrees. "Our parents are so unfair. I can only talk to Dean for ten minutes on the phone. Like, that's so stupid. They never let us do anything."
"They're letting us go on the bus trip to Dorney Park," Jane says.
"Because it's a church trip," Ellen sneers. "Just wait until you have a boyfriend, or want to go somewhere cool. You'll see."
It's Ellen being all Miss Teenage It with us again. I'm ready to tell her to go stand in traffic when Jane says, "I still think our parents are nice. They gave us money to buy records at Nichols last night. I got the Archies and Ellen got 'Crimson and Clover.'" She jumps up. "Come on, Ellen. Let's go play them for Laurie."
And that moment I get the idea. "You know what? We should put on a music festival for Connie. Learn to play and sing some songs. We have some instruments. Ricky Nimowicz plays drums. I have a guitar."
"It's a toy guitar." Ellen just can't stop being Ellen. "It's made of plastic."
"Well, yeah. But it has real strings. And Ricky's drum kit is for real. And Jane plays the recorder, and Teddy plays trumpet . . . It'll be kind of weird, but I get we could learn to play something. Maybe some songs by the bands at Woodstock."
It takes a few minutes but I convince them. We go find the boys and pitch the idea. We agree we'll have to practice at my house so Connie won't find out.
Ricky sets up his drums in our basement, and we set about learning to play. We're not sure what bands will actually be at Woodstock but have decided to learn "Proud Mary" first because Connie likes Creedence. We have our old record player that my folks put downstairs when they bought the stereo, and we try playing along with the record at first. Ricky is the only one who can actually play. After a couple of days, there's no way we can pretend we're any good at all.
Ellen flakes off first, then Teddy. Jane and I sit on the back stoop, feeling glum. Woodstock's in less than two weeks. And even though Tracy's parents have said she can't go either (though they're still letting Scott go), Connie's still barely speaking to anybody and is either closed up in her room or over at Tracy's house whenever she's not at her summer job at the dime store. Between that and Ellen moping about not seeing enough of Dean, Jane's house is pretty depressing so we're usually over at mine.
Ellen comes out in the backyard, playing Connie's radio that she's "borrowed" while Connie's at work. She's dancing around being all moony to Tommy Roe's "Dizzy." Then Jackie DeShannon starts singing "Put a Little Love in Your Heart," and Ellen is pretending to sing it, holding the radio like a microphone and emoting at our mimosa tree like it's her audience. She doesn't see us watching because the big pyracantha bush is in the way.
Jane stands up and is about to go bust Ellen when I get another flash. "That's it! We'll never learn to play one song in time, let alone a bunch. Let's lip-synch and pretend to play! It'll be easier. We can make costumes and try to look like the bands!"
We dash over and interrupt Ellen and tell her the idea. To my surprise, she kind of likes it. We round up the boys and go back in the basement, but this time we know what we're doing.
Over the next few days, Ellen prods Connie to list some of the actual bands playing at Woodstock, and we go through her records so we can pick out songs. We figure six songs will do, and enlist Mom and Mrs. Anderson to help us.
But then things slide again. We've agreed to rehearse at one o'clock one day, but we can't find Teddy and Ricky anywhere, and Ellen's not back from the shopping center. Her mom gave her the okay to walk up there with Dean.
I'm ready to give up again when the boys finally come trotting up. They've been over on Elm Street, they explain, watching Audrey Vanderwende make out with a guy in a sports car.
"There's like six of us around the car, and they don't even stop kissing!" Teddy says breathlessly, throwing himself on the front step. "We banged on the windows and they ignored us. He had his hand up her shirt!"
"I even did this on the windshield." Ricky puckers his lips and mashes his face on the window of my mom's car, leaving a disgusting imprint.
"Never mind. We still have time. We'll start without Ellen."
Jane points. "Here she comes."
Ellen and Dean are walking up Maple Street, real slow like they want to drag out their time together. I yell, "Hey, Ellen!" and she walks even slower, looking away.
We run over to them. "Hey, Ellen, it's time to rehearse," I say, and she turns red. "We agreed we'd start at one."
"Rehearse for what?" Dean asks, and Ellen gets even redder.
"We're putting on our own version of Woodstock, since Connie can't go," I explain. Ellen's eyes are just slits now, but Dean's brighten up.
"Cool," he says, and I launch into a description of our efforts. When Ellen sees Dean's reaction, she jumps in and tries to pretend it's all her idea.
"Can I be in it?" Dean asks.
"Of course!" Ellen purrs and bats her eyes at him, but he's looking at me.
"It'd be great," I say. "We need another person, really. We don't have enough instruments, or the right kind of guitar, but maybe we could make some fake ones."
"Now Laurie won't have to play a guy in every band," Ellen says to Dean. "Just because she looks like one." I swear I'm going to kill her later.
But Dean doesn't acknowledge her. "Can you guys wait a few minutes? I think I got something that will help." He takes off down the street, a lot faster than he walked up it.
He's gone for twenty minutes and Ellen goes from over the moon to spitting fire. "If he doesn't come back, Laurie Willis, it's your fault. He probably thinks we're all weirdos."
"Maybe he thinks you're a snot for calling me a guy," I answer, and we're getting into it when Jane yells that Dean is coming back.
He's holding an electric guitar. It's pretty banged-up-looking, but it's a real one. "My uncle left some stuff in our basement when he shipped out," Dean explains. "It won't play for real, but if we're just faking anyway…"
Two strings are missing, and the back is peeling away from the front. But he's right, it'll look realistic.
Now we're back in business. We raid Connie's room for more records and Mrs. Anderson's "Halloween chest" for costumes. Our families agree to provide food, and we make up a list of people to invite. One afternoon we form an assembly line to make fliers: Ellen and Dean letter "MAPLESTOCK! TWO HOURS OF MUSIC FOOD PEACE & LOVE! 111 and 113 Maple Street. 1:30 PM August 16, 1969." Then Jane and the boys draw flowers and peace signs on each one, and I add "Don't tell Connie Anderson It's a surprise!!!!" on the bottom. We distribute them to the neighbors and to some of Connie's friends, swearing them to secrecy.
Connie has to work until two on Woodstock day. We start setting up as soon as she leaves the house at ten. Our dads have a surprise for us: an actual stage, made from two-by-fours and a big piece of plywood left over from our basement renovation. They set it up under the Andersons' swing set. We take down the swings and hang up an old sheet where we've painted "MAPLESTOCK 1969" and more flowers and peace signs. Instead of Ellen's tinny-sounding record player, we have a sound system: Mr. Anderson has moved the hi-fi outdoors and he'll change the records for us. Ellen drills him about the order while I help our moms set up tables for food and coolers full of ice and sodas. Our costumes are piled on the Andersons' dining room table for quick changes. The boys set up the instruments, including a fake keyboard we made from a cardboard box and one of my mom's tray tables.
We told the guests to come at 1:30 so they'll all be in place when Connie gets home. The yard fills up with the usual party attendees, kids we know, some of Connie's friends like Becky Baxter and Matt Halloran and his younger sister Stacy, and a bunch of the Vanderwendes.
Tracy Rosen pulls up the driveway, dropping Connie off. We have a sign up on the front step telling them both to come to the back yard.
It's like a surprise party. Some people even yell, "Surprise!" and Connie is led to a lawn chair set up just for her in front of the stage.
Our first "act" is Ellen doing Joan Baez. We don't know what songs the bands will actually play at Woodstock, so we just picked ones from Connie's records that we liked and thought we could fake good. Ellen is wearing bell-bottom jeans, a shirt with a peace sign, and a dark wig. She pretends to play my guitar and sing "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right." I have to admit Ellen really is the best fake singer of all of us.
The real applause drowns out the clapping from the live album version of the song. Ellen dashes inside to change for her next song. Since Ricky's our best fake musician, he's staying behind the drums for everything from this point on. Ellen has passed me her Baez wig, and me and Teddy fake-strum the guitars. We're Creedence Clearwater Revival, wearing Mr. Anderson's flannel hunting shirts. Dean is being John Fogerty, in an old Beatle wig. We do "Bad Moon Rising," and at the very end Teddy and Ricky yell "there's a bathroom on the right!" even though we told them not to. But the crowd loves it, so I let it go.
Our next band is Jefferson Airplane. We ditch the shirts and put on a lot of scarves and beads and try to look like San Francisco hippies. I'm supposed to be Paul Kantner, so I have on a long blonde wig and the sunglasses I snitched from Connie's room. Dean leaves the Beatle wig on to be Marty Balin, and Ellen has changed into one of Connie's miniskirts and some high heels to be Grace Slick. They pretend to sing "Volunteers" at each other. It goes over well.
We leave on the hippie gear for Big Brother and the Holding Company. I muss up the wig and wrap a bandana around it and add a feather. And put on a bunch of my mom's old jewelry, because in all the magazine pictures Janis Joplin's always wearing lots of rings and bracelets. It's fun being out front performing "Down on Me." I dance around like Ellen.
Now we have to be Sly and the Family Stone. We fought over this one because Teddy wants to play his trumpet, even though the trumpet player in the real band is a girl. But we decided that since some of the real band are black people anyway and we're not, it wouldn't hurt. I wish the Andrews boys were old enough to be in the band but they're too little. They're dancing on our picnic table bench, though. Ellen is at the keyboard and me and Jane are the backup singers. We all get into "I Want to Take You Higher," and actually yell "Boom shaka laka" over the record. Dean has borrowed a harmonica for the solo, and Teddy prances around the stage with his trumpet.
Connie and all her friends are dancing now. The applause is so enthusiastic that Ellen yells to her dad to play "Everyday People," and we fake it even though we haven't rehearsed it. We invite the Andrews boys up to dance onstage and Kyle, the seven-year-old, starts belting out the song so Dean gives way to him. He's amazing. Me and Jane do these little dance steps during our part.
Dean puts on the long brown wig and sunglasses for Canned Heat's "Going Up the Country." This is Jane's big number, because she's faking the flute solo on the recorder. People are still dancing.
Our big finale is Blood Sweat & Tears singing "Spinning Wheel," and Teddy surprises us by playing his trumpet for real at the end. Jane pretends to be the rest of the horns.
We take a bow and some people even yell, "Encore!" So we play Joe Cocker doing "A Little Help From My Friends," because Connie requests it. Ellen's being Leon Russell in the blonde wig and sunglasses. So who's a guy now?
Connie hugs all of us. Our moms give out cupcakes and Mr. Anderson complains that his hi-fi is probably wrecked forever, but we don't think he means it. Some of the neighbors leave around four but Connie asks if she and her friends can have a little record party indoors. And to our surprise she asks us to join them, even Teddy and Ricky.
3. Aftermath
School will be starting next week, after a big Labor Day cookout in our yard. It's been a fun summer. Connie's friends wave or honk now when they see us. It's like we're not little kids to them anymore. I think it bothers Ellen a little that we're lumped in with her now, though.
Teddy's learning to play the Woodstock songs for real. He practices all the time to the records, and he's getting pretty good. Dad says, "Jesus, do we have to listen to that racket again," and Mom reminds him that they've been wanting him to practice more.
Scott and Larry didn't even get to Woodstock. They got stuck on the New York Thruway for three hours and heard on the radio that nobody could even get near the festival, so they turned around and went to the Jersey shore instead. Connie told her parents, "See, maybe I could have gone after all," and Mr. Anderson said she had another thing coming if she thought camping with boys at the beach was an option.
Ellen's parents let her go with Dean to the teen pool party out at the air base last week. Me and Jane didn't care because we went to this thing at the bowling alley for kids ages eleven to fourteen. The shoe rentals and the snack bar were half price, and they played Top 40 music. We bowled against Stacy Halloran and her friend Julie; they beat us but they were nice about it and said we were good. They left because they got a ride to the Dairy Queen, so we played two boys from Jane's class, Kip and Marty, and we beat them. The bowling alley had all these Christmas lights strung up, and sometimes they'd lower the other lights so colors flashed on you while you bowled. It was cool.
Ellen didn't have such a good time. In fact, her and Dean broke up. Dean ditched her at the party and spent the whole evening pulling on Cheryl Ottolini's bathing-suit strap and trying to dunk her, then bought her a soda at the vending machine to apologize. He didn't buy one for Ellen or even talk to her. When Mr. Anderson came to pick them up she told him Dean had another ride home and left him there. She even told Jane she wished she'd gone bowling with us. She also told Jane not to tell me that part but then she said she was going to the bathroom while they were doing the dishes and didn't come back so Jane got revenge by telling me. Ellen said Dean acted like that because Cheryl has big bazonkas. It's too bad because now we have to ignore Dean when we see him, and if we do another show he can't be in it. You think you know a person and then they act like that.
I hope junior high won't be all about bazonkas and boys pulling your straps. It'll be weird not being in the same school with Jane, just like it was when Ellen wasn't at our school anymore. I mean, we both know other people to hang out with, but it's still weird. I don't know if I can count on Ellen. She even said we should have let the boys beat us in bowling and that I won't be popular in junior high if I don't learn things like that. Like I'm going to pretend to lose to a couple of sixth-grade booger-eaters like Marty Siegel and Kip Vanderwende. But I would still try to win even if I were bowling against Bobby Sherman and Mark Lindsay, so I guess I won't be popular. They don't have recess in junior high, only something called "intramurals," where the boys play basketball and stuff in the gym and the girls watch. I think that's lame. Maybe I'll use the time to read. The junior high library should have some more space books.
I've kind of figured out what I want to do. See, they'll be doing more science experiments in space. They'll need to remember to bring the right equipment and stuff, and somebody will have to organize it all and keep track and make sure they don't forget anything. There's no reason girls can't do that. I think we're better than boys at things like that. The part I liked best about Maplestock, now that I think about it, was the organizing part. Getting everything together and planning and telling people what to do. If I can't join NASA, maybe I could organize music festivals. Connie says there will be more, maybe even another Woodstock. They'll need someone to plan things better so people don't get caught in traffic or stuck in the mud, and have more food and stop people from bringing drugs. I'm not sure what that kind of person is called, but I think I could do it.
I'll have a chance to practice my organizing skills soon. Mom starts a new part-time job next week at ILC, the place where they actually make the spacesuits! I can't wait until we do the family tour in October. So two days a week we'll be on our own when we get home from school, until she comes back after five. We have to check in with Mrs. Anderson and stay inside doing our homework, and maybe peel potatoes or something to start dinner. Mrs. Anderson just got a job answering phones at the newspaper office, but it's only in the mornings. Our dads are worried that if President Nixon ends the war, there won't be as many planes to fix at the base and they could have their hours cut back. I mean, it's not like they're for the war because everyone at the base is sad when a guy from there gets killed. I asked Dad if he could get a job at NASA fixing rockets instead. He said, "We'd have to move to Florida. Do you want to do that?" and I answered truthfully, "I would if Jane and her family went too."
Jane wants to be an airline stewardess and said maybe if people go live on the moon they'll have regular flights like a plane and we could be space stewardesses together. I don't think so, though. I'd rather be the one organizing the flights.
Author katetylerwallPosted on July 20, 2017 July 21, 2017


Fedora Farms, Inc., a mutli-faceted operation near Meridian, Calif., offers a variety of custom services to other growers. Fully automated 22-ton per hour hullder, drier busy season-long. Electronic bar coding improves crop traceability. Family provides custom planting services using state-of-art GPS planting system.
Fedora, his wife, Margaret, and their two sons, Brian and Chris, own Fedora Farms, Inc., a mutli-faceted operation near Meridian, Calif. The farm combines 600 acres of walnuts along with several other crops and offers a variety of custom farming services.
The technology they employ ranges from pneumatic shears, which allow crews to prune more trees quicker with less effort, to a 22-ton per hour hulling facility and fully-automated drying bins. It also includes their latest project — working with an electronics firm to develop a bar coding system for tracking a trailer load of nuts from the field to the walnut handler. It's all designed to maximize profits for the Fedora's and their grower-customers.
That's where the technology comes in. "It enables us to achieve the highest possible grade so growers can get the best possible price for their nuts," he explains.
"After his handler got the first shipment from us, the customer told us that he had never received such good grades for his walnuts," Sib says.
The Fedoras are producing walnuts 400 acres of Chandler, Blackmer, Hartley, Howard, Serr and Tehama varieties. They have another 200 acres of younger trees along the Sacramento River, They also row crop grow wheat, blackeye and baby lima beans, safflower and sunflowers. In addition to hulling and drying walnuts, their list of custom services includes orchard management, planting fruit and nut trees using GPS technology and pruning, spraying and harvesting walnuts. Their clients, whose operations range in size from about 10 to 500 acres, are located on both sides of the Sacramento Valley from Knights Landing in the south to the Chico area in the north.
Although Sib had long done a little custom hulling and drying of walnuts, he began seeing opportunities to expand the operation in the early 1990s. Up until then, even small mom-and-pop growers had their own huller-dryer, he notes. However, this aging equipment was starting to break down and many growers couldn't justify the much higher cost of the latest hulling and drying machinery to replace the worn out units. Also, at about that same time, many new walnut orchards were beginning to produce significantly. So, Sib installed a new, larger huller and saw his hulling capacity jump from 1,000 nuts per hour with his previous equipment to 5 tons per hour with his new line.
"We thought we might be able to make the huller profitable by growing this side of our business," he says.
In 1996, he put up a new building for handling nuts in bulk rather than in 1,100-pound capacity bins and installed pits for receiving the nuts. He also replaced his 11 harvest buggies, each of which held about 4,000 to 5,000 pounds of nuts with three sets of 25-ton capacity double-trailers.
At the time, the Fedoras were growing 150 acres of walnuts. Harvesting operations kept at least two pickup trucks running all day long pulling the nut buggies between the field and the huller, Sib says. Switching to the trailers and the bulk handling really made a difference.
Initially, the Fedoras processed about 350 to 500 tons of walnuts per season. That has since grown to more than 5,000 tons annually, he reports.
During the walnut harvest, Brian is in charge. Typically, he and his crews pick up about 25 acres of trees per day. Chris manages the hulling and drying.
For example, if the nuts are showing up at the huller with too much debris, Chris may call Brian, asking him to adjust the sweeper, travel slower or make one windrow instead of two, as needed, to minimize trash pickup. Brian, on the other hand, may notify Chris that nuts in the first set of double-trailers are dirtier and will require more attention on the hulling line that the load in the second unit. Brian can then plan accordingly.
This past season, the Fedoras picked the last of the walnuts on Nov. 18 — their latest finish ever. The harvest was delayed by rainstorms in late October and early November. The first dropped as much as about 3.5 inches on the West Side of the valley. Rainfall from the second totaled about half an inch, Sib says.
The rains also slow harvest activities by delaying field operation. This means crews have to scramble to pick the nuts before the late-fall rains set in.
For instance, in the orchard, Brian may need additional labor for raking up the nuts by hand if the mud is impeding the nut sweepers. Also, because mud and wet leaves and twigs stick to the walnuts, there's more trash going into the hulling machines and it's harder to remove. That means Chris may have to run the huller slower and add more water lines and nozzles to clean the nuts.
Brian and Chris, both University of California, Davis ag school graduates, designed the bin drying facility. It features 70 drying bins, each with a 4-ton capacity, plus a 12,000-gallon propane storage tank and a custom-built fully-automated drying system. These dryers are another key part of the Fedoras' customer-focused approach to business.
The Fedoras are working with Woodside Electronics Corp., Woodland, Calif., to develop a wireless communication system, using smart phones or laptop computers, for identifying and following a load of nuts from the field to the handler who packages the nuts for wholesalers and retailers.
This new system is based on a bar code label attached to a trailer load of nuts before it leaves the orchard. As Chris explains, this bar code can be used to record such information as the grower's name, date harvested, location of the field and variety. When the trailer arrives at the huller, he uses a scanner to read the label and download the information into his laptop computer. There, he can add more details to the bar code as it follows the load of nuts through the huller, into the drying bins and onto the truck that eventually hauls the nuts to the handler. This added information can include time in and out of the huller and moisture levels before and after drying.
The Fedoras have been providing custom tree planting services using GPS technology for the past seven years. They've equipped each of two tractors — a four-wheel drive John Deere 7810 and a John Deere 8520 track machine — with a Trimble automated steering system. The tractors pull a custom-built, 60-foot wide, hydraulically-operated marker to cross-mark the field. It is used to plant almond, peach and prune tree, as well as walnuts.
"This system requires no survey, and we can plant 30 acres a day with sub-inch accuracy," Sib says.


text:
Midori, het Japanse woord voor de kleur groen
 Midori (Gunma), een stad (shi) in de Japanse prefectuur Gunma
 Midori (Hyogo), een gemeente (machi) in de Japanse prefectuur Hyogo
 Midori Goto, een Japanse violiste
 Midori (auteur), de schrijver Midori
 Midori (acteur), de acteur Midori
 Midori (band), een Japanse punkjazzband
 Midori (pornoactrice), de Amerikaanse pornoactrice Midori, geboren als Michele Watley
 Midori (film), een Japanse animatiefilm uit 1992
 Midori (besturingssysteem), een mogelijk toekomstig besturingssysteem van Microsoft
 Midori (webbrowser), een lichte open source-webbrowser
 Midori (likeur), een helder groene likeur die smaakt naar meloen.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Home Reports Music Events
Live Report: The Final Night of Indie, Idol and Infamous
14th Generation Toilet Hanako-san, GARUDA & 2& Tour Final in Birmingham.
by Matthew Elliott
Birmingham has seen a surge of Japanese music events in these past few years, hosting such groups as Necronomidol, 2& (Double And), Screaming Sixties and even BABYMETAL, but it's safe to say that some in Birmingham, were probably not expecting the Indie, Idol and Infamous show.
Situated across the busy road of Smallbrook Queensway, opposite Birmingham's famous Bullring, sits a small bar called The Sunflower Lounge.
Stepping into its entrance, it looks just like any other, but take the stairs down towards the toilets and you'll find that a small basement is accessible, also a little closer and you will find that particular basement, is a small gig venue – reminiscent of the Japanese live houses.
With a great atmosphere and dedicated fans, this small bar became a hub for anarchy when the time came for the final show of the Indie, Idol and Infamous tour to start.
With special guest Rukatama or MELON BATAKE A GO GO opening the final show with the new MELON track Mother of Pearl, the energy in the Sunflower Lounge was building. Rukatama was delightful to watch, it seemed she had come along as support for Yuffie Sakimura, assisting with operating the GARUDA merchandise table, and made the last minute decision to open the final show.
Following Rukatama's Mother of Pearl performance, Yuffie Sakimura walks through the crowd to the stage and steps on as GARUDA. If you are not familiar with GARUDA, the solo project of Yuffie Sakimura, member of the idol group MELON BATAKE A GO GO. With its roots clearly deep into Industrial Metal, GARUDA debuted in 2017.
As GARUDA stepped on to the stage, wearing her signature Plague doctor masquerade mask, she performed on the audience, she explained that she had been fortunate to visit the Harry Potter studio in London, but she was disappointed that she was not able to see Severus Snape. (Yuffie is a huge fan of Slytherin House).
In a touching moment, Yuffie explained that she was so happy to have visited England and thanked the event organizers, ORIONlive UK and Kushikatsu Records for hosting her, before thanking the audience. The Audience applauded, thanking her in return and then GARUDA then delivered a passionate, well-rehearsed, energetic and visually stunning performance that will be impossible to forget. Given the audience's overwhelmingly positive response to Yuffie's music, It's almost unfathomable that it's GARUDA's first tour in the UK.
Following GARUDA's performance, silence fell across the room as we waited for the appearance of Hanako-san, who had been smuggled through the packed entrance hall, covering her face so as not to spoil any of the mystique.
One of the greatest qualities and mysteries of the artist known as 14th Generation Toilet Hanako-san, is just how secretive she keeps her performances, this creates a certain level of hype, so the time came for Hanako-san to step up to the stage, there was a collective intake of breath.
She introduced herself in a light-hearted method, by way of cardboard signs, seemingly pleased that some of the audience had found this amusing. She explained that she could not speak much English, but she would be working through an interpreter. It had been mentioned on social media prior to the show, but the audience was once again reminded that photos were allowed, videos were not.
In reading this, it's likely you are familiar with Hanako-san, her style, her voice and her stage act, but nothing quite compares to watching it live, the voice is tremendously powerful, filling the room in seconds. She powered through her performance without skipping a beat – eventually, black bin bags were handed out for the audience and that's when the real show started – Those who had been to earlier shows had already equipped themselves with protective raincoats and were now ready for whatever Hanako-san threw at them – literally.
Members of the audience stepped up towards the front, and knelt down as though receiving mass in prayer, as Hanako-san covered them in flour, honey and HP sauce. Following the performance, there was a cleaning ceremony where the fans used toilet roll, brushes and a mop to clean up the mess – while Hanako-san watched on. Once the cleaning ceremony was finished, the audience once again fell silent, as some ran to clean themselves and others decided to remain covered until after the show, there was an excitement that was building, to see the headlining performance – 2& (Double And).
If you're not familiar with 2& – it's the solo project of Saki, once a member of popular idol group Guso Drop. Saki visited the UK in 2018 as part of NECRONOMIDOL's Black Wings on Albion tour and has since gained a reputation for her lively, energetic and positive performances. Saki was a joy to watch because she looked like she was having a great time just being there. She spent a short time conversing with the audience, which emphasized her English language skills – Saki almost wanted you to know that she was trying to learn English, by speaking it at every opportunity.
Following the performances, the merchandise tables opened back up, operated by Rukatama, ORIONlive UK and Kushikatsu Records. There was an extended cheki meet-and-greet with Hanako, Yuffie and Saki, which continued until almost midnight when the curtains closed and the tour was finally over.
By now, many of the patrons had exhausted their energy, but many decided to continue the evening, holding their own little after party in the Sunflower Lounge, until the bar closed and everybody went home – happy.
The Indie, Idol and Infamous tour ended in Birmingham on April 23, it has left many fans with unforgettable moments, performances and encounters with their idols and with fellow like-minded people.
Not only did this tour create even deeper recognition towards the great artistry of 14th Generation Toilet Hanako-san, GARUDA and 2&, it also created many new friendships, it allowed a platform for some to meet new people, so that at the next show, they can always look forward to seeing their friends – and if you ask me, these positive experiences is what this fandom is all about.
In the aftermath of the Tour, Hanako-san expressed her emotions towards the UK tour, explaining that she worried about the language barrier, but that she was thankful for the experiences she had and was thankful for the love she received from her fans overseas – she said that she would return (to kill us all again).
Saki appeared to have a great time, she expressed her delight that her overseas fans enjoyed her performances, she also expressed her love for English food. Her Twitter has been inundated with posts of the food she has enjoyed and since returning to Japan, is continuing to post photographs of anything from Fish and Chips to Lemon Curd – I think it's safe to say that Saki will return.
Yuffie appeared to enjoy the show just as much as we did, she thanked her overseas fans for their support, she said that she was worried or the reception she might receive in the UK, but after all of the positive responses to GARUDA, we are confident that she will return to England – although it's still unlikely that she'll get to meet Severus Snape.
Tags: 2019alt idolidol
Matthew Elliott
I am an obedient slave to the Japanese music industry.
Live Report: NECRONOMIDOL at Boston Music Room in London
As an old school metalhead raised and weaned on bands like Darkthrone and Venom it took me a while to...
Live Report: BRIDEAR & Season Of Ghosts at Camden Underworld in London
Live Report: The 10.000 steps of cali≠gari
The strong final event of first HYPER JAPAN ONLINE with JILUKA
No small amount of fun as Nano rock HYPER JAPAN ONLINE
BABYMETAL to perform at Glastonbury 2019

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
<?php

namespace Etu\Module\DaymailBundle\Test\Controller;

use Etu\Core\CoreBundle\Framework\Tests\MockUser;
use Etu\Core\UserBundle\Security\Authentication\OrgaToken;
use Etu\Core\UserBundle\Security\Authentication\UserToken;

use Symfony\Bundle\FrameworkBundle\Test\WebTestCase;

class MembershipsControllerTest extends WebTestCase
{
	public function testRestrictionDaymail()
	{
		$client = static::createClient();

		$client->request('GET', '/user/membership/orga/daymail');
		$this->assertEquals($client->getResponse()->getStatusCode(), 302);
	}

	public function testRestrictionDaymailOrga()
	{
		$client = static::createClient();
		$client->getContainer()->get('security.context')->setToken(new OrgaToken(MockUser::createOrga()));

		$client->request('GET', '/user/membership/orga/daymail');
		$this->assertEquals($client->getResponse()->getStatusCode(), 302);
	}

	public function testRestrictionPreview()
	{
		$client = static::createClient();

		$client->request('GET', '/user/membership/orga/daymail/current/preview');
		$this->assertEquals($client->getResponse()->getStatusCode(), 302);
	}

	public function testRestrictionPreviewOrga()
	{
		$client = static::createClient();
		$client->getContainer()->get('security.context')->setToken(new OrgaToken(MockUser::createOrga()));

		$client->request('GET', '/user/membership/orga/daymail/current/preview');
		$this->assertEquals($client->getResponse()->getStatusCode(), 302);
	}

	public function testDaymail()
	{
		$client = static::createClient();
		$client->getContainer()->get('security.context')->setToken(new UserToken(MockUser::createUser()));

		$crawler = $client->request('GET', '/user/membership/orga/daymail');
		$this->assertEquals($client->getResponse()->getStatusCode(), 200);
	}

	public function testPreview()
	{
		$client = static::createClient();
		$client->getContainer()->get('security.context')->setToken(new UserToken(MockUser::createUser()));

		$client->request('GET', '/user/membership/orga/daymail/current/preview');

		$this->assertEquals($client->getResponse()->getStatusCode(), 200);
	}
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Q: What is the fair guarantee charge, if the guarantee is 100% and the funds is a geometric brownian motion? while preparing for an exam I have found the following question:
We consider the Black-Scholes model. Let $S(t)$ be a funds, that is $S(t)=S(0)\cdot exp((\mu-0.5\sigma^2)t+\sigma\sqrt{t}W)$, where $W\sim N(0,1)$. Let $r $ be the continuous interest rate. An insurer offers this funds with a 100% guarantee (denoted by K), that is, if $S(T)< K$, then the insurer has to pay the difference. We assume that there is only one initial premium $P_0$.
$$ $$
Question: What are the fair guarantee charges, if the guarantee charges are charged annually as a percentage of the funds?$$ $$
My idea was the following: Let x be the percentage that is charges annually and let $\hat{S}(t)$ be the funds that considers these charges. Then, $\hat{S}(t)=(1-x)\cdot S(t)=(1-x)^t\cdot S(0)\cdot exp((\mu-0.5\sigma^2)t+\sigma\sqrt{t}W)$. I know from a previous exercise that if the fair guarantee charges are already included in the initial single premium, the guarantee charges are the solution of the equation $$x\cdot \text{premium} = K\cdot e^{-rT}\Phi(-d_2)-(1-x)\cdot \text{premium}\cdot \Phi(-d_1)$$, where $$d_1 = \frac{\text{log}\left(\frac{(1-x)\text{premium}}{K}\right)+(r+0.5\sigma)\cdot T}{\sigma\sqrt{T}} $$ and $$d_2 = d_1-\sigma\sqrt{T} $$
Based on the equation above and the fact that the put option can be written as $(K-\hat{S}(T))^+=\left(\frac{K}{(1-x)^T}-S(T)\right)^+$, I derived the following formula for the put option:
$$P_0=\frac{K}{(1-x)^T}e^{-rT}\Phi(-d_2)-\text{premium}\Phi(-d_1)$$ where
$$d_1 = \frac{\text{log}\left(\frac{\text{premium}}{(1-x)^T\cdot K}\right)+(r+0.5\sigma)\cdot T}{\sigma\sqrt{T}} $$ and $$d_2 = d_1-\sigma\sqrt{T} $$. To get $x$ I would then have to solve the equation $$x\cdot\text{premium}=P_0 $$ numerically.
Unfortunetley, if I solve this equation for x numerically with premium 100000 USD, $r=0.02$, $T=20$ and $\sigma = 0.2$, then x would be roughly 8.65%, which is a bit unrealistic to charge annually. Can anybody please help me to find the error in this model?

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Q: prove $\left(3, 1+\sqrt{-5}\right)$ is prime ideal of $\mathbb{Z}\left[\sqrt{-5}\right]$ How to prove that $(3, 1+\sqrt{-5})$ is prime ideal of $\mathbb{Z}[\sqrt{-5}]$?
attempt 1: use definition
Consider $a, b, c, d, k_1, k_2 \in \mathbb{Z}$ s.t. $$ac-5bd=3k_1+k_2,\, \, ad+bc=k_2.$$ To prove $\exists j_1, j_2 \in \mathbb{Z}$ s.t. $3j_1+(1+\sqrt{-5})j_2=a+b\sqrt{-5}$ or $=c+d\sqrt{-5}$.
This is a bad way.
attempt 2:
To prove $\dfrac{\mathbb{Z}\left[\sqrt{-5}\right]}{\left(3, 1+\sqrt{-5}\right)}$ is integral domain. I know how to work with quotient of polynomial ring but not how to work with quotient of $\mathbb{Z}\left[\sqrt{-5}\right]$.
attempt 3:
$$\mathbb{Z}\left[\sqrt{-5}\right]\cong \mathbb{Z}/\left(x^2+5\right)$$
When we have $\mathbb{Z}/\left(x^2+5\right)$, converting into $\mathbb{Z}\left[\sqrt{-5}\right]$ simplifies the problem. May be the other way round is useless.
Please give a hint. Please do not give solution. Thanks!

A: $$
\frac{\mathbb{Z}\left[\sqrt{-5}\right]}{\left(3, 1+\sqrt{-5}\right)}
\cong \frac{\mathbb{Z}[x]}{\left(3,1+x,x^2+5\right)}
\cong \frac{\mathbb{Z}_3[x]}{\left(1+x,x^2-1\right)}
\cong \cdots
$$

A: Hint: The square of norm function $(a^2-5b^2)$ is a multiplicative function in the ring $\mathbb{Z}[\sqrt{-5}]$ for a number $a+b\sqrt {-5}$. Use this to prove the primality by proving one of the factors of the norm is $1$. After showing that the numbers are primes, it is correct that the ideal you describe is prime, by using this answer


text:
A Node.js transaction REST API for neo4j.
Node2neo uses the transaction endpoints feature of the Neo4j REST API. This reduces the traffic between the server and neo4j and allows for multiple http requests within the same transaction.

This is intended to be a building block for future modules to add advanced functionality.

NOTE: Neo4j 2.0 is required.

## Installation

    npm install node2neo

## Usage

#### Connecting to the db

```js
var db = require('node2neo').db('http://localhost:7474');
```

There are only five methods offered by node2neo:
1. beginTransaction
2. executeStatement
3. commitTransaction
4. removeTransaction
5. getTransactionId (helper)

#### Begin Transaction
To create a transaction use the db.beginTransaction function. The statements provided to the beginTransaction function must match the required neo4j format.

````js
var transStatement = {
  statements: [{
    statement: 'CREATE n:User RETURN n'
  }, {
    statement: 'CREATE o:Person RETURN o'
  }]
}

db.beginTransaction(transStatement, function(err, results){

})
```

You can immediately commit a transaction by passing an options variable with a commmit property

```js
db.beginTransaction(transStatement, { commit: true }, function(err, results){

})
```

The response format for an open transaction is as follows (closed transaction have a different response)

```js
response: {
  results: [{
    commit: '...commit string...',
    transaction: {expires: '...transaction timeout period...'},
    errors: []
    results: [{
      columns: ['n', 'o'],
      data: [{
        row: [{ name: 'MyNode'}, {name: 'YourNode'}]
      }]
    }]

  }]
}
```

#### Execute Statement
To perform another action in the same transaction use the execute Statement function

In order to execute a statement you will need the transaction Id or commit string.
You can use the db.getTransactionId(commitString) helper to get the transaction id from the commit string or just pass in the commit string

```js
db.executeStatement(commit, statements, function(err, results){

})
```

Transaction will expire after  aperiod of time. You can prevent a transaction from expiring by submitting an empty statements array

```js
var statemetns = {
  statements: []
}
db.executeStatement(commit, statements, function(err, results){

})
```

#### Commit a transaction
All of the statements in a transaction are not commited until the whole transaction is committed. You can optionally include some further statements at this point before committing the transaction. The result from a commit is different:

```js
db.commitTransaction(commit, [statements], function(err, results){

})

// if no statement is provided you receive tw empy arrays.
// If a statement was provided the results array would be poopulated as above
{
  "results" : [ ],
  "errors" : [ ]
}
```

#### Remove a transaction
There are two ways to undo a transaction that is in mid progress: let it timeout or tell Neo4j to remove it.

```js
db.removeTransaction(commit, function(err){

})
```

##Licence
MIT


text:
https://www.middletownpress.com/news/article/Americans-ignore-risk-of-cellphone-use-11869994.php
Americans ignore risk of cellphone use
Published 12:00 am EDT, Monday, June 6, 2011
NEW YORK (AP) -- News last week that an arm of the World Health Organization said cellphones might raise the risk of brain cancer has been greeted by Americans mostly with a shrug of the shoulder -- one that's pinning a cellphone to the ear.
Google searches for "cancer" and "cellphones" spiked this week. And some people vowed to get headsets to shield themselves from radiation. But most seemed to either dismiss the warning as too vague, or reason that if the most useful device in modern life poses a slight health risk, then so be it.
"I was watching the news about it, and I thought, 'I'm already screwed because I've been talking on the phone for seven years,"' said Genevieve Chamorro, a 31-year-old New Yorker who was shopping for a phone.
John Gottani, a manager at a cellphone store in New York, said he's been selling phones for six years and has never heard anyone ask if they cause cancer. The only things customers really care about, Gottani said, are "if it works, and if it texts."
The International Agency for Research on Cancer reviewed dozens of published studies on cellphones and cancer before classifying cellphones as "possibly carcinogenic" on Tuesday. It's a risk category that includes night-shift work, engine exhaust and coffee.
Studies haven't been able to rule out a link between cellphones and cancer. But experts say that if there is a link, it's unlikely to be strong. Cellphones emit weak radio waves, which, under the conventional understanding of physics, can't wreak the same sort of cellular changes that sunlight and radioactivity can.
A common tip offered to those who want to reduce their exposure to cellphone radiation is to use a headset. Even wireless Bluetooth headsets reduce radiation exposure.


The 9th meeting of the Academic Council, Nazeer Hussain University, was held on April 7th, 2017 in the Board Room. The Meeting was chaired by the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Dr. S. Altaf Hussain. The following honorable external expert members joined the meeting: Prof. Dr. Abid Karim, Chairman, Electrical Engineering from Iqra University Prof. Dr. Farooq-e- Azam Cheema, Dean, Faculty of Management Sciences, Bahria University Dr. Shehzad Hasan, Associate Professor, Computer Science, NED-UET Dr. Sajida Zaki, Associate Professor, Humanities, NED-UET Mr. Saeed Ahmed Siddiqui, Head of Quality Control & Assurance Units, Bayer Pharmaceuticals (PVT) Ltd. The Meeting was attended by Prof. Dr. Nighat Razvi, Engr. Javed Aziz, Mr. Abdul Wasay Khan, Ms. Beenish Tariq, Mr. M. Hussain Khorasany, Engr. Nadeem Akhtar, Arch. Javeria Shaikh, Mr. M. Faseeh Ullah Khan, Ms. Ayesha Kausar, Mr. Urooj Fatima and Ms. Sarwat Ishaq. The house discussed in detail the matters related to tuition fee conducting of examination and development and revision of curricula for Departments of Architecture, Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Electronic Systems, Pharmacy, Social Sciences, Media Sciences Business and Management Studies and other academic matters.


CEproof Wales & North West Ltd, Recreational Craft Directive consultans and suppliers of CE-Pro professional software for RCD Compliance, now have another tool to help boat builders meet the requirements of the 2003-44-EC Directive.
The Sonic Boom™® has been invented by the company to make the process of sound testing semi-displacement and planning craft under 24m simple and cost effective.
helmsman making a few port and starboard passes at the other end of the boom whilst the sound equipment is continually recording the results. It can be used free floating or anchored, on inland or coastal water and takes just minutes to inflate. A second craft and crew is not required, so costs and down time are far less.
HPi commented "When used by a competent person the Sonic Boom will provide accurate and reliable results that we are happy to except."
Craig Morris, & Ian Curtis, inventors of the Sonic Boom™®, have confirmed that CEproof offices in strategic locations across Europe have ordered the Boom and will be able to carry out sound testing in various European countries.
boats tested at the same location on the same day.
The Sonic Boom™® is a simple to use and accurate method of ensuring that your boat meets the requirements of ISO Standard 14509. The system does not rely on sophisticated electronics and ensures that the craft being tested is the correct distance away from the sound measuring equipment.
Sonic BoomTM® is available to boat builders, and surveyors offering compliance testing services in certain locations, to purchase. The cost of the full kit, including Boom, Type 1 Sound Test Equipment and Calibrator, Anemometer, Inflation Pump and Bag is £4495.00 + VAT ex works Martham, Norfolk.


Do you love nothing more than spending your weekends getting stuck into some DIY? Or perhaps you're a trader using tools in your everyday life? Whatever you're looking for, a Tooled-up.com voucher is a great way to make massive savings on a wide range of tools of all shapes and sizes. So whether you're a professional or a home enthusiast, Tooled-up.com vouchers will save you money while you shop.
Tooled-up.com started life as Lee Industrial way back in 1976, a British firm offering the very best quality tools at the best possible prices. With the launch of Tooled-up.com in 2000, the company has gone from strength to strength, combining their years of experience in the tool industry with a huge range, competitive prices and excellent service to offer customers a fantastic shopping experience.
Over the years, Tooled-up.com has built up strong relationships with all the major tool brands and suppliers, allowing them to offer great deals to their customers along with the reassurance that they are ordering a quality product. And because all of their stock is held in a dedicated warehouse, they can provide a quick turnaround on all orders – great if you urgently need a tool at the last minute for a specific job.
At Tooled-up.com, they cater for everyone, whether you're a seasoned professional looking for the right tools for the job or an ethusiastic amateur wanting to build up your collection. Their website boasts an incredible selection of over 60,000 tools, all available to browse by category or by job – so it's easy to find exactly what you're looking for.
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We remember those who gave their lives for us
On behalf of the rail supply-chain, RFM joined 700 people at last week's centenary commemoration in London to pay respect to the railway workers who died during WW1.
The Railway Chaplains also organised as series of regional events across British railway stations and Rail Forum Midlands CEO, Elaine Clark laid a wreath at a memorial service at Derby Station today, 11 November 2020, on behalf of the local rail supply-chain. About 50 people attended this event hosted by EMR.
Nathalie Hollingworth :


ABD AL AZIZ ibn Abd ar Rahman Al Saud rose to prominence in the Arabian Peninsula in the early twentieth century. He belonged to the Saud family (the Al Saud), who had controlled most of Arabia during the nineteenth century. By the time of Abd al Aziz, however, the rival Al Rashid family forced the Al Saud into exile in Kuwait. Thus, it was from Kuwait that Abd al Aziz began the campaign to restore his family to political power. First, he recaptured Najd, a mostly desert region in the approximate center of the peninsula and the traditional homeland of the Al Saud. During the mid-1920s, Abd al Aziz's armies had captured the Islamic shrine cities of Mecca and Medina. In 1932, he declared that the area under his control would be known as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
At first Abd al Aziz's realm was a very poor one. It was a desert kingdom with few known natural resources and a largely uneducated population. There were few cities and virtually no industry. Although the shrines at Mecca and Medina earned income from the Muslim pilgrims who visited them every year, this revenue was insufficient to lift the rest of the kingdom out of its near subsistence level.
All this changed, however, when United States geologists discovered oil in the kingdom during the 1930s. Saudi Arabia's exploitation of its oil resources transformed the country into a nation synonymous with great wealth. Wealth brought with it enormous material and social change--so much change that Saudi Arabia became an exaggerated paradigm of possibilities for development in the Third World. The transformation was staggering: in a few years the Saudis had gone from herding camels to moving billions of dollars around the world with electronic transfers.
Perhaps because of the great upheaval of the last half century, history and origins were very important to Saudi Arabia. Although the country owed its prominence to modern economic realities, Saudis tended to view life in more traditional terms. The state in 1992 remained organized largely along tribal lines. The Muslim religion continued to be a vital element in Saudi statecraft. Moreover, many Muslims considered the form of Islam practiced most widely in Saudi Arabia, Wahhabi Islam, to be reactionary because it sought its inspiration from the past.
The tendency to draw inspiration from the past was an essential part of the Saudi state. The historical parallels between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its Arab and Islamic past were striking. In conquering Arabia, for instance, Abd al Aziz brought together the region's nomadic tribes in much the same way that his great-grandfather, Muhammad ibn Saud, had done a century earlier.


my site of Humorous and Inspirational Posters.
Hi, my name is Annette McKitrick.
I work in a school library and I am always developing creative and inspirational posters.
I encourage staff and students to leave work spaces as they would like to find them.


LENGTH Small 12" Medium 24" Large 36"
Description: True Black Wrist Wraps add power and look great! Solid, heavy wrist wraps with tight weave and powerful rubber.
• IAD mills the material in huge quantities, providing you with an unbeatable price point. Sold by others for over double this price.
• True Black Wrist Wraps provide a cast-like feel on the wrists.
• The yarns are densely woven around the maximum number of rubber strands that can fit into the width of competition legal wraps.
• Wide, secure Velcro with thumb loop.


text:
Q: Converting cell value to table name to use in charts I have a spreadsheet with a few Tables i.e. Art, Drama, English etc.  I want to create a dynamic chart so when I change cell B1 to Art the chart automatically picks up the table Art.  Is there any way to do this?
Thanks

A: Not exactly what you are asking for but maybe good enough:
Set up data series as in the picture and use the filter in the graph


It is true that the way one dresses depends greatly on their lifestyle and profession. Nowadays men are aware of the importance of their looks, and they are cautious about the way they dress. In today's society a modern man can stand out among his peers irrespective of whether they are in their relaxed or formal clothing. Modern men like to wear clothes that fit them properly unlike in the past where men wore baggy clothes.
Men in today's society purchases their clothes depending on their budget, body type, occasion, and lifestyle. This is because they want to look charming and handsome in whatever they wear. For example any man will look charming in a tuxedo when attending an event such as a wedding, evening event, and formal meetings. It's a challenge for a man to choose the best tuxedo if they have no knowledge concerning tuxedos.
You can never go wrong with a customized tuxedo even though the style of tuxedos changes constantly. With customized suit you can add minor details which are eye-catching to make it unique for the occasion. An sleek look speaks volumes about a person.
Choosing custom-made suits presents you the opportunity of exploring different styles which are available before choosing the one that suits your taste. Try to complement the style you chose with the shade of your preference. Many men suits are made of cotton, wool, polyester, linen, cashmere, and flannel. However silk tuxedos are rare because they are expensive and they are difficult to work with. The best thing about choosing customized tuxedo is that you get to select the type of fabric to be used to make your tuxedo suit. A custom-made suit which is specifically made for you helps you to conceal your flaws such as heavy midriff. Your designer will be aware of where to add extra cloth to cover your body flaws without tampering with the design of the suit. A customized suit will fit you impeccably because your designer has the precise measurements of your body. Your personal style is portrayed by wearing a suit that fits you perfectly.
A personalized suit depends on your budget. For example if the material you preferred proves to be expensive you can go for a material that suits your budget. For easiness it's advisable to select a piece of cloth according to the weather. If you have a constricted budget it's wise to go for a machine made suits as they are less expensive than hand-tailored suits. Since custom made suit is specifically made for you it will fit you perfectly, and you will not waste your precious time returning it to be adjusted.


This is a breadboard adapter to connect your ZX-Spectrum vintage computer through its rear edge-connector to external breadboard to try new peripheral circuits or simply to play with inputs and outputs of your ZX. Legend with signal descriptions is attached to the adapter for your convenience. Signals marked with stars are showed as for original 16K/48K models and may have different meaning on newer computers.
ATTENTION: Shorting power lines with ground may damage your vintage computer and/or its power adapter!
P.S. Eagle source files are available as Public Domain (this PCB is part of bigger PCB) - see "Source Code" link on the right.
Great idea and great product. Thanks Alexander.
Works as described, providing a very easy way of accessing the edge connector. I'm using it with a logic analyzer to gaze into the soul of the speccy.


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Tag Archive | Magazine
Pink Thing of The Day: Magenta Beetle and House!
Photo courtesy of L'altra Faccia Della Donna (Translation: The Other Woman's Face) Magazine.
This entry was posted on July 22, 2012, in Gail's Rad Blog and tagged Beetle, Cars, Country Scene with Fence, House, L'altra Faccia Della Donna, Magazine, Magenta, Pink Cars, Pink Houses, Pink Thing of the Day, The Other Woman's Face, Volkwagon.	Leave a comment
Gail's 2011 Pop Culture Top Ten List!
Now that we are just a couple of short weeks away from kicking off a spectacular New Year, full of art, music, pink things, bacon and free food, I would like to ask you, Dear Readers, how was your year? I hope it was awesome. As you can see from this Rad Blog you are now reading, I got to do some fun things in 2011, including going on my most fun vacation in many years when my sister and I took a 7 day Caribbean cruise, with three days in New Orleans on the front end. Holy cow, was that ever fun! Such adventuring! Such fine dining! Such ridiculous humidity! I'm still sweating.
What this all means is that it's time again for the obligatory Year End Top Ten List, so, instead of going with the predictable, rote, yawnfest Top Ten CDs list I've decided to do more of a Pop Culture Mixed Bag, if you will. Because that is how I roll. Let's get started.
Best Album: Manraze, PunkFunkRootsRock. Take guitarist Phil Collen from Def Leppard, team him up with drummer Paul Cook from The Sex Pistols and add Simon Laffy, the bassist from Phil's former Glam band, Girl (because every power trio needs a bassist), and you've got a record that sounds, well, like a raunchier version of Def Leppard! We especially love Phil's Lemmy impersonation on "Over My Dead Body." Record of The Year! Read my interview with Paul Cook at This Link.
That's Me in the Back Row: Third in from the Left
Best Game Show: The Kostabi Show, where a panel of three Art critics and/or celebrities compete to title the works of modernist painter Mark Kostabi for cash awards, while a jury votes on which title suits the painting best. I had the opportunity to serve as a member of the jury for a taping this past summer and went home with $6 cash more than I had when I arrived, plus a Kostabi coffee table book signed by Mark. Bonus: free pizza! Kostabi, who is an accomplished pianist, also released a swell modern classical CD, The Spectre of Modernism, this year, which has been in heavy rotation on my iPod for ages now.
Best Beatles Thing: Dave Depper's Ram Project, an authentically covered version of Paul McCartney's second solo album complete with off-key Linda-esque backing vocals! So good!
Best Rock Book: Nick Kent's Apathy For The Devil, a memoir of the British rock critic's life and career in the 1970s. Everyone knows that all of the best music happened the Seventies , so I will admit that, as both a writer and fan, I certainly would have loved to have lived that life myself, save for the messy heroin addiction part.
Best Fashion-Related Museum Exhibit: Alexander McQueen's Savage Beauty at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Four words: Crown of Thorns Headdress. The Savage Beauty Exhibit set all kinds of ridiculous attendance records for the Met and was just insane. Insane!
Best Homage to Eighties Alternative Goth: Chris Connelly's Artificial Madness. David Bowie Meets Killing Joke plus Bauhaus sautéed lightly with Magazine and a little Ministry on the side. Homage!
Best Rock Documentary: Fix, The Ministry Movie. Kids: Don't Do Drugs. Or do a lot of them. One or the Other.
Best Seventies Southern Rock: The Sheepdogs, Five Easy Pieces EP. Bonus points to the band for their fan-winning appearance on the most recent season of Project Runway!
Reality TV (Competition): Top Chef, because Celebrity Chefs are the new Rock Stars!
Pop Culture as Art: The Suckadelic Art Toy Universe Retrospective and Pop Up Store at Boo Hooray Gallery (NYC). The judges and critics on the second season of Bravo's Work Of Art didn't really dig the SuckLord's artwork too much, but his parodies of Star Wars toys served up with a serious side of snark made for one of the most subversive, hilarious and memorable art shows of the year! Art!
Honorable Mention: Kasabian's Velociraptor, MGMT Live at the Guggenheim, The Zombies at City Winery, Single Fare Please Swipe Again at Sloan Fine Art, Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark, Jeremy Dower's Canis Mortuus Familiarus at Bold Hype Gallery, American Horror Story, Maurizio Catellan's All Retrospective at The Guggenheim, Patti Smith at Webster Hall, The Wyld Olde Souls' Ensoulment, Jeremy Fish Listen & Learn at Joshua Liner Gallery, Robot Chicken, Tosh.0.
Happy Holidaze and all the best for 2012!
This list previously appeared in a slightly abbreviated form on the East Portland Blog Dot Com.
This entry was posted on December 16, 2011, in Gail's Rad Blog and tagged 2011, Alexander McQueen, All Retrospective, American Horror Story, Apathy For The Devil, Art, Artificial Madness, "Over My Dead Body", Bauhaus, Best Of List Year End List, Bold Hype Gallery, Boo-Hooray Gallery, BRAVO, Canis Mortuus Familiarus, Celebrity Chef, Chris Connelly, City Winery, Crown of Thorns Headdress, David Bowie, Def Leppard, Documentary, Drugs, Ensoulment, Exhibit, Five Easy Pieces EP, Fix, Girl, Jeremy Dower, Jeremy Fish, Joshua Liner Gallery, Kasabian, Killing Joke, Lemmy, List, Listen & Learn, Magazine, Manraze, Mark Kostabi, Maurizio Catellan, MET, Metropolitan Museum Of Art, MGMT Live at the Guggenheim, Ministry, Nick Kent, Patti Smith, Paul Cook, Phil Collen, Pop Culture, Project Runway, PunkFunkRootsRock, Robot Chicken, Savage Beauty, Seventies Southern Rock, Simon Laffy, Single Fare Please Swipe Again, Sloan Fine Art, Spiderman, Star Wars, Suckadelic Art Toy Universe Retrospective and Pop Up Store, The Kostabi Show, The Ministry Movie, The Sex Pistols, The Sheepdogs, The Spectre of Modernism, the SuckLord, The Wyld Olde Souls, The Zombies, Top Chef, Top Ten List, Tosh.0, Toys, Turn Off The Dark, Velociraptor, Webster Hall, Work Of Art.	Leave a comment
Rad CD of The Week: Chris Connelly's Artificial Madness
In contrast to the ethereal, romantic, midnight cabaret vibe of Blonde Exodus, my favorite album by Scottish expat Chris Connelly, Artificial Madness, the latest from the ex-Ministry/RevCo vocalist is fierce, briskly paced and vibrant with frenetic energy. Oh Chris, why did you stay away so long?
While the undeniable bombast of Connelly's impressive musical pedigree is in full evidence over the course of these eleven tracks, he's also imbued these tunes with the essence of eighties-era bands that, in effect, carried the torch for all that came along in the nineties. "Wait for Amateur" would sound right at home book-ended by "Terror Couple Kill Colonel" and "Dark Entries" on a Best-of Bauhaus album and "The Modern Swine" resembles an aural bow to Howard Devoto's Magazine, whether intentional or otherwise. As always, Connelly's sublime Bowie-esque croon takes even Peter Murphy's embodiment of the Thin White Duke past the realm of homage and into the arena of a vocalist whose imprint is arguable matched only by Bryan Ferry among those currently recording. If you enjoy music with a serious pulse, there is no reason not to add Artificial Madness to your collection.
Chicago-area fans can catch the Artificial Madness record release show on Friday November 18, 2011 at The Hideout. For this show, Chris will be joined by the those who backed him on the album including producer Sanford Parker (Minsk, Nachtmystium), Noah Leger (The Karl Hendricks Trio, The(e) Speaking Canaries, Head of Skulls), Will Lindsay (Indian, Nachtmystium, Wolves in Throne Room), and Dallas Thomas (The Swan King, Circle of Animals, Asschapel).
Malevolent, beautiful, creepy and compelling all at once, Artificial Madness, out on Relapse Records on Tuesday, November 8, 2011, is one of my favorite releases of the year.
This entry was posted on November 7, 2011, in Gail's Rad Blog and tagged "Terror Couple Kill Colonel", Artificial Madness, "Dark Entries", "The Modern Swine", "Wait for Amateur", Bauhaus, Blonde Exodus, Bryan Ferry, CD Review, Chris Connelly, David Bowie, Howard Devoto, Magazine, Ministry, Peter Murphy, Rad CD of The Week, Relapse Records, RevCo.	Leave a comment
Remembering Bill Miller
Me with Bill at a Modern Drummer Party
On This Date, December 12th, in 2008, Modern Drummer Editor Bill Miller passed away after a long and hard-fought battle with melanoma. Bill was just 47 years old. I still miss Bill every day and I know that everyone at Modern Drummer does as well. He was not only a great editor who taught me so much about drumming and how to write about drummers, he was also a good friend. Rest in Peace, Bill.
This entry was posted on December 12, 2009, in Gail's Rad Blog and tagged Bill Miller, Drummer, Editor, In Memorium, Magazine, Melanoma, Modern Drummer, Obituaries.	Leave a comment
Happy Birthday Wishes to New Wave Pioneers Mike Joyce, Alan Wilder and Barry Adamson
June 1st is the Birthday of ex-Smiths drummer Mike Joyce (1963), Alan Wilder (formerly) of Depeche Mode (1959) and Barry Adamson, composer and former bassist for Magazine (born 1958). Although we don't hear much from Joyce or Wilder these days, Barry Adamson is still making some crazy music and composing soundtracks for mind-tweaking films such as David Lynch's Lost Highway. The soundtrack of Lost Highway is worth owning on the strength of Adamson's atmospheric soundscapes alone. Happy Birthday, Guys!
Thanks to The P5 Blogspot: This Day in 80s Music, for bringing the Birthday Love!
This entry was posted on June 1, 2009, in Gail's Rad Blog and tagged 1958, 1959, 1963, Alan Wilder, Barry Adamson, David Lynch, Depeche Mode, Drummer, Film, June 1st, Lost Highway, Magazine, Mike Joyce, New Wave, Rock Star Birthdays, Soundtrack, The Smiths.	Leave a comment
Gail In Print: Modern Drummer, April 2007
Carmine Appice: The Best Wig in Rock
Check out my awesome updates with drummers Brooks Wackerman of Tenacious D and Billy Brimblecom of Blackpool Lights in the latest issue of Modern Drummer, on newsstands now!
This entry was posted on February 26, 2007, in Gail's Rad Blog and tagged 2007, April, Billy Brimblecome, Blackpool Lights, Brooks Wackerman, Carmine Appice, Magazine, Modern Drummer, Tenacious D.


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Q: Should I support all (6, 7, 8) IE versions? I have FireFox, Opera and Chromium web browsers on my Ubuntu box and I manage to run cycles of development and testing pretty quickly (and happily).
The best part is the small CSS files I mange to produce for all types of layouts.
The problems always start when I decide to check how I am I doing with IE, and I have a few boxes just for that matter (got tired from all those VM games)
Anyways, trying to support those nice layouts on IE take a huge amount of development time, make my CSS files ugly and even force me to compromise on the end design.
I've tried using some libraries but in the end they all leak as other abstractions, leaving you the hard debug issues anyways.
I'm not sure I can afford this but I consider avoiding IE at all ! and yes I know the statistics and yes I know that your clients will kill you but I'm sick of it already!
What if the entire development community stop supporting IE with all its bizarre versions? maybe its time to convince those guys at Microsoft to concentrate on the single thing they ever did well (which Joel remember so well) and leave us alone already?
Go ahead and crucify me with "This is not a question" etc. I'm just trying to legitimate my decision.
Guy

A: IE sucks, we all hate it, but the only thing that takes time is learning how to develop from the start for ALL browsers. Once you learn WHY IE sucks, it's not that hard to develop a successful project without much extra development time.

A: If support for IE6 is really needed (which is actually rarely the case), it's sufficient when a web page/application is usable with IE6.
If a user can access the information with his stone age browser, that's enough. You don't need to ensure that your css layout and fancy javascript stuff works in IE6. The people who still use IE 6 mostly won't even care about such things.
My personal strategy for IE 6 is: If the client does not explicitly want full IE 6 support, then he gets only the most basic IE 6 support. If he want's full support, he has to pay for the extra effort (which is significant ...).

A: Stop special support (hacks) for IE8 and below. If it works, it works but when it is not looking nice so be it. Put a message on top that the page is not properly displayed with this version of IE. Stop using images to get the same effect, it is stupid. It is not your problem, it is a problem of Microsoft, do not try to fix it! The problem of make it look like it should (the W3C way) is that users don't see any difference and don't know what the problem is. Side effect is that when there is no noticeable difference to see, user won't switch to use another browser.
When it is a must to support earlier IE versions, ask extra money for the service. Users can use other browsers that do the job better and it is free! stop the hacking shit and stop to defence of Microsoft piece of shit. IE !== Internet.

A: Please stop developing for Internet Explorer 6 because IE6 Must Die for the Web to Move On.
After all YouTube is ditching support for it soon. And they're not the only one.

A: The real question is what is your audience. If it is an intranet app you have some control over what browsers they will use.
If your app is in the wild, then it is a question of how much of your audience you can afford to give up on

A: I suggest you design some conventions, that will cause your HTML/CSS be both standard-compliant and render well on IE, and then follow those conventions.
From project management point of view, you might first make the core version for standard browsers and mark that as a distinct achievement, and then proceed to improve for marginal browsers.

A: You're not the only one who feels this way. I would suggest looking at the traffic for the sites you create--the browser breakdown can vary wildly from site to site. If you don't get much traffic from IE, then go ahead and stop support!

A: If it's a personal site, do whatever pleases you.
If it's a business site, consider the financial impact of each decision, comparing revenue lost from visitors on unsupported browsers compared to the development costs of supporting them. First gather browsers statististics: if it's an existing site, you should have them already. If it's a new site, you'll need to look for statistics from similar sites.
Of course, you don't need an all-or-nothing approach. You could support older versions of IE, but with limited functionality. Decide the maximum amount of resources you want to devote to IE6 and see what you can do under that restraint. You could also try grouping IE6 into the same category as mobile devices and other user agents with limited standards support. Not only do you not have to drop IE6 support, you've got even more browsers covered. I'm not saying this will be easy, or even possible, since IE6's behavior may be too different from the other low-web-tech user agents.

A: If Microsoft is urging users to ditch IE6, then should you really be spending time to accommodate those users?
I say build your site so that it's functional in IE 6 and pretty in everything else. Spending time on the latter for IE6 is way toO expensive to be worthwhile.

A: It's not that hard to create sites that work in IE6. The only thing you have to do is

*

*Don't use any CSS that's not CSS1

*Use jQuery

*Use IE6 as your development browser, and

*Occasionally test with Firefox.

As long as you stick to those rules, your site is very likely to work with all browsers. You will run into random IE6 bugs sometimes that might take you an hour or two to work around, but it's usually not too bad.

A: I don't think there is a single good reason to even attempt to support IE6 unless your single biggest client is paying you huge sums of money to support it.  In this case its a no brainer.
Versions of IE later than 6 have a standards mode, which helps substantially in getting most pages that look good in other browsers to look pretty ok in IE too.
Now look at the actual usage statistics for browsers and the different IE versions.  Oddball browsers, which would be IE 6 and earlier, as well as the 'other' browsers that could be pretty much anything, represent 24ish percent of the sampled traffic.  That's a pretty healthy chunk, but it might not reflect your actual users.
You can make good use of your logs for this.  Have a look at the number of unique IPs and the browser each of those unique IP's is using.  This can give you a good idea of what  your users are actually using.  Then take a look at total page views by the different IPs and compare the distributions according to browser.  Probably some browsers are going to show more page views than others.  It could be a sign when there is a sharp difference between the page views of two common user agents that one browser has some sort of usability shortcoming preventing those users from getting the higher number of page views
This is a perfect opportunity to use a profile directed optimization.  You have the data that tells you that a hot spot (popular browser) is suffering in performance (fewer average pageviews), so you can look at working on just that specific browser.

A: The real question, to me, is

How do you know not to develop for
  IE5.5? FireFox 2? Lynx?

The answer to that question will help guide you as to how you can make a decision with IE6.
If you want to get really serious, you would look at similar sites' statistics, etc. On the other hand, spending a lot less time and effort, you can read some statistics like these in under two minutes, and then you take a mad guess as to:

*

*whether your users are like the general statistic in their ie6 usage and

*whether you care about whatever percentage you've decided is right... losing 10% of market would be worth it? 20%? 5%?

Or, least cost and probably equal effectiveness: you can flip a coin. IE6 is still just about as popular as IE7 or IE8, so if you leave it out, but then you're choosing less work over more accessibility. Which might be a very good choice.


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Q: How do I clear a (RecyclerView) SortedList? I have a SortedList I'm using to represent my data for a recycler view, but I'm struggling to "clear" the data between API calls. Any help? I'm currently just looping through the list like this:
for(int i = 0; i < mList.size(); i++){
   removeItemAt(i);
}

This appears to inconsistently remove some items?
Thanks in advance! :)

A: If you look at the source code, the problem with what you're doing is that SortedList changes the size when removeItemAt index is called. So mList.size() will change while your for loop is iterating causing inconsistent results.
Here is a way to remove items from a recyclerview SortedList.
public void clear() {
     mList.beginBatchedUpdates();
     //remove items at index 0 so the remove callback will be batched
     while (mList.size() > 0) {
         mList.remove(mList.get(0));
     }
     mList.endBatchedUpdates();
}

A: The new version of the support library has a SortedList#clear() method that you can use.


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Alan O'Reilly is a political activist based in London.
Last weekend, one of Irelands largest far-right parties, the National Party held their annual conference at the swanky Lough Erne resort in County Fermanagh, famed for hosting the G8 back in 2013. Things did not go smoothly; far left protesters broke into the conference, brutally attacking delegates and disrupting the conference.
A number of people were arrested but one of the main results was far more media attention for the National Party that would have probably attracted otherwise. It has once again prompted a discussion in Ireland about far right parties, their potential rise in Ireland, and what mainstream political parties should do about it.
The lack of media attention for the National Party is neither unexpected nor unreasonable. It currently has no TDs (MPs), and more generally far right parties have a pretty dismal record in Irish politics. At the last election in 2020, various parties that could be collectively considered, some version of, far right got less than two per cent of the vote.
Indeed, Ireland is increasingly an outlier in Europe in that no far right political party has ever been able to create a sustainable and ongoing base of support.
Over the last four decades, there has been no significant equivalent surge of parties of the far right or populist right, despite a global recession, rising immigration and other factors that have, in many other European countries, been cited as explanations for the phenomenon.
There are several competing theories as to the reason for this.
First, immigration never really took hold as a major political issue, thus depriving some of these groups of a key issue to motivate potential supporters. This despite the country starting from a position where the country was extremely homogenous, whereas recent census data shows that 17 per cent of Ireland's population were born outside Ireland. Nonetheless, immigration has never been a serious or major political issue.
Commentators point out a range of potential reasons for this. Firstly that that rising immigration coincided with a period of significant and sustained economic growth as the Irish economy transitioned to focus on a more international, services-led economy, thus there inward immigration in fact helped sustain the economic boom of the noughties. It is also probably fair to say that emigration plays a huge role in Ireland with most families knowing someone who does or has worked abroad.
It is also worth pointing out that In 2004, the then Irish Government got out ahead of the issue and passed an Immigration Act that placed some restriction on inward migration which took the potential steam out of the issue.
The very structure of Irish politics probably helps as well; both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail would be considered conservative parties in an Irish context but would be considered very much centrist parties in European standards. (There are, of course, more conservative elements within each party). Sinn Fein, the main opposition party would be considered left (or quite left) of centre, terrorist affiliations notwithstanding, and there are various left wing populist parties too.
Nationalism, another issue that tends to be used by the far right, in an Irish context has always been more associated with Northern Irish question, and any debate on that topic tends to be absorbed by parties within that context.
In theory, the structure of the Irish political system should encourage smaller parties. It uses a single transferable vote with multi-member constituencies which in theory allows for smaller and diffuse party representation.
The Irish political system has thus created a much broader spectrum of parties and allows for far more non-party independent representatives. This is a particular issue on the left of Irish politics where, as well as Sinn Fein and the Labour Party, there are nearly half a dozen smaller left-wing parties and groups.
With a likely oncoming global recession, the question once again is if there is space on the Irish political spectrum for a far-right party. There are three or four registered parties and groups who occupy this space, but they don't have any elected representatives and no momentum yet.
While the left side of Irish politics is well served by a range of parties, there may yet be space for some of these far-right parties to grow – particularly against the backdrop of a potential recession and with over two and half years to go to an election.