text:
Jacqui Banaszynski's Literary Forensics: A Diagnostic Tool to Improve Writing
May 15, 2018 Christina Selby
Alan Berner, The Seattle Times
Jacqui Banaszynski
Jacqui Banaszynski spent a month reporting from Sudan on the Ethiopian famine for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch in 1985. After she filed her story, her editor, Deborah Howell, stood waiting for a dot-matrix printer to spit out the 24,000-word piece. Howell then dragged the draft across the newsroom, each page connected to the next in a long train. As she walked she yelled, "Banaszynski, meet me in the conference room! And bring scissors!"
In the conference room, Howell cut the story into sections and pinned them on the wall. She paced the room looking at the piece—through reading glasses that, as Banaszynski recalls, covered a third of her face. She moved sections around and dropped others on the floor, stomping on them for good measure. "I found it!" she said finally and pinned a section of text to the end of the story. "Now go back and fix it. And do it right this time," she told Banaszynski.
But despite having watched Howell work, Banaszynski had no idea what to fix. "She was looking at the puzzle of how the pieces of my story fit together. She looked at the whole piece, tore it apart and then pasted it back together in bits and pieces," says Banaszynski, "It was my job to take that, read it through, and make it work as a whole. But I couldn't see how to do that at the time. All I saw was her stomping on my work with spiky high heels."
So, she peppered Howell with questions about what exactly she needed to fix. She worked through the symptoms Howell described—"You overwrite" and "It's too long" and most memorably, "You put too much f***ing tinsel on your f***ing tree"—until she was able to translate those symptoms into specific aspects of her writing and understand clearly what she needed to improve to make her writing sing.
Through this process, Banaszynski learned that in her Ethiopian-famine story, she used too many adjectives, she described some things three times rather than once, and she used quotes that were too long. In short: There was too much f***ing tinsel on her f***ing tree.
"What she was doing was making me choose what I actually needed to tell a story, and what was just decoration," says Banaszynski. This clear and specific feedback allowed Banaszynski to revise and improve her story. It went on to become a finalist for the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.
It was this experience that led Banaszynski to create a self-editing technique that she calls literary forensics. As a diagnostic tool, Banaszynski says, literary forensics helps writers identify their habits, strengths, and weaknesses, and then correct them in revisions. "This technique hasn't changed the way I write," she says. "I still let myself write the way I always have in the first draft. But it has changed the way I revise."
The reason the literary forensics technique is so powerful, Banaszynski says, is that it enables writers to look at their stories like readers. If a reader stumbles or gets lost at any point in a story, she says, "you've introduced a speed bump." Looking closely at the elements that make up one's writing can smooth out those speed bumps so the reader can keep going forward. "You don't want the reader to work hard to follow you," she says.
In addition to using literary forensics to improve her own writing, Banaszynski has also taught it to writers of all stripes: to students at the University of Missouri, where she is now a professor emerita; to attendees at the Poynter Institute, where she is a faculty fellow; and to writers who have taken the workshops she teaches. And she has generously agreed to share the technique with TON readers.
Jonathan Sanderson/Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)
The Literary Forensics Technique
(Download a print-friendly version of Jacqui Banaszynski's guide to Literary Forensics here.)
Highlighters in bold, distinct colors.
Hard-copy printouts of your original unedited writing (first drafts or unpublished work).
A basic understanding of grammar and syntax (it's not necessary to know the lingo—you can do literary forensics just fine even if you've never been able to remember what a transitive verb is).
Print out three pieces of your unedited writing.
Select one element of writing (for example: quotes, active verbs, adjectives, or numbers) and one highlighter.
Go through the three stories as fast as you can and highlight that element wherever it shows up.
Study the colored highlights. Does a pattern appear? (For example, do you see a big pileup of adjectives in some sections of the story? Or is your lede splattered with numbers?) Reserve judgment and criticism. The simple act of highlighting elements of writing doesn't mean they are incorrect.
Analyze what you find. Ask yourself: Am I using this element of writing correctly and in a way that moves my stories forward? Or am I just using it out of habit? Does it unnecessarily slow the reader down?
Repeat this process to highlight and then analyze a different component of writing.
Banaszynski thinks of literary forensics as a way to keep developing the muscles needed to become a stronger writer. "You become your own personal trainer with this technique," says Banaszynski. "You can keep elevating your game by using what you already have and making it better."
What's more, Banaszynski argues, by tightening, focusing, and elevating copy before turning it in—as opposed to turning it over to someone else to rewrite—literary forensics also allows writers to retain control of their voice. And it minimizes the power dynamic in the editing process, allowing the writer and editor to instead have a conversation about the most effective way to tell a particular story. Ultimately, this creates a better relationship between editors and writers.
When to Break Out the Literary Forensics Kit
When should you do literary forensics and how much should you do? Banaszynski recommends experimenting with the technique in two ways:
1) Right before you send in your first draft to an editor.
2) As an ongoing practice to improve your writing.
As an ongoing practice, Banaszynski suggests focusing on one element of writing per month, for a year. At the end of the year, she says, you'll have a good sense of your strengths and weaknesses as a writer and will know what to look for before submitting a draft to an editor.
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Until you've done that work, she suggests picking two to three elements of writing in a draft before you hand it in and seeing what you can clean up. How do you know which elements to pick when you're on a pressing deadline?
The number of elements writers can examine in their work is too large for a writer to tackle on any given story, and it can be hard to know what to start with. If you already know that you have a tendency to use too many adjectives, or that you're a sucker for parenthetical asides, or that you want to make more use of metaphor, then those elements may be good places to start.
If you're not sure what elements of your writing to pay attention to, it might make sense to start by looking at elements that editors identify as common stumbling blocks for many writers. I asked a few science editors what problematic patterns they commonly see in science writers' first drafts. Banaszynski adds commentary on each writing element, as well. Three elements rose to the top: use of quotes, jargon, and nut grafs.
Sarah Gilman, contributing editor at High Country News: There's definitely at least one common thread with science writers (including me), and that's letting scientists steer too much with jargony quotes, instead of relying on our own voices to translate the most important parts for readers' benefit. Take a look at your quotes: How many of them are there? Are they long? Unless they're really, really good, long quotes signal to my editor brain a lack of confidence in the material. Do the quotes just contain basic information? Or are they helping create a framework of meaning or conveying central things about your characters? Quotes are there to give the story voice and texture and to put metaphorical exclamation points and a shine on things—not to explain basic details and processes, unless they're super voicy.
Banaszynski: When I work with journalists, I often start [the literary forensics] technique with quotes. Look at your material and ask: Do you always end the story with a quote? Do you always have a quote in the fourth paragraph? Maybe you learned that placement for a quote is where the story needs authority. But, does it help that particular story, or are you just doing it out of some convention or habit?
Jane Lee, news editor at Nature: Just because researchers make up our core audience [at Nature] doesn't mean we can stuff our stories with technical terms. I find that asking the other folks in the office if they know what a word means is a good way of telling if something is jargon or not. If you don't have that option, then try writing it a couple of different ways and see which one sounds the most interesting. Which would you rather read: a story about diel vertical migrators, or a piece about thousands of tiny animals that swim hundreds of feet up and down in the ocean every day?
Banaszynski: Go through all your copy and highlight any kind of specialty language. Ask if this is language that you can expect 80 percent of readers to know. If so, leave it in. If not, ask yourself: Is it in context so those who don't know it will still get it? Is it jargon that I need in my story, but I am going to define it in lay terms so both audiences have access to it? Or, is this jargon that I just need to ditch and use plain English?
Nut Grafs
Heather Smith, news editor at Sierra Magazine: Taking too long to get to the point (a.k.a, "Where's my nut graf?") is a common issue I see in first drafts. Highlight your nut graf—that section, somewhere in the first three paragraphs or so, where you explain what is happening and why it's important. Usually, in your first draft, it's located a lot farther down than it will be in later drafts. If you don't find a nut graf, write "This is a story about …" on a piece of paper and start writing until a nut graf emerges.
Banaszynski: Make a list of elements of nut material you need to include: context, setting, tether or hook to news, significance, or scope. Then [in the story] highlight those essential components of nut materials. (They don't have to be in a single paragraph if you are writing more of a narrative piece.) Are they at least all there? How far into the story are [those elements] before I get to them? Look at placement. Ensure you are including all the elements needed to let the reader know this is the frame or overview of the story. Usually the nut graf material appears in the first 1–5 paragraphs. But, it doesn't have to, as long as it is in the top 10 percent.
Using Literary Forensics in Editing
The literary forensics technique can help editors as well as writers, notes Banaszynski. The technique can help editors develop a more concrete understanding of what isn't working in a draft and offer language for communicating more clearly with writers. That both makes editors' job easier and prevents situations where the writer fixes the wrong things.
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Banaszynski suggests editors take a piece from a new writer and read it several times. After you edit it for structure, look for patterns in elements of writing. Go through the story again and highlight two to three elements that jump out at you—elements that are creating speed bumps in the story for the reader. Then work on those two to three things with the writer. Depending on how much time and energy you have for a story, you may do this again in the next draft. Diving in with several rounds of literary forensics may make more sense for a long feature than a short news piece.
With this information in hand, editors can talk with a reporter about how specific elements of their writing are affecting a story. For example, Banaszynski says, "If I'm seeing a lot of dependent clauses that are robbing the writer of the power and authority of their sentences, I'll look at those. Then, rather than feeling attacked, they think, 'That's interesting.'" Then the writer knows what they are addressing and tackling in a revision.
Using literary forensics can be equally valuable for editors who have the responsibility of revising drafts themselves, because doing so helps them look for telltale patterns first rather than just jumping in on the keyboard.
Literary Forensics in Action
Below is an excerpt of a draft version of my story "In Search of the Lost," published September 6, 2017 at bioGraphic. I've marked up this draft using Banaszynski's literary forensics technique. I focused on three elements:
Dependent Clauses / Phrases at the Start of Sentences
I start a lot of sentences with dependent clauses or phrases—in other words, chunks of text that could not stand alone as sentences. Seeing this, I need to ask myself: Are they providing essential information or just slowing down the read or taking the reader on a tangent?
The quotes in this draft are mostly short, which is good. Several of them use colorful language and help convey the character of the person speaking.
There's some math and science/conservation jargon in here. I asked a friend who knows nothing about science to read this excerpt of my story, and a couple words were unfamiliar. But given that bioGraphic's audience is well versed in science, I'd likely leave it as is—and in fact, that's what the bioGraphic editors did.
Six days in, the expedition has moved downriver to the second community along the Rio Eiru. Marsh and a small field team follow a local guide into the forest, as three other teams depart with guides in canoes. The morning hasn't started well: the just-hired guide showed up with a shiny new shotgun in hand, hoping to take advantage of his time in the forest by hunting the same monkeys the scientists are trying to find and protect. Two guides in the previous community had also shown up with shotguns. The team tried to be diplomatic about it, knowing hunting is how the locals feed their families. But the situation was becoming untenable for Marsh. "This can't be a thing," she said, seething with frustration. "They can go and shoot everything they see with us after we leave. It's their forest, we can't stop them. But they can't bring a gun when they are working with us."
Much to the dismay of conservation biologists doing field work around the world, hunters often plague their study subjects. Outside of Manaus, researchers had to stop tagging and tracking endangered manatees because hunters were trailing them and killing the animals. In New Mexico and Arizona, scientists have started keeping the GPS and radio signals of collared Mexican wolves secret because poachers were using them to pin-point the wolves' whereabouts. In Laos, scientists looking for a lost species of saola, a deer-like mammal, were tracked by poachers. "It's a problem everywhere," says an exacerbated Marsh. "This has happened in every community I've worked in from Belize to Ecuador to Vietnam."
The guide, now gun-less, leads us down a trail faintly marked with snapped branches and saplings macheted to shin height. Shotgun shells hang on twigs to mark side trails. Heading for a salt lick to set up camera traps, we keep our eyes and ears tuned for signs of sakis.
During the first five hours of the hike, Marsh bushwhacks off the trail several times, following the sound of fruit dropping or leaves rustling in the canopy—potential signs of monkeys. "When you've got everything turned on high, every little movement makes your heart skip in excitement," she says.
So far, the field team has encountered an anteater (Tamandua tetradactyla), a three-toed sloth (Bradypus variegatus), a tayra (Eira barbara), a red-headed manakin (Pipra rubrocapilla), and a black tarantula the size of the GPS in Marsh's hand; but no monkeys.
An exceptionally loud bird exclaims whet-whew overhead, parodying a rude man cat-calling women. "That's a screaming pia. It's normally an indicator of undisturbed forest," says Marsh. To her eyes trained as a tropical ecologist, the forest looks healthy. The trees along the trail average two feet in diameter or more. Some rise from the ground straight as a pencil into the canopy; others prop themselves up with angled stilt roots above the seasonally flooded ground. Still others fan out in the iconic folds of buttress roots that impress every newcomer to a rainforest–and give the tree enough support to emerge through the canopy at heights up to 130 feet. Small ferns and glossy pink and green plants blanket the forest floor.
Still, it is unusually quiet for a healthy forest. Marsh picks up a handful of uneaten yellow fruit from among dozens fallen on the ground. She has walked through forests like this in national parks in Ecuador and Peru. "Those forests had monkey tornadoes," Marsh says—her term for a full complement of rainforest primates, everything from the larger howler and spider monkeys all the way down to tiny marmosets. Traveling together through the forest, each species eats fruits at different heights in the trees and disperses seeds as they go. "This is a pretty forest and there's obviously plenty of fruit. So, where are all the monkeys?"
On the boat that evening, Ennes tells Marsh their guide advised them never to walk off trail around the community. The villagers, he said, set up gun-traps with wire triggers to shoot pacas and tapir at eye level.
Duarte reports that when she asks a middle-aged father to sort the monkey cards in order of preference he told her he doesn't hunt or eat monkeys, anymore. On a hunting trip several years ago, he shot a howler monkey out of a tree. The hunter watched as it fell to the ground, righted itself, reached for leaves and pushed them into its wounds. He never hunted monkeys again. "It was trying to save its own life. They are too much like us," he told her.
Courtesy of Christina Selby
Christina Selby
Christina Selby is a freelance science writer and photographer based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She writes about scientific expeditions, conservation and the environment with a focus on South America and the American Southwest although she'll happily travel to any biodiversity hotspot in the world for a story or a photograph. Her work has appeared in such outlets as bioGraphic, Mongabay, National Geographic Online, Scientific American, High Country News, and Ensia. You can find her sometimes on Twitter @christinaselby.
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text:
Technical Commission 6 - Building Physics
General Arbeitsgruppen Publications
The technical commission 6 "Building Physics" deals with all questions relating to building physics in connection with the restoration and modernisation of buildings. Current topics for the development of leaflets are:
Hygrothermal dimensioning of timber constructions
Determination of physical-chemical material and component properties
Climate and climate stability in historical buildings
Internal insulation in existing buildings
Modelling of heat and moisture transport processes in components and entire buildings and the resulting ageing or weathering processes or damage mechanisms
Air tightness in existing buildings - Requirements for planning and execution
Technical drying of wet components
Building thermography in stock
Sound insulation and room acoustics in existing buildings
Wall surface heatings
The members of the technical commission meet once a year for a unit meeting. At its present time, this takes place either in Weimar (WTA Sachverständigentag) or in Leipzig (Denkmal-Messe), following the annual event of the German national group.
Dr.-Ing. Gregor A. Scheffler
IB Dr. Scheffler & Partner GmbH
Dr. Andrea Staar
Alexander Range
Calsitherm Silikatbaustoffe GmbH
Number of members: 147
Nachfolgende Arbeitsgruppen sind mit der Erarbeitung von Merkblätter befasst.
Working Group 6.1 "Assessment of Humidity in Timber Constructions"
Head of the working group: Dipl.-Ing. Daniel Kehl
There are 15 - 20 people from Germany, Austria and Switzerland represented in the WG.
The revision of guideline 6-2 "Fundamentals of hygrothermal simulation" was published as a blueprint in 2014. The guideline 6-8 "Moisture assessment of timber building components - simplified verification and simulation" was published in December 2016 as a blueprint. In the meantime, the guideline 6-1 "Guideline for hygrothermal simulation calculations" has been revised and will be published as a draft in 2022.
Since 2021, the working group has been working again in almost the same composition with some new members. The guidelines 6-2 and 6-8 are due for revision. The experiences of the last few years with the guidelines and the latest findings from practice and science are incorporated into the work.
Working Group 6.3 "Mould Prognosis"
Head of the working group: Dr.-Ing. Martin Krus
The work group was reactivated at the beginning of 2015 to update and revise the guideline 6-3. The content of the guideline is to be expanded to include the transfer of results to the Mould Index and the measurement of isopleths. In addition, the content of the guideline is to be streamlined somewhat.
The revision will be completed in the course of this year.
Working Group 6.12 "Interior Insulation in Existing Buildings"
Head of the working group: Dr.-Ing. Anatol Worch
The working group is very large with over 20 registered members. It deals with issues related to interior insulation. So far, the guidelines 6-4 and 6-5 have been published.
The guideline 6-4 "Interior insulation according to WTA I: Planning guideline" was completely revised and republished at the end of 2016. The guideline 6-5 "Interior insulation according to WTA II: Verification of interior insulation systems by means of numerical calculation methods" is from 2014 and is very well recognised among experts.
In 2018, there was a meeting. The revision of guideline 6-5 was suggested. New experience is to be incorporated here; in particular, there is a need for regulation of building components in contact with the ground and driving rain (W-value of 0.2 kg/m∙h0.5). The subject of driving rain should also be discussed with Technical Commission 3 (Eberhard Wendler).
Working Group 6.14 "Air tightness in existing buildings"
Head of the working group: Dipl.-Ing. Wilfried Walther
Three guidelines on air tightness in existing buildings have been published. The working group's activities are suspended until they are revised.
Working Group 6.16 "Building Thermography in Existing Buildings"
Head of the working group: M. Eng. Benjamin Standecker
In 2017, the working group completed a guideline entitled "Building thermography in the existing building stock", which deals with stock-specific aspects, such as the consideration of trusses, building materials or building constructions and their impact on the application of thermography.
In 2018, the guideline was published in yellow print and the objections received were dealt with in the working group. The guideline was published as a blueprint at the beginning of 2019.
Working Group 6.18 "Sound Insulation and Room Acoustics"
Head of the workig group: Prof. Dr. Philipp Leistner
The working group was founded in 2014 and has started its work.
In the past year, several objects/projects on the topic were dealt with, including the noise sensitivity of historic buildings using the example of Ludwigsburg Palace. They expand the pool of practical experience and are currently being collected, sorted and subsequently evaluated.
The future work of the WG is currently being reoriented. The need is mainly due to the changed standardisation with regard to the new/old building situation.
Working Group 6.19 "Wall Heating and Cooling"
Head of the working group: Dr.-Ing. Andrea Staar
The working group, which was founded in 2016, has 29 members. The WG meets several times a year for working sessions. As things stand, there are to be three guidelines: Basics, Planning and Execution are the headings of the individual areas. Furthermore, topics such as temperature control (component protection) and cooling are considered or addressed.
The following recommendations have been published by the Technical Commission "Building Physics" :
A guide to hygrothermal computer simulations
Simulation of Heat and Moisture Transfer
6-2 Edition: 12.2014/E
Calculative prognosis of mould growth risk
Internal thermal insulation according to WTA I: planning guide
Interior insulation according to WTA II: Evaluation of internal insulation systems with numerical design methods
Assessment of humidity in timber constructions – simplified verifications and simulation
Airtightness of buildings, Part 1: General principies of planning
6-10 Edition: 11.2014/D
Airtightness of buildings, Part 2: Detailed planning and execution
Airtightness of buildings, Part 3: Measuring Procedure
Climate and climate stability in historic buildings
Drying techniques for water saturated building elements, Part 1: General principles
Drying techniques for water saturated building elements: Planning, execution and controling
Infrared thermography for buildings

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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text:
Talks on the Fukanzazengi by
Eihei Dogen Zenji:
Universal Guidelines
for the Practice
of Zazen
Josho Pat Phelan
I really like a passage near the middle of Master Dogen's Jijuyu Zammai which is found in the text Bendowa. "If practice and realization were two different stages, as ordinary people consider them to be, it should be possible for them to perceive each other. But that which is associated with perception cannot be the standard of realization, because deluded human sentiment cannot reach the standard of realization." Dogen also expressed the idea that we can't perceive enlightenment or realization in the Genjokoan where he wrote, "Do not suppose that what you realize becomes your knowledge and is grasped by your consciousness. Although actualized immediately, the inconceivable may not be apparent."
Uchiyama Roshi expressed this idea in his book Opening the Hand of Thought when he said, "...most people think that as long as there is an aim" to what they are doing, "that its only natural that there will be a target to hit. Because there is a target, we have something to aim for. But zazen is different from our usual activity." He said, "In zazen we have to vividly aim at holding the correct posture, yet there is no mark to hit! Or at any rate, the person who is doing zazen never perceives whether he has hit the mark or not. If the person doing zazen thinks his zazen is really good,...he is merely thinking his zazen is good, while actually he has become separate from the reality of his zazen." So in zazen, we aim at engaging our whole body and mind without judging or comparing, and we might go so far as to say, without caring, just doing our best moment by moment, allowing each moment or each breath to be a fresh start. This is traceless practice where we surrender any reflections, regrets, or attachments we might have from the past, so we can enter the present moment fully. Each moment is whole... and then it's surrendered — left behind, so we can engage this moment of living reality. Non-discursive experience dies when it becomes a thought.
Today, I want to talk about Dogen's instructions on what to do with the mind in zazen. In the Fukanzazengi, Dogen wrote, "Think of not-thinking. How do you think of not-thinking? Non-thinking. This in itself is the essential art of zazen." So, what is the "non-thinking" that is the essential art of zazen?
These lines refer to an exchange between Yakusan Igen, or Yueh Shan, and a nameless monk, in 8th century China in the early days of Zen. Yakusan was the disciple of Sekito Kisen who wrote the "Merging of Difference and Unity." The story goes:
One day after Yakusan had finished zazen, a monk asked him, "What are you thinking of in the immoveable, mountain-like state of zazen?" Sometimes this is translated as the "still-still state of zazen," and repeating a word like this in Japanese intensifies its meaning.
Yakusan replied, "I think of not-thinking."
The monk asked for all of us, "How can one think of not-thinking?"
Yakusan answered, "By nonthinking."
When we read teachings like this, it is important not to take them too literally, try to remember that this is the way one person translated the passage, and it's up to us to look for the meaning behind the words. What was recorded in Chinese or Japanese 1,200 or 800 years ago may not have the same meaning or connotation today. In everyday language, it sounds like Dogen is saying to stop thinking. We all know what thinking is, and not-thinking is its opposite. But trying to stop thought by using discriminating consciousness to control consciousness, creates a narrow, controlled experience. Both thinking and stopping thought are found in the realm of duality; they are relative to one another. One can't exist without the other because they mutually define each other like hot and cold, light and dark, forward and backward. But Dogen's nonthinking is outside duality. Actually, the character translated as "non" in "non-thinking" includes the aspects of beyond, transcendent, or emancipated. Kaz Tanahashi translated "nonthinking" both as "beyond thinking" and as "before thinking." So, "nonthinking" is considered emancipated thinking which transcends and is free from both thinking and stopping thought.
Dogen was critical of meditation methods that involved stopping thought and controlling the mind in order to become absorbed completely in the object of meditation. This type of absorption usually removes awareness from the immediate environment and from one's bodily presence. According to the Dogen scholar, Hee-Jin Kim, "Nonthinking should be understood as ... radically non-dualistic thinking....objectless, non-referential thinking," which obviously isn't what we usually consider to be thinking. For me, non-thinking is simply consciousness without thought, or awareness without mental activity. Dogen referred to zazen as "total engagement in immobile sitting," in which we are awake and engaged, but before any comment or reaction arises.
Issho Fujita gives another perspective on non-thinking saying, "When we refer to the qualities of...beyond thinking (hishiryo) ... we mean that sitting posture is [itself] beyond thinking and has no thought,... not that we ourselves are. We will never be beyond thinking ... as long as we live. What we can do is sit with the faith that zazen posture itself is Buddha, that zazen posture itself is beyond thinking." He said, "We tend to think that we are sitting zazen. This is not the case. The entire universe is sitting zazen."
Nonthinking is also the practice of shikantaza. I think the Encyclopedia of Eastern Philosophy and Religion defines shikantaza really well as 1) abiding in a state of brightly alert attention which is characterized by being free of thoughts, 2) directed to no object, and 3) attached to no particular content. Shikantaza is considered the purest form of zazen, and it reminds me of the passage in the Diamond Sutra that talks about cultivating "an unsupported thought." According to the Diamond Sutra, an unsupported thought is a thought, or a mind that is not supported by anything, anywhere, which means no objects of mind. It is not supported by sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touch, or any kind of mind-objects including ideas, mental images, memories, emotions, fantasies, dreams, and so on. So, the unsupported thought turns out to be no-thought or consciousness without thought-objects. In this state there is holistic awareness that may experience sounds, physical sensations, and so on, but these elements aren't perceived as something separate from ourselves.
In the small book Soto Zen, Shohaku Okumura compared non-thinking to a car engine that's idling in neutral. Even though the engine is fired up and working, the gears aren't engaged so the car doesn't move. He said when we think non-thinking, "We cannot say that there is no thinking. And we cannot say that we are thinking....Thoughts are simply idling." In zazen, the mind is alive and able to function but we try not to actively, intentionally, produce thoughts or create a train of thought. When thoughts arise, if the mind is bright and alert, it is much easier to let them flow through without grabbing onto and developing them. So, the thoughts can flow by like a quiet stream, without sticking to anything. Okumura Roshi said, "...by keeping an upright posture, without either rejecting or chasing after anything, we aren't controlled by delusive thoughts."
Another Zen teacher, Koun Franz, in Nova Scotia, said that the particular word translated as thinking in Japanese that is used in this exchange between Yakuksan and the monk, is "about the aspect of mind that measures and evaluates, that holds a yardstick up to experiences or to thought-objects. It's a kind of directed thought." And he brought up 20th century findings on brain activity, saying, "Alpha waves can feel creative and inspired; beta waves are strongest when performing analysis; and theta waves are associated with more complex, generative thought, as in complicated visualization exercises. All three, in different ways, are part of the process of directed thought. Then he said that Delta waves tend to be really strong during just a couple activities. The first is deep, dreamless sleep. The second? Zazen. Delta wave activity is not reflective of directed thought; it is about receptivity, expansiveness, openness.
The 8th century Chinese Master, Ma Tsu or Baso taught, "This very mind, just this is Buddha." This doesn't mean that whatever we happen to be doing or thinking is enlightened activity. It means that when we are able to let go of the thousand things and engage our presence, to be present with what we are doing, we can experience our innate wholeness. When we are awake to our present activity, then it is Buddha's activity. Even if we are feeling angry or depressed or bored or uncomfortable, when we can surrender our resistance and completely accept our experience, undividedly, without trying to change it or improve it, this undivided acceptance, undivided presence, is Buddha-mind.
Tatsugami Roshi, a Japanese priest had been Ino at Eiheiji, was invited to come to Tassajara in the early years. to help establish the forms of monastic practice. Tatsugami Roshi compared Dogen's notion of the non-duality of practice and enlightenment to hitting a drum, the activity of hitting a drum and creating a sound are identical. It's not that hitting is first and the sound is second or that one is the cause and the other the result. Hitting the drum and sound occur simultaneously. Likewise, Dogen taught that "to just sit is to be Buddha."
Tatsugami Roshi gave several talks on nonthinking that were transcribed. In one talk, he said that the way we think nonthinking is by throwing everything away which means to just go directly forward, without looking backwards or forwards, to the left or to the right. This going "directly forward" leaves behind ambivalence and second guessing, reflecting on the past or trying to prepare for the future. He said, "What will happen if you plunge into doing something, eliminating everything? Dogen teaches that no matter what you are about to do, throwing away everything should be the basic attitude towards life." This is a way of talking about wholeheartedness, of devoting ourselves with complete presence to what we're doing. When we do, we are revealed completely just as we are, and our activity is a manifestation of our whole life up to that point. But, if we are involved in an idea about Buddhism or practice or anything else, the idea is outside the present moment, outside our immediate experience, and it is just another distraction leading us away from actualizing the totality of Now.
Tatsugami Roshi said that, "In order to ... throw away everything, all you have to do is just sit. In the world of the practice of nonthinking, you must be yourself in the practice of samadhi. Samadhi means to eliminate everything." [I would say to let go of or surrender everything.] I think "to throw away everything" also dindicates no gap — when you sit zazen, you become zazen, so there is no you trying to do zazen. He said, "The person who can throw away everything, anywhere, at any time, attains true freedom." Letting go of everything means letting go of our expectations, and desires for how we think things should be — basically letting to of our conceptualized world — and jumping in just the way we are. He said, "... you cannot truly understand something without devoting yourself to it. If you try to do something with complete wholeheartedness, you will turn out to be yourself." This is one of the secrets of Zen. We dedicate ourselves to hours and years of upright sitting, developing our awareness, settling deeply with fundamental, basic being, and the result is that we are simply, completely ourselves, nothing more or less.
A common misconception about Zen meditation is that the mind should be empty or without any thought, and sometimes it is and it's pretty nice when it happens. But Soto Zen emphasizes waking up to our thinking and letting it go, releasing our grip on our thoughts, over and over throughout a period of zazen. So, what we are really developing is flexibility — the ability to let go of our mental world and return over and over to the world of the Present. Suzuki Roshi compared the mind in zazen to seeing a movie. The movie screen is always there whether a movie is playing or not. Sometimes there is a movie with colorful images, but zazen is just watching the screen regardless of whether or not images appear.
Zen emphasizes knowing things directly without interference from thinking. Katagiri Roshi said that "Direct" does not mean you get something directly." "Instead, properly put your body and mind in the appropriate place. Then you are supported and you are allowed to be realized. Instead of shutting yourself up in a small house — ...called discriminating mind — throw open your heart."
Moment after moment, be willing to surrender, just step forward without looking to the left or right, without looking to the future or referring to the past. Be willing to let go of distractions, to let go of insights, be willing to let the tracking mind stop and return to your being, just as it is. Our practice is to return to this complete, undivided moment.
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This 42nd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America officially comes into session this evening. During the day, six additional committees hold meetings as most of the six from yesterday completed their work. Of course the Overtures Committee will continue meeting today and the next couple of days most likely.
Yesterday, during an early morning briefing, I had one of those "is this seat taken" moments when the person asking turns out to be an old friend of mine.
Matt Cadora, now pastor of Faith Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, OH, used to live in Atlanta and was eventually an assistant pastor at my Intown Community Church home. We talked a little before the meeting got rolling and then a bit more afterwards. Like many, Matt sees the GA as a family reunion and a time to get refreshed. We spoke at a heart level very quickly.
on in wearing our running shoes and casual attire. And enjoyed some good salads and good service.
The bonds of friendship, when built on experiences of work, struggle and honesty, are easily picked up at a moments notice. These two men reminded me that we are wealthy, indeed, if we have friends with whom we can be ourselves. And with a good foundation, we can re-connect and find rest for our souls.
I'll post some more reflections later this evening.


MARK SELIGER WAS BORN IN AMARILLO TEXAS IN 1959, WHERE HE LIVED WITH HIS PARENTS, MAURICE AND CAROL LEE, AND HIS TWO OLDER BROTHERS AND YOUNGER SISTER, UNTIL 1964, WHEN THEY MOVED TO HOUSTON.
HE ATTENDED HOUSTON'S HIGH SCHOOL FOR PERFORMING & VISUAL ARTS AND, FROM THERE, WENT ON TO ATTEND EAST TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY, WHERE HIS EDUCATION BEGAN IN EARNEST, AS HE STUDIED THE HISTORY OF DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY.
SELIGER IS THE RECIPIENT OF SUCH ESTEEMED AWARDS AS: ALFRED EISENSTAEDT AWARD, LUCIE AWARD,CLIO, CANNES LIONS, AND ASME'S.


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Fact Rio Olympics, Day 5, Part 1/2
2016 Rio Olympics, Weightlifting, Final, Women's 69kg, Riocentro, Pavilion 2, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on August 10, 2016. Leidy Solis (COL) of Colombia competes. (Photo by Stoyan Nenov/Reuters)
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Fact The Week in Pictures: October 24 – November 1, 2014. Part 3/5
Burlesque dancer and Lucha VaVoom co-founder Rita D'Albert gets dressed before the Lucha VaVoom "Night of the Vampire" performance in Los Angeles, California October 29, 2014. (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon/Reuters)
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A boy takes a picture of a car crash in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, August 4, 2014. Two passengers were sent to hospital but no death was reported as a result of the accident, according to local media. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)
Fact The Week in Pictures: May 3 – May 9, 2014. Part 1/5
Promotional models use their smartphones during their break at the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing May 6, 2014. Mobile Internet industry executives, developers and investors from more than 30 countries took part in the Global Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing, the organiser said. (Photo by Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters)
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Andrea Petkovic of Germany in action against Sara Errani of Italy during day one of the Mutua Madrid Open tennis tournament at the Caja Magica on May 3, 2014 in Madrid, Spain. (Photo by Julian Finney/Getty Images)
Rescue workers try to help a driver out of his car, after the vehicle was stuck over an alley in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, August 4, 2014. The car rolled off the edge of a road after the driver was late to brake, according to local media. (Photo by Reuters/Stringer)
Fact The Week in Pictures: December 27 – January 2, 2015. Part 3/5
A dachshund portraying a racehorse, trots down Duval Street in Key West, Florida, December 31, 2014. About 175 dachshunds and other dogs participated in the event that preludes four warm-weather takeoffs on New York City's Times Square ball drop. (Photo by Steve Panariello/Reuters/Florida Keys News Bureau)
Fact The Week in Pictures: Jule 27 – August 2, 2014. Part 3/5
This picture taken on July 25, 2014 shows people cooling off in a waterpark in Suining, southwest China's Sichuan province. Meteorological departments issued an orange alert for high temperature as a heat wave embraces Sichuan province, with temperature of most area topped 37, local media reported. (Photo by AFP Photo)
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Home » SFF Reviews » Direct Descent: Frank Herbert's worst novel
Direct Descent: Frank Herbert's worst novel
Direct Descent by Frank Herbert
Direct Descent (1980) is by a fair margin the weakest novel by Frank Herbert I've read.
In the far future the whole of Earth's interior has been taken up by a gigantic library. Ships travel the known universe to collect information about just about everything and bring it back to Earth to archive it and make it available to the entire galaxy. The first and foremost rule of this organization is always obey the government whomever that may be — a rule meant to underline the library's strict neutrality. But what if the government sends its warships at you? How can you defend yourself armed with archives full of useless knowledge and a policy of strict obedience?
Direct Descent is expanded from the short story "The Pack Rat Planet," which first appeared in Astounding in December 1954. It is one of Herbert's earliest science fiction stories, published before his first novel The Dragon in the Sea (1956). It's not the only short piece Herbert expanded to a novel. He did the same with the Lewis Orne stories which were turned into The Godmakes (1972), and The Green Brain (1966) was originally a shorter piece too. I've tried to find the text of the original story but apparently the copyright on this one hasn't expired yet. My guess would be that the original story is part one of the novel, with a part two added later.
Although Direct Descent is usually listed as a novel, I doubt it actually exceeds forty thousand words. My mass market paperback edition has 186 pages, of which at least 80 are taken up by pencil drawings credited to one Garcia. Name doesn't ring a bell with me but given the absolutely dreadful cover (that poor fellow looks like he is about to throw up), perhaps that is for the best. I didn't think any of the interior illustrations were particularly inspired work either.
To be honest. I am amazed that Herbert published this. Or that it was the same man who wrote The Dosadi Experiment just a few years prior, and went on to produce three more popular DUNE novels. It simply lacks just about everything that makes Herbert's work interesting. Besides the idea of the gigantic library, which apparently came to Herbert after visiting the Library of Congress, there is very little in the way of worldbuilding or interesting scientific or philosophical concepts. Where Herbert's works are usually filled to overflowing with ideas, for some reason he doesn't use the main strength of his writing in this novel. It brutally exposes how little is left when you take that away.
The two parts of the novel are only very loosely connected to each other. Other than the setting and the nature of the threat (the government trying to pull the plug on the Library) there isn't a whole lot that connects the stories. Herbert made no attempt whatsoever to turn this into one novel, he just added a second story. I don't think it ever appeared in a magazine but it could be read independently. Both plots are pretty straightforward and in both instances the policy of strict obedience serves the library well. I guess you could see this work as satirical, a government not in control of its own creation. If satire was what Herbert intended, the Jorj X. McKie stories succeed a lot better in that.
Direct Descent is without a doubt the worst thing I've read by Herbert. It's a very weak attempt at expanding a short story that barely had enough body to make it work in the short format. Some people feel that Herbert's skill as a writer usually cannot keep up with his insights and ideas; a few even go so far as to declare anything beyond DUNE unreadable. Personally I am a bit more tolerant of what are usually considered flaws in his writing. In this novel however, I have failed to find anything that usually appeals to me in Herbert's work. I guess the completist will want to read it anyway, but if you are not, don't feel bad about skipping it.
Direct Descent — (1980) Publisher: Earth has become a library planet for thousands of years, a bastion of both useful and useless knowledge — esoterica of all types, history, science, politics — gathered by teams of "pack rats" who scour the galaxy for any scrap of information. Knowledge is power, knowledge is wealth, and knowledge can be a weapon. As powerful dictators come and go over the course of history, the cadre of dedicated librarians is sworn to obey the lawful government… and use their wits to protect the treasure trove of knowledge they have collected over the millennia.
September 29th, 2014. Rob Weber (GUEST)´s rating: 1 | Frank Herbert | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
ROB WEBER, a regular guest at FanLit, developed a fantasy and science fiction addiction as well as a worrying Wheel of Time obsession during his college years. While the Wheel of Time has turned, the reading habit that continues to haunt him long after acquiring his BSc in environmental science. Rob keeps a blog at Val's Random Comments.
Marion Deeds / September 29, 2014
I feel like I should send a double-bourbon over to your table as a commiseration gift. Thank you for reading this so that we won't have to!
Val / October 6, 2014
I prefer Scotch ;)
Herbert's writing fascinates me even when it's bad. I may have to read the one his son published recently some time soon. I suspect there is a reason Herbert didn't publish it during his life but I'm curious nevertheless.
Thomas Wagner / November 5, 2014
Heh heh, looks like we're on the same page regarding this one.
Leave a Reply to Val Cancel reply


In a deliberate move over the past few days, the US administration is trying to back away from the 'bin Laden' propaganda that they themselves created two weeks ago. Analysts say that at this time, capturing or killing bin Laden can cause U.S. more harm than good.
The sixth-richest man in the world, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal had a 10 million cheque for WTC relief efforts thrown back in his face after the prince had the audacity to criticize U.


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FaithVantage Point
Pentecost, 1948: One woman's ministry in a Siberian prison camp
Edward W. Schmidt, S.J.May 17, 2018
As 1940 dawned, the people of the Baltic States wondered where the greater threat lay: to the east, where Stalin's armies waited, or to the west, where Hitler's war was already being waged. Soviet and German diplomats had in fact secretly divided them up during the previous year: the Soviets got Estonia and Latvia, the Germans got Lithuania. But after Hitler marched into Paris, earlier agreements were off, and in June 1940 the Soviets annexed all three of the Baltic states.
Even as he faced war with Germany, Stalin had time to begin the internal war against those he called his own citizens. In June 1941 mass deportations began, during which 60,000 Estonians, 35,000 Latvians and 45,000 Lithuanians were shipped to Siberia. Among the first of the Lithuanian exiles was Juzefa Maciokiene, who was then in her mid-30s. Like the others who were deported, she had committed no crime.
Now a widow in her mid-90s, Mrs. Maciokiene recalls her ministry to her fellow prisoners 50 years ago, when she served them—to use her word and theirs—as their priest. This account was taken from an interview with Mrs. Maciokiene in September 1996, translated by Antanas Saulaitis, S.J., provincial superior for Lithuania and Latvia, and edited by Edward W. Schmidt, S.J.
Juzefa Maciokiene recalls her ministry to her fellow prisoners 50 years ago, when she served them—to use her word and theirs—as their priest.
On May 28, 1948, a new group of Lithuanians were exiled to Krasnoyarsk, in the heart of Siberia, where I had already been for seven years. I found the barracks where they were being housed, five men in one cabin. They offered me soup. I took some of it and asked, "Who made this soup? It is terrible."
The cook identified himself, and I asked him, "What is your profession?"
He answered, "I am a priest." At that, a heavy obligation fell from my shoulders. I had served as the priest in the camp for seven years.
"Please, tell me what you did," the priest asked.
I told him the story of what I had done. I baptized newborns, I married people, and I buried the dead, praying our Lithuanian prayer that the earth of Siberia be light and warm. And I told him how this came about.
I told him the story of what I had done. I baptized newborns, I married people, and I buried the dead.
One of the people in the camp was an atheist lawyer, Cezaris Petrauskas. He had been imprisoned in Lithuania during the era of our President Antanas Smetona. When the Russians arrived in 1940 they released him and made him minister of justice; his wife was the daughter of the governor general of Warsaw. But soon afterwards, the Russians shipped Petrauskas into exile too. It was Cezaris Petrauskas who made me the priest.
Mr. Petrauskas and I had come out to Siberia in the same shipment of exiles, and when we arrived we were immediately assigned to work in a hospital not far from Reshiot. There was only one shack in which men, women and children were all housed.
I used to serve soup that I made from loose vegetables I picked up on a dock where they were unloaded. I also gave a spoonful of oil to starved exiles. And when I got home from work I would change into a robe that I made out of a saltpeter bag, saving my work clothes. I insisted that I was a lady and that I would remain a lady.
Not long after we arrived, a 12-year-old boy died, and we had to have a funeral. People gathered near the hospital.
Mr. Petrauskas came and said to me: "Mrs. Maciokiene, make sure that the funeral be exactly as is customary in Lithuania, the hymns, the ceremonies. You be in charge. And everything, just as in Lithuania. I'll check on you!"
"But you're an atheist. How will you cheek on me?"
"I became an atheist over time while finishing the seminary course," he replied.
So people gathered in the cemetery. We had no holy water sprinkler. We didn't even have holy water. Someone found water, and I blessed it, making a sign of the cross with my fingers, and sprinkled the grave: "May the earth of Siberia be light and warm."
A child was born. For the baptism, I took the water that was needed and blessed it with a sign of the cross: "I bless you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." I baptized the child with this water.
The people asked me where to put the blessed water. I dipped my fingers in it several times, drank some of what was left, and gave it to the godparents to drink the rest.
And I married people. The newlyweds came from the civil marriage registry, and I met them in the doorway. We blessed ourselves and prayed the Our Father and the Hail Mary. And especially we prayed, "I believe in God." For us it was very important to say that we believe.
When my daughter whispered to me, "I wish girls could be priests," I didn't know what to say.
Barry Hudock
In Defense of Altar Girls
Kerry Weber
After the prayer we blessed ourselves. Then I took some small tree branches and made a cross, which we gave to the newlyweds to kiss, after which we all kissed it. We then offered the newlyweds the traditional gifts of bread, salt and wine. After the ceremony the newlyweds took with them the cross that everyone had kissed, so they could carry it in their coat pockets, close to their hearts.
So on May 28, 1948. I asked the priest who just arrived, Stanisiovas Kiskis, about what I had done. "You have added a few things," he said: "but you did not do any harm. On the contrary, you honored all the ceremonies." He did not condemn me.
For seven years I did what needed to be done because there was no other way. I did all that I knew how to do. And someone inspired me.
This article originally appeared in the May 30, 1998 issue of America under the title, "Pentecost, 1948: Someone Inspired."
More: Ministry / War & Peace
Edward W. Schmidt, S.J.
Edward W. Schmidt, S.J., is a senior editor at America.
Luis Gutierrez
We could have many more like her, ORDAINED to act in the person of Christ and dispense all the sacraments, including the Eucharist. Religious patriarchy is a cultural tragedy that is becoming a doctrinal travesty and a pastoral disgrace. Apostolic succession is not contingent on masculinity. We need women priests and women bishops.
Andrew Wolfe
So if it's a doctrinal travesty, why would you care? Is the Church the Church or not? 2000 years of male-only priesthood means you think it's 2000 years of doctrinal travesty and pastoral disgrace. If you believe that, why stay Catholic?
Dominic Deus
You missed the part of the story about the atheist.
This woman exercised the ordinary priesthood of the laity in what she did, and I'm not sure it was out of line with canon law much, if at all. Certainly lay people are allowed to baptize people in the absence of clergy. She did not seize for herself the claim to celebrate the Eucharist nor Penance—or at least, this article doesn't say she did. Frankly what she did sounds extremely motherly. I'm a little annoyed by the clickbait headline though.
Andrew: "Pentecost, 1948: One woman's ministry in a Siberian prison camp" and you think that's clickbait? I can hardly wait to read in awe, the story of your ministry in...what? The wilderness of the closest mall?
ramil del rosario
what a beautiful article...
Let us not miss the point: Two or more were gathered and she broke Bread in the name of Jesus. She baptized as all of can baptize and she proclaimed the marriage of man, wife and Jesus and witnessed it all before God and others. She buried the dead and gave peace to souls.
What kind of preposterous jaycock would deny her priesthood? I, Dominic Deus say she was and is a priest. My authority to do so in the name of the Church is none but it matters not. The authority of the Church to renounce her priesthood is also none. Her *caritas* is all that matters.


If you are new to programming, you may not know what indexing is. It's actually everywhere around you, if a website has a database, it probably has indexing of some type enabled.
Let me present indexing! Indexing is a process that is run on a database in order to look for things more efficiently, much more efficiently! It does this by looking through all of the database and map the desired fields. Then these new "values/link pairs" are sorted in alphanumeric order. When you hit a keyword, it will go through this ordered list of mapped values and quickly look for your query (Google Big O notation for more details).
Example: We want to search for a word in fields "itemName" and "itemDescription" in our MongoDB database. There are other fields defined in our schema but you should not index more than you need as it will create redundant values/links and that would impact your database's query speed. We will use $text notation to look for word(s) in our indexed fields.
Fill out the desired fields to index, in our case, we are indexing "itemName" and "itemDescription" fields in our database collection; "text" is required to enable the $text notation.
Finally, hit Create in Background, you will get a popup prompting it may take a few minutes to several hours, depending on the size of your database and number of indexing fields.
That's it! Your site is still operational but until the indexing operation is still going on, you may notice performance issue, so best is to wait.
Thank you for reading my first post, let me know any questions/input/comments!


The Awards for Excellence judging panel is comprised of members of the OFPANZ association with relevant product and industry experience in all of the award categories.
Whilst entrants are free to select the categories they would like to enter, the judging panel reserves the right to re-categorise entries where appropriate.
The judging of entries is anonymous and the identity of entrants is not disclosed to judges.
The judging panel may decide not to grant an award in any category if they deem entries are not of sufficient standard or worthy of an award for excellence. In this case, the entries will not be promoted during the Expo or at the Awards for Excellence dinner.
Judges are only able to judge each project based on the information and images that are supplied by each entrant. This is why it is imperative that high resolution .jpg images are supplied for each project and a detailed project description is provided.
The judge's decision is final and no further correspondence will be permitted.


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Industry impact on increasing the minimum wages
The discussion about the impact on increasing the minimum wages is continuous . A few researches find just a little impact we do have due to the increasing the minimum wages while others find critical impacts . But now we discuss on the Industry impact on increasing the minimum wages rather. An investigation as of late distributed in the American Economic Review gives new proof that increments in the minimum wages permitted by law diminish work over the long haul.
The authors such as of the new study—Paul Beaudry, David Green, and Ben Sand—do create a different framework may be as, of course, that they do find that the increases in wages have a negative effect on employment over 10-year intervals rather and in terms of magnitude, they find that a 1% increase in wages leads unexpectedly to a 0.3% to 1% decrease in the employment rate depending on whether the wages do at all increase citywide or in only one industry. And for sure, the authors find that most of the negative employment effects that they find as that result from the wage increases (which are cost increases) are due to more firms closing rather than firms laying off workers.
To condense, we have two bits of proof. Increments to the minimum wage permitted by law:
1.Do not influence the work of existing low-wage representatives or workers.
2.Reduce future procuring of low-wage representatives or workers.
Raising Minimum Wage: Is Bad For Business
When the senior financial professionals surveyed regarding the impact of raising the minimum wage on their companies and on the economy in general, they found that raising the minimum wage is all bad for business. There are increased calls or demands in the United States to raise the minimum wage rate in cities around the country, as well as at the national level even. It is a generally agreed fact that there is all a need to raise, of course, the minimum wage to such a level as to a point where workers can afford their basical needs; but is a general belief that the raising of the minimum wage rate would deprive less-skilled workers of the entry-level opportunities and negatively such a course would impact the U.S. economy. But still it seems that many companies indicated that raising the minimum wage would not affect their profitability, so to say.
Minimum Wage and its Effect on Employment
While the extending wage hole is progressively in the spotlight, the issue of a minimum wage strategy as an instrument for reviewing monetary imbalance is additionally drawing much of the developing interest. While the fundamental research on the consequences for work of a minimum wage increment is still at a beginning stage in Japan, in the United States colossal minimum wage strategies have been actualized at the administrative level as well as at the state and neighborhood legislative levels, and these have empowered the research field. RIETI welcomed Professor David NEUMARK of the University of California, Irvine, a main U.S. researcher on minimum wage.
The U.S. Congress extended inclusion of the minimum wage and raised its level amid the 1970s. Meanwhile, a discussion developed about the suitability of this approach. In 1977, the Minimum Wage Study Commission was built up. In 1981, the Commission delivered a report reasoning that a 10% expansion in the minimum wage diminishes work of youthful specialists, especially youngsters, by 1%-3%. It is important to make a correlation between what happened when the minimum wage was expanded and what might have happened had the minimum wage not been expanded.
So far as the States is concerned: in 1984, three states had a state minimum wage that was higher than the administrative level. In 1989, 13 states had higher minimum wages. In 2007, 30 states had higher minimum wages and as of late a few states have begun to record the minimum wage to expansion. The state-level variety in minimum wages has opened the route for business correlations between states where the minimum wage has been raised.
There has been a huge number of papers on minimum wages, which fluctuate in information, quantitative methodology, target industries, and nations. In any case, there is proceeding with discussion about the elucidation of various investigations done to date. Some suppose that there is no proof that the minimum wage has any negative impact on work, others contend that the proof by and large indicates a negative impact, and, at long last, some keep up that there is no agreement on the course or size of the impact on business.
Educator Neumark inspected in excess of 100 papers evaluating the impacts of minimum wages on work, as a team with Dr. William Wascher of the Federal Reserve Board, endeavoring to make general determinations about the impacts of the minimum wage on business. Rather than playing out a formal meta-investigation, they settled on a customary story auditing, which presents some subjectivity, yet empowers them to display their contentions and appraisals of the proof, and to leave perusers better educated to draw their feelings dependent on their research. They condensed the protracted survey and the review uncovered that around 66% of the papers do propose that the minimum wage negatively affects business while less than 10 of the 100 investigations exhibit that it has a constructive outcome.
In this manner, they have reasoned that an expansion in the minimum wage antagonistically influences business. In light of such survey, Neumark and Wascher recommend that ongoing investigations focusing on the U.S. can be separated into four kinds. The principal type utilizes state-level board information and characterizes adolescents or youthful grown-ups as the objective of the research. The second sort is contextual analyses of particular industries. The third is time-arrangement investigations of adolescents. What's more, the fourth spotlights on less-talented or low-wage laborers, the individuals who are most straightforwardly influenced by the minimum wage (paying little mind to age).
While looking at regardless of whether to raise the minimum wage, it is fitting to measure its positive and negative impacts. As a result, it is a necessity to recognize the impact of the minimum wage on low-paid laborers and its impact on low-wage family units. An examination of U.S. information on the connection between family pay and wages earned by laborers in every family demonstrates that some low-wage cadres are in mid-wage or high-wage families. This suggests the minimum wage arrangement may eventually not profit low-pay families. To decide if minimum wages help low pay families, at that point, it is vital to research specifically how minimum wages influence the families otherwise.
The wages as increase the industries start thinking their proceedings too. Increasing the minimum wages will make the industries suffer. The wages when increased the industries aim closing. The wages of the industries when don't increase, the employees suffer. The wages should increase and at the same time the industries also should thrive rather. While the widening wage gap is increasingly discussed, an increase in the minimum wage is as, of course, as to contribute to alleviating the income disparity by increasing wages of low-paid workers, yet it very much does have the possibility of expanding disparity through the reduction in employment opportunities for indeed the low-paid workers. The wages only are for the families but wages only are for the industries may be as their profits. Somehow wages of the industries should increase but in the mean time the number of the industries too should increase for the economical growth, so to say.
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Starbucks store in Buenos Aires, Argentina caught mining cryptocurrency secretly by hijacking customer's laptop via free in-store Wi-Fi.
On 2 December, Stensul CEO Noah Dinkin unraveled the sneaky cryptocurrency miner code that served along with his coffee. Dinkin noticed there was a 10-second delay when connecting to the public Wi-Fi at the Starbucks store in Buenos Aires and with a further little digging, he found out the in-store wifi provider is using Coinhive's code embedded in Starbucks' reward site for Argentina to generate Monero coins by utilizing the CPU processing power of the site's visitors.
On December 11, Starbucks responded to Dinkin's tweet confirming the issue and announcing that it's been resolved.
Starbucks spokesperson told Motherboard that the incident was only happened at the Beunos Aires store and the problem was with the service provider, not Starbucks itself.
This is not the first time we are seeing some popular website mining cryptocurrencies with sneaky codes. Earlier Showtime, the Pirate Bay, Politifact and UFC's website were found running similar code to covertly generate digital currencies as an alternative to advertising, without the knowledge or consent of users.


What is a session (Or lesson) with a KMSE Teacher like?
A session will be identical to you having a conversation with an English speaker. You can talk about simply anything – from sports to movies and culture to politics. Our English speakers at KMSE are trained to conduct these sessions in such a way that you get maximum chances to talk in English.
What areas in my English can I expect to improve?
You will become more fluent in English.You will speak more effortlessly, you will sound more natural, and you will become more spontaneous. Over time, your pronunciation will improve and making it easier for native English speakers to understand you. You will develop better listening skills, which will allow you to quickly and correctly understand native speakers in real life conversations.
Sure. Send us an email to school@mansuu.com with your Email address, Skype ID, time availability and we are happy to set up a free trial session for you.
What countries do you get students from?
We have helped students from over 40 countries develop their conversational English.
Our focus is in helping you Speak English naturally, without having to process grammar rules in your head. At KMSE it is our experience that focusing too heavily on grammar will slow you down when learning to speak English.
Who is a Native English Speaker?
A Native English Speaker is someone who has learned and used English from early childhood. All our Native Speakers are from the US and UK.
Are your English Speaker English language professors?
No. This is what makes our program unique and effective. We do not teach English. We create opportunities for you to practice with real people – the kind of people who you'd meet at a business function or in graduate school. You will have real conversations in English, not silly role plays. We hire people who are good conversationalists and who are good listeners. We also make sure we hire English speakers who have traveled across the world, who are knowledgeable in a lot of areas and who love interacting with people around the world. All of our English speakers have at least a bachelor's degree.
How do I schedule sessions with a Native English Speaker?
How often should I speak with an English Speaker?
2-3 times a week is ideal. If you prefer more sessions a week, we can arrange this. KMSE requires that you have at least two sessions a week.
At what times do the sessions take place?
Our sessions take place 7AM to 10PM EST. Check the programs page for information on what times sessions can be scheduled.
You don't need to go anywhere. All sessions are conducted through the internet, via Skype.
Where do you have office locations?
Currently we have offices in Doha, London and Kerala. We are planning in opening brand new Spoken English Centers in Saudi Arabia, UAE and Russia.
Each session lasts 30 minutes. It is our experience that 30 minutes is the optimal duration for 1-to-1 conversations. If you prefer 1 hour sessions instead of 30 minutes, we can arrange this.
What's the cost, and how do I pay?
Our programs are very affordable and start at INR 5k. Please check the course section on our website for full details. You can pay by credit card or PayPal through our secure payment gateway. You will get a confirmation email within minutes. We offer a 30 day money back guarantee.
What do I need to have for a session?
What if I need to reschedule a session?
What happens if KMSE cancels a session?
You will not be charged if KMSE cancels a session. Our trainer's control department will e-mail to set up a makeup session.
Is Skype reliable enough for 30 minute KMSE sessions with KMSE speakers?
Skype is typically a very reliable method of making free voice calls over the Internet. You can make a free Skype Test call to see sound quality. Also, please make sure you use a set of good earphones and speakers.
Is Skype a free service? How can I get it?
Yes, we do! When you buy group sessions, you will get some sessions absolutely FREE. This is actually a very popular option for families and groups of friends. For larger groups or corporate bookings, please email school@mansuu.com for special rates and packages.


text:
Q: SetThreadContext works but the registers are not changing CONTEXT ctx;
ctx.ContextFlags = CONTEXT_ALL;         // I want to see all registers
GetThreadContext(pi.hThread, &ctx);     // Now I see the register
ctx.Eax = newEntryPoint;                // Changing EAX register
SetThreadContext(pi.hThread, &ctx)      // Returns 1 (nonzero is success);

Running on a 32bit process, changing EAX to another 32bit process.
The remote thread is suspended (since it was created) while I work on it.
Looking at the registers using windbg shows that the value remains the same.
I'm not sure where the problem is. Thank you for your time.
EDIT:
Nevermind. It's only windbg. The values do change. Thankyou.

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