text:
Is Langley Unleashing Jihad Against China in Xinjiang?
James George Jatras
One of the early indicators that the Trump administration's foreign and security policies would not be guided by the President's own preferences but by those of the supposed "experts" – globalists, neoconservatives, and assorted retreads from the George W. Bush administration – with whom he unwisely has surrounded himself was the announcement of a "new" strategy on Afghanistan in August 2017. It was neither new nor a strategy. President Donald Trump allowed his publicly stated preference to get the hell out to be overruled by the guys with the short haircuts who want to stay in Afghanistan, in effect, forever.
But why? What possible national interest could be advanced from a permanent American military presence in a godforsaken piece of real estate about as remote from the United States as it is possible to get while staying on this planet?
One answer was suggested by Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (US Army-Ret.), former chief of staff to US Secretary of State Colin Powell, at the August 18, 2018, conference of the Ron Paul Institute. Wilkerson's description of the subjective thinking of the US military has the ring of truth (presented here in authentic Pentagonese BLOCK LETTERS, emphasis added in bold):
'HERE IS WHAT THE MOST POWERFUL AND MOST STRATEGICALLY-ORIENTED BUREAUCRACY IN OUR GOVERNMENT, THE MILITARY, HAS DECIDED FOR AFGHANISTAN.
'THERE ARE THREE STRATEGIC REASONS WE WILL BE IN AFGHANISTAN, AS WE HAVE BEEN IN GERMANY SINCE WWII, FOR A VERY LONG TIME—WELL BEYOND THE ALMOST TWENTY YEARS WE HAVE BEEN THERE TO DATE.
'THESE REASONS HAVE LITTLE TO DO WITH STATE-BUILDING, WITH THE TALIBAN, OR WITH ANY TERRORIST GROUP THAT MIGHT BE PRESENT. THESE THINGS ARE ANCILLARY TO OUR REAL OBJECTIVES.
'THE FIRST REAL OBJECTIVE IS TO HAVE HARD POWER DIRECTLY NEAR THE CHINESE BASE ROAD INITIATIVE (BRI) IN CENTRAL ASIA.
'ASK DONALD RUMSFELD HOW DIFFICULT IT WAS TO GET MAJOR MILITARY FORCES INTO THIS EXTRAORDINARILY DIFFICULT LAND-LOCKED TERRAIN IN THE FALL OF 2001. FOR THAT REASON, WE ARE NOT ABOUT TO DEPART.
'SECOND, IN AFGHANISTAN WE ARE RIGHT NEXT TO THE POTENTIALLY MOST UNSTABLE NUCLEAR STOCKPILE ON EARTH, PAKISTAN'S. WE ARE NOT ABOUT TO LEAVE THAT EITHER. WE WANT TO BE ABLE TO POUNCE ON THAT STOCKPILE VERY SWIFTLY SHOULD IT BECOME A THREAT.
'THIRD, WE WANT TO BE ABLE TO MOUNT AND COVER WITH HARDPOWER CIA OPERATIONS IN XINJIANG PROVINCE, CHINA'S WESTERNMOST SECTION. THESE WOULD BE OPERATIONS AIMED AT USING THE SOME 20 MILLION UIGHURS IN THAT PROVINCE TO DESTABLIZE THE GOVERNMENT IN BEIJING SHOULD WE SUDDENLY FIND OURSELVES AT WAR WITH THAT COUNTRY.
'I WILL WAGER THERE ARE NOT A HANDFUL OF OUR CITIZENS WHO REALIZE THAT WE—OUR MILITARY, THAT IS—PLAN TO BE IN AFGHANISTAN FOR THE ENTIRE TIME WE ARE CONSIDERING FOR OUR GRAND STRATEGY—AND PERHAPS BEYOND.'
We are not yet overtly at war with China, but given Beijing's quasi-alliance with Moscow and the growing prospect of a clash between the US and Russia in Syria or Ukraine it's not too soon to suppose the self-proclaimed "steady state" already thinks of China as an enemy, or at least as a "great power competitor" that needs to be taken down a peg. Of particular importance, as noted by Wilkerson, is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the centerpiece of a greater Eurasian partnership, a key component of China's bid to become a military superpower as well as an economic one.
Beijing's geographical weak link to Eurasian partnership is Xinjiang, which is BRI's logistics hub and China's gateway to the west towards Central Asia, Russia, and Europe. It also conveniently happens to be the home of restive Muslim ethnic Uyghurs.
In short, Xinjiang is an ideal place for the CIA (per Wilkerson) to give Beijing a hotfoot and try to throw an impediment in the way of BRI and thus of Eurasian integration.
Whenever you see western governments and the legacy media wailing about the plight of "persecuted Muslims" somewhere (in a way they never do for Christians anywhere) it should be a tipoff the boys and girls over at Langley are pushing the start button on a jihad against someone for geopolitical reasons having nothing to do with human rights, religious freedom, or other ostensible bleeding heart concerns. That appears to be what we're seeing today in the strident chorus of alarm from Congress calling for sanctions against Chinese officials.
We've seen this movie before. Today we see it against China and Beijing's Belt and Road Initiative (the Uyghurs, and connectedly the Rohingya in Myanmar, directed against BRI's China-Myanmar Economic Corridor through Rakhine State on the Bay of Bengal). In the past we saw it in Afghanistan (against the USSR), in the Balkans on behalf of Bosnian Muslims and Kosovo Albanians (against the Serbs), in the Caucasus on behalf of the Chechens (against Russia). Of course the successful overthrow and murder of the Libya's Muammar Kaddafi and the not-yet-abandoned effort to effect regime change in Syria depend heavily on support for various al-Qaeda affiliates and offshoots.
It's significant that in all of our post-Cold War 1 military interventions every one (except for Bill Clinton's invasion of Haiti) was ostensibly to free or rescue some suffering Muslims – never mind that in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, etc. we somehow ended up killing large numbers of the supposed beneficiaries. Just imagine how many oppressed Muslims we would need to kill liberating Iran! Meanwhile, as we continue to support the Saudi slaughter in Yemen with a US quasi-alliance with al-Qaeda there, there's nothing to see, folks . . .
Recognizing these crocodile tears for what they are isn't to suggest that bad things aren't happening in Xinjiang. But based on past experience it's reasonable to think that behind the fog of state-sponsored media propaganda the reality is more complex and involves a substantial element of western intelligence ginning up the jihadis against the kaffir Han as we have against many other targets.
As is the case with Myanmar, where the government's claims of actual jihad terrorism – including massacring Hindu villagers – are dismissed out of hand, China's policy in Xinjiang is condemned without reference to the demonstrable reality of outside-supported attacks. As noted by Moon of Alabama:
'Since the early 1990s a number of terror incidents by the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) [also known as the Turkestan Islamic Party] killed several hundred people in China. ETIM is sanctioned by the UN as an al-Qaeda aligned movement. Three years ago China decided to attack the problem at its roots. It prohibited Salafist-Wahhabi Islamic practice, which was only recently imported into the traditionally Sufi Uyghur-Muslim areas, and it tries to weed out any such ideology. It also fears the potential growth of an ethnic-nationalistic Turkic Uyghur movement, sponsored by Turkey, that could evolve into a separatist campaign.
'People who are susceptible to such ideologies will be put through an reeducation training which includes language lessons in Mandarin and general preparation for the job market. This may not be the way 'western' countries mishandle a radicalization problem, but it is likely more efficient. There surly are aspects of the program that can be criticized. But to claim that these trainings happen in "concentration camps" and for nonsensical reasons is sheer propaganda.'
Further:
'Xinjiang province is larger than Great Britain, France, Spain, and Germany combined. It is a mostly uninhabitable landscape of mountainous and desert terrain with a tiny population of some 24 million of which only 45% are Muslim Uyghurs of Turkic ethnicity. It would be rather unimportant outer province for China were it not at the core of the new Silk road connections.
'It is a vulnerable point. An established insurgency in the area could seriously interrupt the new strategic communication lines.
'Chinese strategists believe that the U.S., with the help of its Turkish, Saudi and Pakistani friends, was and is behind the Islamic and ethnic radicalization of the Turkic population in the province. It is not by chance that Turkey transferred Uyghur Jihadis from Xinjiang via Thailand to Syria to hone their fighting abilities. That the New York Times publishes about the Xinjiang re-education project, and also offers the report in Mandarin, will only confirm that suspicion. China is determined to end such interference.'
The fact is that the CIA and MI6 spooks love jihadis – they're very "operational" as well as expendable. Case in point are several thousand Chinese Uyghurs fighting with the al-Qaeda-led terrorists in Syria's Idlib province, where China's President Xi Jinping no doubt will help Syria's Bashar al-Assad and Russia's Vladimir Putin ensure as many of them as possible never make it back home.
One inescapable irony is that the US and other intelligence services likely siccing their terrorist hounds on China represent governments that worship at the absurd altar of "diversity is strength," unlike the countries they are targeting. Unashamed of their identity and culture, the Han Chinese aren't buying it. As American nationalist Patrick Buchanan observes:
'Consider China, which seeks this century to surpass America as the first power on earth. Does Xi Jinping welcome a greater racial, ethnic and cultural diversity within his county as, say, Barack Obama does in ours?
'In his western province of Xinjiang, Xi has set up an archipelago of detention camps. Purpose: Re-educate his country's Uighurs and Kazakhs by purging them of their religious and tribal identities, and making them and their children more like Han Chinese in allegiance to the Communist Party and Chinese nation.
'Xi fears that the 10 million Uighurs of Xinjiang, as an ethnic and religious minority, predominantly Muslim, wish to break away and establish an East Turkestan, a nation of their own, out of China. And he is correct.
'What China is doing is brutalitarian. But what China is saying with its ruthless policy is that diversity—religious, racial, cultural—can break us apart as it did the USSR. And we are not going to let that happen.
'Do the Buddhists of Myanmar cherish the religious diversity that the Muslim Rohingya of Rakhine State bring to their country?"
If Donald Trump really were master of his own house, maybe he could move forward on his pledge of an America First, national interest-based policy that finds "common ground" (as articulated at the same Ron Paul Institute conference by Colonel Doug Macgregor (US Army-Ret.)) with countries like Russia and China we continue to treat as adversaries.
But as things stand now, Trump's nominal subordinates continue to do as they please as though someone else occupied the Oval Office. Perhaps they anticipate that will soon be the case.
September 15, 2018 | World
Analyst, former U.S. diplomat and foreign policy adviser to the Senate GOP leadership
Before the Bidens 'Did' Ukraine, There Was Iraq – and Serbia
Western Campaign Against Orthodox Church Turns to Montenegro
We Live in Hysteric Times: What Trump's Impeachment Really Means
Violence Erupts as West Turns Its Sexual Subversion Weapon on Georgia
Trump Will Be Impeached. The Stupid Party Says, 'Bring It On!'


Kanye West Goes Splat—and Not Just Verbally This Time!
Kanye West briefly toppled from his high horse this week.
The rapper took a heels-over-head spill onstage Tuesday while performing the multilayered "All of the Lights" at the Bergen Calling festival in Norway.
Where are Rihanna and the other dozen guest vocalists when he really needs them?!
MORE: Who's the richest rapper, Kanye or Jay-Z?
But, like with everything else West does, even the fall had a certain flair to it, with the rapper ingloriously landing on his back but managing to get right up without missing a beat.
Then again, so much of the track was prerecorded, we doubt anyone but the hardest-core Kanye fans would have noticed a flubbed line.
During the upright portion of the show, West thanked the audience at the open-air Bergunhus Fortress for making his latest album—a joint venture with Jay-Z—a hit.
"It feels so good to come by here and rock y'all tonight. We come to make sure you all have a good time 'cause so many bad things have happened," he said, noting the recent shooting at a youth camp in Oslo.
"You know how I feel about the press," he continued. "I hate the press. They try to take my s--t out of context. They try to demonize me, but it don't matter because my fans are always here."
MORE: Kanye's in illustrious company. Here are five more musical tumbles!


A Government scientist who branded a colleague a 'larda**e' and another a 'f***wit' has been sacked.
Biomedical scientist Michael Hampton, 61, also described a worker as 'the monster from Zagreb' and another staff member as 'idiotic' and 'stupid' while working for Public Health England.
Hampton, who worked as a bacterial resistance scientist in North London, was today struck from the medical register over the insults.
The Health and Care Professions Council also heard that Hampton refused to attend work meetings.
Hampton was a high-ranking scientist who had worked for Public Health England since 1990.
Concerns were raised by colleagues over his offensive language while at work and with regard to his refusal to comply with work-related requests.
The distress caused to one colleague was 'tantamount to bullying', the report said.
Hampton was cleared of calling another colleague 'vinegar t*ts' and another a 'backstabbing f***wit'.
Panel chair Lesley White said: 'A reasonable person aware of all the circumstances of this case would expect a finding of impairment to be made so that colleagues and service users were not put at risk and confidence in the profession is maintained, and proper professional standards are upheld.
Hampton was not present at the hearing.


Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. says the annual pace of housing starts in October increased compared with September.
The housing agency says the seasonally adjusted annual rate of housing starts last month came in at 205,925 units, up from 189,730 in September.
Economists had expected an annual rate of 200,000, according to Thomson Reuters Eikon.
The increase came as the annual pace of urban starts climbed by 8.6 per cent in October to 191,964 units. The annual rate of urban multiple-unit projects such as condominiums, apartments and townhouses increased by 16.8 per cent to 145,442. Single-detached urban starts fell 10.7 per cent to 46,522 units.
The six-month moving average of the monthly seasonally adjusted annual rates was 206,171 in October, down from 207,809 in September.


text:
It's Time For Publishers To Get Bullish On SEO Once Again
by Mads Holmen
Photo: IIIerlok_Xolms/Getty Images
A version of this article was originally published by Bibblio.org.
Twitter accounts for less then 2.5 percent of traffic to publishers; Instagram and Pinterest barely supply one percent together. Currently, Facebook represents 22 percent, but its role in distributing publishers' content has been falling dramatically for more than a year, and is only accelerating.
Social media was a fun fling for publishers, but search is always there for you.
Data from Parse.ly, which tracks visits to more than 2,500 publishers, shows that ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, more than 40 percent of traffic to those sites came from Facebook. By the end of 2017, it was less than 26 percent. It's still dropping. For some sites, like BuzzFeed, this is a big problem, but even if you don't rely on social traffic to the same extent, it's a challenge.
The chart below shows the amount of traffic coming to publishers from Google and Facebook since the beginning of 2017. It's not just Facebook's decline — the huge growth in Google mobile visitors is very striking. This can largely be attributed to the growing popularity of AMP, Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages format for the mobile web.
Source: Chartbeat
Social traffic was never a great way to make money anyway
How much was social referral traffic really worth? As Scott Galloway points out in this great video, Audience vs. Traffic: "People don't tune in to BuzzFeed because they're fascinated by the journalism, they click because someone forwarded them 'Pick some of your favorite potato dishes and we'll tell you your best quality.'" Social referrals are fickle, hard to monetize, and disappear when Facebook changes the algorithms. They're traffic, not an audience. Even before Facebook's changes, BuzzFeed had apparently been seeing a decline in unique US visitors for two years.
In many ways the decline in social referrals is just the icing on a pretty unappetizing cake for traffic-dependant sites, which struggle to monetize beyond programmatic ads. Yields are declining, the use of ad-blockers is on the rise and Facebook and Google are hogging all the growth. Meanwhile, those sites that managed to build a loyal audience, like the New York Times and many special interest magazine sites, are flourishing — usually by using that loyalty to monetize in other areas like subscriptions or e-commerce.
Social traffic was never all that great for anything other than reporting big numbers. While that doesn't change the fact that content distributed directly on platforms can be an important acquisition channel (e.g. The Economist has used Facebook as an effective way to retarget potential subscribers), that only really works if you can convert your off-site viewers into paying subscribers. Monetizing content on somebody else's platform is really tough. Your company's account on Instagram may have a lot of followers, but how much value is that generating, and is it going to you or the platform? As a friend likes to say: "Everyone knows National Geographic has amazing photography, but how many people remember the names of individual photographers?"
Long-term, the move away from desperately trying to drive and monetize social referral traffic is a necessary step, but right now it's still hurting many people. So, how can you thrive despite Facebook's continuing retreat from publishing?
The antidote to declining social traffic
One answer is Google. As the Chartbeat graphic shows, Google is quickly regaining its status as the primary source of referrals for publishers. So the main question becomes, how do you drive more large scale, organic traffic to your website via the search engine result pages (SERPs)?
Basically, you need to refocus your efforts away from social traffic and re-energize your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) team. As a quick refresher, SEO is the umbrella term for many tactics, all of which aims to optimize your content for search engine algorithms, so that you rank higher when a potential visitor asks a query. The higher you rank, the better your natural traffic becomes, and the more chances you get to convert that traffic into a loyal, revenue generating audience. However, SEO in 2018 is not the SEO you remember: Google is always tinkering with algorithms and features (like AMP), and that means the best SEO tactics constantly change. Sometimes quite radically.
What are the ranking factors that influence your SEO score most these days? Google famously doesn't give us full transparency on ranking factors, but recently large studies by intelligence platforms such as SEMrush have shed some light into the ranking darkness. The answers probably aren't what you expect.
The days of keyword stuffing are over
No, it's not keywords (in the anchor, body, title or anywhere else) or backlinks. It's your engagement metrics. The top four ranking factors are direct website visits, time on site, pages per session and bounce rate. This isn't surprising really when you think about it: Google wants to find the 'best' answers for queries, so happy Google users are a key indicator for them. What they've worked out is that engagement indicators, like low bounce rate, high pages per session and superior dwell time, are the best signs of a good search answer. They're also hard to game, which can't be said for keywords and backlinks.
This all means that there is now another very obvious reason to try to increase your engagement metrics: high engagement is a virtuous cycle. More engagement directly means more new organic traffic, which in turn means a greater opportunity to monetize your site and build a loyal audience, which means higher engagement and more organic traffic.
Source: SEMrush
SEMrush's study results are backed by industry experts such as Larry Kim, Founder & CTO of WordStream. He says that "having positive website engagement metrics is critical" and he presents the data that shows the relationship between engagement rates (such as bounce rate and time on site) and rankings here.
So, yes, you shouldn't ignore keywords and backlinks, but the biggest opportunity to increase organic traffic from Google comes directly from boosting on-site engagement metrics. This is especially true for established sites that already rank fairly well.
That leaves one question: how do you improve your SEO? If you're already creating great content, what can you do that will impact these metrics right now?
How to effectively raise your site engagement and search traffic
SEO expert Matthew Woodward describes internal link building and content recirculation as "the most powerful SEO tactic you are not using." Why? It increases engagement.
Internal content recommendations are the best way to help readers discover relevant content that they really want to read. This means fewer people leaving after reading just one article, more articles per session and more time on your site. Most importantly, the more of your content they explore, the more likely they'll be to come back. Search visitors can be fickle if they've come looking for a particular piece of content, and often leave as soon as they've consumed it. You give yourself the best chance of converting them into a loyal audience member by providing other high-quality content that's relevant to their interests.
Content recommendation is even more important when you consider that, for over half of publishers, less than 10 percent of visitors enter the site via the homepage, according to research by Parse.ly. This means your content pages also have to do the job of the homepage and help people find the next piece of interesting content.
What all this adds up to is this: the related and recommended content widgets on your content pages are the single most important performance unit you have. Measure them and optimize them!
Social media can still work great as an acquisition channel for publishers and media companies, but as a dependable traffic- and revenue-driver it's a busted flush. You can't rely on it to drive engaged traffic to your site, the principal source of sustainable revenue. Now that Google is the most important referral source again, SEO has a renewed importance, and the days of keyword stuffing are behind us. You should be doing everything you can to improve your user experience. An easy way to do this right now, as well as implementing tools like AMP, is great recommendations.
Mads Holmen is co-founder and CEO at Bibblio, a leading provider of personalization and content recommendation services. He's a passionate "better web" advocate and recognized publishing industry commentator.
Tagged: audience analytics engagement engagement metrics facebook referral traffic seo social media

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Jackie Davis, Healthy Lifestyle Coach. Founder #TeamEternalMotivation Full-time online coach guiding people to achieve their goals in health.
It's my passion and purpose to educate others for Healthy Living! You'll also be inspired to dream big and start living a much more fulfilling life.
I'm a happy wife, mother mom of 4, managing a nonprofit while personally maintaining healthy habits after an amazing Personal Health Overhaul from Oct 2011 to Sept 2013.
After changing my eating lifestyle through "Ingredient Hacking", it was amazing to experience losing 5 jean sizes, 2 ring sizes and more. Now it's great to have energy and keep up with the kids (home schooling & travel), the house, the nonprofit ministry, and my wellness business. It cannot be done unless I'm focused on my personal responsibility for healthy habits living daily.
See, it wasn't always this great for me.
After suffering with PCOS for decades (including infertility and miscarriage), stress induced high blood pressure, other TMI symptoms/issues (I'll spare you), I found myself tired, achy, and weighing my heaviest after the birth of our fourth child at 38 years old, I thought I was eating healthy and active, but I was so wrong and not in the best shape to keep up with my roles/responsibilities.
As a wife/mom of 4 who suffered High BP, Candida, PCOS, and more for over 2 decades, I was nearing 300 pounds at my biggest. During those 2 decades, I was between sizes 16-22 yo-yo'ing. I was 'ok' with my size, but uncomfy to get on the floor or up off it. Dreaded flying or trying to squeeze in small seats in theaters, people's homes etc.
My health and size had many unspoken symptoms not to mention emotional and mental baggage. NOW, I am amazed that a FEW Changes in Lifestyle have yielded being Free of the above mentioned issues and then amazing weight loss and KEEPING IT OFF!!! What's your goal? You can do it. I want to guide, cheer, and see you achieve it!
I'm looking forward to connecting with you here or ask to join my free support group or the details of my next challenge group! Monthly, I also share the opportunity for your own home-based business. So look in my EVENTS tab to attend the next one.
Message me to get your wellness journey started, restarted, or with support so you reach your success your way in your time. I am your Independent Team Beachbody Coach. As resources allow, I will be Nutrition Certified, then I will be Trainer Certified.
In 2011, she changed her knowledge on health and became passionate about inspiring others to reach their health goals while living the example of her encouragement. She retired from Corporate Marketing/Branding and shifted into motherhood followed by her family pursuing life as full time Christian missionaries in Central America. She listens to your health needs and guides you on how to succeed long term with support.
*It is not a substitute for, nor does it replace, professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment of health conditions. Please consult your physician or other healthcare professional before beginning or changing any fitness program to make sure that it is appropriate for your needs.


text:
Q: PHP $_POST is empty or null I'm desperately trying to solve an issue with my android app.  I submit a List to my server with an enum set as a 'tag'.  The PHP pages should look at this tag and then proceed to perform the associated functions and return as a json array or object.  This works fine with one version of the app but a cloned version fails to fetch data.  The PHP just jumps straight over tag checking at the isset tag and tag is not empty conditions so it must be flat out seeing an empty POST or the object I submit doesn't meet some requirement I'm unaware of.
I've looked through so many posts and searched and searched but haven't found a solution.  Why would it work for one version of the app but not for the upgraded version, that hasn't made any changes to the methods used for sending data??
So here's what I'm dealing with.  To begin with, an AsyncTask takes the objects and passes to a class that handles communication:
private class UpdateJobList extends AsyncTask<User, Void, Boolean>  {

    private List<Message> messages;

    public UpdateJobList()  {
        super();
        messages = new ArrayList<Message>();
    }

    @Override
    protected Boolean doInBackground(User... params){
        try {
            CloudConnect cConn = new CloudConnect(sAddress);
            this.messages = cConn.getAll(params[0]);
            return true;
        } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        return false;
    }

    @Override
    protected void onPostExecute(Boolean result)    {
        if (true)
        {
            handleMessageList(messages);
        }
    }
}

Using the CloudConnect class to get single Json objects or an array of Objects:
public class CloudConnect {

private String site;
private InputStream is;
private Gson gson;

public CloudConnect(String site) throws MalformedURLException   {
    this.site = site;
    this.gson = new GsonBuilder().setDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd").create();
    is = null;
}

public synchronized Message get(Message m) throws IOException   {
    Message msg = null;
    HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
    HttpPost post = new HttpPost(this.site);
    post.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(validateMessage(m)));

    HttpResponse response = client.execute(post);
    StatusLine status = response.getStatusLine();

    if ( status.getStatusCode() == 200) {
        HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
        is = entity.getContent();
        try {
            Reader read = new InputStreamReader(is);
            String str = (String) gson.fromJson(read, Object.class);
            JsonParser parser = new JsonParser();
            JsonElement jElem = parser.parse(str);
            JsonObject jObject = (JsonObject) jElem;

            msg = gson.fromJson(jObject, Message.class);
            is.close();

        }   catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
    return msg;
}

public synchronized List<Message> getAll(Message m) throws IOException  {
    List<Message> mList = new ArrayList<Message>();
    HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();
    HttpPost post = new HttpPost(this.site);
    post.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(validateMessage(m)));

    HttpResponse response = client.execute(post);
    StatusLine status = response.getStatusLine();

    if ( status.getStatusCode() == 200) {
        HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity();
        is = entity.getContent();
        try {
            BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is));
            JsonArray jArray = null;
            JsonReader jReader = new JsonReader(reader);
            jReader.setLenient(true);
            JsonParser parser = new JsonParser();
            if (parser.parse(jReader).isJsonArray()){
                jArray = parser.parse(jReader).getAsJsonArray();

                if ( m instanceof User ){
                    for (JsonElement je : jArray)   {
                        mList.add(gson.fromJson(je, Job.class));
                        Log.d("json", je.toString());
                    }
                } else if ( m instanceof Job ) {
                    for (JsonElement je : jArray)   {
                        mList.add(gson.fromJson(je, Update.class));
                        Log.d("json", je.toString());
                    }
                }
            }   else {
                JsonElement jElem = parser.parse(jReader);
                JsonObject jObject = (JsonObject) jElem;
                Error msg = null;
                msg = gson.fromJson(jObject, Error.class);
                mList.add(msg);
            }
            is.close();

        }   catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
    return mList;
}

And the PHP code that checks for the tag:
if ( isset($_POST['messageType']) && $_POST['messageType'] != "") {

$tag = $_POST['messageType'];
//
//various functions depending on messageType tag here.  Such as getUser($email).
//functions appear to work fine if the PHP doesn't find the initial conditions
//false and skips them all.
} else  {
$response["success"] = 0;
    $response["error"]["errorMsg"] = "Tags are null";
    $response["error"]["messageType"] = $tag;
            $response["error"]["varDump"] = var_dump($_POST);

echo json_encode($response);
}

A: Ok, now I get it. You do not have a problem on your Android code but in PHP (I came here because of the TAG Android). I am not an expert in PHP, but remember that isset ($ _POST ['messageType']) returns true only if the payload of your POST request contains something like: messageType=some_value. So you need to check if the value that you passsed to post.setEntity(value) is something in this format.
You can use tools like Fiddler to see the payload of your request and debug properly.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Ohana is Honua
Let's Build a Story Together!
I had the fun experience of running a panel at SNAFU Con about creating a story with the attendees. My previous post detailed the decision we all made about the contents of the story I have started writing.
I also gave the ones who participated in the panel a chance to email me any other ideas they might have had. To that end, the fact that we didn't get a chance to discuss the antagonists was brought to my attention. (There are so many decisions to be made as a writer!)
I had a message detailing one participants thoughts on those very bad guys. As promised, I am taking the input to heart. He didn't provide names for the group that will be giving Richard and company so much trouble, but he did provide a concept:
The idea for how they are introduced is that after Richard and his/her group leave on their quest to find a cure for the condition, mysterious attackers invade the research facility, apparently after whatever the magi-scientists had been working on, before the accident. Whatever it is they are looking for, seems to be tied in with hero/heroine's condition, but as the attackers cannot figure out where exactly Richard has gone.
There would be five antagonists total; four of which are based off of the suits of playing cards (I do not have names for them yet, because this is just an idea.).
SPADE: The apparent leader of the four. A dark knight-type warrior, who uses his sword to cast spells. He is strong, and enigmatic, but has a deep sense of personal honor, and is protective of the other three in his group.
CLUB: A muscle-bound martial artist warrior, who envelops his fists & feet with elemental magic, and always seeks out strong opponents. He seeks out strong opponents though, because he does not want to hurt weak people.
DIAMOND: A sneaky nerdish guy, who summons monsters, but is too weak to fight anything on his own. He is aware of his own weaknesses, and has self-esteem issues because of this.
HEART: The token female of the antagonists, and the one most encountered personally. She uses powerful spells that are based on her current mood (i.e. Anger = Fire, Sadness = Water, Fear = Lightning, etc.), making her dangerous, but somewhat unfocused. The FIFTH antagonist is a shadow-boss based off of the motif of the ?Wild Card?, and commands the other four antagonists from the shadows.
WILD CARD: He is in fact a spirit trapped inside a magic crystal, and formerly one of the magic users from the ancient magic-using civilization that now lays in ruins. In discovering the origin of magical energy at the time, he attempted to achieve immortality through it, but ended up destroying the entire civilization himself. Although he is ?alive? and unageing inside of his crystal prison, he has no physical body, and requires the special magic energies inside of the hero/heroine in order to gain a physical form once again.
The Wild Card convinced the other four antagonists that they are decedents of the lost ancient magic civilization, but in actuality they are merely his pawns, and they also possess magic that the Wild Card will need in order to regain his body.
Now, as anyone who was in the Lets Build a Story Together panel can attest, this story grew to become much bigger than anyone originally intended. I do not think it will reach novel length, but this is going to be a pretty epic tale.
So, what I will be posting here is the rough draft of the opening scene. Since it is an action story, I decided to drop the reader right in the middle of everything. There is still a lot to reveal (pretty much everything about Richard hasn't even been mentioned yet) but I hope you enjoy what you see so far. More will be coming...
THE QUEST FOR THE RETURN OF THE PEE PEE
(Working Title, not final)
By Spencer Stoner
(based on input from the Lets Build a Story Together panel at SNAFU Con 2016)
The figure dressed head to toe in white stepped around the rubble. His pale pant legs peeked out from his long colorless coat with each step, only to disappear again as he maneuvered deeper into the room.
Stray sparks of electricity popped to life from the ends of newly exposed wiring that used to be encased in the now nonexistent wall. The building was trying to keep the power on but the damage inside was too severe. It was like trying to save a man by transfusing his life's blood from one artery to another again and again only to find the adjacent vein severed every time.
The mask over the individual's nose and mouth pressed tightly against his face as he inhaled, the smell of ozone strong in the destroyed lab. The fabric stretched, as much as it could, when he exhaled with a heavy sigh.
"Sam, do not tell me that Hearthstone killed everyone," he idly kicked at the limp hand of the deceased scientist at his feet, "again."
A woman stepped out from the adjacent room at the sound of her name. Each piece of clothing she wore was some shade of red, although the palest hue (belonging to the silk scarf around her neck) was flirting with pink. Unlike the loose, almost floating scarf, the rest of Sam's wardrobe bordered on skintight.
Except for her boots, they had large, clunky soles. They didn't even fit her red color scheme. They were black, although that could have been from the burning debris the man was being so careful to avoid. Thankfully, the potential fashion faux pas was alleviated by Sam's equally dark hair that just brushed over her shoulders.
If the man had been mortal, he would have likely described the woman as "beautiful". Mathematically, Sam's facial features were infinitesimally close to the being perfectly symmetrical. But she wasn't standing around to let him inspect her closely, in fact the woman immediately turned in his direction as she entered the room.
While Sam was walking toward the man in white, the woman in red was not looking at him. Her attention was focused on the mere human wrapped under her arm.
"Not from lack of trying, Queensknee." Sam responded. "But it seems he missed one this time."
"My soul is absolutely aflutter with the joyous news." Queensknee adjusted the brim of the pale fedora on his head to be almost as flat as the tone of his voice.
Sam tightened the grip of her thin arm around the almost as thin neck of her prisoner to force her prisoner to look in the man in white's direction. The human was asymmetrical, although she could have been described as attractive in a nonlinear fashion, he supposed.
Her glasses, with one lens cracked in a pattern that resembled that of a crumbling planetoid, magnified her blue eyes. Queensknee figured that enlargement was the source of whatever attraction this woman was able to project.
Because, otherwise, she had nothing that any artisan would want to immortalize in marble or watercolor. He could only hope that her mind held her true appeal. That being the information that he wanted now, of course.
Queensknee bent slightly at the knee and waist to lower his masked face to the level of the woman in the headlock. "I trust that you realize that resisting us is a truly poor idea?"
"Y-yes." She squeaked her answer.
The man smiled behind his mask, not that she could tell. Good. The woman had a basic survival instinct, at least. Now to see if she had good sense.
"Then you will tell us the location of the Kwisatz Haderach."
Despite the obvious pain in the prisoner's neck, she stared back at Queensknee blankly.
He let out a displeased sigh. "The glass box that glowed on one side?"
"Oh." The woman frowned back. "Richard has it."
"And who, pray tell," Queensknee pressed a gloved finger under the prisoner's chin, pulling her face towards his to ensure that he had her full attention. "is Richard?"
That is the opening gambit for our tale. Everyone in the panel can tell that we have a LONG way to go!
You know what? Another participant said that she wanted to write her own version of this story based on the decisions we all made. I hope she sees this and decides to share with the rest of us!
You want to create your own? All the notes are in the previous post. I would love to see what you come up with!
And keep an eye out! You can find out what happens next in my version this coming Friday (October 21)!
A Taste of Things to Come
I have just returned from a great time at SNAFU Con. I ran a panel there called "Lets Build a Story Together".
Now, the plan was that the participants would decide every, and I do mean every, element of a story that I would write for them. A first draft for, at least, the elements that we were able to get to will be here on Friday. (I gave the participants a chance to e-mail any last minute ideas they wanted to add.)
Here are the elements for our story that were all decided upon:
First, it will be written in third person. I told you that EVERY element would be decided on.
It will be an action-filled sci-fi story with fantasy elements (and some dark humor, if I can do it right). The depiction will be of a roughly PG-13 level, so no graphic details of the damage caused by, shall we say, visceral violence or, um, hentai level lovin'.
The main character's name is Richard. He is an intern who is an introvert and, physically, about as average one could be. Through the events of the story, Richard will become more assertive and principled.
Physically, he has brown hair and eyes and an average build. In fact, the only distinctive feature Richard has is a birthmark on the back of his left hand.
Richard is on a quest to restore himself back to his original state. You see, he was the victim of an unfortunate side effect from a scientific experiment on magic that changed him from a male to a woman. This quest will, perhaps, lead to the discovery of why magic exists in their world.
He won't be alone in his quest to "restore his pee pee". Richard will have a team of five scientists with him. In fact, one of them will be in love with him. Unfortunately, we didn't have a chance to decide on her name.
The setting for this tale is a modern city with some ancient, magical ruins outside of the town. The city is a colony on a planet long removed from Earth.
As I mentioned before, the participants had a chance to e-mail any additional elements they wanted. Those won't be listed here but I will note them on the post of the rough draft.
This is going to be interesting...
How Often Should One Post On Their Blog?
I've been making a point of being more active on the interwebs once I became a "professional" writer. I make sure to post a special "Wisdom of Ophelia" once a week on Twitter (and then Facebook and Tumblr) and share post that I like with my audience and audience in potentia.
While doing all this, I realized that I haven't actually posted anything here on my blog in a couple of months!
I didn't mean to ignore the blog. I guess I just haven't had anything to say that wasn't around the size of a tweet or a picture that I have drawn. I know that you can post pictures here but it doesn't seem, well, appropriate to just have pictures here.
I always thought of a blog as a place that you share ideas in a more detailed way. Now, I'm before I get into this next portion of my tirade, let me preface it by saying that I'm not saying that other blogs do what I am about to describe en masse. I'm not one for whining or reading a long rant about problems that aren't really problems but are because they make the writer annoyed and/or upset. Nor am I one who thinks that I have all the answers in regards to the problems in and of this world.
With all that being said. I wonder what a blog should talk about. I think the most opinionated post I have here is my defense of the video game Metroid: Other M. While I enjoy playing video games, I don't think most anyone would really care about my current game of the month.
Or maybe you do. Perhaps you take the opinion of other gamers over that of critics who seem to be bought a paid for by those they are supposed to be reviewing in an unbiased manner. But then, video games aren't something I devote 100% of my time to, either. I mean, I do have to take time to eat and write my books, short stories and draw some pictures, right?
So this blog can go all over the place when it comes to subject matter. That still begs the question of how often should one post before a blog becomes derelict?
Labels: amwriting, blogs, interactivity, Internet, internet presence, Metroid, questionable subject matter, video games
Story Excerpt (Star Wars Edition)
Are you a Star Wars fan? So am I!
I am such a big fan, in fact, that I write a serial for another Facebook page called The Star Wars Bash. (Feel free to check it out here:https://www.facebook.com/starwarsbash/)
In a belated celebration of George Lucas' birthday, I wanted to share part of the first story that I'm proud of in that galaxy far, far away that he created.
So here is an excerpt from the first episode of the first serial.
Anyway… Enjoy!
Excerpt from Ryotan is Only the Beginning, Episode One:
"Why do you keep such a neurotic droid around?" The woman asked out of genuine curiosity rather than any malevolence toward T-23. "He doesn't seem to match your personality at all."
The pilot laughed outright at that. "You know how many short circuits or malfunctions my ship has had since I got him? None. T-23 cares about the Icarus and doesn't stop checking up on her."
"Almost like he has a little crush?" Terra grinned.
"Oh, no." Aryl leaned back in his seat again. "I think it's outright infatuation."
Neither spoke for a short while, each enjoying the silence together before Terra finally sighed. "I can't wait to get back to Coruscant."
The pilot arched an eyebrow over at the Jedi Knight. "T-23 is annoying you that much?"
"No." The twi'lek straightened in her seat. "When I get back, I'm getting my first Padawan apprentice. He's the same species as Master Yoda."
"Understandable." Aryl turned for a moment to press a few buttons. "I'm anxious to get back myself."
"Why's that?"
"Queen Amidala is getting sworn in as a Senator soon. What Noobian would want to miss that?" Aryl smiled.
Terra smiled back, relaxing into her chair. While the pilot had been living on Coruscant for years, at least according to his records, he still had a sense of pride in his place of birth, the planet Naboo.
Terra herself was born on Coruscant but, once she became a Padawan as a child, only returned rarely to the planet. Even then she spent most of her time in the Jedi Temple until it was time for her Master and herself to leave for their next assignment. She didn't feel that same pride Aryl did, and wondered about that feeling of… connection.
The twi'lek watched the stars stream by in silence, stealing occasional looks over at Aryl, who busied himself with piloting the ship. Neither spoke, they didn't feel the need.
Once, when she looked over at Aryl yet again, she caught him stealing a glance at her, just as she had been doing. She blushed, her cheeks turning a dark green, when the sheepish look on his face reminded the woman of what Aryl said to Gingi the engineer about twi'leks when she first hired their ship…
"Hey, Aryl! Can you hear me up there?" Gingi's baritone voice popped over the comm.
With a flick of the switch, Aryl responded. "Yeah, I hear you Calamari-boy. What's up?"
"Could one of you come back here and collect T-23?" Both Aryl and Terra had to stifle chuckles. "He's messing with my engines again."
Suddenly the ship lurched as if it had hit a wall! The human clamped his hands around the edge of the console to keep from being thrown into the cockpit's viewing port. The Force kept the Jedi from reeling out of her seat, but only just. The momentum threw her head tails forward and back, giving her a slap on the cheek on their return.
"What happened back there, Gingi?" Aryl's brow furrowed as looked over the instrument panel.
"I don't know!" The Mon Calamari's voice betrayed how uneasy he felt.
Terra glanced out at the stars as she rose from her seat… and they weren't there. Outside the ship was only blackness, no points of light or any hint that they had even been there.
"I'm going back to see what I can do." Terra hopped to her feet.
Want to find out what happens next? And, perhaps check out all three story arcs, you can find them here :
https://starwarsbash.wordpress.com/page/3/
#star wars#jedi#twi'lek#lightsaber#droid#scifi#action adventure
Postcards from Honua #3 (short excerpt from Ophelia and Lyan are Dead Meat)
Continuing my feature that shares bits and bobbins from my stories, I decided to showcase another part from my first novel (and currently only but the second is on its way!), Ophelia and Lyan are Dead Meat:
Skeletons weren't exactly known to have supernatural strength. Hopefully having nothing but sinew holding them together would make them more brittle and they could get through before the air power and behemoths could reach. Ophelia slashed for the neck of the nearest skeleton holding a torch and a longsword.
The undead creature's head flew from its shoulders and she started for the next. The first didn't fall, though, and chopped for the woman's neck much like she had to it.
Ophelia ducked under the strike. When she looked back up at the skeleton warrior, she saw the undead being place the flame from the torch in its hand at the base of its neck, as if it was going to light it like another torch.
It worked. The monster tossed the now extinguished length of wood to the ground and its skull was now replaced by what looked like a demon's head sculpted in fire! It reared back and shrieked its displeasure at Ophelia.
"Okay... panicking is looking like a better idea now." She said before bringing Havarti down on the creature again.
Want to see what happens next? (Or what happened to lead up to that?) You can pick up Ophelia and Lyan are Dead Meat in paperback or ebook formats here:
http://bit.ly/1HYjNSH
#swordandsorcery #fantasy #mythicalcreatures #undead#strongfemalecharacters #writing #books #novels
Postcards from Honua #2: Girl Talk
I thought it would be fun to post another excerpt from one of my stories. This one again stars Ophelia and Lyan Yo Bunpy (who are also the main characters of my novel Ophelia and Lyan are Dead Meat which is available here.) but is a completely different story.
If you came here via the link from my website, www.authorspencerstoner.com, you may have already read this short story, entitled Girl Talk (riiight?). But for those of you who haven't (shame on you! It's just a simple click on the previous sentence. You can do it!), here's a little taste of the story that is exclusive to my site. Please enjoy!
Lyan looked as if she'd been asked some kind of riddle. Her brown eyes locked onto Ophelia as if she was trying to find some clue.
Then the Bunny Barbarian sighed and, sure that the answer she was about to give was wrong, she said, "You are an attractive woman."
Ophelia nodded. "Thanks, the guys whose eyes make it to my face seem to think so, too. What about the ones who don't look at my face?"
"Don't look at your face?" Lyan muttered then came to a realization. "They keep looking at your chest. There is rarely much covering it."
The barbarian pointed just where she mentioned. She looked proud of herself that she had figured out the answer to which the mercenary was trying to guide her.
Ophelia pointed right back at Lyan's chest. "Your top is covering even less and those are even bigger than mine."
The Bunny Barbarian's face slowly turned insulted. Not at Ophelia, at least not directly, but at the memory of all the men who failed to make eye contact with her. She had taken it as a compliment previously, assuming they were simply in awe of a warrior of her reputation (word of the battle prowess of her tribe had spread wide, thanks in no small measure to her efforts over the years). Now, realizing that they only saw her as a piece of meat...
Not long but what postcard is? You can find the rest on my new website and find other fun freebies there, too!
Why are you still here? The post's over.
Go (check out some other posts while your here. :) )...
An Interview to Celebrate the Launch of my New Site!
Hi there! My name is Spencer Stoner. I'm the author of Ophelia and Lyan are Dead Meat. In celebration of the launch of my website, www.authorspencerstoner.com, I thought I would try something a little different. You know how, in interviews, the one asking the questions asks the writer things like "where do you find your inspiration?" or "do you have a system for picking names for characters?" (I do. Two, in fact, but that is another article).
Instead of that, I am going to interview the main characters of Dead Meat. That's right! We are going to get answers straight from the mouths of the actual participants of the story! Let's begin, shall we?
To set the stage, I'm in a simple room with the two ladies. The walls are mortared stone, there are several plants in each corner to make it a little more, well, cheery, I guess. Outside the window, the sky is gray but it doesn't look like its about to rain or anything.
As for Ophelia, she's sitting (or more like slouching) in her seat, resting her chin in her hand as she waits for me to speak. Lyan is sitting with nigh-impeccable posture, although she looks less eager to be there than her compatriot.
Spencer: "First, I really appreciate you taking the time to speak to me today, Ophelia and Lyan."
Ophelia: "Of course. I just wish that you had provided some beer or something."
Spencer: "Yeah, sorry about that but I don't drink. It didn't even occur to me to bring anything like that."
Ophelia: Sighs.
Lyan: "Do not be disgruntled, Ophelia. We will not linger here too long. We do have more important matters that require our attention."
S: "Why are you in such a rush? I thought you had, you know, taken care of the problem already."
O: "You really think that we only have one major problem at a time? That's a pretty simplistic way of thinking. What kind of writer are you?"
S: "Err... I guess you're right. Sorry again."
Lyan: "So many apologies are a sign of weakness."
S: "Sor- I'll try to remember that. Are we ready to start the interview proper?"
O: "Sure."
L: "Very well."
S: "The first question is for both of you. It's a pretty simple one. Who are you?"
O: "My name is Ophelia."
L: "I am Lyan Yo Bunpy of the Yo Bunpy Tribe of Bunny Barbarians fairing from the Land of the Long Toothed Rabbit."
(Note: Lyan's name is pronounced Lee-an, not like lion, as the spelling would imply. I know, it's weird but proper names seem to not have to follow the standard rules of pronunciation and spelling in the English language. Of course, we can always blame the one who translated it from the Honuan languages but that would be... rude.)
S: "No, that's not what I mean. I already know your names. What I want to know is who you are."
O: "I thought you said this was a simple question."
S: "It isn't?"
O: "Would you find it easy to answer a question like that?"
L: "Perhaps you do not realize that simple is not synonymous with easy."
S: Sighs. "You're right. I'm so- sure you can give us a little, I don't know, a little overview of how you see yourself?"
O: "Yeah, sure. I'm a mercenary, a sword-for-hire. A pretty good one, too."
S: "And you like fighting for the highest bidder rather than something you believe in?"
O: "I didn't say that. I don't just fight for the highest bidder. That's more of a prostitution frame of mind and I know you're not calling me a prostitute, are you?"
S: "No, no. Of course not."
L: "Ophelia is a noble warrior who often fights alongside myself and my people. When it is just she and I, it is often not for money."
S: "So what about you, Lyan? You've told us your lineage but not about you."
L: "What more do you want to know?"
S: "More about you, not your people."
L: "Very well." Long pause. "I am one of very few female warriors among my tribe."
O: "More like the only female warrior in your tribe."
L: "You forget that my mother is a warrior."
O: "She had to leave the tribe to do that."
L: "But she is returned now."
O: "I wouldn't call overnight visits with Corthek every fortnight returned, Lyan."
L: "...Right."
S: "Um... Corthek is your father, right?"
L: "Yes. But I thought that you wanted to know about me."
S: "True. I just wanted to clarify for people reading this later. Let's move on and see if we can get back to answering a few questions. Ophelia, you're a mercenary who fights for who you want rather than who has the most money. But what is your ultimate goal in life?"
O: "Boy, you do ask all the easy questions, don't you?"
S: "To be honest, I'm using a guide to questions I should ask from another article I read."
O: "Oookaaay... I can't say that I have an ultimate goal. I mostly just want to have a soft bed, a healthy dose of booze and maybe a warm body to go in the bed with at night."
S: "Pretty simple if... morally ambivalent goals, I guess."
O: "What do you mean by that?"
S: "I guess I'm kind of old fashioned. I'm kind of a type that's more into having a committed relationship. I'm not big on having a different partner every night."
L: "Do you not feel that is rather judgmental?"
S: "I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying that it's not my philosophy when it comes to relationships."
O: "It's not mine, either."
Both Lyan and I look at Ophelia with surprised looks on our faces.
O: "I didn't say that I wanted a relationship with whatever warm body was in the bed with me. I'm not saying that I'm not open to having a relationship. I just haven't had one outside of the one I have with Lyan and a handful of other people."
S: "You mean that you and Lyan have..."
O: "I didn't say that. I said that I have a relationship with her. Get your mind out of the gutter!"
L: "By that standard, I have not had a relationship in some while, myself."
S: "Listen, I didn't mean to make this conversation devolve into a discussion of your sex lives. I'm just trying to give the readers a feel for who you both are as people."
O: "Well, sex is part of being a person but I get your point."
L: "As do I. As for my goals, my people believe that I am destined to destroy the Great Evil. Unfortunately, we have yet to uncover where it is hiding."
O: "Scouting around for information is one of the contracts I take with regularity."
S: "You take money from your friend's family to wander around and get information about something as ambiguous as a Great Evil?"
O: "A girl's gotta eat."
L: "And we are willing to aid her as she had aided us in the past."
S: "Point taken. Maybe now would be a good time to change the subject. If people were to read your life stories or, for instance, the story of the events of your recent encounter with the Lytyl Tribe and Perrett, what would you want them to know?"
L: "That was a fine battle. It had powerful ramifications throughout the countryside. It even created a new political force that will undoubtedly change the face of the continent in years to come. A warrior can usually only dream that their struggles could lead to such events occurring in their lifetime."
O: "I don't mean to disagree with Lyan here but she does like to gloss over the things we lost thanks to that (I apologize to those who prefer to have every word written out but, Ophelia's description of Perrett was a little more, um, colorful than I was comfortable printing here.) ...and I hope it falls off."
S: "So it's fair to say that you have strong feelings about what happened."
O: "You could say that. While we're on the topic, I feel that the Lytyl can (Sorry again. I'll just give you this brief synopsis of her... passionate opinion of the svartalfar*: Ophelia feels that those she dealt with within the Lytyl Tribe were duplicitous, underhanded and generally dishonest in their dealings with her and Lyan.) ...after they spank the horse."
(Note: *The svartalfar are elves that, long ago, moved into tunnels and caverns deep underground. As the centuries passed, their skin has absorbed a lot of the carbon in the fertile soil around them to make their skin colors range from gray to obsidian black.)
S: "Thank you, Ophelia for that... honest assessment of your feelings. I think I've held you two ladies up long enough. Be safe in your future adventures and I hope that we can do this again sometime."
O: "You want to get yourself alone with two attractive women again? And I'm the morally ambiguous one?"
S: "I didn't mean it in the warm bodies in a bed way!"
O: "Of course not. But I do expect to have one in my bed tonight and I have a feeling that you are the one that can make that happen."
S: "I'll... see what I can do. No guarantees, mind you."
L: "Does that mean that you may provide me with a better sharpening stone?"
S: "That would be... easier."
I hope you enjoyed reading my conversation with Ophelia and Lyan. I have to admit that it so didn't go the way I thought it would. Anyway, my novel, Ophelia and Lyan are Dead Meat is available in paperback and e-book formats here: bit.ly/1HYjNSH
Posted by Unknown at 9:46 AM 1 comment:
Fun Facts About Honua:
The world on which Ophelia and Lyan live, called Honua, isn't earth in the ancient past or extreme future. It is an entirely separate world.
Case in point, Honua doesn't have a "leap year". The closest equivalent that they do have is called the "Longest Day". Every four or five years, there is one day where, just as the sun starts to set, another starts to rise. So the entire world has a full day and a half of sun before darkness actually falls again.
It's difficult to predict just when it will happen precisely, but it does consistently occur in that four to five year window. Both those factors make it a popular but elusive astrological phenomena to try and tie to rituals or energy manipulation required for the most powerful spells.
This is, of course, only one of many of the differences of Honua and this world. While it does have a lot of elements that fans of fantasy will recognize but there are so many more that are completely new. I'll be mentioning or showcasing various elements here and, of course, in my novels and other works. Please keep an eye out!
Postcards from Honua #3 (short excerpt from Opheli...
An Interview to Celebrate the Launch of my New Sit...


text:
SVOFFICE 5/GTGeotechnical Modeling
SVDESIGNER 3D Conceptual Modeler
SVSLOPE LEM Slope Stability
SVSEISMIC FE Earthquake Analysis
SVSOILS Soil Property Database
SVFLUX GT FE Seepage
SVSOLID GT FE Stress / Deformation
SVOFFICE 5/WRHydrogeological Modeling
SVFLUX WR CVFE Seepage
SVHEAT WR CVFE Geothermal
SVOFFICE 5/GEGeoEnvironmental Modeling
SVFLUX GE FE Seepage
SVHEAT GE FE Freeze/Thaw Modeling
SVCHEM GE FE Contaminant Transport
SVAIR GE FE Pore-Air Flow
SV ExtrasMore Good Stuff
VIP Upgrade Your All-Access Pass
Academic Use For Teaching/Research
SVHEAVE Heave Calculator
Vol. Mass Calculator Free Utility
Textbooks Expand your knowledge
Success Stories Real-World Applications
Promotions Check our our latest deals!
Dams and Levees
Reinforced Walls and Slopes
Infrastructure (Roads, Bridges and Embankments)
Landslide Risk Analysis
Foundation Excavation and Settlement
Climate Change and Arctic Engineering
Regulator Policy
Classroom Edition
The Fredlund Files
Our Customer Philosophy
This section highlights instances where our software has been used by geotechnical consultants to provide their clients with rigorous numerical modeling solutions. Our mandate is service first. We are in the software business for the long term and our first priority is to ensure that your modeling experience is a successful one. To that end, we are constantly researching and developing new solutions to ensure that our software is both powerful yet easy to use – this allows your focus to remain on the primary objective of creating a successful model.
Below is a comprehensive list of success stories and testimonials from our valued customers using our software in real applications around the world. Please enjoy...
List of articles in category Success Stories
SVSOILS™ used by Shiraz University to study ongoing and past studies on unsaturated soils	 18 October 2018
SVAIR™GE Used in Environmental Consulting Project to Support a Landfill Post-Closure Development in the San Francisco Bay Area	 05 March 2018
SVSLOPE® utilized for clay slopes research project	 16 February 2018
Far-Field Ground Strain Failure Mode Assessment for Mineral Extraction Near Dams using SVSOLID™	 11 July 2017
SVSLOPE® 3D applied to Tailings Impoundment Facility	 20 February 2017
"I would like to thank you for all the support and the interest that I got from your team regarding this matter. I was able to successfully finish my project with the help of your technical support and managed to graduate achieving a high grade on the project I did. The software is extremely helpful and wasn't complicated and I look forward to future for more work and experience with your software. Thank you for your help and support."
Abdul Hadi Ahmad Al Klaib
Student at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET)
"I have been using SoilVision's SVOFFICE™ software for research and training purposes for a number of years now. Myself and my colleagues have developed a number of training modules in this software, and have been using these to teach limit equilibrium and flow modeling to undergraduate students in the civil, environmental and mining engineering streams.
In my opinion, this software is easy to learn and fun to use. The built-in tutorials are sufficient to get one started. With these tutorials, my students were generally able to complete their analyses with minimal involvement on my side.
Based on my own experience, it takes around a month of full-time use to become reasonably competent with the software (provided that one understands the theoretical underpinnings of this type of analysis) - a short learning curve, compared to other products of similar complexity. The interface is intuitive enough for me to figure out things on my own, and I rarely had the need to ask for help.
I don't generally like praising anything excessively, and I don't post particularly glowing reviews for anything. Having said that, I must mention the SoilVision support. At some point during my research, I was conducting a number of replication studies for my thesis. In that period, I must have emailed SoilVision's support anywhere from 2 to 5 times a day, with fairly complex (and sometimes very dumb) questions. I always got a response by the end of the day, and a resolution within a couple days at most. In a number of urgent cases (such as during a tutorial session with a classroom of students) I called them directly on the phone and, with senior product engineers involved, had the issue addressed in minutes."
Elena Zabolotnii, PEng MEng
PhD Candidate, Geotechnical Engineering at University of Alberta
"We have allowed our students the choice of using multiple Geotechnical software suites in our Dam Design and other Geotechnical courses. Our students consistently gravitate towards SoilVision software as being the most modern and user-friendly."
Gilson Gitirana Jr.
Associate Professor at Federal University of Goiás
"I've been a geotechnical engineer for more than 25 years and SoilVision has the best tech support I have ever worked with. I truly appreciate their patience and help over the past year."
Principal Engineer at Ninyo & Moore
"Peter Brett Associates have been looking to update our existing slope stability software over the last year. After extensive research and trials, SVSLOPE® developed by SoilVision Systems Ltd. was found to meet all our existing and future design requirements. Its ease of use for modeling simple as well as complex geological and geometrical problems was a critical factor in our assessment as well as the incorporation of design to the Eurocodes. Their customer support has been faultless and their willingness to develop the software to meet our own specific design requirements is a most gratifying added bonus."
"We love the fact that SVSLOPE® is part of an integrated suite of software and that, if required, 3D analysis can be undertaken. We would recommend this product to other geotechnical consulting firms."
Asmi Desai
Principal Engineer at Peter Brett Associates LLP
"We have been using SVSLOPE® and SVFLUX™ for the past year and have found them to be efficient and productive engineering tools which have allowed us to offer our services in an efficient manner. The capability of automated increased discretization of the mesh is an absolute benefit to our modeling, reducing time and effort. We have found the software quick and easy for our engineers to train and utilize. I would recommend this product to other geotechnical consulting firms."
Barry L. Carlson, P.E.
President at InTerraLogic
"The software is well documented and comes with number of useful example models. We were able to quickly begin creating models after a short review of the user interface and going through the available on-line webinars. The software offers solid benefits of less conservatism and the ability to model real geometry."
Steven A. Haire, P.E.
Chief Geotechnical Engineer at Ninyo & Moore
"This new software for stability analysis includes a number of state-of-the-art options for probabilistic slope stability analysis. This feature, combined with comprehensive deterministic analyses, will provide new opportunities to build confidence in the results of a site-specific analysis."
Prof. Dirk van Zyl, Ph.D., P.E.
Professor of Mine Life Cycle Systems at University of British Columbia
"I'm excited to see the release of this new and innovative product. I look forward to and encourage the application of this software on additional geotechnical projects."
Prof. Ward Wilson, Ph.D., P.Eng.
Mining Chair at University of British Columbia
"In consulting engineering practice, I am increasingly made aware of the important and beneficial role that modeling the unsaturated soil zone can play in providing the client with the best possible engineered solution. The SoilVision software has made it possible to readily estimate and incorporate unsaturated soil properties into the modeling of saturated / unsaturated soil systems."
Del Fredlund, O.C., Ph.D., P.Eng.
Senior Project Engineer at Golder Associates
"The use of SVSLOPE® software as part of a research project on clay slopes under seismic conditions with the Université de Sherbrooke has been incredibly easy and effective. The continuation of this research with SoilVision is promising, with technical support, which was present at the right time, as well as a passionate geotechnical team supporting the project."
Jonathan Mole
Master's student in Civil Engineering at Université de Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada
Our industry defining software will change the game for your firm
Latest Software Features
Become a Beta-tester
© 1997 SoilVision Systems Ltd. All Rights Reserved.


text:
Term Paper > Term Paper Topics > Good Term Paper Topics > Term Paper on Urban Renewal
Term Paper on Urban Renewal
In theory, urban renewal is any effort to direct city planning toward the improvement of the physical infrastructure. In practice, in the United States it has often meant the seizing of "blighted" property by the federal government and its redevelopment by private enterprise, underwritten by federal grants or loans. Many of the largest public works that shape urban landscapes are urban renewal initiatives, including expressways, bridges, parks, stadiums, and housing projects. While urban renewal promised better low-income housing and citywide improvements to slow "white flight" to the suburbs, its execution remains controversial. Critics charge that renewal projects further marginalize the poor and minorities and destroy communities while subsidizing facilities for the upper classes. Public housing projects—a keystone of urban renewal—are today almost universally seen as a failure and are being torn down. Their destruction symbolizes changes in approach to urban renewal, where structural rehabilitation and selective demolition are now favored over wholesale "slum clearance."
The Early Stages of Urban Renewal
By the mid-1800s many Western cities that expanded rapidly during the industrial revolution were replete with dilapidated and dangerous buildings. Entire neighborhoods had become slums, with overcrowded and deteriorating homes lacking basic facilities such as plumbing. These predominantly immigrant and minority areas were epicenters of crime and delinquency. Narrow streets made garbage collection difficult and were a fire hazard. In the first modern instance of what would later be called "slum clearance," between the 1850s and 1870s, Baron Haussmann destroyed many poor neighborhoods in Paris and replaced them with wide boulevards, parks, plazas, and new houses. He also installed sewage systems, streetlights, and other modern amenities.
In late 19th-century America, social reformers like Jacob Riis argued that the immorality of slum inhabitants resulted from the physical degradation of their environment. Thus, reformers promoted improved living conditions and the creation of settlement houses, which would act as the social and recreational center of a neighborhood and provide social services. Riis argued that such improvements would compel slum dwellers to become responsible citizens. Although some settlements and housing laws were initiated as a result, a 1929 government survey of 64 cities found that 15.6 percent of all dwellings needed major structural repairs and only 37.7 percent were in "good" condition. By the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt's depression-era presidential inauguration, conditions had worsened. Roosevelt declared that one third of the nation lacked proper nourishment, clothing, and housing. His establishment of the Federal Housing Authority marked the nation's first foray into government-sponsored slum clearance and low-rent public housing.
The Housing Act of 1949 allocated federal loans and grants for slum clearance and redevelopment; utilizing a wide interpretation of "public interest," the government authorized property seizure for private redevelopment under eminent domain. Often, the land was resold to developers who constructed higher-priced housing. The money designated for finding satisfactory housing for those evicted was minimal, with the frequent result that slum dwellers were merely relocated to other slums. Additionally, slum-razing left a dearth of low-rent units, instigating a housing crisis for the poor.
Urban Renewal Projects
In an effort to eradicate slums, the government embarked on a massive program to construct public housing projects for the poor across urban America. A low-income ceiling was enforced for admission; those with a higher income were refused or evicted. These "projects," usually placed in depressed areas where private developers were unwilling to invest, concentrated large numbers of buildings and people in a "superblock" that disrupted the street grid. This application of Le Corbusier's modernist "garden city" plan resulted in giant concrete and brick towers placed on large tracts of land left otherwise undeveloped ostensibly to provide open space for recreation. One of the biggest such projects was Chicago's Robert Taylor Homes. Completed in 1962, the complex contained 27,000 people in 28 high-rise buildings that collectively occupied only 7 percent of the land. Projects funneled some of the city's poorest residents—usually minorities—into buildings that were often surrounded by ghettoes, barren land, or highways.
Large-Scale Urban Renewal
The scope of urban renewal projects reached its broadest during the era of Robert Moses in New York City. From the 1930s to the 1960s, Moses—as the city park commissioner, construction coordinator, and planning commissioner—seized on the opportunities made possible by the Housing Act of 1949 more than any other entity in the country, spending twice as much federal money as all other U.S. cities combined in 1957. Every expressway in New York but one was built by Moses, in addition to seven major bridges, 416 miles of parkways, venues such as the Lincoln Center and Shea Stadium, and large-scale middle-income housing developments like Stuyvesant Town. He increased the number of playgrounds from 119 to 777 and also developed a network of state parks. By 1968 the total cost of urban renewal projects personally conceived and executed by Moses had reached $27 billion.
The Human Toll of Urban Renewal
Moses's projects required slum clearance on an unprecedented scale, including the eviction of 500,000 people and the erasure of dozens of neighborhoods. As is the case around the country, many of the evicted were minorities, and the new housing was beyond their means. Thus the benefits of such projects went disproportionately to nonpoor whites, while institutionalized discrimination practically forced minorities and the poor into other slums or, increasingly, into projects.
One infamous slum clearance was the leveling of Boston's West End in 1959-60, which evicted over 20,000 poor residents. Hoping to revitalize downtown, luxury apartments were built, along with a shopping center and a new government complex. Few resources were provided for those displaced by the bulldozer. In the razing of the West End, critics saw the destruction not only of homes but also of a social system that left psychological scars and grief reactions for years after displacement. Many West Enders landed in areas later slated for slum clearance, the majority wound up paying significantly more rent for their new dwellings, and the community dissolved as its members were dispersed throughout the city.
Public housing, saddled with the most disadvantaged Americans, isolated from white and middle-class areas of the city, and faced with constant funding cuts that ran especially deep during the Reagan era, was in crisis. Within only a few decades of their construction, most projects were over-run with crime and gang violence and were in such disrepair that they were deemed dangerous and even uninhabitable. Those living in projects seemed doomed to an environment of fear and despair, and activists argued that public housing was never given a chance to succeed, as it was given low priority and little funding.
Resistance and the End of an Era of Urban Renewal
Jane Jacobs spearheaded opposition to a downtown highway proposed by Moses in the 1960s and put forth her philosophical justification in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Jacobs and others contended that the "towers in the sky" and "superblocks," so central to urban renewal, destroy the social fabric and vitality of the city and thus are designed to fail. Increased protests against such public works, and the race riots and civil rights protests of the 1960-70s that were partially a reaction to segregation and slum clearance, forced the government to rethink urban renewal.
In 1995 the Chicago Housing Authority declared that the Robert Taylor Homes were uninhabitable and would be demolished. Across the United States, the towers that once symbolized hope and a promise to the underprivileged were now seen as failures and eyesores, and most cities began rapidly pulling them down. As cities relocated those displaced from the projects and the federal government contemplated a new approach for housing the poor, there evolved a near-consensus that large-scale, concentrated housing projects should never be built again. Many in Boston lament the vibrant West End that was lost, and city planners seem to have learned from failed experiments with large-scale slum clearance and public housing projects to focus instead on redevelopment and rehabilitation, selective demolition, and vouchers to subsidize the relocation of the poor to middle-class areas.
Many recent urban renewal schemes focus on commercial development and sports arenas. Baltimore's downtown baseball stadium—built over a rail yard in 1992—is credited with revitalizing the area. Other cities have scrambled to construct downtown arenas, often couching them in larger mixed-use projects that broaden their appeal. One of the most ambitious examples is Brooklyn's proposed Atlantic Yards. The $3.5 billion plan calls for building a basketball arena, yet it also includes affordable and market-rate housing, a park, hotel, retail shops, and office buildings. As with urban renewal in decades past, the project's backers argue that it will revitalize a downtrodden area, while opponents claim thousands of lives will be destroyed by the bulldozer. The rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 is also testing the government's commitment to more equitable urban renewal, as debates rage over what to do with the many displaced poor black residents and whether to rebuild their lost neighborhoods.
Colin Jerolmack
Bellush, Jewell. 2000. Urban Renewal: People, Politics, and Planning. New York: Doubleday.
Caro, Robert A. [1974] 2006. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. New York: History Book Club.
Gans, Herbert. 1962. Urban Villagers. New York: Free Press. Jacobs, Jane. 1961. The Death and Life of Great American
Cities. New York: Modern Library. Venkatesh, Sudhir. 2000. American Project. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Free Term Paper on Video Games
Video games are an important entertainment industry and common leisure pursuit, played by people the world over. However, video games continue to be deeply controversial. Playing video games is often viewed as mainly the activity of adolescent boys, and games are seen as isolating and antisocial, creating a generation of socially dysfunctional and unfit children. […]
Free Term Paper on Fossil Fuels
In the understanding of the material world provided by physics, energy is defined as the ability to do work. Work in this sense means the displacement of an object ("mass") in the direction of a force applied to the object. In everyday life, we use the word energy more generally to indicate vitality, vigor, or […]
Free Term Paper on Sex-Offender Registries
Since 1996, federal, state, county, and municipal legislation has required convicted sex offenders to register with law enforcement agencies and has imposed escalating restrictions on the lives of the offenders. These expanding restrictions and the growing number of registered sex offenders, nearly 705,000 in the United States as of December 2009, have led some observers […]


text:
Home Forums Tournaments Events Calendar Results Interviews Writers Pictorials Newsletter FAQ's Contact Advertise About Us Rules Gammon Jargon BG Variants Tips History Past Champions Gammon Giants Site Map
GO TO WRITERS HOME
by Walter Trice - 11 July 2006
Countless games of backgammon are lost unnecessarily by players who simply do not try to win. As in everyday life, fortune favors those who expect it, plan for it, and welcome it when it arrives. The planning is the main thing, but it is impossible to plan for events that one has not already imagined.
Problem 1 shows Red in a situation that might look hopeless at first glance. Five checkers are stuck on the ace point behind a five-prime. Red's home board is not ready to contain a checker, if Red should be lucky enough to hit one. There's a very good chance that he will fail to roll an adequate amount of sixes quickly enough to avoid crashing his board. It looks like a gammon loss is on the way – perhaps even a backgammon. If Red jumps out with a six now, he is a favorite to get hit, and then every roll that he dances will make the dreaded triple-game loss more imminent.
So there is a great temptation to just give up on the possibility of actually winning the thing and play cautiously in the hope of minimizing the amount that will be lost. But this would be a big mistake. Red can win this game a full 22% of the time. He can also, if he so chooses, give away almost a third of his winning chances on this one move with a single pessimistic play.
Problem 1: Red to play 6-3.
The plan is as follows: Red will hit a blot at some point. Then either White will dance a few times or Red will have built a prime to imprison the hit checker. Red might have to resort to an attack – an attempt to keep the hit checker on the bar – but he would prefer to do the job with a prime. One reason for this is that he will likely still have some checkers to bring around from the far side of the board, so he will not want to leave himself with work to do on the near side Another reason is that with a prime he can permit White to keep moving destructively in his own home board, and perhaps pick up a second checker.
The plan absolutely dictates one play, which happens to be the right play. Red must avoid crashing, and he needs to make checkers available for prime-building: hence 24/18. For his prime he needs to make his five point: hence 8/5.
This particular play happens to have other advantages. Playing 24/15 would leave more shots and make it easier for White to get around Red's outfield blot if he should happen to miss it. And by staying on the 18 point, Red might get to follow it up with another six and actually make the point before White gets home. But these are relatively unnecessary considerations. The systematic optimist sees how he is going to win and makes the plays that are needed to make it happen.
Something like 24/18, 9/6, by the way, would be just silly. Red would presumably be thinking that he would hate to get hit on the five if he happened to hit a lucky shot in the outfield. But this is a much more remote possibility than immediately getting hit on the 18. If the first risk is worth taking then the second, which is far less likely to cost anything, must be worth taking too.
Is it justified to play this way, "against the odds"? Up to a point it is. As the underdog you have less to lose than your opponent, so risks are less serious than they look. Secondly, many players have an exaggerated fear of a gammon loss. The fact that losing a gammon is only half as bad as losing the game is hard to grasp intuitively, so to compensate it helps to focus more on the upside when playing from a weak position. Of course there are situations where the best policy is to pretty much give up on the game and try to save the gammon, but these are less common than the average player seems to think.
If Problem 1 was not quite desperate enough for you, you might enjoy Problem 2, which arose in a recent club tournament match of mine. It may look like Red has nothing, really, to think about or to do here, but I made a play which my opponent found more surprising than anything else I did in the entire match. (At any rate, it was the only one that he felt compelled to ask me to explain.)
At first I just pushed the point, 9/8*/7(2), but after looking at the result I took it back and played 9/8*(2) 4/3(2), which certainly has a more ragged look to it. Why make the alternative play?
Red hopes to roll some fours. If White stays on the bar then Red gains time for rolling fours, so Red would like to make more home board points. The problem with moving checkers to the seven is that sixes then send them to the ace, where they could never possibly contribute to making a new point. If sixes force me to blot after my play, that doesn't bother me much. I would often rather have a blot on the deuce, where it might become part of a point, than a dead checker on the ace, which could never be constructively useful.
It is extremely optimistic for Red to think he can move all four of his back checkers out while White remains on the roof. That might actually happen, but Red can be satisfied with a less dramatic result. If he just gets one or two checkers out then he improves his chances of winning the race later on, when White is bearing in and off. Also he will crash more slowly, which will give him a better chance to benefit from hitting a fluke shot at some point.
The Snowie rollout (at the end of this article) shows the top two plays to be nearly equal, with a tiny edge to my 9/8*(2), 4/3(2), though it is really still too close to call after 2000 trials. It seems that by far the most important part of the plan is to roll fours while White fans, and it is up to the Dice Gods to carry out that part. I am satisfied to find that making the common-sense active play didn't do any harm. Note that the top play gains wins and costs gammons, as is often the case with active winning plans. The still more active 9/8*/6, 5/4, which gains a builder for the three at the cost of a 3-6 shot, wins even more games, while losing more gammons. This might be correct at double match point (DMP). I had given the blotting plays little consideration over the board, thinking that it could not be right to take that much extra risk for a couple of point-making rolls when the resulting home board would probably just crash anyway. But #3 is much closer than I would have expected.
In Problem 3, Red had no particular cause for desperation before he rolled the dice. While 4-3 seems not to be worst, it is definitely in the bottom five. All reasonable plays leave either a double shot or a single shot (with extras) and two or three blots. Red is not well placed to attack, with only 8 men in or around his home board, three checkers back to two, and two home board points to four. Priming prospects don't look so hot either, at least not in the short term. What to do?
The natural tendency is to look for a play that is not too passive, not too committal, and that preserves as many of Red's assets as possible. We have all learned not to expect an attack to work under circumstances such as these. The right play probably hits one of White's blots, because the alternatives are passive without being safe. One would rather not play 6/2*, because starting the deuce is impure. But after 6/3*, 13/9 and 11/7 are too risky, so it looks like 6/2*, 11/8...
Except that there is another play. Red can hit both of White's blots with 6/2*, 6/3*. It is easy to overlook this, an apparent attacking play in what is not an attacking position. The attack will probably not succeed. On the other hand, it might. The double hit, though, happens to have a couple of things going for it in addition. First off, it holds all of Red's points. Second, the double hit gains time. If Red's blots are missed then he might be able to use the time gained to run his checker off the 23 point, going into a holding/racing game. But if one of Red's blots is hit, he might have an extra half-roll (or more) in which to roll a deuce and get a playable back game.
In Problem 4 above, the beginner hits both blots, because he believes that hitting blots is always good. The more advanced player realizes that (a) attacking is useless (in fact a closeout is fatal) with something trapped behind a full prime; that (b) his home board looks ugly, and if he tries to counter-prime White the effort will probably fail; and that (c) timing for an ace-point game is good, but if he does a lot of hitting he could just end up with a hopelessly busted ace-point game. So he calmly plays 8/5, 3/2, preparing for the hit that he hopes will come later on when White is bearing off.
Did you spot the fallacy in that "advanced" reasoning? Red dismissed the priming plan for the wrong reason. The question is not whether it ought to work, but whether it ought to work better than the alternative. Ace-point games don't work so well either. After hitting the two White blots Red will have 13 checkers to use for prime-building – enough for a full six-prime with one left over. White's timing will be almost all tied up in his two back checkers, so if they get blocked a couple of times White might crash even before Red can build a substantial prime.
One of Red's problems is that White has a five point board as well as a full prime. In building a prime of his own Red will have to take some risks – at least to the extent of leaving indirect shots in the outfield. The risks begin with White's possible immediate 5-5, which would be devastating. A single hit could easily get Red gammoned. This could be reason enough to avoid the try for a counter-prime, except for one thing. Red is so far down in the race that he is more likely to be gammoned if he sticks with the ace-point plan. 15/14*, 13/10* is best for the win, best to avoid a gammon loss, and best for a gammon win.
Here are the rollouts for the positions above:
Click here to return to Walter Trice's section
Copyright © 2006-2011 by GammonLife.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be broadcast, published, re-written, or re-distributed in any form.


text:
CBCI Goes to the Estonian Food Fair
When you think of Estonian cuisine – if you think of it at all – you probably imagine hearty foods like sauerkraut, jellied meat and blood sausage. But what do you really know about Estonia and its food culture? We decided to go to Tallinn and take a closer look at the Estonian Food Fair. Held at the popular (and easily accessible by bus) Song Festival Grounds during the first week of May, the fair is the biggest culinary attraction in the country with about 500 exhibitors and 100,000 visitors over two days.
Half of Estonia's territory is covered with forests and one third with farmland, which is why the country has an abundance of agricultural and horticultural crops and livestock products, as well as wild berries, mushrooms and game. The chefs of the new generation are seeking ways to transform Estonia's traditional nourishing and simple peasant cuisine, starting with a seasonal approach.
The spring brings rhubarb, wild garlic, sour dock, radishes and fresh goat cheese to the table. Summer favorites include fresh potatoes accompanied with a salad made of cottage cheese, tomato and cucumber, or chanterelle sauce or fish. Summer and autumn is when wild berries ripen – strawberries, raspberries, bilberries, lingonberries, cranberries, cloudberries, sea-buckthorn berries and gooseberries. During our visit, we sampled a local dish of fresh strawberries as large as your palm topped with "Kohupiimakreem" quark, a milky curd cheese mixed with sugar, vanilla and whipping cream, served with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and wildflower honey.
The early winter hunting season brings elk meat, roe deer meat, wild boar meat and even bear meat to the table. The winter introduces long-cooked roasts and casseroles with wild mushrooms. The traditional pea, bean or cabbage soup with smoked meat, pearl barley and pork braised with sauerkraut (Mulgi kapsas) or potatoes (Mulgi puder) are no longer common everyday meals, but they are still prepared every now and then during the winter.
We liked the braised elk roast with cauliflower cream, parsnip, carrot and blackcurrant sauce at Rataskaevu16.
But Estonians also love fish (and if you've been reading my blog, you know I do too) including white fish, flatfish, perch, sprat and Baltic herring – the national fish of Estonia – which was once considered the cheap food of the common people but has now made its way to restaurant menus. Gourmands can take pleasure in roasted and marinated lamprey, and marinated eel and eel soup are served as delicacies. One of our favorite dishes was the fried Baltic herring in homemade marinade, cottage cheese and mushroom salad at Kaerajaan in Tallinn's Old Town Square.
If you like herring, Tallinn is the perfect city for you. Not only can you find it on restaurant menus, but every supermarket stocks a wide array of fresh, frozen, dried, canned and jarred varieties. Our favorites were herring in sour cream and "sill", sweet-sour pickled herring soaked in vinegar spiked with sugar, spices, and aromatics that we first tasted in Sweden. Often served atop crisp bread with chopped red onion and chives, sill is a mainstay on Nordic breakfast and lunch buffets. Though it comes in many varieties, it's actually quite easy to make at home.
Perhaps one of the most surprising offerings at the Estonian Food Fair was the selection of Mediterranean-style food, particularly kebabs and paella. In Estonia, the kebabs are prepared primarily from veal though pork, chicken, lamb and beef are popular options. For us, grilled hot kebabs with veggies were the perfect street food on a cold day in Tallinn.
One last word about Tallinn…we struck up a conversation with an American expat who told us about the "burger wars". The story is that after the Estonian Burger Factory opened in 2012, a number of competitors entered the market and there was a fierce (food) battle for who had the best burger in Tallinn. First, you should know that Estonia is not known for its beef and our expat friend hailed from Texas, so he should know. Anyway, apparently the struggle continued for several years until most of the other restaurants finally closed…and Estonian Burger Factory declared the winner (their burgers were pretty awesome). Judging from our visit to Tallinn, we think the whole town is a winning foodie destination.
Links for more information:
Estonian Food Fair – http://www.toidumess.ee/eng
Kohupiimakreem – https://www.valio.ee/en/products/quark
Rataskaevu16 Restaurant – http://rataskaevu16.ee/en/
Kaerajaan Restaurant – http://www.kaerajaan.ee/en
Abba Sill – https://abba.se/produkter/sill/
Estonian Burger Factory – http://ebf.ee/en/
Tallinn City Tourist Office & Convention Bureau – https://www.visittallinn.ee/eng/visitor