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Home Opinion Editorial EDITORIAL – Getting ready for the rainy season
EDITORIAL – Getting ready for the rainy season
Hurricane forecasters have increased their predictions for the Atlantic hurricane season. They say conditions are likely to lead to 14 named storms and six, not five, hurricanes over the next few months.
They anticipate a fairly average season, with a 44% chance of a hurricane tracking into the Caribbean before it is over. The catch, of course, is that no one can predict with absolute certainty when or where a hurricane will develop or make landfall. Even the most highly trained experts using the most scientifically advanced methods can make only what amounts to an educated guess.
Still, as imperfect a tool as these seasonal forecasts can be, most of us pay attention each time they are issued or adjusted. Forewarned is forearmed, as the adage goes, and it is important not to let down our guard as hurricane season approaches.
As Premier Alden McLaughlin wrote in his annual hurricane season message, "We know that just one bad storm can wreak havoc." Indeed, government deserves high praise for its commitment and professionalism in creating hurricane response plans, conducting exercises and sharing important information about these rare, but natural disasters.
We wish they would treat with equal seriousness another perennial danger: Seasonal flooding caused by torrential rains.
Unlike hurricanes, we can predict with near-100% certainty that the rainy season will wreak havoc on low-lying neighbourhoods – flooding streets, homes and businesses, causing headaches, inconvenience and damaging property. We even know which areas of our island will be hardest hit.
Cumber Avenue, Belford Estates, Randyke Gardens, Windsor Park. Each summer, the residents of these and other especially vulnerable areas will be forced to deal with impassable roads, yards and driveways under water, damaged vehicles and sodden messes. Surely, something can be done to address this chronic issue.
Last month, residents of North Sound Estates in Savannah shared their frustrations with a Compass reporter, describing saltwater spewing from storm drains and breaching canal walls during king tides and heavy storms. Many have taken the initiative to raise their driveways or building walls in an attempt to protect against rising water, but there is only so much they can do. With side roads built less than 2 feet above mean sea level — less than half the recommended elevation — the problem is too big for a single property owner or resident to solve.
The National Roads Authority is working to provide some relief by raising the elevation of the streets in the areas that are most susceptible to flooding. They, too, are limited by the general lack of elevation and must be careful not to create new flooding problems in their attempts.
"It was not really filled to the level it should have been," the area's legislator Alva Suckoo said of the North Sound Estates development.
Flooding will always be a fact of life on our low-lying islands. That does not prevent our adopting – and enforcing – building codes and construction protocols that will minimise the ill effects.
Belford Estates
Cumber Avenue
National Roads Authority
Randyke Gardens
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Keeping customers loyal should be at the top of every business owner's marketing plan. The amount of time, money and effort that goes into retaining customers is much lower than finding and obtaining new clients.
Train your employees to always give the best customer service and make the best products. Always deliver a quality item using quality service to keep people coming back.
Offer incentives for patronizing your business on a regular basis. These can include employing loyalty programs like punch cards or giving discounts every so often (e.g., get 20% off on every fifth purchase). You could also offer discounted or free upgrades to your loyal customers.
Give your customers a reason to come back. Advertise a follow-up discount to your current customers. If they purchase something now, they'll get a coupon to use on their next purchase from you. Set up a referral program so that your existing customers will get a discount when they refer a new customer to you. This type of loyalty program is common in service businesses.
Provide a discount if customers purchase several of your products up front. For example, you could provide a package of five massages for 20% off the normal price if they pay up front. This keeps them coming back and each time they enter your establishment, that's an opportunity to make a new sale. Your client could end up purchasing retail products, upgrading to a more expensive massage or adding other spa services.
Encourage trial of your other products by giving customers a sampling of new items for free. This works especially well in restaurants.
Start a newsletter or email club. Provide a discount to anyone who signs up and then offer exclusive coupons when you send out the newsletters and emails.
Stay at the forefront of your customers' minds. Sending out holiday cards, email blasts, direct mail, even making personal phone calls can help you stay in their minds. This will encourage repeat business and give your customers a positive perception of you.
Get feedback from your customers. This will help you hone your sales techniques and marketing tactics, and in exchange for their participation, you can offer a freebie or percentage discount for a future visit to your business.
wikiHow is a "wiki," similar to Wikipedia, which means that many of our articles are co-written by multiple authors. To create this article, 13 people, some anonymous, worked to edit and improve it over time. This article has also been viewed 30,422 times.
Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read 30,422 times.


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Cattleman's best friend
| Cow dogs bred and trained for life and work on the ranch |
The dogs working with Florida cowboys aren't quite like Lassie, the popular television Collie featured on television rescuing a boy named Timmy Martin and traversing the wilderness with forestry Ranger Corey Stewart. But they are just as loyal and do a bit of rescuing of their own.[emember_protected custom_msg="Click here and register now to read the rest of the article!"]
"One good dog is worth two or three good men," says Mike Facente, a 41-year-old Polk City area day worker and a firefighter for the Florida Forest Service at Green Swamp Tower. "A good dog is sure enough your best friend in the cow business . . . We drive cattle with the horses and hold them up with the dogs."
Cracker cur dogs, which may be part hound and part bulldog, are known for hard-headedness and aggression, pursuing cows and even capturing them by their noses when they stray from the herd. But they also are fiercely loyal and protective of their owners. "We have to muzzle them because of their aggressiveness. They are very very loyal," explains Facente, a cattleman for at least 30 years. "It's a pretty tight bond. You don't mess with a man's dog or his hat."
"They want to be around you," adds Jimmy Allen, a 47-year-old Bartow rancher. "Hopefully you're going to take them to the next place they're going to get to go."
Cur dogs may rescue more than cattle. When Facente's daughter Carrie was 2, his dog Sully protected her when she wandered toward the road, standing between her and road and pushing her back, he recalls.
Although cur dogs are work dogs that typically sleep in pens outside rather than inside with their owners, the dogs still bond with their masters and protect them. "My dogs don't listen to anybody but me," Facente says. "You pull up to my house right now and they won't let you out of your truck. Once you're there, they settle down."
Dogs are bred for cow herding and trained by their owners using other work dogs. Cowboys will obtain puppies from other cowboys or cowgirls with working dogs, but not all of them take to the job description. The ones suited to it are eager to run after the cows and keep them with— or return them to— the rest of the herd. "That's all they want to do is stop cows," says Allen, a cowboy for at least 15 years. "He's got to have a lot of go. Then you can teach them to whoa later."
The dogs must be determined and have the heart to work in the Florida heat, even when they are tired. "When you whistle at him, you want to know he's going to go and not just stand there and look at you," Allen explains.
"It's easier to take the hard-headedness out of them than to put it in them," adds Facente. "They've got the nose. They've got the speed. They've got the aggressiveness. That's what the Crackers have been using them for.
A good cow dog is around five to seven years old; generally they don't last in the job for many years. Allen has one that is eight, who he describes as "retired" after working four or five years.
While cowboys like Facente believe the dogs are the best way to herd cattle, others make do without them. "A lot of people have gone to four wheelers and feed buckets," he says. "We pen all our cattle with dogs. All our cows are broke to handle with a dog."
He wants his children, Carrie, Kaylee, Radley and Karlin, to be raised in the ranch life, as he was, herding cows with horses and dogs and knowing the value of hard work. "There's no way to grow up better," he says. "My kids are taught with respect and manners."
Still, the relationship between a dog and his owner is different for everyone. "It's not like having a lap dog. It's just something you need," Allen says, explaining he enjoys his dogs and pets them but doesn't have the same relationship with them as an owner might with a house pet.
Facente, a Polk County Cattlemen's Association board member, used to have a dog with him where ever he went before he took the firefighter job. In addition to the three cur dogs— Red Bob, Dixie, and Digger— he, his wife Amie and children have six more— three for deer hunting.
story by CHERYL ROGERS
photo by PEZZIMENTI
[/emember_protected]
Tags:	cow dogs, cur dogs, Florida cattle, Florida cattlemen, Florida cowboys
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Q: Sync files between Mac, PC and Linux automatically I have a MacBook Pro, a Windows 7 desktop, and a Fedora 13 netbook. I have been searching far and wide for an automatic solution to sync files (pictures, music, docs, etc...) between the three when they are all on the same LAN.
To better explain, when I get home and turn my MacBook on, I want it to sync automatically any file changes to Windows 7 and the netbook. Likewise if I make changes on my Windows 7 box, I want them to be reflected on my Mac.
I can use rsync, but it is not automatic as far as I can tell, and I would use Dropbox but I have a lot more that 2 gigs and do not want to pay. I also do not need internet syncing. I just want local LAN.
Does anyone have any ideas?
Thank you very much in advance.

A: I think Unison is going to be your best bet.

A: Dropbox uses your LAN for local sync. "Enable LAN Sync" is checked (turned on) by default in versions 1.0 and later.
Dropbox is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linus operating systems.
Biggest issue with Dropbox is that the free account is limited to 2GB by default. There are ways, via referral and social linking, to increase to a max of 10GB. They have 50GB $100/yr. plan and 100GB $200/yr accounts.

A: windows live mesh will get you 2 thirds there

A: I went with Windows Live Mesh because it is automatic. Unison is also a very nice solution, but it would have required quite a bit of scripting (from my understanding) to get it to run automatically on Windows.
While Live Mesh does not have Linux support yet (I can live without it I guess), and the syncs seem a little slow, it does not require a sync to the cloud and offers the option for browser based remote desktop.
I wish a program would come out that would easily meet these requirements. Hope this helps. Thank you all for the input.

A: I have no affiliation with these guys but I found it whilst searching for an answer to the same question. It doesn't get much coverage but it might be worth a look:

http://synkron.sourceforge.net

A: Dropbox is the tool I use for it. Works perfectly, but then you sync over the internet.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


This project was created on 04/06/2016 and last updated 3 years ago.
Note that the 4.3" version consumes up to 250mA, the 2.4" model up to 90mA. Both are well within the specs of the Arduino UNO's 5V regulator (450mA).
Press the check boxes and note how the boxes give feedback when they are being pressed. They still do not change to Selected because we haven't sent the command to do so yet.
The Pressed image configured to 1 is why the check boxes show the round grey circle when they are being pressed even though we haven't configured anything in the Arduino yet.
This can be read as: "Button 1 on Page 0 was released". But it's easy to just copy the message and compare was done in the code above.
Now, if everything went well when the first button is pressed and released the green checkbox is turned on! It won't turn off because we haven't told it to. What would be the commands to turn the button Off?
In the Nextion Editor there is a component called a Progress bar. There are several aspects that I don't like about the implementation. First, it requires that one isolates the graphics for an empty and full progress bar and then add them to the Pictures in the Editor. Secondly, every time the progress bar receives a new value it erases the progress bar entirely and then repaints it. This causes a noticeable flicker even if it repaints with the same value. Hopefully, this will be fixed in the future.
In order to "wipe" the progress bar we will need to its x,y position and it's width and height. A quick and easy method is to use Add Component-->Progress bar to create a temporary component. Move and stretch the component over your progress bar and write down the values x,y,w,h. Then Delete Component-->Delete Selected Component to erase the component.
Allows you to make stackable soldering/unsoldering boards like ProtoBoard-Uni.
You are about to report the project "Nextion LCD Touchscreen Tutorial for Arduino", please tell us the reason.


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I find it impossible to believe that a creature whose existence has been affirmed by so many authors, and at so many different dates, and from so many different countries, can be, as mythologists demand, merely the symbol of a myth.
CHARLES GOULD
I suppose we have all heard the story of how the unicorn was subdued by the virgin maid." The eagerly attended raconteur reflected that, although he and his fellows had absorbed the wonder of the myth since childhood and seen its expression in numerous works of art, few of them had ever considered the tale seriously. The town in which they lived, like so many European towns, was rich in sacred architecture. All their lives they had taken its bas-reliefs and the statues depicting the Virgin Mary with a sleeping unicorn in her lap as part of their mental and aesthetic environment. And yet they had never thought the story behind such works of art might have any special significance and were, therefore, intrigued to hear their long-absent friend mention the theme in connection with his travels in the exotic East. He had gone out with a caravan through the great passes penetrating the Hindu Kush and Karakoram and along the tapered valleys sloping to meet the curving thread of the silk route. They had often tried to imagine the nature of his journey and had awaited his return with great anticipation, gathering now to learn of the wild and mysterious lands into which he had gone.
"We were camping at the base of an alluvial fan which stretched up into some fine meadows between the hills. A native family had pitched their yak-hair tent further up the valley not far from a stream where some antelope were grazing. In the early morning I noticed that a man and his young daughter left this shelter and walked to a small gully that ran along the edge of the meadow. The girl was made to sit on a stone there while the man disappeared from view into the gully. Having no pressing task at hand and becoming curious about this strange behaviour, I sat quietly behind some brush and watched to learn what it might mean. The sun rose over the hills and the peacefully grazing antelope moved slowly up the valley, drawn by the coolness of its still shaded interior. A large and graceful buck looked back at the seated girl and hesitated. He was unable to tear his gaze away from her and, with great trepidation, turned and began to move towards her. The others of the herd panicked and bolted into the hills, sensing somehow an imminent danger. The beautiful buck looked back to see them flee but he could not break his fascination with the girl. Slowly he walked, hesitated, waited and moved ever closer to where she was seated until, bolting over the last few yards of grass separating them, he lay down beside her with his head in her lap."
The gathered listeners gasped and urged their friend to go on with his remarkable story.
"Well, you may be surprised," he said, "and no less, I assure you, was 1. But I remained still in my concealment and waited to see what might follow. The girl sat quietly fondling the buck's head, and so natural was his attitude of trusting repose that he seemed to be sleeping like a babe in arms. The sun continued to rise and a wind began to stir the grass. Clouds scuttled across the sky and cast the idyllic scene in dark shadow. The young maid grew restless with the cold and shivered, just as her father rushed out of the gully and plunged his knife into the sleeping animal. I recoiled in my hiding place. It had happened so quickly and the cruelty of the act so shocked me that tears sprang to my eyes. Through their blur I saw that the girl herself was crying and that the man comforted her and gesticulated as though to joke away her momentary sadness. He must have reminded her of how hungry they had been and how good the fresh meat would taste. He must have explained away the cruelty as an act of necessity and congratulated her on the important part she had played, for I saw that she began to help him dress the carcass and carry it off to their camp. I watched until they disappeared within their tent and the smoke from a yak-dung fire began to curl up into the gathering breeze. I was transfixed to the spot, my friends, my mind reeling with memories of stone-carved unicorns and Virgins sweetly gazing while hunters approached to make the capture secure. My memory insisted that in the childhood myth the hunters had merely tied the unicorn and taken it alive to the king. But the killing I had just witnessed filled my heart with a sense of betrayal, and my mind floundered with the effort of trying to understand the connection between the innocuous tale of our youth and the cunning entrapment achieved through the young maiden on that wind-swept meadow above me."
The listeners sat in silence. Expressions of wonder and puzzlement fluctuated across their faces as they too struggled to piece together the popular Christian myth with the extraordinarily vivid scene that had just been placed before them. They tried to remember all that they had ever heard about the unicorn, of how its image decorated the standard of many a noble family and its horn was coveted as a rare and powerful talisman. They wondered what the connection could be between a unicorn and an antelope, and they searched their hearts to discover the depth of their belief in the animal's existence. Were there or had there ever been unicorns in the world? Did people in the exotic lands to which their friend had gone also possess legends associating the unicorn with chaste maidens? And if so, did such notions lie behind the extraordinary practice he had described? In the Christian tradition the animal had become so closely identified with the virgin-capture story that in most peoples' minds it was emblematic of chastity itself, and the puzzling listeners wondered if this were universally true.
Centuries later another puzzler named Carl Jung would decide that the unicorn had many different symbolic characteristics, even embracing other single-horned animals like the swordfish or the dragon. But of its many remarkable features the most arresting is the universality of the idea of the unicorn's existence, which has persisted for millennia despite all evidence to the contrary. In the broadest sense, legends seem to identify the unicorn with great strength, fleetness, loveliness, incorruptibility and chastity. There is a strong relationship between it and that which is lunar in the most powerful and positive sense. Thus, the unicorn is associated with the horned (crescent) moon of Diana the Huntress and other virgin moon-goddesses of the ancient Mediterranean world. The Taoists of China believed the unicorn to possess the essence of the five elements and virtues, and the Indo-Iranian tradition focussed upon its embodiment of purity and mystical power. Many are the stories that have floated down through the centuries telling of things like the one-horned goat which belonged to a judge during the reign of Emperor Sun (2200 B.C.). It butted the guilty but refused to attack the wrongly accused. Or there is the case of the single-horned augur of divine will who met the Mongol hordes as they swept towards the Asian subcontinent. It is said that when Jenghiz Khan undertook to invade India in the thirteenth century, a scouting expedition of his army was met in the high plateau country by a creature "like a deer, with a head like that of a horse, one horn on its forehead and green hair on its body". It said to them: "It is time for your master to return to his own land." When the scouting party reported this to the Khan, one of his ministers advised him that the animal must have been a chio-tuan, a variety of the Chinese ki-lin or unicorn. He explained that "for four years the great army has been warring in western regions. Heaven, which has a horror of bloodshed, gives warning through the chio-tuan. Spare the Empire for Heaven's sake; moderation will give boundless pleasure." The great leader must have taken this advice very seriously, for he desisted in his war plans and turned aside from the subcontinent's fabled wealth and allure.
In the old Sumerian and Semitic traditions two unicorns were depicted as guardians of the Tree of Life. They were shown flanking the tree on either side, their horns pointed up towards the boughs in a protective pose, which seems to echo the many tales celebrating their prophylactic powers. For it was widely held that one who drank of a cup fashioned from one of these fabulous horns would never be subject to convulsions or epilepsy, nor would he succumb to poison if administered. In India as well as the Middle East a legend was passed down which told of animals waiting thirstily around the shores of a poisoned lake. A unicorn advanced through their midst to its edge and, dipping its horn into the water, purified it of all taint. Christians later called the unicorn's horn the 'horn of salvation', which acted as an antidote to sin, but the Oriental story is much older and links up with ancient talismanic uses of what came to be known as the alicorn. Widely coveted, the alicorn was so valuable that latter-day sceptics, suspecting the motive of those who traded in them, sought to prove that the cups, knife handles, apothecary prescriptions and magical wands believed to have been fashioned from a unicorn's horn were, in fact, from the horns of the rhinoceros, walrus or narwhal. It is, indeed, striking to compare the horn of the narwhal with that later appended to the European unicorn, for it is singular in the world and corresponds exactly with the tapered straightness and spiralled form of the alicorn. Innocent of such scepticism, many older cultures held that the alicorn was two horns joined in one and thus a perfect embodiment of undivided sovereign power, a rare unification of opposites. In following the custom that only royalty could drink from an alicorn cup, classical Indian rajas both protected themselves from poisoning and symbolically reinforced their divine right of rule.
In China the alicorn was believed to be made of flesh which sprouted from the forehead of a unicorn so gentle in nature that it would not walk on the tiniest creature. First seen in the garden of the Yellow Emperor in 2699 B.C., this ki-lin was considered to be one of the four animals of good omen (along with the dragon, phoenix and tortoise) and foremost amongst all land creatures. It was said to possess a five-coloured coat and a voice sounding like bells, to live thousands of years and wander through mostly hidden places all alone. The Chinese believed that its appearance foretold the incarnation of a noble and upright ruler. At the birth of Confucius, one appeared to his mother and announced the rule of a throneless king. Seventy years later hunters in the forest killed a ki-lin which still bore bits of ribbon that had been tied round its horn by the great sage's mother. It is said that Confucius went to see it and wept over its lifeless form before himself departing from this world.
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.
In the biblical vision of David, a one-horned goat appeared from the west and smote the two-horned ram of Persia, stamping him beneath his cloven hoof. Thus the coming of Alexander the Great was prophesied, and the unicorned helmets and crowns of conquering kings were anointed with the aura of divine right and invincibility. Had not Pericles been presented with a single-horned ram before becoming the sole ruler of Athens and ushering it into its Golden Age? But in stories told about the life of Gautama the Buddha, a different sort of kingship is suggested. It is said that when the Lord delivered his first sermon at the holy park of Sarnath, a unicorned gazelle sat upon his knee listening to his words. Symbolizing the transcendent and kingly wisdom needed to penetrate the portals of Nirvana, the animal's single horn seemed to be bowing before the compassionate vocalization of Bodhisattvic sacrifice. And yet the purity of its mien, the perfection in its straight and spiralling horn, certainly pointed to a path which had been travelled by Buddha himself. Single and long in its symmetrically twisted length, the horn, like the path, was hard to find, powerfully mysterious and solitary in its nature.
Like a lion, without fear of the howling pack,
Like a gust of wind, ne'er trapped in a snare,
Like a lotus blossom, ne'er sprinkled by water,
Let me, like a unicorn, in solitude roam.
Hymn of Buddha
As a worldling who had been shaken by the phantom banquet and ethereal music that accosted his subtler senses on Prosperous island, Sebastian declared the suspension of his scepticism with the announcement: "Now I will believe that there are unicorns." As ancient and ubiquitous as the legends have been, many have disbelieved. But reports of their existence have never really ceased to trickle in from the hinterlands of human experience. In 400 B.C. the Greek historian and physician Ctesia carefully recorded a description of the wild asses in the kingdom of India, with their white coats, dark red heads and blue eyes. In the middle of their foreheads they bore a single horn eighteen inches long, whose base was white, middle black and tip red. The dust from this horn was widely used, he said, as a protective potion against deadly drugs. Over the centuries eyewitness reports would continue. In the sixteenth century Fray Marcos de Niza, while looking for the Seven Golden Cities of Cibola, was shown a unicorn hide by the Anasazi Indians. Contemporary French explorers encountered stories of a similar creature among the Florida tribes. Around the same time Ludovico di Varthema wrote that he saw two unicorns at Mecca which had been sent to the sultan as a present from the king of Abyssinia. In 1622 Father Jeronimo Lobo, a Portuguese Jesuit in Abyssinia, described a unicorn there which resembled a beautiful horse, having good proportions and a long mane and tail. In the eighteenth century a unicorn was sighted by a British traveller in Tartary, and claims were made concerning others seen in Persia, at Samarkand and in the Carpathians. In 1820 Major Latter of the British army wrote that he had found a unicorn in Tibet, and Captain Samuel Taylor was told by the raja of Bhutan that he had owned one which had died in captivity.
The descriptions of these various unicorns vary in particulars but remain strikingly similar in certain essential characteristics. In Africa the animal was known as an a'nasa or an ara-se or adaka, depending on the locale, but it was always described as being about the size of a donkey or small horse. Julius Caesar wrote of unicorns in the Hercynian forest that resembled stags with one long, straight horn on their brow. Some reported their beautiful ankle bones, others their hooves as heavy as lead and the colour of cinnabar, and still others, like Julius Solinus, that they were "footed like an Eliphant, tayled like a Swyne, and headed like a Stagge". Pliny, during his travels to the East, wrote: "In this country we encountered several species of unicorns." He listed some small as goats, and a monstrous variety which had an armoured hide and was both dangerous and impossible to capture alive. Here Pliny, like Solinus and many before and after him, had unknowingly crossed over into the territory occupied by the very visible and certainly formidable Indian rhinoceros.
The accounts coming from India and Persia frequently stressed the exceeding swiftness and power of the unicorn, the fact that its speed increased as it ran, that its power was so great as to defy capture and that its body was reddish with a white underbelly. But other reports of white, black and red animals have caused some speculators to wonder if the ancients did not derive their facts from colourful Indian fabric designs or painted cups made of rhinoceros horns. In any case, the tendency was to explain any conflicting evidence or possible exaggeration in terms of the animal being a native of India. After all, one does not question the seemingly outrageous if it comes from that exotic land! When Apollonius of Tyana travelled there, he saw wild asses captured near Hyphasis and was told that cups capable of protecting life were made from their single horn. When asked by his companion if he believed this, Apollonius replied, "I should have believed it if I had found that the kings of this country were immortal." It is noteworthy that though Apollonius did not believe in the efficacy of the alicorn cup, he did, apparently, see single-horned animals.
Despite varying descriptions, empirically minded observers like Aristotle believed in the one-horned ass and oryx, and poets explained their scarcity in terms of their having a nature "so virtuous and beautiful, that heaven vouchsafed the earth only one specimen at a time". Others tried to rationalize the persistent sightings of unicorns by pointing to the fact that the oryx's or the Tibetan antelope's straight horns became superimposed and appeared single from a side view, whilst still others simply dismissed the need for explanation by affirming that the unicorn "seems to fill a gap in nature". In the course of discussing "mythical monsters" in The Secret Doctrine, H.P. Blavatsky quoted Charles Gould, who felt that "the specific existence of the Unicorn seems not incredible, and in fact, more probable than that theory which assigns its origin to a lunar myth" He doubted that myths were derived from a contemplation of external Nature, but believed rather that ancient wisdom had been diluted as it was passed down and transformed into the fabulous as knowledge and real insight waned. This is in opposition to the contemporary notion that evolution has been a physical, cultural and mental process of progression from the simple to the complex, the irrational to the rational. From the standpoint of modern science, belief in unicorns represents the 'pre-rational' man's attempt to assign causal powers to tangible objects and elements which could then, somehow, be. manipulated in an effort to control things on the plane of effects. To the less empirically minded, the belief in unicorns has been so pervasive and attractive to the human mind for so long that the need for a deeper and more intuitive investigation asserts itself. The fact that evidence for their existence is confused with descriptions of rhinoceros or that green ones in the Tibetan plateau fail to correspond with red or white or five-coloured ones elsewhere does not cancel the fact that the unicorn, as a recognizable and unique entity, has persisted in exerting its impact as a living idea for millennia. This stands as a central point of importance when addressing the question of whether unicorns coexisted with early man (as some cave paintings suggest) and have since died out, or whether they are the result of a natural hybridization occurring only occasionally and thus are variously shaped and coloured.
. . . the dream, at any rate is an unquestionable fact, a phenomenon of mind; it has grown like a tree, striking deep roots in thought and spreading huge boughs against our mental sky.
ODELL SHEPARD
In the Western world the unicorn legend has gone through a theological phase (to borrow Comte's idea) to a metaphysical, positivistic and, finally, modern phase. Long ago it was mythologically validated by being made a constellation in the celestial hemisphere, but for centuries the vitality of the idea mouldered in the pages of Pliny and similar authors while experiences of contact and uses of the fabled alicorn continued to thrive in the Eastern world. With the incorporation of the myth into the mainstream of Christianity, the unicorn assumed a much more clearly defined mental and physical shape. The fact that mention of the creature had been made in seven different places in the Old Testament had not escaped people's notice, but all these references emphasized the strength and ferocity of the animal as well as the exalted nature of its horn. Only when these characteristics became juxtaposed with the idea of virgin-capture did the strange blend of elements basic to the Christian unicorn take birth and inspire the early medieval European world. In his Speculum de Mysterius Ecclesiae, Honorius of Autun described the very fierce one-horned unicorn which could be caught only by placing a virgin in the field. He asserted that the animal would come peacefully only to her (a non-virgin attracting instead its anger and ferocity) to lie down in her lap. Theologians asserted that the Virgin was the mother of God and that the unicorn was none other than Christ, whose invincibility was represented by its horn and whose capture by human beings was made possible only because he "lay down in the womb of the Virgin" and took on human shape. In the lap of the Virgin the unicorn shrank to become the sort of toy animal depicted in ecclesiastical sculpture and paintings. Its smallness was associated with humility and its goat-like appearance with the taking on by Christ of the sins of man. The fierceness attributed to this rather docile-looking animal was said to represent the fact that no worldly powers could control the Christos, and the singleness of the horn was made to signify the unity of Christ with the Father.
Who is this unicorn, but the only-begotten Son of God.
Leonardo da Vinci, in his often heretical view of things, attributed the unicorn's capture to its lust, which, he said, made it forget its fierceness and jump into the maiden's lap. The story itself takes its source from the Greek Physiologus, which is the fount of all the subsequent Christian bestiaries. Though no one is certain where or when this collection of stories was written down, it does provide the outline of how the virgin subdues the unicorn and, after its capture, sees it taken off to the king. This original maid was apparently capable of attracting larger and more formidable unicorns, and, though one may balk at the notion of her cuddling a rhinoceros, it was only in its Christian theological phase that the animal lost some of its physical power, making it seem more capable of being duped. Leonardo's unicorn seems to have sprung from this more robust stock, and it links up in an unintended way with the inverted notion that the animal represents the devil, who is overcome by the virtue of the virgin.
In the Syriac version of the story, the unicorn (dajja) is attracted and throws itself upon the virgin, who then offers it her breasts. After suckling it she takes hold of its horn and the huntsmen come to tie it and lead it to the king. The theological explanation of this is that "likewise, the Lord Christ has raised up for us a horn of salvation in the midst of Jerusalem, in the House of God, by the intercession of the Mother of God, a virgin pure, chaste, full of mercy, immaculate, inviolate". No doubt Leonardo, like several modern scholars, would have thought that this seemed a rather forced rationale tacked on to a more archaic theme of sexual attraction. But the whole Christian current of thought eddying around the idea of virgin-capture is fraught with ambiguous elements which seem to be the result of a great deal of eclectic borrowing from other traditions. More basic, perhaps, is the question of what affinity did people think existed between a unicorn and a virgin, and why was the animal worth such an elaborate and heartless-seeming ruse? Why is it led to the palace of the king, or is it? There are many medieval tales about the tragic aspect of the unicorn's helpless attraction, ending in its betrayal and death. How is it that, in such cases, the maiden can preserve the expression of pious serenity upon her face even when the huntsmen pierce the animal with their arrows?
It is more agreeable, perhaps, to focus upon the unicorn as a symbol of chivalry and high birth. All of its characteristics of fierceness, pride and solitude and the fact that it is dangerous to foes but gentle in the presence of chastity are perfectly suited as attributes of the knight. True to the ancient legend, he too assumes the aristocratic role of going down to the shore when all the others are waiting patiently for him to deliver them from harm, to con the water with his magic horn (sword). The medieval code of chivalry was based upon an aristocratic turn of mind, whose greatness was such that its proponent would willingly choose death over dishonour, "wherein the unicorn and the valiant-minded soldier are alike" In Richard Wagner's Parsifal (modelled on the Arthurian Sir Perceval), the death of Zidegast provides a rich illustration of this connecting symbolism when Parsifal cries, "A unicorn of loyalty was this man, the object of my desires. Humanity must lament the loss of this unicorn. Because of his purity he had to suffer death." In the chivalrous and heraldic celebration of the unicorn, its lunar and chaste nature was meaningfully wedded to its solar counterpart, so often symbolized by the lion. Thus, in the unification of Scotland with England the lion and the unicorn ceased to be "fighting for the crown" and merged into one of the strongest and most confident imperial powers the world has ever seen. One might assert that the unicorn could have done this on its own, but there was probably something of the pragmatic and worldly-wise nature of the lion that was needed to pull it off. The unicorn is not pragmatic in its nature. It suffers death because of its purity, a recurring theme which throws one's mind back once again to the haunting though troublesome idea of the virgin-capture and the notion that an element of sacrifice is central to its character.
The Buddhist tradition treats the alicorn as the symbol of nirvana, and it is the land from which this religion comes that provides us with a glimpse into a realm of deeper realities concerning the unicorn. In the ancient Mahabharata a tale is told about a young Rishi called Rishya-Sringa ('the Deer-Horned') who was said to be the son of Rishi Vibhandaka (descended from Kashyapa – 'Tortoise') and a gazelle. At his birth he had one horn on his forehead and was brought up in the forest by his father, never seeing another human being until he was verging on manhood. It is said that when King Dasaratha performed the ashva-medha sacrifice for the sake of an offspring, Rishya-Sringa officiated and was there when Vishnu appeared to the king and ensured the birth of Rama. The fame of the Rishi's purity and power spread, and when there was a drought in the country of Anga, King Lomapada was advised by his Brahmins to send for him. Thus it was that his daughter Santa was sent into the forest to lure Rishya-Sringa (called Eka sringa or 'unicorn' in certain Buddhist versions of the story) into a trap. The pious Rishi had imagined her to be a penitent disciple, but she aroused his love with her virginal beauty and caused him to follow her into a cell which rested on a concealed raft moored at the edge of a river. As soon as he was within the cell, the raft was set afloat by the hunters who had waited there and it carried him to Anga, where the Rishi brought about the desired rainfall and married the king's daughter.
This is surely the archetypal myth which spawned the many tales of the unicorn's capture in the East and, finally, in the Christian world. Its power and clarity of story-line are not confused with conflicting elements of cruelty, chastity and love. Furthermore, the unicorn is a man, a great sage who is descended from a line of sages going back to Kashyapa, the cosmogonic being identified in the Artharvaveda with Prajapati. This lends tremendous significance to the idea that the alicorn symbolizes Nirvana, for one can see in it a spiralling path leading back through generations of our true spiritual ancestors to the threshold where the many lines of descent merge into oneness. As an augur of divine will, the unicorn's horn symbolizes both that which pierces the ancestral heavenly realm and transmits back to earth the voice of God. Gautama Buddha seated with the unicorn in his lap has made the journey in both directions, and his Teaching, like that of Christ and others who have followed that spiral path, is capable of alchemizing the poison that resides in the waters of the human heart. To do this, the sacrifice of birth and death is necessary and the entrance into a worldly womb is the means of bringing it about. Thus the unicorn of Buddha or Christos lay upon the lap of the virgin and heralded, like that which visited the mother of Confucius, the birth of an unthroned king. In making the sacrifice of birth and death, however, the great Teachers of mankind are not tricked or duped. They choose to come and accept suffering through the renunciation of Nirvana, They permit the loss of their alicorn of bliss, their 'horn of salvation', in order to take on the burden of purifying a much polluted world. Even in the case of Rishya-Sringa, who seemed to have been duped through love, one can presume the presence of a higher willingness to make this sacrifice.
One by one in the moonlight there,
Neighing far off on the haunted air,
The unicorns come down to the sea.
CONRAD AIKEN
In the hearts of countless young maidens, even in the darkest night of Kali Yuga, the dream of the unicorn persists. Encouraged on the surface of their minds by diaphanous poster paintings and window decals, still the roots of the dream lie much deeper in their souls, for it is there that the true ancestral memory resides. To be born in a female body is to 'feel' with peculiar poignancy these longings to become a pure and chaste receptacle for the Christos within. The allurement of anticipation in the innocent young girl's eye is an untainted invitation to this highest fulfilment of spiritual conception and birth. How beauteous is the dream flowing through her unconsciously attractive movements and smile. How noble the desire to insist on believing in unicorns, believing that complete fulfilment is possible! Remembering the little native maiden seated as bait in the meadow or the modern maid's loss of innocence as she descends into the business of using her allure for worldly ends, one grieves. So pure and soaring is the dream, how could it sink so low? Yet even in the poor native child who cannot exert a will of her own or the modern child mesmerized by the pounding beat of glamorized materialism, there is still the seed of Buddhic light which can be saluted and nurtured and believed in.
The simple and direct action of King Lomapada's daughter in luring the unicorn is a forthright deed of duty. Santa is fulfilling her role in an occult drama where she opens the way through which the current of adeptship can release the life-giving rain of Divine Wisdom into the drought-stricken world. Like the Virgin Mary, whose similar behaviour symbolically echoes the drama centuries later, Santa is not evil in her allurement. She is not impure in her action, but fulfils, with serenity, the highest dharma. She waits for the unicorn to come and embraces him in the full purity of her receptive love. The hunters who assist the maiden are not outside herself. They are her own inner light of mind, which does not kill but seizes upon the Truth and carries it to the throne of the god within. The young girl longing to see the shape of this highest union can sense within the solitary places in her heart the unicorn's presence. She follows slowly on the spiral path where Santa trod and never ceases to keep pure and inviolate her dream.
If you believe in unicorns,
You join the ranks of
And dreamers and sages
and gods.


I have a SATA 1 TB Maxtor drive that is giving me issues. When the drive is plugged in it prevents Windows from booting even though there is no OS on this drive. I am running Windows 7 RC from a Raptor Drive. When I take the drive out my computer boots up with no issues at all.
Now normally I would assume there is a problem with the drive, but I had been using the drive fine up until about 4 days ago when this started happening, but the drive still spins when I turn my computer on, and in the boot menu my computer still recognizes the drive and can read the drive's size. My computer just stops at "Verifying DMI Pool" Sometimes it makes it past that and will make it to the Windows 7 screen then it will go to black and say "Checking Disk" and it will start to scan but eventually the progress will stop and it will just sit there.
I put the drive in a SATA enclosure. When plugged in my computer recognizes there is a new USB device plugged in but the Hard Drive still does not show up in My Computer or in Disk Management. Drive still spinning though.
Re-formatting or accepting the drive is lost is my last option. I have a lot of important data on this drive. If I have to I would find a way for someone to fix it.
you can try the old trick of freezing the drive connecting it quickly and seeing if you can get it to be read enough to get the data off it.
im sure other TS members have their own ways of recovering dying drives, but that one works for me.
Also try and download the makers test tool for it and use that to test it with, if its under warranty you may be able to get it replaced, however the data is gone.


text:
Ricoprì il ruolo di direttore d'orchestra a Sondershausen, dove aveva compiuto gli studi. Fu primo violino solista dell'orchestra diMagdeburgo e a partire dal 1884 nell'orchestra reale di Dessau. Tuttavia, fu noto soprattutto come insegnante - fra i suoi allievi si annovera una giovanissima Marlene Dietrich. È ricordato principalmente per i suoi otto Schülerkonzerte, concerti per violino e pianoforte scritti per uso didattico.
Alcuni estratti dei suoi concerti n. 2 e n. 6 sono stati inseriti nel metodo Suzuki.

Collegamenti esterni

Compositori romantici
Violinisti classici

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


In 2 Sam. 8:18, we learn that David's sons are serving as priests. Previously, we've read that only the descendants of Levi could serve as priests (as, for example, in Numbers 18). As David is, in fact, from the tribe of Judah, this poses a rather serious continuity problem.
I've seen some apologetics claim that this is a translation error, and that it should rather say that David appointed his sons to oversee the priests. Of course, that doesn't address the other breadcrumbs.
Genesis and Judges seem, to me, to be the most folk books we've read so far, showing us glimpses of the popular religious expression. What we see in both books, but that is largely lacking in the more urban/establishment books, is the presence of individuals setting up their own personal shrines. In Genesis, the characters are semi-nomadic, and seem to be dotting the landscape with altars. In Judges, we see the beginning of more settled, permanent installations, such as Micah's shrine in Judges 17.
If we assume a nomadic/semi-nomadic origin for Israel, we could be seeing the process of settlement and the evolution of belief. This is further illustrated when Micah replaces his own sons as priests with a dedicated professional, giving us the term "levite." This could be a story illustrating the beginnings of the priesthood as a dedicated vocation in Israelite society.
In a nomadic culture, it's rare to fine specialization. When camp needs moving, everyone needs to help. When sheep need tending, everyone needs to pick up a crook. It's only as societies settle that agriculture can support a class of people providing services that are not directly related to the acquisition of food.
If we make further assumptions, it could be that, as the priest cast came to hold more power, they consolidated by making the position hereditary. Perhaps even to prevent precisely what David does – rulers setting their own sons in the priesthood, which could lead to the same family controlling both the secular and religious life of the nation. It's quite possible, then, that the tribe of Levi was formed sometime after David, taking over what had been a more generic term for priest, and constructing a tribal identity that fit with the cultural and cosmological milieu.
It could also be that there was a nomadic tribe of Levi that, when it finally came down to settle, found it more expedient to serve as priests than to fight established communities for patches of land.
There's also an evolution from regional worship to a more centralized cult, giving us the possibility that the term "levite" (and the definition of the levite's role) may have originally had more pronounced regional variations, hints of which remain in the stories collected in the Bible. We may see a hint of this in the different uses of the word "ephod" – which is used variously to mean an item of clothing, an object made of metal, or a divination tool. It's possible that the term had cultic significance, but that what it referred to differed by region. Or perhaps it referred to a whole class of objects and garments associated with ritual.
Certainly, it's clear from 1-2 Samuel that tribal heredity was not a requirement at the time of the events being described, but we also see that this was a concern for later contributors. For example, Samuel's father is explicitly an Ephraimite in 1 Sam. 1:1. Given Samuel's later role, however, it seems that a group of contributors were uncomfortable with him having so much religious authority without being a Levite. So the genealogy in 1 Chronicles 6:22-27 makes him a descendant of Kohath, turning him into a proper Levite.
This may have been the case with Eleazar, as well. In 1 Sam. 7, Abinadab appoints his son, Eleazar, as a priest and caretaker of the ark. In 2 Sam. 6:3-4, however, Eleazar is not listed as one of Abinadab's sons (who are given as Uzzah and Ahio). It's quite possible that multiple people have been named Eleazar, and that perhaps he'd died prior to or been absent from the events described in that chapter. Or, it could be that Eleazar was known as an early priest of the ark, and was written into Aaron's family at a later date.
There's frustratingly little evidence from which to draw conclusions, and it doesn't help that the texts have been periodically edited so that clear chronologies are difficult to tease out. I think, however, that it's reasonably clear that the priesthood evolved over time – from a role assigned to a member of the family, to a mostly hereditary profession.
When last we left our heroes, David was working as a sort of raider-in-chief for the Philistine king Achish while Saul remains (for the time being) the king of the Israelites. This poses an obvious problem for David, as the Philistines and Israelites have long been enemies. So far, David has managed to avoid conflict by only raiding non-Israelites and lying about it. The ruse couldn't last forever, however, and King Achish summons David to join his army as he marches out to meet the Israelites. David accepts the summons.
As a reward for his loyalty, Achish makes David his bodyguard for life.
So with David about to fight against his own people (if he felt any hesitation, the narrative doesn't tell us about it). Leaving a rather major cliffhanger, the narrative veers off into a digression.
In accordance with Exodus 22:18, Saul has rather thoroughly been going after witches (or mediums, wizards, necromancers, seers – whatever term the translator decides to use).
Unfortunately, when God stops speaking to Saul by any sanctioned means – through dreams, the Urim, or through prophets – he gets a little desperate and heads off to Endor to meet with one of the few remaining witches.
Saul hides his identity when he goes to her, and his reasoning is obvious when she baulks at his request. She is afraid that Saul will find out and she will be danger. Saul presses her and she finally agrees.
When he requests that she raise Samuel, however, she figures out who he is. Even so, she raises Samuel (apparently the real Samuel, as he retains his ability to prophesy).
Saul explains his problem to the Samuel-shade: The Philistines are moving against Israel but God is silent. My New Bible Commentary explains the possible issue a little more thoroughly: "His problem was that the Philistine armies were resorting to a new strategy; hitherto they had fought in the hills, where their more sophisticated weapons gave them little advantage, and where the Israelites were on familiar terrain. But now they marched into the plain of Jezreel, keeping to level ground, and threatened to cut off Saul from the northern group of tribes" (p.301).
Predictably, Samuel is as acrimonious as ever. It's unclear why Saul expected death to improve his relationship with the prophet! So, of course, Samuel goes on about how God is giving Saul the silent treatment because he's mad at him – apparently specifically for his failure to deploy his full wrath contingent against the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15.
Samuel then tells Saul what he already knows – that David has been chosen as his successor. Then he finishes up by predicting that Saul and his sons will die the next day (when David is slated to fight against him!).
Saul, exhausted from fasting (perhaps part of the summoning ritual?), collapses. The witch forces him to eat (insisting after Saul's initial refusal), then Saul and his companions leave.
Despite how frequently the text has forbidden people from consulting mediums (Lev. 19:31; Deut. 18:10-12) and even the prohibition from allowing mediums to live (Ex. 22:18), the actual depiction of the witch of Endor is very sympathetic.
She is cast almost as one of Saul's victims. Perhaps I'm reading too much into the text here, but when we read about Saul's campaign to exterminate the mediums and the witch's fear of him, it certainly seemed that Saul is the one playing bogeyman.
Even in the end, when Saul collapses, the witch shows great compassion in feeding him before sending him off.
I also noted the mention of the Urim in 1 Sam. 28:6 (one of the methods by which God is refusing to talk to Saul). Does this mean that Saul has his own Urim/Thummim? Up until this point, I had been under the impression that they were unique objects that were kept and used by the current high priest (which would be Abiathar).
So this detail suggests that perhaps the objects were, if not common, at least not unique. Perhaps it also suggests that David and Saul each had their own high priest at this time.
Or perhaps the Urim is only mentioned as being silent to Saul because he currently has no access to it (it being with David). This is always a possibility.
In this chapter, we get what is essentially a repeat of the story from 1 Sam. 24. A few details are different, but many are the same. In several places, the wording is even identical.
We begin once again with the Ziphites reporting on David's whereabouts to Saul. When I read chapter 24, the wording had suggested to me that they were complaining to Saul and asking him to do something about David. When I got a different vibe from chapter 26, I read back again and realized that I'd brought my own assumptions into the chapter 24 narrative. It seems that the Ziphites are merely betraying David's whereabouts to their king. This doesn't preclude my original reading, but it makes it by far the less obvious one.
Saul heads into Ziph, again with his 3,000 soldiers, and David can apparently feel his approach. He sends out spies to confirm his intuition. When Saul makes camp for the night, David finds out that he is sleeping in the middle of the camp.
There's a note here about some of David's followers, which includes an Ahimelech the Hittite. I think it's safe to assume that this is a different Ahimelech, not the priest. The characters are named as though they should be familiar to the reader – Abishai is named as "Joab's brother" and "the son of Zeruiah" (1 Sam. 26:6). Of his companions, it is this Abishai that David decides to take along with him.
Together, they sneak into the camp and stand over Saul's sleeping body. Abishai urges killing Saul, now that they have him so vulnerable. David, however, refuses – "who can put forth his hand against the Lord's anointed, and be guiltless" (1 Sam. 26:9). Though he has lost God's favour, Saul is still the anointed king. If God wants him gone, he'll have to take care of it himself. Not to skip ahead in our narrative, but David displays quite a bit of prescience when he suggests that perhaps God will take care of the monarchy problem by having Saul die in battle (1 Sam. 26:10).
Instead of killing Saul, or perhaps cutting off a piece of his robe, this time David takes a spear and a jug of water that had been placed by Saul's head. I can't help but wonder if the taking of Saul's spear might not be a nod to 1 Sam. 18:10-11, 1 Sam. 19:10, and 1 Sam. 20:33. Finally someone thinks to take Saul's spear away from him!
More cautious this time than in chapter 24, David stands at a safe distance before he he calls out – this time to Abner, Saul's general. He taunts Abner, showing him the jug and the spear, berating him for having failed to keep adequate guard over his king. "As the Lord lives, you deserve to die, because you have not kept watched over your lord, the Lord's anointed" (1 Sam. 26:16).
Saul overhears David's yelling at Abner and recognizes his voice. In identical words to those used in 1 Sam. 24:16, he asks: "Is this your voice, my son David?" (1 Sam. 26:17).
As in chapter 24, David reproves Saul for being such a meanie, asking him what he's done to deserve such treatment. This time, there's an added detail: David argues that by driving him out, Saul is cutting him off from the assembly of God, sending him into the arms of foreign gods (1 Sam. 26:19).
If I understand correctly, David is talking about being cut off from the sanctuaries of YHWH – either because it's too dangerous for him to show his face in such places (as the episode at Nob in 1 Sam. 22 amply illustrates), or it's a reference to David's later defection to Philistia. It's a hint that perhaps David's faith wasn't quite as unwavering as the account otherwise portrays.
As before, Saul agrees that he has done wrong, and he promises that he will not try to harm David again. This seems rather silly following, as it does, so closely on the heals of a nearly identical reconciliation that clearly amounted to very little. Those who argue against the multi-source cobbling hypothesis use this as evidence of Saul's mental instability, though that does not exactly explain David's apparent memory problems.
With that, Saul and David part ways.
David is informed that the Philistines have been harassing the citizens of Keilah, a town in Judah. David asks God if he should go help them, and God says yes. Abiathar has brought his ephod, so this conversation takes the form of divination (notice God's "yes/no" answers in these chapters – God is not having lengthy, direct conversations with his adherents here).
David's followers, however, have different ideas. Their argument seems to boil down to the fact that they are already on the run from Saul, so why draw attention to themselves as the enemies of Philistia as well? David asks God again if he really should go, and God maintains that he should.
This story seems to serve two purposes. The first is to contrast David against Saul. Saul, too, has been defied by his followers. In 1 Sam. 15:24, Saul disobeys Samuel's instructions out of fear of his people and, in 1 Sam. 22:17, he couldn't get his guards to obey his orders. Yet here, when confronted by the same refusal from his followers, David chooses to follow God instead. The message is a clear one: David is a strong leader, Saul is a weak one; David is a God-centred leader, Saul is a people-centred one.
The second point seems to be that David is behaving like a king – at least in Judah. When a town is harassed by Philistines, a good monarch should come to their aid. Yet where is Saul? He will have no trouble coming to Keilah with an army once he hears that David is there, but displays no intention to come relieve the citizens of the town from the Philistines. Alternatively, this may support my reading that the antagonism between David and Saul was one between two tribal leaders trying to establish their own tribe as the rulers of a confederation.
So David heads out to Keilah with his 600 followers (an increase from the 400 he had in 1 Sam. 22:2) and fends off the Philistines, then apparently takes up residence in Keilah.
When Saul hears that David is in Keilah, and he assumes that God must have delivered David into his hands (since Keilah, apparently a walled town, can easily become a prison in a siege). At this point, Saul clearly still believes that God is on his side, despite his conflicts with Samuel.
David hears of Saul's coming and consults Abiathar's ephod to confirm the rumours. He then asks if the people of Keilah will surrender him, and God says that they will. No explanation is given for future-betrayal, but it may be assumed to be related to the slaughter at Nob (having heard of it, it would make sense for people to be rather wary of sheltering David). So David and his followers leave and go instead to the wilderness of Ziph.
While Saul has had so much trouble locating David, Jonathan seems to have no difficulty whatsoever. He goes out to David in the wilderness of Ziph to reassure him. He also assures David that: "you shall be king over Israel, and I shall be next to you" (1 Sam. 23:17). Apart from Samuel's visit to Bethlehem, this is the first we hear about David's future as king, and it seems odd given the circumstances that he does not deny or seem surprised by Jonathan's words. It changes the tone of the story, suggesting that David is not so much a fugitive on the run from a king possessed by an evil spirit, rather than a rebel and explicit contender for the throne. It suggests that Saul's hatred and fear of David may not be quite so irrational as they have been made to seem.
Jonathan and David reconfirm their covenant, and Jonathan returns to Saul.
The Ziphites in the area where David is staying appeal to Saul to help them get rid of David. It seems strange unless we're supposed to understand David as a sort of bandit leader figure, since the request is similar to that of towns like Keilah.
Saul sends the Ziphites home to confirm David's whereabouts. He's concerned that David is "very cunning" (1 Sam. 23:22), so he wants absolute confirmation before he brings out his army again.
Once the Ziphites confirm David's location, Saul heads out and chases David to the wilderness of Maon. There, he is closing in when, suddenly, he receives a message that the Philistines are raiding. As king, he must repel them, so he abandons the hunt for David.
This complicates our image of Saul. He is not possessed of an "evil spirit" that causes him to hunt David single-mindedly. Rather, he is still – at least in this instance – willing to abandon the hunt, even when he is so close, to go fulfil his duty as king and protect his people.
With Saul distracted, David escapes to Engedi.
Saul returns from fighting the Philistines and hears of David's move, so he takes 3,000 soldiers along (to fight David's 600). As they march along, Saul stops in a cave to relieve himself. Because Saul's dignity is clearly not a concern for the authors.
Unfortunately, Saul ha the worst luck ever. The cave he chooses happens to be the one David is hiding in and, while Saul is doing his business, David stealthily cuts the skirt off Saul's robe. He then feels terribly guilty for having done even that much and stays his hand against further mischief.
Saul, apparently not noticing that the skirt of his robe is gone, finishes up and leaves the cave. The mental image will have me giggling for weeks, I think.
David chases after Saul, waving his skirt. "Why do you listen to the words of men who say, 'Behold, David seeks you hurt'?" (1 Sam. 24:10). The obvious answer might be that Saul's own son and David's closest friend, Jonathan, is one of them. By declaring David the next king, he is strongly implying that David will either kill Saul or, at least, prevent Saul's descendants from taking the crown.
But in this case, David has evidence on his side. He presents the skirt he cut from Saul's robe, saying that he came that close yet Saul remains unharmed.
David then launches into a big speech in which he apparently admits that he and Saul are pitted against each other, but calls on God to arrange all of the fighting on his behalf. He refuses to raise his own hand against Saul (1 Sam. 24:12-15). The apologetics of such a speech placed in the mouth of someone who will usurp the crown are rather obvious.
Saul acknowledges that David is the more righteous between them, and he calls on God to reward David for his mercy. He admits that he knows now that David will be king (1 Sam. 24:20), and even that it will be David who will truly establish "the kingdom of Israel" (1 Sam. 24:20) – further supporting my pet theory that Saul was king only of the Benjaminites (and possibly the odd vassal tribe). He asks only that David swear not to cut off his descendants and destroy his name.
There may or may not be secondary intended aspect to this story. When David runs out of the cave to talk to Saul, he puts himself at the mercy of Saul's 3,000 men. It's never explicitly said, so I don't know if it's intended or not, but Saul shows just as much restraint here as David in not taking advantage of the parlay to capture or kill David.
In the end, Saul heads home and David goes to a stronghold.


Mara Hauser is the Founder and CEO of 25N Coworking with locations in Geneva and Arlington Heights, IL. Mara is also on the board of the Global Workspace Association.
In addition to starting 25 North, Mara is President of Workplace Studio and has over 25 years of experience in designing and optimizing workspaces.
Iris led the NextSpace team during initial expansion from 1 location to 9 and co-founded the League of Extraordinary Coworking Spaces and COSHARE, produced Freelance Camps and has spoken at various conferences including the Global WorkSpace Association Conference and the Global Coworking Unconference Conference.
Iris currently consults, leads Coworking Mastermind groups, heads the board of directors of COSHARE and showcases industry and movement leaders through her media series, Coworking with Iris.
Her background, how she got into coworking and how you've landed on her sweet spot- helping organizations with hiring, culture and retention.
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Rana Adhikari and colleagues are awarded a 2019 New Horizons In Physics Prize.
Professor of Physics Rana Adhikari, along with Lisa Barsotti and Matthew Evans from MIT, are one of six recipients of this year's New Horizons In Physics Prize. Awarded by the same foundation that issues the Breakthrough Prizes In Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics and Mathematics, the New Horizons In Physics Prizes honors early-career achievements in physics and math.
Adhikari, Barsotti and Evans received this award for their research on present and future ground-based detectors of gravitational waves. Along with their fellow 2019 Breakthrough Prize honorees, the three will be recognized at the seventh annual Breakthrough Prize ceremony on Sunday, November 4, at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA which will be broadcasted live on the National Geographic channel.
The Breakthrough Prize Foundation was established in 2012 and is sponsored by Sergey Brin, Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg, Ma Huateng, Yuri and Julia Milner and Anne Wojcicki. For more information, visit the Breakthrough Prize website.


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Young people welcomed to housing development in Tutshill
Housebuilder Bellway is working alongside Welsh homeless charity Llamau to give young people an exclusive glimpse into the construction industry.
The group from Llamau – which aims to get vulnerable young people into work – visited the housebuilder's Manor Chase development off Gloucester Road in Tutshill.
People being supported by the charity were given a tour of the development by Bellway staff, who also gave them an insight into the types of jobs that the construction industry has to offer.
Bellway also presented Llamau with a cheque for £5636, which was raised after Bellway staff took part in the charity's annual sleep out last year.
Gareth Hawkins, Learning 4 Life Contract Coordinator at Llamau, said: "It's really great to be able to give our young people a glimpse into what the construction industry has to offer. We're very grateful to Bellway for hosting us.
"At Llamau, we are committed to helping vulnerable people get back onto their feet and find work, so it was extremely beneficial for them to visit the development and gain an insight into the industry."
Simon Hughes, Development Manager for Bellway Wales, said: "We really enjoyed hosting the young people from Llamau to visit our development at Manor Chase.
"We are extremely pleased to be able to support Llamau's fantastic work and we are looking forward to continuing to build on our relationship in the future."
Llamau is the leading homelessness charity in Wales and helps young people to regain the necessary skills to live independently.
More information on the charity can be found at llamau.org.uk.
More information on the new homes being built at Manor Chase can be found at bellway.co.uk.