Isaiah looks forward to the hope of salvation and glory.
1. What "mountain" is referred to in Isiah 25.6ff (cf. Is. 2.1-4)? What happens there?
2. As you read through these two chapters, make note of what they do who have come to know the salvation of the Lord (cf. 25.9; 26.1-6; 26.7-9)?
With the return to thinking about "that day" that comes in chapter 24, the prophet's mood changes significantly. From threats of judgment and condemnations of sin, Isaiah turns to celebrate the promised salvation of the Lord, to which he pointed in chapter 24.
He praises God for His faithfulness and care for His remnant (25.1-5) – all those who waited on and trusted in Him (v. 9). Isaiah rejoices in the expanding of that remnant to include "all people" (vv. 6, 7) who confess God and have believed in His salvation. A great day is coming when even death will be defeated, and tears will be no more (v. 8). The mountain of the Lord's house (Is. 2.1-4, cf. Is. 25.10ff) will overcome all its enemies and become a strong fortress among the nations.
Now (ch. 26) Isaiah prepares a song for "that day" (Is. 26.1) when the Lord begins to save His people. It is a song of mission (vv. 1-3), peace (v. 3), and victory (vv. 5, 6; 25.10-12), looking forward to the day when righteousness will prevail on the earth (vv. 7ff). The upright are those who desire the Lord, seek Him early, and obey His righteous commandments (v. 9).
God grants His grace to all people, though the wicked reject it (vv. 10, 11). But to those who trust in Him, God will grant them His peace and show them His grace as they rejoice in and obey Him (vv. 12-15). The people of God have known much trouble, but this was only the pangs of birth bringing to life the renewed blessings of the Lord (vv. 16-19). Those who were dead in their trespasses and sins have now become alive in the grace of God (v. 19; cf. Eph. 2.1-10), and they go forth like the morning dew to bring the refreshment of God's salvation to the world (cf. Ps. 110.3).
Judgment is coming to the people of Judah and Jerusalem. But a day of salvation lies beyond that time of suffering and trial, and the people must look toward that day and be faithful to God, even as they prepare for the judgment which is to come (vv. 20, 21).
1. Our world is under the wrath of God at this moment (Rom. 1.18-32), and it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God (1 Pet. 4.17). We may have to endure a season of suffering and trial, but, following Isaiah's prophecy, what can we look forward to beyond that?
2. Why do you suppose the prophet emphasized the importance of singing about the Lord's salvation? When should we sing about His salvation? Only when we're in a worship service?
3. Isaiah says we must trust in the Lord. What does that mean? How could you tell whether someone was trusting the Lord? How is trusting the Lord related to desiring Him (26.9)?
Jesus is exalted in glory and reigning at the Father's right hand. Rejoice in the promises outlined in this psalm, and pray that today you will be able to share the salvation of the Lord with someone in your Personal Mission Field.
O clap your hands, you peoples all; with joy to God your songs intone!
Shout out to Him, and on Him call, He is the mighty, sovereign One!
High is the Lord, O, fear His Name! He rules, a King o'er all the earth.
Nations and peoples He has tamed, the heritage of His holy worth.
God has ascended with a shout, the Lord with sound of trumpet bold!
Sing praise to Him, let praise ring out! Let praise through all the world be told!
God is the King of all the earth: Sing praise to Him with glorious psalms!
He rules the nations by His worth, and on His throne receives their alms.
Princes of peoples gather all to Abraham and to our God.
Exalt the Lord, and on Him call – the earth is His, so praise our God!


Stop pushing your roll blower! Attach your roll blower directly to your zero turn mower in under 60 seconds (After assembly). Fits many makes and models of both blowers and mowers. More detailed pics.
The Wonder Hitch is a patented blower hitch. There were no changes made to the mower seen above. The only change was to the blower. Two of the existing handle bolts were replaced with eye bolts (2 are provided with each hitch).


NOTE: Associate Members do not have voting rights on any aspect of our Charity's governance or management.
Donation and fundraising materials eg collecting boxes, donation days, recycling etc.
"Payroll Giving...it's easier than you think!"
Payroll Giving/ Give As you Earn (GAYE) is a way of employees giving money to charity without paying tax on it. It must be paid through PAYE from someone's wages or pension.
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text:
Information about traffic volumes assists with road design and in prioritising network improvements. Traffic count data is also valuable in assessing road safety risk exposure and helping identify how effective past improvements have been.
The Auckland Transport traffic flow counting programme is carried out based on road hierarchy and need.
Traffic count data
Download the Traffic Count data from March 2020 to May 2021 (xlsx 4.3MB)
Last updated 24 September 2021.
Contact Auckland Transport to request Traffic Count data across the Auckland region prior to 2012. Please note, data prior to 2012 is quite sparse and is only available in summary format, there is no guarantee there will be data available for every site.
Traffic counts data explained
Traffic count data is collected for AT at sites within the Auckland region.
Traffic count sites are listed in the spreadsheet by area and then alphabetical order by street name. Each column is explained here:
Road name: The road the traffic count was carried out on.
Description: The exact location of where on the road that the traffic count was placed (GPS coordinates included from 9 February 2018).
Count start date: The date that the 7-day count started.
5 day ADT: the Average Daily Traffic (vehicles per day) based on a Monday – Friday week.
7-day average: the Average Daily Traffic (vehicles per day) based on a Monday – Sunday week.
Sat: The total number of vehicles that were counted on Saturday.
Sun: The total number of vehicles that were counted on Sunday.
Direction: Indicates which side of the road the count was on.
AM peak volume: The volume of traffic counted in the morning peak hour.
PM peak volume: The volume of traffic counted in the afternoon peak hour.
Midday peak volume: The volume of traffic counted in the midday peak hour
HCV%: Percentage of total vehicles counted that are heavy commercial vehicles (HCV).
Prior to 2011, traffic count data was collected by the legacy councils: Auckland City, Franklin District, North Shore City, Manukau City, Papakura District, Rodney District and Waitakere City.
Traffic count data terms of use
While all due care has been taken in the preparation and provision of this service, Auckland Transport does not give any warranty that the information contained is accurate and accepts no liability whatsoever for any loss or damage arising from the use of the data.
People using the traffic count data should apply and rely upon their own skill and judgement when using the information, and consider the consequences arising from its use. The data should not be used in isolation from other sources of advice and information. The data is for individual use and can't be republished without AT approval.
Please note that traffic flow counts are variable due to various external factors, eg sensitivity of the equipment, counting methods used, congestion effects and seasonal variations. The traffic flow data is intended to be used as an approximate indication of traffic volumes at counting sites.
Contact Auckland Transport

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


JIM STEGER is currently Chief Technical Officer and cofounder of an Internet applications company. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from Northwestern University. His prior work included mechanical engineering assignments at Motorola and Acco Brands. At Motorola, Jim worked on part design for two-way radios and was one of the lead mechanical engineers on a cellular phone product line. At Acco Brands, Jim was the sole engineer on numerous office product designs. His Worx stapler has won design awards in the United States and in Europe. Jim has been a Pro/Engineer user for over six years.


In the garden of the castle, there are the guests of the Queen. The folks are having fun. The celebration is animated by the antics and jokes of the clown. He begins his games and then it is followed by the dances of girls and knights. His mother, friends and courtiers, congratulates him.
The Queen, who is concerned about her son's carefree lifestyle, tells him that he must choose a bride from the eligible princesses who have been invited at the royal ball the following evening when he comes of age. Siegfried is upset because he dreams of a pure, ideal love.
The festivities draw to an end, the guests depart, leaving the prince alone with his thoughts in the gathering dusk. Night falls.
Siegfried wants to be alone, face to face, with his thoughts but he feels the presence of a shadow at his side, it is as if some mysterious force is beckoning to him. His thoughts were interrupted by flight of a flock of swans. He follows it.
He finds himself on the banks of a mysterious lake where he sees mysterious ruins of an ancient palace. In the shimmering patches of moonlight on the water, visions of bewitched swan maidens rise up before him. Siegfried catches sight of Odette, the most beautiful of the maidens. He is spell-bounded, deeply stroked by her beauty. She and the other swans live under the spell of the evil sorcerer Rothbart. Only between midnight and dawn, they are able to regain their human shape.
The Prince Siegfried is decided to fight for her love and for Odette but she prevents him that only a vow of eternal love, expressed by one who is willing to die for her, can relinquish the curse. At long last, he has found his romantic ideal of love. He swears to Odette that he will love her forever and be faithful to her. Odette tells him that she will not appear among people until the spell will not dissipate, otherwise they would attract Rothbart's revenge. Through cunning he would make Siegfried to break his oath causing the death of the swans. While she explains that she can only attend after midnight, Rothbart appears in the guise of an owl and conceals himself in the ruins. But as dawn arrives, the evil spell draws Odette and her companions back to the lake and they are turned into swans again.
The celebration is taking place at the castle of the Queen. Prospective brides-to-be are arriving at the Princess Mother's castle. The Prince must choose one of them to become his wife.
The dances follow one another - a tumultuous Spanish dance, then a cheerful Neapolitan tarantella, a Polish mazurka and, finally, a Hungarian dance. During a waving and elegant waltz there are presented the girls. But Siegfried can think of nothing but Odette and his date with her. He dances in an offhand way with the well-born maidens. Not one of them can compare to his ideal.
Suddenly, a mysterious knight arrives at the ball accompanied by a ravishingly beautiful young girl and a suite of black swans. It is the Evil Genius and Odile, Odette's double.
Struck by their resemblance, Siegfried hurries towards Odile. The Evil Genius is testing the Prince's sentiments. Siegfried is enchanted by the perfidious Odile who manages to disarm him of all his doubts. He dances with her a pas de deux and announces Odile to be his chosen bride.
At this very moment, the throne room is plunged in darkness and a vision of the beautiful Odette appears before the assembled company. Siegfried realizes that he has become a plaything in the hands of Fate. Hoping to atone for his betrayal, he rushes in despair after the receding image of the white swan.
Nighttime. A deep gloom overhangs the lake. Odette brings the tragic news; the Prince has broken his vow of faithfulness to her. Siegfried's conscience is deeply troubled; he hurries towards Odette begging for her forgiveness. Odette forgives the youth but she is no longer mistress of her own fate.
The Evil Genius summons up a storm which disperses plays havoc with, the heroes of our tale, but the real love wins.
The spell is broken and the remaining swans turn back into humans. The sun embodies their love.
World Premiere: 20 February 1877, at Bolshoy Theatre, Moscow.
Premiere in Chisinau: 20 april 1958, at Moldovan State Theatre of Opera and Ballet.
The premiere of the last version: 30 may 1982, at Moldovan State Academic Opera and Ballet Theatre.


Target has a new printable coupon on their website for Hungry Jack for a $1.00 off any one product…….best part is you can use it to get one of the Hungry Jack products (easy Pack) for FREE…..nice!
Head over an print the Target coupon for a $1.00 off any one Hungry Jack product.
So head over to your local Target and get your FREE Hungry Jack easy pack…….


text:
Biography Galleries Drum Setup Discography Interview Archives Feedback
FROM HARD-ROCK MAGAZINE, A FRENCH MONTHLY METAL MAGAZINE
Interviewed by Olivier Strouhetovarius
Hard-Rock: When did the idea of this album, Intermission come from ?
Jörg Michael: We had decided to have a two year break (two year break is best) at the end of the Infinite Tour, before releasing the new album. For five or six years, we followed a kind of routine: release of a record, go on tour to promote it, work on new material, record it, release the new album and go again on the road...The Infinite Tour was exhausting because, for us, it is the one that has been the most successful, the longest one and the one that made us travel the most. It was absolutely necessary to stop a while to have a bit of a rest and take care of ourselves...
In brief, the people at our record label were not very happy to learn that, and asked us to supply to them with one Mini LP or a maxi-single with demos, live, things like that... We found that a load of codswallop : offering some second-rate material would have meant to us stealing from the fans.
We took time to consider the remarks of journalists and amateurs of the band who blamed us for releasing records in different shapes according to countries. We thought that it would be better to compile all our bonus titles on a single CD which we would release at one special price. So, naturally, Intermission is not a new album of Stratovarius, but it contains fifteen songs, among which five have never been released before. The CD comes out with a booklet of 24 pages with a lot of photos, a very nice layout, a very luxurious product as a matter of fact. We wanted the fans to get their money's worth. We know that many of them already possess some songs which appear on Intermission, and it was out of question that, for five new ones, they would pay the full whack ! This is why, here in Germany, from where I'm calling you, the CD will not cost more than 90 Francs.
I am also anxious to clarify a matter which the fans do not necessarily know concerning bonus-tracks: the Japanese sell very expensive records - moreover, everything is expensive in Japan (laughter)! - and the record companies, over there, ask for one more bonus title because they are afraid of imports which are cheaper. By including a bonus-track, that represents a valuable product. I admit that, for groups like us, the Japanese market is very important and we can not skip over official structures. Furthermore, the record labels pay the groups a lot for having a bonus-track. For Destiny, we were at cross purposes with fans: we gave an exclusive title to the Japanese market, but we said to them that our European fans were going to find themselves with a title less and that we would not appreciate. Then, we gave another song for the European pressing. But the fans in Europe did not understand that they won one more song, which wasn't foreseen ! With Intermission, we put things back on the right track and I hope that the fans will understand our move.
Hard-Rock: Nevertheless, there is another version of Intermission...
Jörg Michael: Yes, but only available on our website and strictly limited to 1,500 copies in the shape of a digipack accompanied with a CD bonus with two demos. It is the product only intended for our die-hard fans, for those who get informed regularly of our current events by surfing on our website. It costs exactly the same price as the regular CD and there's none left anymore! We did not send 400 copies to Koreans or things like that; I would say they're intended to our most persevering fans.
Hard-Rock: Intermission will be released later...
Jörg Michael: It is not very hard to explain it: it is due to the Finnish mentality (laughter)! I'll explain to you: the deadline was fixed and, hem... how to say, mister Tolkki made errors with mastering in the studio, and he had not realised it! Otherwise, the first delay was due to the fact that Timo Kotipelto should have sung on one song stemming from Infinite's sessions. We were absolutely anxious to work with our usual sound engineer who got it all wrong in his timetable. We had rented the studio, but he could not join us! In brief, Finns are not the most reliant people of the world (laughter)! Well, eventually, the album has only one and a half month delay because it comes out at the end of May.
Hard-Rock: Both Timos are working at the moment on their solo projects. What about you ?
Jörg Michael: Jens Johanson also works with his brother! As for me, even if my record label and numerous fans asked me for a J�rg Michael solo album, I'm not really interested in that. I prefer to concentrate 100% myself to Stratovarius. I want to care about the next album, remain in good shape, practise the drums. I perfectly understand that Timo Tolkki wants to express himself: he composed some material which he likes but which would not work within the framework of Stratovarius. This is not my case: entering the studio without material in order to record a solo album just for earning some more money is not my purpose.
Hard-Rock: So you are on holidays...
Jörg Michael: Hem... If you like. But I work a lot, too! We passed a lot of time on the road and we left things slip: our website was not updated enough, fans had troubles because their credit card was debited and they have never received merchandise that they had ordered : as I'm in charge of everything at the moment, I make up for these small errors! And then, we do not stay completely inactive people: this summer, we're participating in four or six festivals, we do not still know. When we speak of a two year break, it is not totally true: from January, 2002, we are beginning to prepare our next tour which will be a hell of a work! We may not appear in the media during all this time but that does not mean that we twiddle our thumbs!
Hard-Rock: You said just before that the Finnish groups were not very conscientious but, at least, the 21st century is promising...
Jörg Michael: It is a difficult question to answer... But I have my opinion about it. Finland is not in the public eye, the bands must work twice as hard to become famous. It is more difficult for a Finnish group to break space through than for a combo of Los Angeles or even for the Germans. The heavy-metal market goes very well. Besides, in Finland, the winter is abominable, the bands lock themselves into studios and repeat tremendously. That is all they do: therefore, the level of the musicians is there very high so.
Waltari and Stratovarius were certainly among the first groups to be successful at world level, but we were the trees which hide the forest. Today, everybody realises that Finland possesses groups which are absolutely excellent. It is my theory, I do not absolutely know if it is true (laughter)!
Hard-Rock: Between France and Stratovarius, it is THE big love story...
Jörg Michael: I am the first one surprised about it ... and delighted! When I set foot in France with my previous bands, that did not work really. Anyway, France has the reputation to be a very difficult country for heavy-metal. Generally, the groups think that they pass by France to join Spain (laughter)! And suddenly, Olivier Garnier appeared and was anxious to take charge of us. As soon as he began to work with us, our sales did more than double! The People of Garrance Production (EDITOR'S NOTE: the tour booking company) works also very well. The magazine Hard-Rock also always supported us. We had the chance to tour with Angra, who is very successful in France. Numerous fans were able to be exposed to Stratovarius's music. Moreover, we like France, and I think that, when the audience sees us, they feel how we take pleasure and they return that feeling.
Intermission tracklisting
01. Will My Soul Ever Rest In Peace?
02. Falling Into Fantasy
03. The Curtains Are Falling
04. Requiem (Instrumental)
05. Bloodstone (Judas Priest - A Tribute To Judas Priest 2)
06. Kill The King (Rainbow - A Tribute To Ronnie James Dio and � Father Time � Japanese single )
07. I Surrender (Rainbow, live - never released before)
08. Keep The Flame (Infinite French limited pressing)
09. Why Are We Here? (14 Diamonds, Best Of Stratovarius)
10.What Can I Say (Infinite Japanese Bonus track)
11. Dream With Me (Destiny Japanese Bonus track)
12. When The Night Meets The Day (Episode Japanese Bonus track)
13. It�s A Mistery (Infinite French limited pressing)
14. Cold Winter Nights (Destiny European Bonus track)
15. Hunting High And Low (live - never released before)
The French version of this interview is available here.
Contact: [ webmaster@jorgmichael.com ]
PHP coder / Web Designer: Emile.a
Writing and Pictures: Muriel.B


Throughout the design process, you'll come across certain terms used to describe the basic structure of different cabinetry. These terms will help you better articulate what you love, like and want to complete your kitchen.
Our door designs come in three panel styles that have an impact on the overall feel of your space.
Slab-style doors have the look of a solid center panel with no ornamentation.
A recessed panel door has a flat center panel set back inside the frame of a door.
A raised panel has an elevated center panel and is somewhat decorative.
Overlay refers to how much of the door and drawer fronts cover the cabinetry frame. Hardly any of the frame will be visible behind a full-overlay door, while half-overlay doors leave more room around the frame.
A full-overlay door has very little frame showing around each door and drawer front for a seamless look.
This style shows some cabinet frame around each door front.


Tom and Minda selected the gorgeous Ballroom at Church Street located in the heart of Orlando Florida as their wedding venue. The venue features cathedral ceilings stain glass windows and beautiful chandeliers. Its location in Orlando also offers many wonderful photo opportunities for weddings. Lon Tosi of the Orlando Team of Sensational Ceremonies worked with the couple for nearly a year to develop a meaningful ceremony that truly told their story. They did not want a long event, so it was up to Lon to get into the true essence of what was important to the couple. And he did!
They had a "Love Theme" ceremony with several readings that focused on the meaning of love. The reading What is Love speaks of the mystery of love and indicates that "Love is a promise that is always kept, a seed that can flourish in the most of unlikely of places" Another reading about love indicated that "It was love that brought you together to unite your destinies. Always remember how important your loving relationship is. Cherish you love forever". That most memorable and poplar reading from Nightmare Before Christmas served as a transition between vows. It reads: "My dearest friend, If you don't mind, I'd like to join you by your side, Where we could gaze into the stars And sit together, now and forever, For it is plain as anyone could see, We're simply meant to be. So beautiful!
An amazing group of vendors worked with the couple to make certain that they had a fantastic wedding experience. Married By Mail provided the couple with their Florida Marriage License. They actually hand delivered it to Lon for the wedding. Outstanding service! Sara from Serendipity Events did a masterful job of orchestrating the event. Things went off perfectly and on time! Puff' N Stuff Catering provided the cocktail and reception menu items, and Sofelle Cake Artistry made that gorgeous and delicious cake! The flowers were provided by The Flower Shop Orlando. Magic Occasions served up the amazing beverages of the evening! We wish you much luck with your marriage Tom and Minda! You are off on a great adventure!


← Do You Have Restless Tillage Syndrome?
Cover crop seeding into standing crops or after harvest?
Cover crops have gained in popularity in the Corn Belt over the last few years, and now is the time of year they are being seeded.
Some producers have already flown on cover crop seed into their standing corn or soybean crops, while others are waiting to drill or seed the cover crops after harvest. With the delayed crop maturity and later harvest in some areas of the Corn Belt this year, it could be a good year to try seeding by air or with ground-based high clearance equipment, especially if seed is already purchased for species needing several months of moderate temperatures to grow.
Oats and radish flown into standing soybeans in September.
Brassicas, legumes, and oats, for example, should be seeded no later than the third week in September for much of the Corn Belt, and flying them on now could still give some benefit to the soil. Cereal rye is the most hardy of the cover crops grown in the region and can be successfully seeded after harvest throughout the region, and would be a good choice after corn harvest this year, particularly if next year's crop will be soybeans.
Producers should consult the Cover Crop Selector Tool from the Midwest Cover Crops Council for recommended seeding dates for their state and county, as well as seeding rates, depths, and other tips. It is important for producers to do their homework on fitting cover crops into their overall systems, however, including choice of cover crop based on next year's cash crop and the method and timing of termination in the spring.


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Skaggs' Autopsy, and the Language of Addiction
by Connor Graham, September 4, 2019
On July 1, Major League Baseball player Tyler Skaggs, 27, a starting pitcher for the Los Angeles Angels, was found dead in his hotel room in Southlake, Texas.
In the following weeks, Tyler Skaggs' death made ripples through Major League Baseball. Teammates and players from other teams paid tribute to the pitcher, including a July 12 game in which everyone on the Angels wore Skaggs' name and number.
Over the weekend, the medical examiner of Tarrant County, Texas released Skaggs' autopsy. It revealed that at the time of death, Skaggs had oxycodone, fentanyl and alcohol in his system. The cause of death was ruled as "terminal aspiration of gastric contents," meaning he choked on his own vomit while intoxicated.
Skaggs' death should make us ponder what kind of drug and alcohol treatment options are made available to MLB players.
The Response to the Autopsy
The Southlake police are investigating Skaggs' death. According to a statement released by his family through legal counsel, the investigation is tied to an unnamed Angels employee. In the statement, the family, grieving the loss of their son, said they were "heartbroken" to learn Skaggs had drugs in his system. They called it "completely out of character for someone who worked so hard to become a Major League baseball player."
The family said they were shocked to learn that their son's could involve an employee of the Los Angeles Angels. They vowed that "we will not rest until we learn the truth about how Tyler came into possession of these narcotics, including who supplied them."
Skaggs' family is mourning his untimely death, and they are entitled to express their heartbreak, sadness, shock and anger. Unfortunately their statement is an example of the kind of stigma that those with substance use disorder face each day. Asserting that drug use is "out of character" for someone who is accomplished and works hard implies those addicted to drugs don't work hard.
I would argue that you only have to visit any drug and alcohol detox near Atlanta, Georgia to see that very hard working people suffer with addiction everyday.
The thousands of deaths caused by drug overdoses, including the recent upsurge in tandem with the fentanyl crisis, are preventable. Many are ashamed to come forward about their disorder and never reach out to receive the opioid addiction treatment they need.
The Language of Addiction and Recovery
Harvard Medical School Professor of Psychiatry, John Kelly is one of the creators of Addictionary, an online glossary of addiction-related terminology including words that are considered stigmatizing.
In a 2017 article, Kelly told the Harvard Gazette that using the appropriate language to talk about addiction "goes beyond political correctness. It's not just a matter of being nice. What we now know is that actual exposure to these specific terms induces this implicit cognitive bias. If you really want to solve the problem, you want to remove barriers and obstacles."
So far, Addiction-ary contains mostly terms that addiction treatment professionals use and focuses less on conversational phrases used by lay people.
But imagine another Major League Baseball player who is living with addiction seeing the Skaggs family's statement. It would be hard not to internalize the sentiment that addiction is "out of character" for a professional athlete, even if the facts don't support that statement.
Since 2014, three MLB players, Oscar Taveras, Jose Fernandez, and then-recently retired Roy Halladay, all died from vehicle accidents that occurred while they were intoxicated. In 2015, pitcher C.C. Sabathia missed playing in the postseason when he checked himself into rehab for alcohol addiction. These are only a few highly publicized examples of how substance use has impacted, or ended, the lives of talented athletes.
The results of investigations by Southlake Police and Major League Baseball, have yet to be announced. Even if foul play is involved in Skaggs' death, more attention should be paid to the prevalence of substance use in baseball and other professional sports.
Drug Detox, Residential Treatment Center in Atlanta
Even though we call athletes heroes, at the end of the day, they are people, just like you and I.
They also have histories of experimenting with drugs. They also drink alcohol and live with alcohol abuse. live with addiction, anxiety and depression and can't overcome these conditions without help.
Many people are afraid to seek help for addiction to drugs and alcohol. They'll suffer through delirium tremens or maintain a buzz or high at work, for fear of losing respect if it was found out they entered into treatment. If you are struggling to stop drinking or using drugs, there is help.
The first step in treating alcohol and opiate use disorder is to end the physical addiction through the detox process. But no one should try to do this alone. Trying to stop drinking alcohol cold turkey, for example, is potentially life threatening.
At Atlanta Detox Center, medical professionals provide clients with top-of-the-line substance abuse and mental health treatment around the clock. We are a premier Atlanta mental health center and accredited detox in Georgia. We can help you lay the groundwork for the next level of treatment and your long-term recovery.
To find out if you need to detox from alcohol or detox from opiates, call to speak to an admissions specialist today at 833-440-8642.
Amatus Recovery Centers, a division of Amatus Health, offers treatment for drug and alcohol addiction as well as co-occurring mental health disorders in facilities across the country. To learn more visit amatusrecoverycenters.com.


Anyway all that passed away like a dream and things were back to normal the very same day, once the markets reopened.
But why the hell did this happen?
Well by now everyone knows that it was because of SEBI's proposed ban on P Notes with immediate effect. I interacted with people around me who had some interest in the markets, and everyone suggested to stay away from active investing as the markets are volatile because of SEBI's recent proposal on P Notes.
So far so good, the moment I asked what a P Note is, I got blank faces or some weird explanation which I couldn't comprehend.
To be precise, a P Note (Participatory Note) is a financial instrument through which a foreign individual or institution can take a position in the Indian equity market without being registered as a 'Foreign Institutional Investor' (FII). So the FIIs who are already registered in India become the medium for such individuals/institutions to take a pie in India's promising growth story by issuing them P Notes.
The point I want to make is not the whole P Note issue. I wanted to highlight the significance of the all powerful 'Market Sentiment'. I have read a number of times that the Market Sentiment is so powerful that it can sometimes defy all logic. I believe that in any market there are only a few people (few in nos. but holding the major chunk of the market.) who understand the intricacies of it and a majority are mere dummy observers.
Any news reaches the market as and when it happens.
The markets react to the news almost instantly.
We may be able to predict the direction (+ve or -ve) of the index based on the news but the magnitude of swing can be completely disproportional to the actual impact the news may have.
Over the time, the markets digest the news and indexes get back to their normal, leaving behind the appropriate impact the news should have made.
All this provides some decent opportunities for a well informed investor, to buy/sell stocks and make a quick gain.
After spending a week deciding on the structuring, layout, themes etc., finally, I got everything in place to put up my first post. Now I can pour in all the crap that comes to my mind. I am pretty unorganized by nature, but I'll try to categorize my posts properly. I am wondering how many categories I am gonna end up with!
While I am starting all this in anticipation that people would come up to read my posts and provide comments, even if that doesn't happen I would be happy to continue. Once in a while, as life moves on, it would be great to browse through my own posts to remember the past and see how things have changed in and around me.
Before I complete this, let me thank Ankit Solanki for helping me with the setup and being generous to provide space to host my blog.


text:
'TheTruth Is Being Told At The TRRC'
in Politics — by Kairo News —	July 25, 2019
As the tiny West African nation continues to be rocked with gruesome crimes confession by Yahya Jammeh's former hitmen, the Gambia's Attorney General and Minister of Justice Aboubacarr Tambadou said Gambians have now known the Truth.
"I think the truth is being told, and revealed. That is what this country needs," Minister Tambadou told this medium. The defeat of Yahya Jammeh in December 2016 elections had given Gambians the opportunity to build a bleeding nation.
Last Monday, Malick Jatta, an ex-member of the Junglers testified before the ongoing Sixth Session of the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) and confirmed that the kill team carried out a number of extra-judicial killings at the direction of ex-President Yahya Jammeh. He further stated that he took part in the assassination of journalist Deyda Hydara, an Agence France Presse (AFP) correspondent and co-founder of The Point newspaper.
Mr. Tambadou said Gambians need to establish the truth about all the human rights violations that occurred in the country.
"Yesterday (Monday) was just another episode of that truth telling process," he added. The TRRC is giving Gambians the opportunity to uncover truth on gross violations of human rights committed during 22 years of the Jammeh dictatorship.
Meanwhile, Malick Jatta, a brother to the former Army Chief of Staff, ended his testimony on Tuesday with a vibrant call for forgiveness. He had expressed regrets for being allowed to used as a tool to kill innocent people.
Jatta said in the army, the position of subordinate is very critical because they are bound to follow orders – written or unwritten – from the top brass.
"When we were at the bottom, we take and implement orders," Jatta said remorsely.


Learn how to optimise your sites, the secrets of a winning UX portfolio and more in net issue 279.
In web design, it feels like a hot new tool or technique pops up every week. No one can learn everything, so the net team have asked educator Christopher Murphy to put together a roadmap of the 10 top skills you should be focusing your efforts on now.
What should you be learning now?
Animation is one of the areas gaining traction at the moment. But it's not all about the big, look-at-me animations – small, subtle movements can elevate your site from okay to great. To that end, the team asked Donovan Hutchinson to guide you through how to create a bank of 'micro-animations' you can adapt and reuse throughout your projects.
This issue's freebie is a 66-page ebook taken from Lea Verou's CSS Secrets. Dive in to learn how to tackle translucent borders, flexible background positioning, inner rounding and more.
As our sites get bigger and more unweildy, performance is a growing concern within the industry. However, there are some sites getting it right. This issue Jamie Knight explains how the BBC keeps its users flowing from one page to the next; follow his advice to keep your site speedy.
Filament Group's Patty Toland chats about why open source gives you "double bang for your buck"
Great news: you can save up to 54% on the world's leading web design magazine with a subscription. Just head to MyFavouriteMagazines and choose between a print, digital or special bundle package.


'Freedom Through Art', Resources for Human Development, RI (RHD-RI), provides people with intellectual and developmental disabilities the opportunity to explore and expand their creative talents in a way that empowers them. Their artists create paintings and drawings as well as craft items such as handmade soap, pillows, bags and hand-painted repurposed furniture.
Artist B. Lucy Stevens told us what inspires them: "The belief that creativity has no disability. That these talented artists deserve support as well as opportunities to get their art out into the world and perhaps even support themselves through their art."
We're pretty sure that we're as excited as they are to come to the Flea. "We want to show off our fantastic artists to a larger Rhode Island audience," Lucy said. "We believe that their unique art will appeal to the kind of people who attend the Providence Flea -- people who are looking for things they can't find anywhere else. Also, we want our artists to experience the sense of accomplishment and empowerment that comes from actually selling their work."
Don't miss the fabulous creations of these artists at Opening Day on June 7, 10 am - 4 pm!
Did you know that each week The Providence Flea introduces crowds to a local non-profit doing great work? We are very pleased to host The Initiative to Educate Afghan Women on The First Flea of the year on June 1.
The Initiative to Educate Afghan Women has worked tirelessly for more than a decade to provide Afghan women with four-year college scholarships at over 20 universities in the United States. In the process they are helping to bring change to Afghanistan.
Under the rule of the Taliban women were not allowed to be educated. With the liberation of their country, young Afghan women are slowly returning to the education system and their voices are being heard.
The Initiative to Educate Afghan Women has accelerated change by offering a college education at some of the nation's best schools. These young women return to Afghanistan after graduation to help their country move forward.
Come learn more about this groundbreaking work happening right here in Rhode Island on June 1.
Rhode Island is a unique place, and Back Roads Clothing celebrates what makes it that way. Their pro-Rhody t-shirts will help anyone promote their pride in the Ocean State. Designed and printed locally, partial proceeds benefit the Providence Rescue Mission. Anne, the creative spark of Back Roads says, "What inspires me to make these shirts? A love of my native state, and a desire to celebrate the quirkiness, independent spirit and resiliency of Rhode Islanders." Get the perfect tee for summer at The Providence Flea on June 30 and July 21!


text:
All fields: weird
Save to favorites Bulletin, Compañía Repertorio Dumé
Save to favorites Interview with William W. Silva
Save to favorites Veritas, Vol. 40, No. 06, March 1998
Save to favorites Miami Hurricane, January 31-Feb 02, 2012
Save to favorites Clipper, November 15, 1945
Save to favorites Clipper, November 1, 1945
Save to favorites Weekly news bulletin, Vol. 3, No. 4, November 4, 1937
Save to favorites Weekly news bulletin, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 19, 1937
Save to favorites Weekly news bulletin, Vol. 1, No. 4, April 28, 1937
Save to favorites Clipper, Vol. 6, No. 8, April 20, 1950
Save to favorites Clipper, Vol. 7, No. 2, January 18, 1951
Save to favorites Flight ops, September-October 1971
Save to favorites Veritas, Vol. 33, No. 03, December 1992-January 1993
Save to favorites Cook's tours to Florida and Havana, 1914, by rail or steamer, with personal escort
Save to favorites Miami Hurricane, April 3, 2007
Save to favorites Miami Hurricane, March 9, 2007


Chef Dave Mothersill from The Salt Room in Brighton introduces us to a line caught seabass and the principles involved in filleting a fish.
From using a flexible sharp knife to the technique of pin boning, here Dave shows us how easy filleting is (when you know how) as he prepares a perfectly executed and weighted portion of seabass for one of the Salt Rooms seafood dishes.
The Salt Room is already creating a buzz around Brighton and Sussex and it has been one of the hottest openings in Brighton for some time.
The Salt Room is the sister venue to the very reputable Coal Shed restaurant on Boyce Street Brighton.


Hertfordshire is a fantastic location if your stag or hen group are looking for a more rural feel to the weekend events. With options of Ti pis and stately homes the area has something for all groups and their budgets.
For advise on Hertfordshire as your stag and hen party location give us a call.


With the Rezdy Marketplace growing in popularity, it only makes sense to increase your exposure! We're happy to announce the latest Marketplace upgrade, as well as Online Booking Form and Internal Order improvements.
We've increased efficiency in two areas of the booking procedure for your Customers.
You can now also create an Internal only Promo Code, essentially hiding it from all emails and correspondence that goes out to your Customers. Click here to see how to create an Internal Promo Code.


Next message (by thread): [Lazarus] Memory leak in dbgrids?
actually updating and recompiling, there's no need to migrate anything).
(it either discards the bookmark in local functions or assigns nil to it).
I'll try calling FreeBookmark and see if the leak goes away.


What makes for a good story? In ancient Greece the philosopher Aristotle reflected on what makes stories powerful. He concluded that every effective story has three parts: a beginning, a middle, and an end. While this observation might seem obvious, he was actually highlighting some common misperceptions about stories.
For instance, every story needs a good beginning. The story needs to start by showing us people and situations with which we have something in common. While those people may live in settings that are very different from ours, there needs to be a sense in which we can understand how they feel and why they do things the way they do.
The story of the Bible starts with a really good beginning. There's a wonderful new world, created by God just for us. We have the chance to share this with God, forever. But we're given a choice—we will need to accept God's authority and his instructions if we wish to live with him. In other words, we will need to either embrace God's presence in our lives or reject him outright.
You and I have been created to live rich, full lives in complete abandon to the goodness of God. Although our lives don't look like that anymore, we still ache for it. That's where our story begins.
God, we almost get used to the constant stream of bad news in our world. Please help us remember that you created us in the first place to enjoy full life with you. Amen.


Celebrating 11 years in business this month!
We are so excited to be celebrating our 11th Anniversary! Thank you for putting your trust in us! We are looking forward to the next 11 years!
I'm sorry our 1-Day only Flash Sale just ended.
Start our Weight Loss program this month with a friend and save $50 each off Initial Visit AND you both get 4 upgrades of SMIC, our most powerful, all natural, fat-burning injection. Bathing suit season is quickly approaching and what better time to boost that metabolism and shed those unwanted pounds. Our program is medically-supervised and incredibly successful. Whether you have 100+lbs to lose or just that last stubborn 15lbs, we can help get you there. Learn more about our program here.
will be doing eyeliner at a special rate. Typically eyeliner treatments cost $500-$650 depending on if you want just a lash enhancement, medium liner, or really thick with a wing. As always, our consultations are free. If this is something you have been thinking about, now is the time! Take advantage of this great offer. Learn more about permanent makeup here.
Recover faster, increase your endurance and boost your immune system with our Goal Amino Blend Injection. Includes Glutamine, Ornithine, Arginine and Lysine, an excellent combination to get the most from your workouts or training. Learn why this has become one of our most popular injections here.
Specials only available during March 2018. Not valid with any other promotions or discounts.


text:
Q: Break levels in PHP I have this snippet of code and it's working just fine (because in my example that variable really exists in $arrival_time so it breaks at about $k = 10).
$arrival_time = explode(",", $arrival_timeAll[1]);

$sizeOfArrival = sizeof($arrival_time);
$k = -1;
while (++$k < $sizeOfArrival) {
    if ($arrival_time[$k] >= $someVariable) {
            break;
    }
}

Isn't that the same as this code? I added the while(true) loop and increased the "break level" - so it's now break 2, not just break. But seems that's an infinite loop. Why?
while (true) {
    $arrival_time = explode(",", $arrival_timeAll[1]);

    $sizeOfArrival = sizeof($arrival_time);
    $k = -1;
    while (++$k < $sizeOfArrival) {
        if ($arrival_time[$k] >= $someVariable) {
            break 2;
        }
    }
}

Why adding while(true)? Because I need to define some more statements (which here aren't neccesary for explanation) if inside while loop doesn't find the matching one (if that "break" in first case, "break 2" in second case doesn't run).
Anyway - why this isn't working?

A: In some cases, the predicate for the inner while loop is never hit, thus the while loop is never executed. As you don't have a break after it, the loop will run forever. This case would be if the array is empty, 0 < 0 is false.
Starting with $k = -1, the first time the predicate gets evaluated, $k will be 0 as you are using the preincrement operator, for an empty array this will evaluate to false and the code with run infinite. Without the while(true) loop this wouldn't cause any problems as you'd just jump straight over it.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
/*
* Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
* you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
* You may obtain a copy of the License at
*
* http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
*
* Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
* distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
* WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
* See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
* limitations under the License.
*/

package com.addthis.ccompressor;

import java.io.IOException;

public class DefaultColumn extends AbstractColumn<byte[]> {

    private final ColumnType columnType = ColumnType.RAW;

    public DefaultColumn(String name) {
        super(name);
    }

    @Override
    public ColumnType getColumnType() {
        return columnType;
    }

    @Override
    public void push(byte[] columnValue) throws IOException {
        writeColumnChunk(columnValue);
    }

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
NI Special Pool Association celebrates silver anniversary
Derek Allum, Chris Baxter and John McIlreavey receive recognition from guest of honour Jackie Fulerton at the NI Special Pool Tournament 25th anniversary dinner in Lodge Hotel. wk13007mb
Tuesday 9 April 2019 10:26
MEMBERS and supporters of the NI Special Pool Association have celebrated a memorable quarter of a century with a special anniversary dinner in Coleraine's Lodge Hotel.
The evening was compered by guest of honour Jackie Fullerton, ably assisted by John 'Hatchet' McIlreavey, a man who enjoys a long association with the sport in the north coast area.
During the anniversary dinner, which was well supported and included visitors from as far away as Cork, NISP Chairman John Clarke welcomed everyone to the celebration.
It was also a special night for Trevor Harte, founder and former Chairman of the Northern Ireland Special Pool Association, who has been one of the principal organisers in local pool and international pool for almost 30 years.
Indeed, it was at his agreement, as chairman of the Northern Ireland Pool Association, that the Special Pool Tournaments were first introduced.
"Those events have become a tremendous success over the years," explained Trevor.
*Full story in this week's Chronicle*


text:
ERP, CRM & BI
eRational
LEAN Summit 2018
No one is immune
Even clever people think irrationally
There is a temptation to believe that cognitive biases affect smart folk less than they do people of average intelligence. We like to think that others are much more likely to fall prey to illusions and errors in thinking than we are. This is an example of what social psychologists call the primus inter pares effect, and we are all susceptible to it. For example, the majority of us think that we're better than average drivers (studies show that most people score themselves 7 or above when asked to grade their driving ability between 1 and 10). Mathematically, of course, we can't all be better than average at something!
David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, has studied the phenomenon, known as illusory superiority, for decades. He suggests that although most people will score themselves highly for most positive traits such as IQ, memory and immunity to bias, they will simultaneously recognise the frailties in other people's abilities, realising that the actions and abilities of others are influenced by personality traits and external circumstances; "but when it comes to us, we think it's all about our intention, our effort, our desire, our agency – we think we float above these kinds of constraint"
So most people would be shocked to discover that everyone, including those whose abilities and intellect we respect most, are just as susceptible to biases, faulty analysis and irrational conclusions as the rest of us. In a famous 1977 study, 94% of college professors rated themselves above average relative to their peers! Statistically, that makes the 6% who didn't very dumb indeed!
Project managers inhabit a complex world and have to navigate a treacherous landscape strewn with pitfalls and traps; inaccurate data, competing priorities and complex diagnostics not to mention contradictory opinions, unrealistic estimates and faulty assessments. In this sense they experience a similar working environment to medical doctors, and like their counterparts in healthcare, the most successful practitioners have developed the ability to think clearly and logically even under pressure, and in doing so ensuring that their analysis of a problem is as sound and reliable as possible. Bear this in mind when considering the following puzzle, and be aware that when presented with this challenge, over 80% of General Practitioners arrived at the wrong answer ...
A problem of multiple probabilities
In this example doctors were asked to consider a test used to screen for a disease. The
test is quite accurate with a false positive rate of just 5%. In other words, 5% of the people who take the test will show as having the disease even though they don't. (This success rate would be considered more than acceptable in real life situations. For example, in the case of breast cancer screening the American Cancer Society's website states that 'About half the women getting annual mammograms over a 10-year period will have a false-positive finding.')
For this puzzle, it was explained that the disease is quite common and strikes 1 in 1,000 of the population. People will be tested at random, regardless of whether they are suspected of having the disease or not. Finally, the test does not produce false negative results, so it won't indicate that a person doesn't have the disease when they do.
The question was posed as follows: assuming that a given patient's test is positive, what is the probability of this patient actually having the disease?
Most GPs answered 95% - in other words, they thought that the chances were that the patient did have the disease. At first glance this answer seems logical, after all the test is 95% accurate isn't it? So if the test shows positive then the sad news is that the person is much more likely to have it than not.
However, the correct answer is 1/50 or 2%. The chances are that they don't have the disease. If you thought otherwise, then you may have just informed someone that they're going to suffer from a terrible illness when they're probably not. It's the sort of thing we ought to be capable of getting right – but most of us, including most practising doctors, get wrong. Why?
At first the answer of 2% seems counter-intuitive. It just doesn't sound right. This is because we didn't engage our analytical faculties when calculating the solution, in fact we didn't do any calculating of probabilities at all, relying instead on mental short-cuts or heuristics to arrive at what seemed to be the obviously correct answer. If you're one of the minority of people who got the answer right you can skip the next couple of paragraphs, but for the rest of us, here's how we should have approached the problem:
The key piece of data which we should have factored into our thinking is the incidence at which the disease affects the population. In this case it was explained that the illness strikes 1 in 1,000 people. So, imagine that the screening programme took place in a small city and that 10,000 people were tested. We would expect there to be 10 people in that population who had the disease. However, when we screen those 10,000 people we know that we are going to get 5% false positives and no false negatives, in other words we will end up with 500 people indicating positive on the test. Yet we know that of those 500, only 10 people will have the disease.
So 10 out of 500 is 1/50, or 2%, in other words, the positive reading made it 20 times more likely that the person tested has the disease.
One of the mistakes we make when dealing with puzzles like this is to skimp on carrying out a thorough analysis of the question. Ironically, the smarter we are and the more confident we are in our own abilities, the more likely we are to rush to a conclusion that 'feels right'. In this case we didn't pay attention to the two most important statistics i) the fact that 1 in 1,000 people will have this disease, and ii) the fact that the screening is 95% accurate for positive outcomes and 100% accurate for negative results.
Instead, we focused solely on the fact that the test was '95% accurate', we latched onto this statistic alone and allowed it to influence our thought process, which led us inevitably, to the wrong answer.
Looking at this example in the context of project management; it is most relevant when thinking about risk analysis; what are the chances that this or that will happen and impact the project for the worst. Most project managers are not experts in the day to day operational aspects of the businesses that they're working in, usually we work with subject matter experts; engineers, surveyors, developers with whom we would consult to help us populate our risk registers and develop mitigation strategies. The lesson from this example is this: all of the smart people you work with are prone to making errors of this kind, even when analysing processes and events that are within their sphere of expertise. Never assume that they haven't succumbed to a cognitive error or an invalid mental shortcut when they're providing you with their assessment of risk, impact or probability. Try asking them to talk you through their thought process, you may discover something interesting.
The bigger moral of the story is that we are all susceptible to those tempting mental shortcuts. We use them without being aware that we're doing so, which is why our success rate when dealing with risk analysis is usually poorer than we would admit. Our intelligence, expertise and experience is no defence – unless we are constantly vigilant and on the lookout for cognitive traps.
The author and broadcaster Garrison Keillor created the town of Lake Wobegon as the setting for his long-running radio show Prairie Home Companion in 1974. In this fictional town it was said that;
'All the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average.'
It's a pity that our projects aren't all based in Lake Wobegon, that most unlikely of places.
You can't fool me
You wanna bet?
Most of us don't go about our business as Project Managers assuming that we are irrational, biased or easily fooled. Quite the opposite, in fact. We feel that we make decisions based on reason, cold analysis and a rational assessment of the available evidence. We believe that one of the skills that makes a Project Manager good at their job is the ability to make thoughtful, coherent and balanced decisions most of the time, in any given situation, irrespective of stress levels, pressure from stakeholders, looming deadlines or stretched resources.
But whether we realise it or not, our decisions are often skewed or biased or just downright wrong because we regularly fall prey to cognitive biases, subconscious influences and things that psychologists like to call decision traps.
Of course, in everyday life most of us manage OK. We usually don't see the effects of our irrational tendencies, and in fact, there is evidence that the short-cuts or heuristic thinking processes that we use day-to-day evolved in the past to improve our ancestors' survival chances. But these evolutionary adaptations of our brains took place a million years ago, when homo sapiens needed very different skills and abilities to survive. So what about now, how does this legacy of mental capability affect us in our modern work lives? What if our inability to think and act rationally impacts the decisions that we take while we're engaged in our business of project management? Is it conceivable that some of the problems we face when coordinating teams, assessing risk, estimating tasks, devising schedules or communicating with stakeholders could be down to errors in the way that our brains actually work?
If you're anything like me you're probably thinking "Well, I can see how that might be an explanation for the issues some of my colleagues face, but I don't think it applies to me, I'm fairly sure that I approach things in a pretty rational way, I'm a 'reason and logic' kind of person, I don't think I'm easily fooled or misled."
And you may well be right, but statistically it's unlikely, for reasons that I explain more fully in this book. (See the chapter No one is immune). For now, let's look at a couple of simple examples that might just catch you out.
In the preface to his best-selling book Inevitable Illusions, Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini illustrates just how easily we find ourselves believing bizarrely incorrect facts without realising it, indeed, without giving these 'facts' much forethought at all. He uses examples from geography to illustrate what he likes to refer to as mental tunnels. Here are a couple of them to think about;
Losing my sense of direction
These examples work best for people with a basic knowledge of the geography of the
United States, Italy or the United Kingdom. Let's start with the American example:
Imagine you're in Los Angeles and you take off in a helicopter to head to Reno, Nevada. What direction do you think you would need to fly in? Most people, even most Californians, guess that it would be North and East, perhaps a heading of 10 or 20 degrees East. (Don't look at a chart just yet.)
Now, for the Brits, imagine again taking off in a helicopter from Bristol. If you head immediately North and fly towards Scotland what major Scottish city would you end up flying over first? If you're a Londoner, imagine taking off from Heathrow and heading directly North, what is the first Northern English city you'd fly over? The prevailing answers are Glasgow and Leeds, respectively. But, as you might suspect, they are entirely incorrect, as is the answer that most Americans give in response to the Reno question.
The correct answers are as follows; Reno is actually North and West of Los Angeles, 20 degrees West to be precise. The first city you'd fly over if you were heading North from England's 'West Country' city of Bristol is actually Edinburgh on Scotland's East Coast. Similarly flying due North from London has your helicopter passing Hull on the left before crossing the coast onto the North Sea. You'd barely get within 100 km of Leeds.
Native born Italians are used to seeing the map of Italy drawn at an angle running from North West to South East, but even so they are generally fooled into thinking that Trieste is some 20 or 30 degrees East of Naples, it being on Italy's Eastern border with Slovenia and Naples being on the West Coast. But, of course, they'd be wrong. Trieste is, in fact, just West of Naples.
Now you can check these out on the charts, Google Maps will do. While you're at it amaze yourself with these other facts: the first country you'd fly over if you headed directly South from Detroit is Canada. Rome is North of New York City.
Don't be disappointed if you answered all of these questions incorrectly, most people do. It's not because you're bad at geography or because you don't know your East from your West. The actual explanation is that your mind played a trick on you. Without your knowing, your brain rotated the mental image of these maps to align any more-or-less vertical land masses with a North South axis. No one fully understand why this is, we don't know, for example, why no one rotates the land mass of Italy horizontally, it's always straightened vertically in our minds, as are the British Isles and the Western Coastline of the United States.
Piatelli-Palmarini refers to these as cases of tunnel vision and I'm indebted to him for these examples. They illustrate very elegantly how our brains sometimes work on a problem in our subconscious and present us with false conclusions without our even realising it. But these instances are relatively benign and need not alarm us unduly. For more examples that perhaps ought to alarm us, read on.
Do your eyes deceive you?
If we're fortunate enough not to suffer from a serious visual impairment, we probably trust our eyes more than any of our other senses. They are generally in use from the minute we wake up to the time we close them again to go to sleep. Most of us are highly resistant to the idea that our vision might regularly play tricks on us, even though we've seen stage magicians fool people on television many times, we have an almost unshakable faith on our own ability to discern reality from illusion.
So what colour was that dress?
If you pay attention to such things, you may remember a furore in social media about a celebrity whose dress appeared as to be different colours to different people? Some thought it was black and blue, others white and gold. I recall asking myself at the time how could it possibly be that different people had an entirely different impression of the same photograph. I wondered if it was their eyes or their brains that were interpreting the visual data differently.
In the example below there are two images of a woman wearing a dress. Do they appear to be the same colour to you?
For most observers, the dress on the left is a shade lighter than the one on the right. Similarly, the olive brown colour at the top of the dress is slightly darker on the right than it is on the left.
The two dresses are, in fact, exactly the same colour. But it doesn't seem to matter how long you stare at the picture, even if you believe it to be true you can't force your eyes to see them as being identical. The blue and brown on the left hand dress always seems lighter than the one on the right.
All good project managers are somewhat skeptical in nature (and you have every right to be) so for those of you who don't believe it, here is a modified version of the picture to help you convince yourself of the facts of the matter.
Fifty Shades of Grey?
In another well-known version of a related visual illusion we see two squares, in this case labelled A and B, which are clearly different shades of grey. You would probably find it very difficult to believe that the squares are exactly the same colour and that your eyes – or more correctly your brain – is fooling you into thinking that one is lighter than the other?
And yet that's precisely what you're not seeing. In this example of the shadow illusion squares A and B are identical in both colour and shade. Yet knowing that this is true is of no help when you try to see them as the same colour. The presence of the cylinder casting an apparent shadow over a chequer board helps to fool your brain into creating a visual perception of the squares in which square A is significantly and obviously darker than square B.
In fact, the only way you can be convinced that they are the same colour is if you completely mask out the other parts of the image to reveal only the two squares in question. Try printing this blog page and cutting squares A and B out then laying them side by side, I promise you that you'll be amazed.
Rubik's Magic Cube
The final example is perhaps the most astonishing of all. Below is an illustration of a 5- row version of Ernő Rubik's famous cube. Two squares are highlighted, A, I think you already know what's coming ...
Yes, the 'yellow' square A and the brown square A are actually the same colour, and it's brown. The illusion is exquisite in that your brain has made the square on the shaded face of the cube yellow. But it's not, it is in fact, brown, (R145 G89 B32 to be precise).
The bars extending out to the side of the squares in the version of the illustration below helps us to see the colours as they 'really are', but take care, if you permit your eyes to wander back towards the centre of the picture you may notice the bar on the left lighten again, and by the time you find yourself looking at the lower square it may even look yellow once more!
Although we may use the expression 'our eyes have deceived us' we know that it is, in fact, our brains that are the cause of the problem. Our eyes are the just the sensors that detect electromagnetic radiation in the visible spectrum and convert it into electrical impulses. These electrical stimuli are then sent along the optic nerve to the visual processing part of the brain. This is the primary visual cortex — a thin sheet of tissue located in the occipital lobe in the back of the brain.
Thanks to technological advances such as fMRI scanning, we now know that different areas of the brain deal with different aspects of visual interpretation such as colour, shape, lines and motion. Just how the brain deciphers this information to present us with our experience of the 'real world' remains poorly understood.
It would seem that our brains have a lot to answer for, and, as project managers, visual illusions are the probably the least of our concerns. Yet they serve as useful metaphors for the challenges that our brains face when trying to make sense of the complex world we live and work in, a reminder that we need to be constantly vigilant if we are to avoid being fooled.
Begging The Question
How framing can change everything
As project managers we spend a lot of time asking questions. It is important that we understand that how we ask a question can have a profound influence on the answer we will be given. When we ask a colleague for a progress update, or to assess a risk, or even to let us know whether they are happy with the manner in which the project is being managed we are providing information, in the form of the words that we use, which may influence the answer that we receive.
Framing effect
The framing effect is a type of cognitive bias where people can be influenced into giving different answers depending on how a question is presented. Some of the most interesting examples of the framing effect can be found when decisions are being made about risk and it is for this reason that a basic understanding of this psychological phenomenon is crucial for project managers and business executives.
The prevailing theory suggests that people are more wary of risks when a positive frame is presented but are more accepting of risks when a negative frame is presented. To better understand what this means in practise, consider this example from a paper published by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman1 in 1981:
The study looked at how different question phrasing affected participants' decisions in a hypothetical life and death scenario. The participants were asked to choose between two medical treatments for 600 people who had been affected by a lethal disease.
The treatment options were not without risk. Treatment A was predicted to result in 400 deaths, whereas treatment B had a 33% chance that no one would die but a 66% chance that everyone would die. This choice was then presented to the participants in two different ways; one with 'positive framing' - how many people would live, the other with 'negative framing' - how many people would die.
The results were as follows:
Treatment A was chosen by 72% of respondents when it was framed positively, but treatment B becomes the overwhelming preference in the negative frame, demonstrating that people are much more accepting of risks when the decision is framed negatively. Of course, in this example, there was no material difference between the risks involved in either treatment!
Fooled by framing – always 'do the math'
Question framing can also be the cause of curious cognitive difficulties. For example, we are easily confused by questions that are framed using inappropriate units of measure. Consider the following:
Margo drives a Corvette which consumes fuel at 12 mpg (miles per gallon). She would like to save money so she is going to trade it in for a Mustang with an improved petrol consumption of 14 mpg.
Jake drives an old Volvo which achieves 30 mpg, but he is concerned about his carbon footprint so he is going to replace it with a new model which manages 40 mpg.
Assuming that both Margo and Jake drive 10,000 miles per year, who is going to save the most fuel in a year?
The answer to the question seems obvious; both Margo and Jake are driving 10,000 miles per year. Margo is only going to achieve an additional 2 miles per gallon whereas Jake is going to improve his consumption by 10 mpg. It seems that we don't even have to 'do the math' – Jake is clearly going to be the winner and save the most.
Except he isn't, Margo is. We have to do the math.
In driving 10,000 miles in her new Mustang, Margo uses 714 gallons of fuel. Previously her gas-guzzling Corvette used 833 gallons to cover the same distance. So she's saved 119 gallons in her first year.
Jake, on the other hand, will save only 83 gallons. His old Volvo used 333 gallons to cover 10,000 miles and his new, improved, Volvo will use 250.
So although Jake's fuel consumption has reduced by 25% and Margo's by only 14%, Margo is still ahead in terms of savings. This is because her cars are so inefficient in comparison to his that a mere 14% improvement is still a lot more fuel!
Most people are caught out by the question so don't feel too bad if you were too. But the more interesting discovery is this: if the question is re-framed so that instead of presenting the fuel consumption measure as miles per gallon it was shown as gallons per mile, we would instantly see that Margo was going to save the most fuel. Try it.
When discussing business issues involving KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) we should always bear in mind the importance of framing and measures. The health of a business (or of a project for that matter) is often communicated to stakeholders in the form of KPIs.
You will be familiar with system dashboards that show, for example, sales growth, sales per employee, percent of target reached, debt to equity ratio, margin by product etc. When reviewing this sort of data while discussing KPIs, bear in mind that perception of performance can be profoundly influenced by the measures used.
You may not want to promote Jake as a result of his upgrade decision, after all, Margo did save the company the most money!
The Challenger Shuttle Disaster
Every now and again a project failure occurs which is so devastating that it attracts the attention of the entire world.
On January 28, 1986 the NASA space shuttle, Challenger, took off from a launch pad at Kennedy Space Centre. 73 seconds later it exploded instantly killing its crew of seven.
The night before the launch a number of engineers at NASA contractor, Morton Thiokol, had tried to stop the launch on safety grounds. Their analysis of the weather conditions and their understanding of the temperature sensitivity of the booster rockets' hydraulic systems had a resulted in the assessment that it was too risky to proceed and that the launch should be delayed.
The management team asked the engineers to reconsider and to look at the potential costs, both financial and in Public Relations terms, of the launch not proceeding. The managers set out a number of factors for the engineering team to consider including the fact that President Ronald Reagan was set to deliver a State of the Union address that evening and was planning to tout the Challenger launch.
The engineers reconsidered. With the question now re-framed to highlight the negative consequences of not launching they eventually agreed that the launch should proceed. NASA's management team had succeeded in changing the frame of the question so that the cost of not launching carried more weight than the risk of launching. Despite it being the coldest weather Kennedy Space Centre had ever experienced for a shuttle launch, it went ahead.
It seems that the engineers were very wary of the risks when the launch was presented in a positive frame but were persuaded to be more accepting of the risks when they were set out in a negative frame.
This tragic example highlights how even the most experienced and qualified professionals can be influenced to assess hazards differently when the risks are framed in a certain way. This is not to understate the immense pressure the engineers faced from their superiors (who had a vested interest in achieving the launch date). The lesson for project managers is that if this can happen at NASA it can happen in any project. The more we understand about how people arrive at their assumptions with regard to risk, the more we can do to ensure that their conclusions are logical and rational.
How we are prone to making bad decisions
As project managers we are used to making decisions and most of us would acknowledge that the ability to make the right decisions at the right time is one of the most important factors influencing the outcome of a project. Of course, not all of our decisions turn out to be the right ones, we are only human after all, but we'd like to think that we make more correct decisions than we do wrong ones. More importantly, we like to think that we get the big decisions right most of the time, so we pay special attention to mission-critical aspects of the project such as risk management, task estimates, team selection and milestone planning to ensure that we make them logically and rationally.
But what if making rational and logical decisions is more challenging than we think? What if our choices could be influenced in one direction or another without our even realising it?
Let us step out of the world of project management for a moment and into an environment that will be instantly recognisable: the supermarket. You may be familiar with product price labels that look something like this:
Now £4.99
And despite our best efforts to employ our critical faculties, when we see a label with this sort of offer we cannot help but think that we would be buying a premium product at a discounted price.
Retail marketing and product placement gurus have long understood how important and influential our desire to make comparisons is to the decision-making process. The technique is employed in many situations which the supermarkets hope will assist us in making the 'right' decision but which actually highlight just how irrational our decision-making can sometimes be. Consider the following set up:
When presented with three comparable products at different price points most of us tend to pick the mid-price product. Some of us may pick the cheaper or the more expensive options and these choices will be influenced by a number of very rational considerations including how wealthy we feel and what our standards and quality expectations might be.
However, an interesting phenomenon occurs when a fourth product is included in the selection:
Research has shown that when another, more expensive, option is introduced, a significant number of shoppers who previously would have bought the mid-price product instead opt for the next most expensive one. Somehow the addition of a premium option – which is usually significantly more expensive – tricks us into thinking that the next most expensive product offers the best value for money.
If we were happy to spend a certain amount on a bottle of wine, why should the addition of a very costly bottle to the shelf cause us to change our minds and spend more money? This does not seem rational, but the example does provide a clue about the processes that our brains employ when making comparative decisions.
Comparisons, relativity and default settings
In his ground-breaking 2008 book Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely showed how easily a person's choices could be manipulated without their being aware. In a chapter entitled The Truth About Relativity he introduces a concept known as the 'Decoy Effect' using an example like this one:
You are offered two options for a romantic vacation for two; a free, all-expenses paid trip to Paris or an equivalent all-expenses paid trip to Rome, which would you choose? Your answer would most likely depend upon your preferences in terms of art, culture, food and entertainment. Some people may opt for Paris and some for Rome and in a large enough sample group we might expect the split to be about half and half.
However, if a third option is added, in this case also a trip to Rome but without a free breakfast included, a strange thing happens: more people choose the all-expenses paid trip to Rome over the all-expenses paid trip to Paris. No one chooses the inferior trip to Rome without breakfast, of course, but why does the presence of a third, inferior option cause people to gravitate towards Rome rather than Paris?
The explanation may be that the presence of a 'decoy' makes it easier to compare the two options for Rome than to compare Paris with Rome. This decoy effect (also called the asymmetric dominance effect) is a phenomenon that causes people to have a change in preference between two options when presented with a third option that is related to, but also markedly inferior to, one of the original options.
The presence of a decoy option results in an irrational decision. In this case Rome now looks like a better option than Paris despite no new information about Rome or Paris becoming available to the consumer.
This kind of irrational decision making is not limited to the ordinary consumer; it is apparent that we are all prone to subconscious influence by decoys. Even expert professionals, when evaluating critical decisions, are susceptible to making illogical choices. In a study carried out in 1995, researchers Donald Redelmeier and Eldar Shafir illustrated how experienced medical doctors could, under certain conditions, be influenced into selecting an inferior treatment course for patients suffering from chronic pain:
The first scenario presented to the doctors was as follows: You are reviewing the case of a patient who has been suffering from hip pain for some time and has already been scheduled for a hip replacement. However, while examining the case notes ahead of the surgery you realise that you have not yet tried treating the patient with Ibuprofen. What should you do: (a) leave the patient to undergo the surgery, or, (b) delay the operation until a course of Ibuprofen has been undertaken? In most cases (you will be pleased to know) the doctors delayed the surgical intervention and recommended that the patient be prescribed a course of Ibuprofen.
In the second scenario, another group of physicians was presented with a similar case but this time they were told that two different medications had yet to be tried: Ibuprofen or Piroxicam. This time, most physicians opted to allow the patient to continue with the hip replacement! It seems that because another decision factor was added and the choice made more complex, many more doctors allowed the default option to stand.
To better understand this example it is important to realise the role played by the default option. We need to bear in mind that the patient was already scheduled to have a hip replacement. The choice was not 'Which of these many treatment options is best?' but rather 'Do I make the decision to change the current course of action in order to try something different?'. It appears from numerous experiments like this one that if multiple or complex choices are available then the tendency is to leave things as they are. Only when a simple alternative is presented is it likely to be selected – even if the alternative choice would have been the more logical thing to do.
As a project manager and business owner I have seen decision situations like these arise many times. While directing a large ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system installation some years ago my implementation team was presented with a sudden resourcing crisis after half of our implementation consultants were removed from the project at short notice.
With the scheduled 'go-live' three months away and with little prospect of completing all of the application testing and user training in time we were faced with a simple decision:
(a) should we proceed with the project as planned and hope that, by redoubling our efforts and with a fair wind (and some luck), we are able to deliver a workable system, or, (b) do we change the scope of the project so that only a subset of the overall functionality is delivered to begin with, and thereafter initiate a new project to implement the remaining features.
At a core team meeting we discussed both courses of action in detail and decided on the latter option: to reduce the scope of the project in order to meet the scheduled date, albeit with a reduced set of system functions.
I duly presented this as my recommendation to the CEO of the business at the next project board meeting. There was much discussion between the various stakeholders after which another option was suggested: why not recruit implementation specialists from outside of the business so that the go-live date could still be met without the scope of the project being reduced? I didn't relish the thought of trying to find a handful of consultants with the appropriate expertise in our chosen ERP application at short notice, but I agreed to take the idea back to the core team for further consideration.
The core team representatives now discussed the three options and very quickly arrived at a decision: the team preferred to redouble their efforts, plough on, and hope for the best. I was astounded! It seemed that the complexity of the decision-making process had now increased to the point where it was just too difficult to weigh up the pros and cons of each option. No one knew how best to go about recruiting additional implementors and some members of the team decided to reconsider the feasibility of dropping some functional elements from the scope. The easiest option seemed to be to do nothing, and to let the project unfold according to its original schedule, in other words, to accept the default position. What originally seemed like a simple decision had turned into a complex one by the addition of a challenging, third option. The validity of the choice to proceed with a reduced scope had not altered, but the team's perception of the choices available had changed significantly enough for them to retreat and backtrack. (Of course, for the record, I did not allow the decision to stand, but that's not the point of the story.)
Dan Ariely provides another salient example of the importance of default options in a case study featuring an analysis of Organ Donor programmes in Europe from 2009.
The chart above shows the percentage of the eligible population who agreed to carry an organ donor card when applying for their driving license.
On the left of the chart are the countries with the lowest participation rate: Denmark, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom* and Germany. On the right are the countries which subscribe to the scheme on an almost universal basis. It is worth noting that in order to persuade its population to carry more donor cards, the Dutch government wrote a personal letter to every single eligible citizen and asked each one to participate in the scheme. The result was a significant uptake in membership to 28%.
It is not obvious from an initial analysis of the data why there should be such a marked variation between countries. Cultural and social differences do not seem to explain it, after all, one would expect Germany and Austria to have similar values, and it is hard to imagine attitudes in the Netherlands being dramatically different from, say, Belgium. But participation in the organ donor scheme is dramatically different between these countries.
So why do only 4% of Danish drivers carry organ donor cards when 86% of their near neighbours in Sweden carry them?
The answer lies not in the ethical or moral attitudes of the respective populations but in a simple administrative oversight. The countries with the poorest participation in the scheme provided driving license applicants with a form containing the following question:
Whereas the countries with the best participation in the scheme used the following question:
In both cases the default option is to do nothing by not ticking the box. By doing nothing in the first case you opt out of the scheme, by doing nothing in the second case you opt in to the scheme.
When faced with a choice, people are strongly drawn to the default option, the default option usually being the one that requires the least effort or consideration. That this sort of question framing should influence people's decision-making to such a degree is fascinating to say the least, especially so given the nature of the choice being made in this particular example. It also raises an important question: if framing can so easily influence us when it comes to making such important decisions, then how easy must it be to sway us when we don't perceive the stakes to be so high?
* From 1st December 2015 the system in England & Wales was changed to an 'opt-out' for this very reason
The Irrational Project Manager
Availability Bias
Data Vs Information
Decoy Effect
Default Options
Frictionless Data
Irrationality
Question Framing
Self Deception
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The 2005 Maharashtra floods refers to the flooding of many parts of the Indian state of Maharashtra including large areas of the metropolis Mumbai, a city located on the coast of the Arabian Sea, on the Western coast of India, in which approximately 1,094 people died. It occurred just one month after the June 2005 Gujarat floods. The term 26 July, is now always used to refer to the day when the city of Mumbai came to a standstill due to flooding.
A large number of people were stranded on the roads, lost their homes while many walked long distances back home from work that evening. The floods were caused by the eighth heaviest-ever recorded 24-hour rainfall figure of 944 mm (37.17 inches) which lashed the metropolis on 26 July 2005, and intermittently continued for the next day. 644mm (25.35 inches) was received within the 12-hour period between 8 am and 8 pm. Torrential rainfall continued for the next week. The highest 24-hour period in India was 1,168 mm (46.0 inches) in Aminidivi in the Union Territory of Lakshadweep on 6 May 2004 although some reports suggest that it was a new Indian record. The previous record high rainfall in a 24-hour period for Mumbai was 575 mm (22.6 inches) in 1974.
Other places severely affected were Raigad, Chiplun and Khed.
On 26 July 2005, around 2:00 pm, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region was struck by a severe storm and subsequent deluge. The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) station in Santacruz recorded 944 mm. of rain for the 24 hours ending at 8:30 a.m. on 27 July. The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai [MCGM] control room started receiving phone calls reporting the heavy rain and subsequent water logging in suburban areas.
Local train movement came to a halt by 2:30 p.m. due to the water-logging on the tracks. This caused traffic on roads to increase dramatically with water logging and submerging of certain low-lying pockets of the region, such as Dharavi and Bandra-Kurla Complex.
Thousands of school children were stranded due to flooding and could not reach home for up to 24 hours. The following two days were declared as school and college holidays by the state government.
The rain water caused the sewage system to overflow and all water lines were contaminated. The Government ordered all housing societies to add chlorine to their water tanks while they decontaminated the water supply.
The banking transactions across the counters were adversely affected and many branches and commercial establishments were unable to function from late evening of 26 July 2005. The state government declared 27 and 28 July as public holidays. ATM networks of several banks, which included the State Bank of India, the nation's largest national bank; ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, and several foreign banks like Citibank and HSBC, stopped functioning from the afternoon of 26 July 2005 at all the centres of Mumbai. ATM transactions could not be carried out in several parts of India on 26 July or 27 July due to failure of the connectivity with their central systems located in Mumbai.
The Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange of India, the premier stock exchanges of India could function only partially. Electronic trading platforms of the brokerage houses across the country remained largely inoperative. In partial trading, the Sensex, India's most tracked equity index closed at an all-time high of 7605.03 on 27 July 2005. The Exchanges, however, remained closed for the following day.
For the first time ever, Mumbai's airports ( Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport and Juhu aerodrome) were shut for more than 30 hours due to heavy flooding of the runways, submerged Instrument Landing System equipment and extremely poor visibility. Over 700 flights were cancelled or delayed. The airports reopened on the morning of 28 July 2005. Within 24 hours of the airports becoming operational, there were 185 departures and 184 arrivals, including international flights. Again from early morning of 31 July, with increase in water logging of the runways and different parts of Mumbai, most of the flights were indefinitely cancelled.
Rail links were disrupted, and reports on late evening of 30 July indicated cancellation of several long distance trains till 6 August 2005.
The Mumbai-Pune Expressway, which witnessed a number of landslides, was closed the first time ever in its history, for 24 hours.
According to the Hindustan Times, an unprecedented 5 million mobile and 2.3 million MTNL landline users were hit for over four hours.
According to the .in registrar (personal communication), the .in DNS servers in Mumbai had to be reconfigured because the servers were not operational.
The present storm-water drainage system in Mumbai was put in place in the early 20th century and is capable of carrying only 25.1237 millimetres of water per hour which was extremely inadequate on a day when 993 mm of rain fell in the city. The drainage system was also clogged at several places.
Only 3 'outfalls' (ways out to the sea) are equipped with floodgates whereas the remaining 102 open directly into the sea for more than 24 hours. As a result, there is no way to stop the seawater from rushing into the drainage system during high tide.
In 1990, an ambitious plan was drawn to overhaul the city's storm water drainage system which had never been reviewed in over 50 years. A project costing approximately 6 billion rupees was proposed by UK based consultants hired by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation to study the matter. Implementation of the project would have ensured that rainwater did not flood the streets of Mumbai. The project was planned to have completed by 2002 and aimed to enhance the drainage system through larger diameter storm water drains and pipes, using pumps wherever necessary and removing encroachments. The project, if implemented would have doubled the storm water carrying capacity to 50 mm per hour.
The BMC committee had rejected the proposed project on the grounds that it was "too costly". These were few of the drawbacks due to which the city suffered so gravely.
Development in certain parts of Mumbai is haphazard and buildings are constructed without proper planning. The drainage plans in northern suburbs is chalked out as and when required in a particular area and not from an overall point of view.
The Environment Ministry of the Government of India was informed in the early 1990s that sanctioning the Bandra-Kurla complex (a commercial complex in northern Mumbai) was leading to disaster. No environment clearance is mandatory for large urban construction projects in northern Mumbai. Officials in the environment ministry claimed that it was not practical to impose new guidelines with retrospective effect "as there are millions of buildings".
Mangrove ecosystems which exist along the Mithi River and Mahim Creek are being destroyed and replaced with construction. Hundreds of acres of swamps in Mahim creek have been reclaimed and put to use for construction by builders. These ecosystems serve as a buffer between land and sea. It is estimated that Mumbai has lost about 40% of its mangroves between 1995 and 2005, some to builders and some to encroachment (slums). Sewage and garbage dumps have also destroyed mangroves. The Bandra-Kurla complex in particular was created by replacing such swamps. The most acclaimed Mindspace CBD (INORBIT MALL) in Goregaon & Malad has been built by destroying a large patch of mangroves in Maharashtra.
1) The disaster was featured in a National Geographic Documentary.
2) Tum Mile - A 2009 Indian Hindi drama film, set against the backdrop of the disaster.
The floods have been the subject of research by scientists and social scientists attempting to understand the causes, impacts, and short/long term consequences. Scholars have studied the floods in Mumbai from the perspectives of climate change, disaster management / mitigation, urban health, vulnerability and adaptation, hydrology, environmental degradation and encroachment etc. Kapil Gupta (2007) assesses urban flood resilience, while Andharia (2006) contrasts the "widespread acts of generosity and altruism" in Mumbai with the general social disorder that was seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Aromar Revi (2005) draws lessons from the floods for prioritising multi-hazard risk mitigation. Parthasarathy (2009) links social and environmental insecurities to show that the most marginalised groups were also the most affected by the floods.
Climate change has played an important role in causing large-scale floods across central India, especially the Mumbai floods of 2005. During 1901–2015, there has been a three-fold rise in widespread extreme rainfall events, over the entire central belt of India from Mumbai to Bhubaneshwar, leading to a steady rise in the number of flash floods. The rising number of extreme rain events are attributed to an increase in the fluctuations of the monsoon westerly winds, due to increased warming in the Arabian Sea. This results in occasional surges of moisture transport from the Arabian Sea to the subcontinent, resulting in widespread heavy rains lasting for 2–3 days. The Mumbai 2005 floods also occurred due to moisture surge from the Arabian Sea, and the heavy rains were not confined to Mumbai but spread over a large region across central India.
^ "Mumbai airport becomes operational after two days". Rediff.com. 28 July 2005. Retrieved 23 March 2012.
^ a b Roxy, M. K.; Ghosh, Subimal; Pathak, Amey; Athulya, R.; Mujumdar, Milind; Murtugudde, Raghu; Terray, Pascal; Rajeevan, M. (3 October 2017). "A threefold rise in widespread extreme rain events over central India". Nature Communications. 8 (1). Bibcode:2017NatCo...8..708R. doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00744-9. ISSN 2041-1723.
Mumbai Help A blog dedicated to disseminate information on emergency services, helplines, infolines, relief/rehab organisations and their activities etc.
Cloudburst Mumbai A blog dedicated for news, links and personal stories related to this tragedy.