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LOVE IS FLEETING. PASSION IS FOREVER, JEAN-PIERRE BEAUVIALA
When asked to contribute something to this journal, I went back through my projects to see if there was something that might be appropriate to the forum and help me in some way rethink my process. I came across the beginnings of a project I had started with the inventor, Jean-Pierre Beauviala. In a notebook I had started for the project, I found the epigraph to this essay, a quote from JP when I had interviewed him. I was reminded of all the reasons I found him to be a fascinating figure: he was an engineer involved in an extremely structured mechanical device, he was a passionate human being who loved his practice, his friends, co-workers, and lovers, and he was committed to re-envisioning society to make room for these interests. For him, work and love were the same thing. I rethought my own relationship to cameras in general and my Aaton and the films I made with it. I also thought about the theme of love in my films, one that, in retrospect, was the undercurrent of everything I've done, but that I rarely spoke about and always submerged beneath a rigorous structural approach.
In 1994 I made my first film, Khalil, Shaun, A Woman Under the Influence, a combination of disfiguring makeup tests and a reworking of the last scene of Cassavetes' film. Having never made a film before, I hired a camera operator to take care of the technical requirements. I found the physical nature of film provided a very satisfying structure to work with. The size of the magazine provided very distinct and limited time segments based on the repeated opening and closing of the shutter, and the fixed lenses defined the image in a similarly limited and structured way. I also discovered I was much more effective in front of the camera with the subject, moving back and forth between the view behind the camera and in front of it, communicating physically. What I had originally seen as a handicap (my inability to operate the film camera) turned into a positive way of engaging the image for twenty plus years.
My next three films, Goshogaoka, Teatro Amazonas and No, were all defined in part by the technology that produced them (the 400-foot magazines of 16mm cameras, the maximum time you can get out of a 1000-foot 35mm magazine shot on a 3-perf camera, and the optics of a normal lens' field of view). But, looking back, each of them really was about the people in front of the camera and my relationship to them. Goshogaoka became something of a community project over the three months I spent working with the girls and their families and, after the project was completed, I continued to stay in touch with many of the girls years later when they had their own children. Choreography, meanwhile, worked as a great device to help me negotiate my relationship in front of and behind the camera. It gave a structure to those relationships that mirrored the repetitive, mechanical operations of the camera. One might miss the tender relationship between the husband and wife in NO and the months I spent getting to know them and their land because the rigorously structured optics and choreography of the film are foregrounded.
It was in the midst of the NO project that I began researching 16mm cameras to make a film of children in a small rural town in the foothills of California's Sierra Nevada mountains. If I brought a camera person or a team of the size I had worked with on the previous three films, I knew that it would alter the results. There had to be a level of intimacy in the process and, since the film would be shot amid the landscape, the camera had to be fairly mobile. I was looking for a model that was easy to operate and had a large viewfinder for the kind of precise framing that had been an important part of my practice. I spoke with filmmakers, tried out their cameras and read everything I could about different models. I was discouraged by the complexity of most cameras and how it was impossible to frame an image due to their small viewfinders. Eventually, my research led me to the Aaton camera and then to its inventor, French engineer Jean-Pierre Beauviala.
The Aaton was completely different in its approach. It was designed to be nimble, quiet, easy to use and repair, yet logical and precise in every way. It was designed for filmmakers and not camera technicians. I purchased an Aaton LTR-7 with a 25mm Zeiss lens and two 400-foot magazines, and it was perfect for the project that I had bought it for.
Shot over the course of three years, Pine Flat was different from anything I had done. It took years to make and I got to see many of the children grow up in front of the camera. We formed a strong bond that grew even tighter than the community I formed during Goshogaoka. Although the twelve ten-minute takes again used the maximum footage a 400-foot magazine could produce, each shot was set in a different landscape and planned out with my subjects based on activities they enjoyed. Together with the children I scouted locations, lugging the camera up hills, to waterfalls, down river embankments, in rain, snow, and hot summer days. Over those years I grew to love my Aaton. Its relative mobility allowed us to film in truly beautiful and somewhat remote landscapes. Its quiet mechanics allowed for intimate shots with very simple sound recording. Its large viewfinder and diopter allowed me to precisely frame each shot and show the children what the image was going to look like. They became experts at knowing the frame they were performing in and how the light moved within it. I loved the daily labor of loading and downloading the film and cleaning the camera after each shoot. The camera's physical attributes—the way it sat on one's shoulder like a cat, the smooth, hand-carved walnut grip—were unique. For me, the Aaton was a truly remarkable machine.
Through my camera research and in the production Pine Flat, I became more and more interested in, and curious about, the inventor of my camera. In the winter of 2002, I was invited to Harvard University to screen Goshogaoka and begin conversations about an exhibition. My initial proposal was an exhibition engaging Beauviala's archive. I decided to visit Grenoble for a week, meet Jean-Pierre, interview him, and approach him about developing a project.
He was incredibly welcoming. In my first encounter with the archive, everything was dusty; letters and drawings were rotting, prototypes were haphazardly thrown in boxes. It consisted of boxes and boxes of important but unorganized history. JP was more interested in the invention he was working on in the moment than looking back at his past, but he humored me by going through boxes and introducing me to his team. What struck me about all this material was the very personal nature of it all. I loved the many humorous advertisements he made and the films he shot of his girlfriends, always while testing inventions. In many ways they were like home movies, recording the history of his love life, yet each one was shot in service of his camera and recorded the history of its development and life in the world. For example, I remember a girlfriend, naked in bed, reading a book about philosophy or mathematics. He worked like an artist, engaging the world around him. There was no rigid separation between work and life. I wanted to make a film out of his tests, a film about his love life and his passion for cinema. I imagined an ode to love constructed of bits and pieces gathered from the archive, a history of both camera and passion.
He was resolutely local and thought of his manufacturing site as a response to urbanist critiques of the 1960s. His laboratory/factory was located in the center of the city amongst a set of storefronts on either side of a small street close to shops, cafes, and restaurants. JP prided himself on joining his collaborators daily in the shop windows on both sides of Rue de la Paix. People would always tell him he was wasting his time (and money) going back and forth between the locations. He insisted upon a resistance to a functionalist approach to production, saying, "We will never leave to an industrial zone, the so-called functional, which translates to me as car, work, sleep. At Aaton, a lot of people come by bike or foot." He liked the glass storefronts and believed that passers-by should be able to look in and see what was being built and that workers should have an engagement with the street and be part of the fabric of the neighborhood.
Among the founding principles of Aaton was that labor should not be invisible. On my visit, he introduced me to everyone who worked for him. He was not interested in the normal hierarchies of the workplace. He claimed, "decisions here are the responsibility of everyone." At Aaton, the organization of the workplace and the products they created were political. The simplicity of the Aaton cameras allowed a more flexible, mobile kind of filmmaking and revolutionized documentary film. Not surprisingly, there was a humanism present in everything they did. For example, in Jean-Pierre's office, and where possible in the rest of the site, there was no artificial lighting. He told me, "when the light leaves us, that is the end of the day." Although, at the time, he was working on groundbreaking digital cameras and sound recorders, he had an appreciation of the analog. He asked me not to use a recording device when interviewing him, saying the words had go straight through my hand.
As we poured through the boxes of materials, we encountered a virtual history of the last half-century of French cinema. For instance, I found a wonderful original negative reel of Godard with a color chart on the banks of a river. The film was a product of a lengthy collaboration between him and JP. Godard's wish was that the camera would fit in his glove compartment. JP was so pleased that I liked the footage, he casually ripped off a foot of the film and handed it to me. I had to refuse his offer and admonish him for not giving these materials their due. On another occasion he showed me the first synch-sound test that worked. My memory of the test is that it was shot in a mirror, reflecting the camera, his little son, Julien, sitting on a table, and the scene of cars going by outside the window.
His collaborators included many of the figures I saw as role models and they would visit him in Grenoble to test new equipment and repair their trusted cameras. On a later visit to Grenoble, Raymond Depardon was there because his camera had fallen in water while he was filming. That same visit I photographed a copy of the LTR made of tin soda cans by participants in one of Jean Rouch's African films. JP had never really thought of these bits and pieces of his life and research as interesting to those outside his close circle of friends, but I knew that this history needed to be preserved. I was introduced to someone at the French Cinematheque, and eventually the institution was able to purchase the archive in its entirety.
In the end, the interview never took a form one could read, and I never got to make the film I envisioned. After the Cinematheque had purchased everything, my experience with the material was different. There were rules in place limiting interaction. A great deal of the archive had been moved to Paris and JP had a different sense of his and the archive's importance. It was clear, at this point, that there was no way to move forward with my project.
Yet many of the ideas that my encounter with JP inspired became part of my later work. My next project was about labor and I thought a lot about Aaton's windows onto the street as I researched and filmed Lunchbreak. Exit, a document of workers leaving the Bath Iron Works shipyard, was filmed with my Aaton, as was Double Tide, a document of a woman clam digger on a rare occasion of two high tides in one day. In all of those three films I was hoping to address the invisibility of labor. Double Tide had a particularly satisfying rhythm of shooting, downloading and reloading the magazines, sleeping three or four hours and then repeating the whole process each day for a week. For each 45-minute shot we had four magazines. The film would not have been possible without the ease of replacing those magazines quickly.
Jean-Pierre's ideas about the vibrancy of city life were present, as well, when I filmed Podworka in the Polish city of Lodz in the summer of 2009, again on an Aaton LTR. The last time I used my Aaton was for a short film I made in the summer of 2014 with one of the children I met in Lodz and kept in touch with, Milena. Milena had lost both her parents and was living in an institution when we discussed making a film about her life. We ended up recreating the final sequence of Truffaut's 400 Blows on the Polish Baltic coast. If this was the last time I ever used my Aaton, it would be a fitting end because it really was a work of love.
In 2009 I also started a project that would allow me to work with an archive as a kind of portraiture. The project involved working with the archive of Noa Eshkol, a choreographer in Tel Aviv. Together with her collaborators I was able to honor her life and activities in a project that included archival materials, two film installations, and a suite of photographs. In many ways Eshkol's activities mirrored Jean-Pierre's. She was a maverick who insisted on her own way of doing things and was surrounded by a group of devoted collaborators. As I met the women of the Eshkol foundation a year after her death, they lived a fairly communal lifestyle in their workdays. Eshkol was also an inventor, having invented the only system of movement notation able to account for all animal locomotion, and she kept her process close to her daily life. It was only fitting, then, that the sound recordist for the films I made with Eshkol was a huge fan of Aaton's Cantar digital audio recorder.
As I reflect back on the connection between the work I had envisioned with the Beauviala archive and what I was able to do with Eshkol, it strikes me that film is a medium of love. When I encounter compelling objects, landscapes or people, I use film to share them. As a way of avoiding the sentimental or nostalgic, I often submerge these relationships under a structure that might allow a viewer to experience them anew. There were seven dusty wire spheres hanging in the corner of Noa Eshkol's dance studio. I asked the dancers what those sculptures were, and they replied that they were just diagrams Noa had used and had been there as long as anyone could remember, so the dancers had stopped noticing their presence. Each sphere was a model for describing the movement of a limb on the axis of a joint. We took them down, polished them, and photographed them in a studio rotating like a spinning dancer. Jean-Pierre and his archive were lost subjects for me. Perhaps it would be better to think of it as a lost love.
[First published in Les Saisons Cinema Journal]
cat-on-the-shoulder, for Jean-Pierre Beauviala, 2011
20×25 inches
chromogenic print
Sharon Lockhart was born in 1964, in Norwood, MA. She lives and works in Los Angeles. Educated at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA and the San Francisco Art Institute, Lockhart teaches at CalArts in Southern California. Working with communities to make films, photographs, and installations that are both visually compelling and socially engaged, Lockhart's practice involves collaborations that unfold over extended periods of time. Her practice often involves architectural elements, extensive periods of research, and longterm relationships with her subjects and collaborators.
www.lockhartstudio.com


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You are here: Home / Education Programs / The Robotics Story and What It Means to Education
The Robotics Story and What It Means to Education
One of the hot topics in education is the role of robots in education.
The latest interest in this education hot topic is revealed in a 2013 TV commercial showing a robotic virtual screen on wheels, with a child recovering from surgery in the hospital, while also remaining connected to his classroom studies.
To help students from lagging behind in their studies, an advanced NASA styled tele-program now enables students who are unable to be in the classroom, to participate in classroom studies, via robotics.
This tele-robot technology is a pairing for students who are recovering at home or in a hospital and their classroom instructors. One virtual robot TV screen is given to the student and another robot screen is located in the classroom. A virtual or live picture is displayed to both the student remotely and the classroom instructor.
This amazing innovation is able to move around the halls of the school to enable students to be connected to all of their classes. With minimal instructions, a student with the aide of a joystick or a remote, can direct the TV robotic camera to scan the classroom to see, hear and answer the classroom instructor. Additional attachments include a scanner and a printer for the student to further participate in all classroom assignments.
As a result of robotics in educational institutions, the hot topics in education include math, history, science, mechanics, engineering and more. Robotics as the latest in hot topics in education and is well accepted by young people who embrace the science because it is so similar to the home games which they play for fun everyday.
Tele-robot technology has been used in space exploration, laparoscopic surgery and in unmanned military situations. Virtual video tele-robot technology has also been employed by law enforcement and industries that work with hazardous material. Designing this technology for use in our classrooms has proven very successful. Mobile robots like those used to help students and special education students, are mobile robots known as "automated guided vehicles." They are programmed to navigate classrooms via invisible wires in the floor, lasers and Skype guided.
READ Comparison of Education in Different Countries
With testing and research, studies have been compiled showing that robot technology helps to free the untapped potential in school age children who may be unchallenged or are socially awkward. Hot topics in education for kids and young adults toward robotics is providing creative outlets for our youth and the studies are peeking their interest in subjects that once gave them difficulty to learn.
Robot designed studies have identified a variety of robotic subjects which have engaged youths throughout the world in increased learning knowledge and increased motivation. With the introduction of robotics in the classroom, new learning avenues have opened for children who are withdrawn, especially autistic children.
Autistic children are introduced to robots which are their size and are programmed to guide them through memory games, phonics and card games designed to reach their analytical and memory skills. Children who have autism do not relate well to adults and sometimes can not communicate with other children, but as soon as the autistic child is introduced to a human type robot, it is instant chemistry.
Added hot topics in education for robots is how to program them to develop a child's communication skills, learning skills and behavioral skills. Modern technology industries are looking for tomorrow's scientists and engineers and the hot topics in education are needed to propel students to produce qualified graduates.
Robotics is the study of intelligent connection through a machine like automatic device which performs functions ascribed to humans. Who knew that watching the Jetsons and the Star War robot technology would enter our classrooms so quickly. From 350 BC when a Greek mathematician built a mechanical flying bird to year 1958 when the Stanford Research Institute, designed robotic arms to go from an industrial use to present day use in aiding our children in their growth processes.
READ STEM Education Statistics to Share with Skeptics
Top colleges like Stanford are offering free introduction to robotic training with hot topics in education that include artificial intelligence studies, computer science and computer programming. Our pre-school children are introduced to touchscreen robot computers that talk to them to help teach them how to identify colors, shapes and pictures.
Classroom teachers and instructors teaching our young minds, find that robot technology is easily assimilated by students and their joy in learning makes their classroom management a lot easier. Therefore, by introducing robotic hot topics in education, teachers and instructors have a classroom aide. More "smart boards" have replaced the old chalk board with flat screen monitors that are networked with computers in the classroom. Many smart boards are designed with using touch screen technology for students to use to answer questions, as well as using remote control panels.
Robotics is being discussed by top toy manufacturers, telecommunication giants, healthcare leaders, leading educators and leaders in the technology industry. Their partnership is delivering modern solutions in initiatives that provide a brighter healthier future for your youths. Hot topics in education is about robot designing which puts our society on the brink of revolutionary technology that is transforming the way our young people think, interact and solve problems.
The Robotics Academy's
Andrew's Leap
The Roadshow

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Margot Robbie Is Officially Starring as Barbie in the Live-Action Film
She's going to co-produce the project too.
By Erica Gonzales
Jan 8 2019, 1:08 pm EST
NBCGetty Images
After years of rumors, Margot Robbie will officially play Barbie in an upcoming live-action film, Warner Bros. and Mattel announced today. The Oscar-nominated actress will also co-produce the movie under her company, LuckyChap Entertainment, alongside husband Tom Ackerley and producer Josey McNamara.
This project will mark the first live-action film from the Barbie franchise, and the first movie from Mattel Films, the newly-launched film division of the toy company behind Barbie and other iconic toys. Details of the plot and release date have not yet been announced.
Margot Robbie and Tom Ackerley at the 2018 Golden Globes
Stefanie KeenanGetty Images
In a press release, Robbie praised Barbie for promoting "confidence, curiosity and communication" through childhood, and empowering kids "to imagine themselves in aspirational roles from a princess to president."
"I'm so honored to take on this role and produce a film that I believe will have a tremendously positive impact on children and audiences worldwide," she added in her statement.
Dave J HoganGetty Images
Rumors of Robbie's casting as Barbie first began in 2015, after a Sony email leak reportedly revealed that she was one of the potential actresses to play the famous doll. Years later, in October 2018, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Robbie was in talks for star in and produce the film with Warner Bros.
She also wasn't the only star attached to the film. In 2016, Amy Schumer had reportedly landed the role but dropped out a few months later due to scheduling conflicts, according to THR. In 2017, it was reported that Anne Hathaway would star.
Rob KimGetty Images
Robbie has undergone some impressive transformations for her previous roles, including Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad, Tonya Harding in I, Tonya, and, most recently, Queen Elizabeth I in Mary Queen of Scots. And although fans may be quick to tout the actress as a real-life Barbie, she actually avoided being typecast for roles based on her looks.
"When I was trying to make my name as an actress, creative roles for women were limited," she told Harper's BAZAAR in her December 2018/January 2019 cover story. "I didn't want to pick up another script where I was the wife or the girlfriend— just a catalyst for the male story line. It was uninspiring."
Erica Gonzales Erica Gonzales is the News and Entertainment Editor for BAZAAR.com covering celebrity, entertainment, fashion, and royal news.
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Press Release (ePRNews.com) - BANGALORE, India - Jun 08, 2016 - The day when you exchange your vows with your partner and promise to hold ahand for the rest of the life is not just a simple day. It is rather a special occasion to celebrate with your better half.
If you decide to take your vows following a traditional Indian wedding, you will get a number of Indian wedding decoration ideasthat will make guests awestruck and surprise. Thematic Indian wedding is not about making ordinary arrangements of lights and flowers. It is about creativity that makes the entire venue look stunning and beautiful.
The traditional wedding color combination such as cream and red look the most elegant. You can use various shimmering drapes to give an outstanding look to the venue. If you want, you can use golden accessories that will add a royal theme to the venue. However, if you are a bit confused about this thematic idea, you can check out wedding decoration pictures of professional companies to get abetter idea about wedding decorations.
Just like the beautiful peacock bird, the color combination of golden and green gives a fantastic look to the wedding. With darker shades of blue and green, you can add silver and golden bling to add shine to the venue. The dark theme looks really great in daylight or the evening.
This color combination will surely thaw your heart. The color combination creates such a theme that it looks beautiful in day and night as well. To make it look more beautiful, you can add golden chandeliers to the venue.
The absolute white flower decoration is unparalleled, and you will never go wrong if you choose this particular theme solo. You can use other color flowers as highlighters and candles to give an enhanced and glowing look to the venue. You can have a look at various white flower decoration pictures (http://www.meltingflowers.com/entrance.html) to choose the best one for your wedding.
What are some popular showroom inauguration decorations ideas?
A showroom is one of the easiest and traditional ways of attracting customers. From ribbon cutting, curtain-raising to VIP bouquets and entrance, to do everything in perfect order, you need to hire professional decorators of Bangalore. They are professional decorators, who have expertise and knowledge in decorating various events such as mehndi and sangeet décor, wedding décor, naming ceremony and the like.
By choosing any of these options for your showroom decoration, you can make your guests go gaga. However, to implement all these ideas, you need to hire a professional company that makes your dream come true.


The first thing to do when you want to change your approach to food is to start thinking differently. Rather than thinking about the fact that you miss junk food and how much you would love to have those French fries instead of baked sweet potato wedges, you should think about how the sweet potatoes taste good because they are sweet potatoes and not the fact that they aren't French fries! Enjoy the food you eat instead of wishing it was something else. Sometimes it can be helpful to think about the harm that junk foods have done to your body, but try to be positive and focus on the benefits of the foods that you ARE eating.
One of the ways that people are using to help them adjust their mindset on eating healthy is the use of audio. There are many methods, including guided meditations, self-hypnosis and even subliminal messages. They have many different uses and can help you get the results you're looking for. The way they work is by re-training your brain to think that healthy foods are good for you and that you don't need junk food. While this may not be enough to completely defeat any negative attitude you have towards eating better, it's still a good start. The best part is that there are many of these available that are free or very inexpensive.
Meditation is another great method that you could take into consideration when you're trying to change your mindset. Often times people eat junk food because they're looking for some sort of emotional release or the ability to feel good about themselves. If you can't get to the root of your problem using meditation, you may want to consider talking with a nutitionist as they may be able to help you re-focus on the hows and whys of changing your diet and eating habits.
Another thing you can do when you're trying to change the way you think about eating healthy is to find some new recipes. Many times you can find a healthier alternative to your favorite recipes, such as lasagna or mashed potatoes. This can help you to enjoy the same foods, yet with the healthy twist that you want.
You can also try new foods you've never had before. A fun thing to do with friends is to have tasting parties. Try new foods and recipes and by sharing with your friends, you can reduce the possibility that you'll have spent time and money on something you may not have liked. Chances are, someone in your group will like the new food item or recipe, so there will be little or no waste. And when you do find new things that you like, it will have been worth taking the time to try. Remember that old saying, "Try it, you'll like it?"
Any good diet out there allows you a cheat day. While it is true that the more you cheat, the longer it will take you to reach your goals, it can actually be quite beneficial. This doesn't mean you should take the opportunity to eat all the foods you have been missing! Rather, you should use this cheat day as something that'll help to keep you motivated and on track with your mission of eating healthy. Just remind yourself while you're eating the food that is not on your diet that it's just a treat and it's not as good for you as the other foods that you eat. Over time as you stick to your diet, you'll find that these foods make you feel sluggish and bloated and you may find that you'll want them less and eat less of them.
Also keep in mind that the longer you stay on your healthy eating diet, the easier it will become. There are many reasons for this. For one, as your body gets the proper nutrients that it needs, you'll have the energy you want and even be in a better mood. If you feel better, you'll make better food choices to perpetuate that feeling.
Eating healthy will also help you in your weight loss or strength building goals. As you reach your targeted goals, you'll feel more self confident and this will also motivate you to stay with your diet and new healthy eating mindset. Keep in mind that the more you eat these foods, the easier it will become. In the same way, the more you drink water instead of sodas or other beverages that are not good for you, the easier it will become.
Always remember that every hill you climb has two sides. It may be hard to get up the hill to change the way you think about eating right. But once you reach that certain spot, it'll be much easier for you. There is no way to tell where the top of the hill is for you, as every person is different. Just stick with it every day and you will get the results you want- whether that's to lose weight, have more energy, build strength, or just do something better for your overall health.


This Topical Information brings selected data on balneal treatment in the Czech Republic in 2009. Balneal treatment was provided to 367 463 adult persons, besides that to 2 370 juvenile persons and to 8 348 children. In the total number there were 111 123 Czech citizens fully paying for balneal treatment and 143 922 foreigners fully paying balneal treatment.


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Old Project Avalon Forum (ARCHIVE) > Project Camelot Forum > Project Camelot > Conspiracy Research
Update on the Tungsten goldbars.........who knows, really?
tintagelcave
Avalon Senior Member
Hi there, this is from www btrnews.org on the Tungsten gold bars affair.
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C., March 7, 2010: "Today, I have two subjects to discuss. The first deals with the so-called "Fake Ft. Knox Gold Bars." This, very simply, in just another Chinese ripoff of the hated West and a means of striking back at the United States for Obama's raising the interest rate on U.S. Treasury notes, an act which caused the Chinese to howl with rage because this in effect cheapened billions of dollars of such notes they were holding. Obama needed more money to finance his recovery programs so he ignored the Chinese demands. Vindictive as well as totally crooked, the government in Beijing then ordered the preparation of over 5,000 400 oz fake gold bars. These were made of gold-plated tungsten (which weighs almost the same as gold) and stamped with fake U.S. Treasury markings. The Chinese then exported their counterfeits all over the world to pay for oil and other badly needed products. Like their massive counterfeiting of U.S. gold and silver coins, the greedy Celestials made a serious error and that was their use of provable fake numbers on each bar. While these bars, like the Chinese gold American coins, may look original, the reduced weight of the former and the wrong serial number of the latter caught them. As soon as word of the fake gold bars spread, the Chinese began to howl that they had been robbed and tricked by the evil Americans sending them terrible fakes. Unfortunately for them,,the world banks were able to clearly identify these fakes and all of them were traced back to China. Ethopia, Iran and other countries were notified that their deposits of gold were fake and were being returned to them. China, through bought and paid for pseudo-"Experts" in the West started a flood of stories designed to shift the blame for their own faking onto the United States. As China has a well-earned reputation for fraud and counterfeiting, their laments went largely unbelieved by the world's banking system. Upon request, the U.S. Treasuiry can authenticate, or denounce as fake, these bars by a simple check of the numbers. Purchasers of the flood of fake Chinese gold U.S. coins can do the same thing by simply weighing any suspect coin. The Chinese fakes, while visually correct, never weigh the same because the Chinese, typically, short the gold or silver content and then plate the fake with 24 caret gold, giving it the outward appearance of an original piece. It is estimated that China has faked and exported tons of fakes. And this subjece leads me into the second one. When the mortgage crooks cooked up their falsified credit reports, enabling the poor to buy nice houses, these fake and worthless mortgages were mixed in with.sound ones, "bundled" by crooked banks and shoved offshore onto unsuspecting foreign investors, banks and government archives. China was by far and away the largest buyer of these items and the growing knowledge that the MERS-protected mortgage packages are worthless is another reason why China is increasing what is obviously a major trade war against this countty.
It is known, though never openly discussed in public, that the mastermind behind the mortgage fraud was one Alan G. Shapiro who, it is conservatively estimated, made off with over $200 billion dollars, far more than the $74 billion his friend and fellow crook Bernie Madoff bagged. And like Bernie, Alan stashed all his loot in Israeli banks where no one can ever get at it. I intend to publish a lengthy and very confidential report on Shapiro, a heavy cash supporter of George W. Bush and his gang. About 3,000 financial services firms pay annual fees for access to MERS, which has 44 employees and is owned by two dozen of the nation's largest lenders, including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. It was the brainchild of the Mortgage Bankers Association, along with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae, the mortgage finance giants, who produced a white paper in 1993 on the need to modernize the trading of mortgages."
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gibonos
Re: Update on the Tungsten goldbars.........who knows, really?
Find More Posts by gibonos
If you want to know more about eh faked gold bars buy a copy of the latest Uncensored Mag www.uncensored.co.nz - big story on this very subject. Pg28.
Or http://www.daily.pk/fake-gold-bars-i...rt-knox-14477/ Jan 11, 2010
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Northern Boy
Location: On this Rock
maybe thats why china sold off 34.8 billion in T-dills
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Thanks Barron, this stuff I read before.
I wanted source for tintagelcave' article.
I tend to lean to west faking gold not chinese, wouldn't make much sense to me.


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Limitations are really good for you. They are a stimulant. If you were told to make a drawing of a tulip using five lines, or one using a hundred, you'd be more inventive with the five.
Posted in #ShareGoodVibes and tagged as #ShareGoodVibes, creativity, limitations.


Live rear axle, light weight, clean and simple. Western riders are going to love the way our new M-10 W-2 Air snowmobile suspension maintains track tension in all positions, including acceleration in deep snow. It also reduces sqatting/lift characteristics during climbs, allowing for long limiter settings, resulting in higher comfort levels and increased control. This airspring technology has grown out of our AIRWAVE® snowmobile suspension system, our absolute best system ever! The all NEW M-10-W2 AIR narrow the gap while keeping your investment to a minimum. It has significantly greater breadth in its comfort zone and delivers good small to medium bump isolation, while at the same settings resists bottoming in high energy big bump and low speed G–bump events. Its ride is far superior to any stock snowmobile suspension! For more info click photo on left.
An Aftermarket Innovation Award winner. When the trails get rough and you are too beat to continue white-knuckling it, the Air-Wave snowmobile Suspension is the cure! This system simply devours the big stuff while at the same time purely adoring trail stutters and chop.


Awe! Your toddler sounds like such a cutie! I'm a little jealous actually. My daughter, who is a nearly two and a half, refuses to say sentences. She knows exactly what the words are and what they mean but she's more physical than verbal right now. I, for one, cannot wait to hear her start talking the day away.
And kudos for eating that raw pork. That had to be quite a tease.
That raw pork was surprisingly delicious. I'd probably eat it again, just not in The United States. I remember as a kid watching my mom eat raw pork. She would squeeze it out from sausage casings and spread it on bread. I'd always tell her that she couldn't eat that here. She always did anyhow and somehow managed to never get sick.


Watch is brand new in Pastorelli gift box. Still wrapped in original plastic protection (shown).
Because I have had it for over a year, it will need a new battery.
A rectangular case with a colorful mother-of-pearl dial lends this Pastorelli bracelet watch its timeless charm. Luminous hour, minute, and second hands tick around silvertone Arabic numbers. The silvertone bracelet strap fastens with a satin-finish deployment clasp. Water-resistant to 30M. Stainless steel caseback. Swiss movement.
Approximate measurements: Strap 8"L x 5/8"W. Case 1-1/8"L x 7/8"W.


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46 Aarhus Universitet - Aarhus University
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47 Santa Clara University - Leavey School of Business
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48 Indiana University (IU) - Kelley School of Business
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Full-Time 12 months English
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49 University of Houston - Bauer College of Business
Full-Time: Master of Science in Accountancy (MSACCY), Master of Science in Finance (MSF), Master of Science in Global Energy Management, Master of Scie... more…
50 Florida International University - College of Business Administration
Full-Time: Master of Accounting (MACC), Master of Science in Information Systems, Master of Science in International Real Estate, Master of Internation... more…
Online: MS in Health Informatics & Analytics more…
51 Syracuse University - Whitman School of Management
Full-Time: M.S. in Business Analytics, MS in Entrepreneurship & Emerging Enterprises, MS in Finance, MS in Marketing, MS in Professional Accounting, MS... more…
52 Loyola University Chicago - Quinlan School of Business
Full-Time: Master of Science in Accountancy (MSA), Master of Science in Business Data Analytics, Master of Science in Finance, Master of Science in Hum... more…
53 The University of Tennessee at Knoxville - Haslam College of Business
Full-Time: Management & Human Resources, Master of Accountancy, Master of Science in Business Analytics, Master's in Global Supply Chain Management more…
54 The Robert Gordon University (RGU) - Aberdeen Business School
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text:
package com.blueninjas.aditlal.trackingapp.utils;

import java.util.Date;

/**
 * Created by aditlal on 06/07/15.
 */
public class DateUtil {

    public static int getDaysDifference(Date fromDate, Date toDate) {
        if (fromDate == null || toDate == null)
            return 0;

        return (int) ((toDate.getTime() - fromDate.getTime()) / (1000 * 60 * 60 * 24));
    }

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
The Note: Investigations are the new impeachment for Democrats
By Rick Klein,MaryAlice Parks Mar 5, 2019, 6:00 AM ET
WATCH: The House Judiciary Committee demanded documents from 81 people and entities close to the president, including members of his family -- sons Don Jr., Eric and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The TAKE with Rick Klein
You're going to need a scorecard to keep track of all the action.
The House Judiciary Committee's request for information from 81 individuals and entities connected to President Donald Trump is only a small glimpse of the unfathomably broad set of investigations Democrats are launching. Judiciary is the committee that would run impeachment proceedings, and Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler said Sunday on "This Week" that "it's very clear that the president obstructed justice," but he also said impeachment was "a long way down the road."
It's a signal Democrats are probably not that interested in pursuing impeachment after all. By fishing off all piers -- via Judiciary, Oversight, Intelligence, Ways and Means and other committees -- Democrats are, at least, tacitly acknowledging that the only way to replace Trump will be at the ballot box in 2020.
Pushing impeachment aside doesn't necessarily carry any less political risk. The blizzard of initial letters will be followed by certain subpoenas and court fights that will feed the narrative of "presidential harassment." There is no realistic way that all, or even most, of the overlapping and confusing probes will be wrapped before next November.
Democrats are hoping the go-broad-or-go-home strategy will appease their base and satisfy their 2020 contenders, who like the concept of exposing Trump's weaknesses. For now, it's notable that Republicans are more apt to talk about impeachment than Democrats.
The RUNDOWN with MaryAlice Parks
There's a big difference in the Senate between being the 51st and the 52nd vote to get a bill over the finish line. Put differently, hardly anyone wants to cast the deciding vote, but the political calculus changes significantly once members of Congress have an idea about how a vote is going to go down.
U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, left, R-Ky., and wife Kelley Paul listen to questions Monday, Jan. 28, 2019, during jury selection in a civil trial in Warren Circuit Court in Bowling Green, Ky.
With Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., now saying publicly that he plans to vote with Democrats to block the president's emergency declaration to build a wall on the southern border, expect other Republicans to re-evaluate their votes too.
"I've had at least 10 people come up to me to say they will vote to disapprove on this. I'm not going to name them," Paul told ABC Monday.
Paul is far from the only Republican who expressed stern opposition the president's move at the time, and he could now be giving his colleagues cover. There's safety in numbers.
If more members of the president's own party decide to send this message back to the White House, that could change the political calculus for Trump too as he weighs his first ever veto. Traditionally, vetoes are not signed lightly, especially one that deals specifically with the power of the executive branch.
The TIP with John Verhovek
The roughly five-month campaign to elect a replacement for former U.S. Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., after he was appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services in 2017, turned out to be the most expensive congressional race in U.S. history. Now, the state of North Carolina has a chance to break that record.
Rep. Eric Swalwell, left, and Sen. Cory Booker.
The North Carolina State Board of Election's decision to hold a new election in the state's 9th Congressional District ensures that for at least the next six months, a cavalcade of national money and attention will descend on this suburban Charlotte seat. Potential Democratic presidential candidates like Sen. Cory Booker and Rep. Eric Swalwell are already blasting out fundraising appeals about the race, and it would not be a surprise to see a number of candidates head to North Carolina to campaign for Democrat Dan McCready, who narrowly lost the seat in 2018.
Trump also campaigned in the state in 2018, just minutes from the 9th District. Depending on the GOP nominee, the president also could make an appearance on the campaign trail in an effort to salvage the final holdover of last year's midterm defeat.
ABC News' "Start Here" podcast. Today's episode features ABC News Senior Congressional Correspondent Mary Bruce, who tells us more about Rep. Jerry Nadler's Trump-related document requests. Then, ABC News Deputy Political Director MaryAlice Parks is joined by ABC News' John Verhovek to talk about what the additions of Gov. Jay Inslee and former Gov. John Hickenlooper mean for the 2020 presidential race. http://apple.co/2HPocUL
ABC News' "The Investigation" podcast. "The Investigation" sits down with former White House lawyer Ty Cobb, who opens up about the special counsel's investigation and Robert Mueller himself, calling him "an American hero." Plus, more insight and analysis from our ABC News Investigative Team on upcoming Congressional committee hearings and more anticipated testimony from former Trump associates. https://apple.co/2BlcX0N
FiveThirtyEight's "Politics" podcast. Colorado is set to become the latest state to sign on to the "National Popular Vote Interstate Compact," which is an attempt to sideline the Electoral College and award the presidency to the winner of the popular vote. In this episode, the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast team debates the merits of the Electoral College. They also discuss the latest candidates to enter the Democratic primary -- Gov. Jay Inslee and former Gov. John Hickenlooper -- and consider how much party endorsements matter in the Trump era. https://apple.co/2mKrhcF
Presidential candidate Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., speaks on "America's Monopoly Problem" at 9 a.m. in Washington.
Democratic presidential candidate Washington Gov. Jay Inslee launches his "Climate Mission Tour" Tuesday in Iowa.
The House Rules Committee meets to consider the "For the People Act of 2019" on ethics and elections rights reform.
Howard Schultz, former Starbucks CEO and author of "From The Ground Up: A Journey To Reimagine The Promise Of America," visits the Adaptive Training Foundation in Carrolton, Texas, and then holds a book event at Southern Methodist University in Dallas at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. CST, respectively.
Download the ABC News app and select "The Note" as an item of interest to receive the day's sharpest political analysis.
The Note is a daily ABC News feature that highlights the key political moments of the day ahead. Please check back tomorrow for the latest.
© 2019 ABC News Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.


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Two steel stands 21"H for 10" pot or basket.
$45 · Pressure Washer 36" Underbody Wand.
Iron Garden stand, foldable. very sturdy - - dimensions: 49" high , shelves 10"
I'm looking for several hundred galvanized, tin and aluminum sap buckets. I'll pay UP TO $1.00 each in quantity.


text:
← Can We Stop the Charade and Just Cut To The Chase: THE U.S. IS HEADED FOR A DEPRESSION
The Rescue That Missed Main Street →
U.S. Cities Continue To Violate Human Rights and Make It A Crime To Be Homeless
Posted on Friday, August 26, 2011 by meganwilson
By Janell Ross
The challenges poor and homeless Americans often face accessing clean drinking water and restroom facilities violate international human rights standards, according to a report issued by a United Nations investigator this month.
Catarina de Albuquerque, a U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation, visited the United States in late February at the invitation of the U.S. government.
She found homeless individuals around the country not only struggle to access running water and restroom facilities but increasingly face criminal and civil sanctions when they improvise solutions.
The right to safe drinking water and restroom facilities is a part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The U.N. report's findings detail just a few of the ways that U.S. cities and counties are failing to meet these obligations because of how they opt to deal with homelessness, said Eric Tars, human rights program director at the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty.
The most recent federal homeless count data available is from January 2010. It shows there were 700,000 individuals in the U.S. who were homeless. The Department of Housing and Urban Development report found that homelessness grew very little between 2009 and 2010. But the share of families who lack a place to sleep continued the rapid expansion that began during the recession. Between 2007 and 2010, the number of homeless families grew by 20 percent.
The nation's elevated unemployment rate and the large number of foreclosures have increased demand just as municipal and state budget problems have led to a reduction in services available to the poor and homeless. As a result, many communities — in particular suburban communities where services for the homeless are often nonexistent — are confronting an increasingly visible homeless population forced to sleep in city parks or take up residence in one of a growing number of tent cities, Tars said.
Some cities have begun to regulate tent cities issuing temporary permits that allow churches or other organizations to host the homeless for few months. But in many more cities, developers, business district boosters and city councils have clashed with the homeless, encouraging police to issue more frequent tickets for violations such as sleeping in public, loitering, littering or public urination and defecation, Tars said.
This year, in Sacramento, Calif., city efforts to discourage homeless individuals and families from taking shelter in a growing tent city have included shutting off the water supply to nearby a fountain and locking or removing public restroom facilities, he said. A spokesperson for the city of Sacramento did not immediately return request for comment Friday.
In 2009, a Gainesville, Fla., a developer convinced the city to begin enforcing a nearly 20-year-old ordinance barring some social service agencies from distributing more than 130 meals per day. For two years, one downtown shelter was forced to turn homeless individuals away from its soup kitchen line. The city changed the policy this month to allow soup kitchens to serve an unlimited number of meals during a limited number of hours each day.
In 2007 Los Angeles began an initiative to reduce crime downtown, leading police to issue thousands of citations to homeless individuals for things such as flicking the ash from a cigarette onto the sidewalk (cited as littering) to urinating or drinking in public, said Tars. Those citations have been overwhelmingly issued to poor and homeless black people, he said. When downtown art gallery crawls bring to the area upper-income city residents who frequently walk from one gallery to another with full wine glasses in hand, police do not take action, he said.
In 2009, the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty issued a study of the crackdown and others like it around the country that named Los Angeles the No. 1 "meanest city" for its treatment of the homeless. A spokesman for Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called the report "short-sighted and misleading" at the time, Reuters reported.
"Rather than doing good things like providing more housing, more shelter, more assistance, cities are using these measures to push problems out of view," said Tars.
Tars said the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty is planning a series of cases to challenge ordinances that criminalize activities — such as using the restroom, sleeping or accessing water — that can not be avoided or handled in private if a person is homeless.
"What this [U.N.] report will allow us to do is go into court and argue that these laws violate international standards and amount to what a U.N. investigator said was cruel and unusual punishment," Tars said.
This entry was posted in CAPITALISM, FASCISM, GOVERNMENT, GREED, Health, HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES, POLICY. Bookmark the permalink.


December 28, 2018: Updated by Mike Kerkau: Added category "Relocated"
The article includes several pictures, most of which are for the Mystery Falls Sinkhole that it now spans, but there's a couple that show the bridge itself and one has a Google Maps location.
Other pictures show fencing around it though, and in any case, accessing it will require permission from the current owners (mentioned as "the Kennedy farm" in the article) - though, apparently there have been ongoing efforts to make the sinkhole into a tourist attraction.
The Trail itself is public - it's a 70-mile trail stretching from Alpena to Cheboygan - though I doubt it'd be viewable from there.
You need to sign up for an editor account so you can upload your pics directly to the bridge's page.....and add new pages for these lost spans.
Let me see what I can do. Between the road commission and the historical groups I should be able to come up with something.
Speaking of which, would you be interested in other bridges that use to stand in Ionia county but are many years removed? I have access to photos of an old bridge that use to cross the river in Lyons and one in Hubbardston.
The discussion about this bridge on this website reminds me that this is one of the only truss bridges in the entire lower peninsula that I do not yet have on HistoricBridges.org and I need to remedy that.
Would definitely like to see pics of this one John. The 1 photo I have seen was from the Michigan DOT site and is not very clear. Looks to be a Massillon with a somewhat different portal style than their others from the 1880's.
Will this span be accessible to the public in Alpena County?


text:
Outcrop-scale silicate liquid immiscibility from an alkali syenite (A-type granitoid)-pyroxenite asociation near Puttetti, Trivandrum Block, South India
H. M. Rajesh
The Pan-African (572 Ma) Puttetti syenite (A-type granitoid)-pyroxenite association intrudes the high-grade metamorphic terrain of the Trivandrum Block, South India. Field evidence indicates the contemporaneous nature of syenitic and pyroxenitic liquids. The occurrence of a mixed-rock (∼70% syenite and 30% pyroxenite) with an emulsion-like texture, and the occurrence of pyroxenite globules in syenite, is interpreted as relies of immiscible magmas. Both syenite and pyroxenite show similar mineral assemblage (with major minerals having overlapping compositions), but the relative proportions differ. Major element and trace element partitioning trends, parallel REE patterns, and similar Sr initial isotope compositions are in accord with behavior either predicted or measured for immiscible melts in experimental and/or natural systems. The more pronounced Eu anomalies and LREE/HREE ratios of syenite and pyroxenite (relative to the mixed-rock) is related to fractionation caused by immiscible separation. The proposed origin of the Puttetti pluton involves the intrusion of a magma whose bulk composition is that of the mixed-rock. This melt behaved immiscibly and split into two fractions, which produced the syenite and pyroxenite magmas.
Dive into the research topics of 'Outcrop-scale silicate liquid immiscibility from an alkali syenite (A-type granitoid)-pyroxenite asociation near Puttetti, Trivandrum Block, South India'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
syenite Physics & Astronomy 100%
outcrops Physics & Astronomy 86%
immiscibility Earth & Environmental Sciences 67%
India Physics & Astronomy 64%
pyroxenite Earth & Environmental Sciences 61%
granitoid Earth & Environmental Sciences 50%
silicates Physics & Astronomy 49%
alkalies Physics & Astronomy 49%
Rajesh, H. M. (2003). Outcrop-scale silicate liquid immiscibility from an alkali syenite (A-type granitoid)-pyroxenite asociation near Puttetti, Trivandrum Block, South India. Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology, 145(5), 612-627. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00410-003-0474-x
Rajesh, H. M. / Outcrop-scale silicate liquid immiscibility from an alkali syenite (A-type granitoid)-pyroxenite asociation near Puttetti, Trivandrum Block, South India. In: Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology. 2003 ; Vol. 145, No. 5. pp. 612-627.
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title = "Outcrop-scale silicate liquid immiscibility from an alkali syenite (A-type granitoid)-pyroxenite asociation near Puttetti, Trivandrum Block, South India",
abstract = "The Pan-African (572 Ma) Puttetti syenite (A-type granitoid)-pyroxenite association intrudes the high-grade metamorphic terrain of the Trivandrum Block, South India. Field evidence indicates the contemporaneous nature of syenitic and pyroxenitic liquids. The occurrence of a mixed-rock (∼70% syenite and 30% pyroxenite) with an emulsion-like texture, and the occurrence of pyroxenite globules in syenite, is interpreted as relies of immiscible magmas. Both syenite and pyroxenite show similar mineral assemblage (with major minerals having overlapping compositions), but the relative proportions differ. Major element and trace element partitioning trends, parallel REE patterns, and similar Sr initial isotope compositions are in accord with behavior either predicted or measured for immiscible melts in experimental and/or natural systems. The more pronounced Eu anomalies and LREE/HREE ratios of syenite and pyroxenite (relative to the mixed-rock) is related to fractionation caused by immiscible separation. The proposed origin of the Puttetti pluton involves the intrusion of a magma whose bulk composition is that of the mixed-rock. This melt behaved immiscibly and split into two fractions, which produced the syenite and pyroxenite magmas.",
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Outcrop-scale silicate liquid immiscibility from an alkali syenite (A-type granitoid)-pyroxenite asociation near Puttetti, Trivandrum Block, South India. / Rajesh, H. M.
In: Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology, Vol. 145, No. 5, 01.08.2003, p. 612-627.
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N2 - The Pan-African (572 Ma) Puttetti syenite (A-type granitoid)-pyroxenite association intrudes the high-grade metamorphic terrain of the Trivandrum Block, South India. Field evidence indicates the contemporaneous nature of syenitic and pyroxenitic liquids. The occurrence of a mixed-rock (∼70% syenite and 30% pyroxenite) with an emulsion-like texture, and the occurrence of pyroxenite globules in syenite, is interpreted as relies of immiscible magmas. Both syenite and pyroxenite show similar mineral assemblage (with major minerals having overlapping compositions), but the relative proportions differ. Major element and trace element partitioning trends, parallel REE patterns, and similar Sr initial isotope compositions are in accord with behavior either predicted or measured for immiscible melts in experimental and/or natural systems. The more pronounced Eu anomalies and LREE/HREE ratios of syenite and pyroxenite (relative to the mixed-rock) is related to fractionation caused by immiscible separation. The proposed origin of the Puttetti pluton involves the intrusion of a magma whose bulk composition is that of the mixed-rock. This melt behaved immiscibly and split into two fractions, which produced the syenite and pyroxenite magmas.
AB - The Pan-African (572 Ma) Puttetti syenite (A-type granitoid)-pyroxenite association intrudes the high-grade metamorphic terrain of the Trivandrum Block, South India. Field evidence indicates the contemporaneous nature of syenitic and pyroxenitic liquids. The occurrence of a mixed-rock (∼70% syenite and 30% pyroxenite) with an emulsion-like texture, and the occurrence of pyroxenite globules in syenite, is interpreted as relies of immiscible magmas. Both syenite and pyroxenite show similar mineral assemblage (with major minerals having overlapping compositions), but the relative proportions differ. Major element and trace element partitioning trends, parallel REE patterns, and similar Sr initial isotope compositions are in accord with behavior either predicted or measured for immiscible melts in experimental and/or natural systems. The more pronounced Eu anomalies and LREE/HREE ratios of syenite and pyroxenite (relative to the mixed-rock) is related to fractionation caused by immiscible separation. The proposed origin of the Puttetti pluton involves the intrusion of a magma whose bulk composition is that of the mixed-rock. This melt behaved immiscibly and split into two fractions, which produced the syenite and pyroxenite magmas.
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Rajesh HM. Outcrop-scale silicate liquid immiscibility from an alkali syenite (A-type granitoid)-pyroxenite asociation near Puttetti, Trivandrum Block, South India. Contributions to Mineralogy and Petrology. 2003 Aug 1;145(5):612-627. doi: 10.1007/s00410-003-0474-x


I hope you'll join me live tonight at our new summer hour of 9pm ET / 6pm PT for the party and an interactive Tips Tuesday recap and breaking news discussion on the BlogAid Facebook Page. You can also catch the quick recap later that evening on the BlogAid YouTube Channel.
Wow, July 3rd, y'all. Second half of the year starts now!!
How you are doing with your site success plans?
We weren't able to close on the house last week. The title company misspelled the seller's name and she has to fly back from Germany in 2 weeks to sign new papers. Since it's an estate sale, there is no other way but for her to do it in person, in ink. She's in the military, and that's as soon as she can return to do it.
Needless to say, that has thrown a huge monkey wrench into my plans for July.
So, I'm making a new plan, most of which still centers around SEO and improving BlogAid's reach and helpfulness.
One of my goals at the start of the year was to redesign the main BlogAid theme this summer.
I started with boosting the speed while I had my head all up in the speed tests for the first 3 months of the year.
I've been tweaking on this theme for 4 years and it's time to make a total switch to a newer base.
All of those things are SEO factors now too.
Plus, the focus of my biz has changed a lot over the past 2 years as well and I need a content and layout revamp that makes it clear what my offers are and who I serve.
Plus, I have a ton of valuable content, but I don't necessarily make it easy for folks to find, or find again. So, I'm doing something about that too.
And this is me putting my money where my advice is.
Yes, Gutenberg will be rolling into the core later this summer.
But I can't see us having viable themes and plugins that are fully compliant until closer to 2020.
And I need to do what I need to do for my biz now!!
My new theme design will be radically simplified.
That's going to give me all the speed, SEO, and other compliance benefits I mentioned previously, but it's also going to cut costs on the design too.
Plus, when it is time to switch to a Gutenberg theme, I will have a far less complex site, and that's going to cut costs then too.
Along with a new structure for helping more folks find content on my site, I've also started new promotion tactics for that content.
And I am delighted with the help that Sheri Prest-Herman of Colorist Cafe has been giving me with that!!!!!!!
All those fun graphics you're seeing on Facebook and Twitter that highlight the valuable info in Tips Tuesday are being made and posted by Sheri.
She started as my site audit client and now I'm her VA services client!!
And, it's working!! More folks are visiting and re-visiting Tips Tuesday and getting so much more good out of it. I know y'all read and listen to these posts, but sometimes you need a reminder to go back and check out a post I mentioned, or a tutorial, or such.
So, thank you so much Sheri, from all of us!!!
And, Sheri will be right in the middle of this big content revamp task for BlogAid too, and will help more DIY site owners find the site success help they need.
Y'all may recall that I started the DIY SEO workshops 2 months early this year.
We began in January to give folks extra time to get their technical SEO ducks in a row.
And to start planning for content changes so they could get more posts into Google's featured snippets and Voice Search.
I had planned to run a series of quick challenges through the rest of summer to help folks see where they are with their plans and get back on track.
I'm still planning on doing those, as I need them too, especially with the content and theme revamp I'm doing. I'll just have to be more flexible with the schedule and do some flash challenges.
So, if you're in the course, look for announcements in our Facebook group and emails soon.
And this is a great time for you to jump into the course too!!
Yoast just made some big changes to his SEO plugin and I've got updated tutorials underway.
That will be a fine time to check all of your settings.
Plus, new Google Analytics and Search Console courses are coming this fall or winter.
Since the house closing got postponed, I've been at my desk every day working on site audits and HTTPS conversion requests.
Several of the current clients required moving to a better host first, and then doing a ton of cleanup on sites they have had for 5-10 years where they tried every plugin on the planet and had even jumped to different hosts. Those things left a LOT of garbage behind, so the cleanup took a while.
But, wow, are those sites a lot faster already!!!!!
And, they have far less glitchy stuff happening now that all those conflicting directives and orphaned files are out of there.
We're moving straight into HTTPS conversions this week. I think I have one scheduled for nearly each day of the week.
If you're on the waiting list, just know that we're going as fast as we can and I'll be contacting you soon to onboard your project as I complete each one that is on my plate.
And I'm heartbroken for one of my site audit clients. At the time, she had just renewed with Bluehost and didn't want to leave despite my warnings that they don't allow all security measures.
And sure 'nough, she got hacked.
Now she is having to pay to get that fixed, and will still need to move to a new host.
And all of this under duress instead of being able to budget the time and money for it.
You can get the whole story from this livestream on the BlogAid Facebook page, about how cheap, and junk hosting can cost you a fortune.
That's also where I do my BlogAid Today tips and breaking news streams live too.
So be sure you Like, Follow, and turn on notifications so you always see the info you need as it happens.
FYI, since the end of 2017 I've washed my hands of doing any site work on any EIG owned host, including Bluehost, HostGator, A Small Orange, and 50+ others. Besides not allowing full security measures, I can no longer even see all the stuff I need for a full site audit. Plus, they don't terminate the SSL certificate properly. And that's why they don't offer Let's Encrypt SSL certificates either.
I'm also hands off with GoDaddy hosting, as well as InMotion Hosting for the same reasons.
So, if you're on one of those hosts and want to work with me, I will encourage you to move to a better host first where we can actually secure your site and make it fast.
Most of my webmasters have sworn off working with these hosts too, and for the same reasons.
If you're a designer or site maintenance person, or a blogging trainer, and still recommending these junk hosts, then you're doing a huge disservice to your clients too.
In fact, I'm working with one such person right now, who made the switch to SiteGround from Bluehost just prior to coming to me for an audit. From what she learned in that audit about how BH does, she'll never recommend them to her clients again!!!
If you haven't received an email from Google Search Console yet about schema markup issues with your recipe plugin, you soon will!!!
See my post for what's going on and how to check your plugin, plus what you should do about it.
I want to thank my site audit clients for bringing this to my attention in our Facebook group and for sending over their emails and reports.
And I want to send a huge thank you to Marilyn Lesniak of Marilyn's Treats for her invaluable help and expertise with getting to the bottom of this issue.
Marilyn and I are already working on recipe plugin review posts, including the schema markup they output. But, we are going to delay that for a bit, while these plugin devs do their fixes.
I'll keep you posted on it.
Also with this issue, plenty of the recipe plugins devs are seeing this reported on their support forums.
He's saying that they are in the process of updating the plugin to fix this issue. Although he did not go into detail, I would imagine the fix will be to not output empty schema markup fields for things you are not using, so Google will no longer flag them.
And, I'm betting that many other recipe plugin devs will follow suit.
In fact, the plugin devs are getting swamped with support tickets on this and we've heard from several of them that they are fixing things on their end, as best as they can.
So, some of this may resolve itself with your next plugin update.
Be sure to look for mention of things like that when you view the changelog on plugins prior to updating them.
You do read those plugin changelog notes, right?
Definitely something you want to get in the habit of doing now, especially with Gutenberg looming around the corner.
The new Yoast SEO 7.7 version has lots of changes to the Snippet Editor.
I'll be updating the Yoast tutorials in my DIY SEO course with new screenshots over the next week. I want to give them time to work out any bugs and get user feedback on wording and use first.
Makes me feel a lot more confident about the GDPR choice I made for BlogAid, which is similar. And I'm starting to see this everywhere.
My first reaction to this was NOOOOOOOOO!
I've never understood StudioPress' focus on hosting. And those packages never made any sense to have. I see this move to be swallowed up by WPEngine as a continuation of that hosting focus.
I've heard a couple of interviews with Jason, the owner of WPEngine and met him at WP Meetups in Nashville. He has drunk a LOT of Matt Mullenweg kool aid. They are deep in Matt's vision for WP. And they are deeply involved in the community.
But honestly, I was not at all impressed with their vision in the announcement they made about this buyout. Basically, they are tickled to be able to offer Genesis and StudioPress themes to their hosting clients.
I'm betting they are also tickled to obliterate Synthesis, which was StudioPress' hosting venture, and a direct competitor to WPEngine.
I was glad to read in Brian Garner's post that Nathan will remain lead dev for Genesis and that the whole team will move over to WPEngine.
But honestly, it is all of the community designers that are keeping StudioPress themes viable. Nathan had to do two huge updates to bring Genesis into alignment with WP core and the documentation on those were poor, at best. Quality control and/or standards for theme design are nonexistent.
I'm extremely concerned about how all of this could fall apart with this move, and with Gutenberg changes looming, and Genesis lose the one thing that made them great, which was a clean coded framework and child themes that designers could count on to be clean too.
You can see my BlogAid Today livestream on this for more details.
I want to thank my site audit clients Rachel and Gaye for bringing up this topic in our Facebook group. I tell you, that group is one huge perk for getting site help from other site owners in the know. They've all been through the site audit education and fixes and they are empowered and knowledgeable DIY site owners.
All the answers to questions in that group don't come from me. They come from each other.
What a super, rich village we have!!!!!!
Back to the point, Rachel discovered that the Shared Count plugin does not show the image when sharing to Pinterest.
You may recall that I mentioned that recently revamped plugin as an alternative to Social Warfare a few Tips Tuesday's ago.
The image does get pinned to Pinterest, it just shows a blank in the preview. And that causes the sharer to abandon the attempt.
This is easily fixed by turning off Hotlink Protection in Cloudflare. It's under the Scrape Shield settings.
Now, I hate that has to be turned off, as it protects your site's images from being scraped by bots.
This same issue will happen if you have any other type of hotlink protection or code on your site too.
I posted about it in the plugin's support forum, and they are telling me to contact Cloudflare about it. So there you go.
A new bug popped up when you're on PHP 7.2 at your host and using Cloudflare.
It's not happening for everyone, and I'm still trying to get to the bottom of why that is.
But, if you do encounter it, you'll see the error on a white screen when you attempt to save a post or delete a spam comment.
It flags the hooks.php file in the Cloudflare plugin.
The fix is to downgrade the PHP level at your host to 7.1 for now.
You can see my blog post above for more details, plus my livestream on it.
READ: How and Why to Switch to PHP 7 for more details on that.
We're going to run into more bugs and conflicts with this for at least another year, while more plugins get updated to some version of PHP 7.x and start dropping support for older versions.
That's another reason you need to make the jump to at least PHP 7.0 because you could update a plugin that has dropped support for older versions and cause all kinds of havoc on your site, including not being able to access it, depending on the plugin's function.
This is also why you need to ensure you read every Tips Tuesday post.
The tech of DIY site ownership is changing every day.
My job is to help you avoid the headaches, and make good, calm decisions about your site, and empower you to easily do them yourself.
I couldn't have jumped on this recipe plugin news without you and our group, Marilyn!!!
Thank you for being on top of it too!!
Good info and timely as always. I use Genesis for my website clients, trying to provide the very best site that I could for them. I stayed calm when I read the announcement about WPEngine, waiting to see your take on the situation.
Thank you for all that you do, MaAnna!
I'm sticking with Genesis for the revamp. And hope to stick with them after Gutenberg.
I'm sure they have a plan because if they don't, they're gone.
The community won't let that happen, but will be a BIG switch for everyone.
That's why we're focusing on Gutenberg in our Webmaster Level 6 meetings later this summer.
Designers HAVE to stay well ahead of the curve!
Great post! I love the facebook group as much as I love Tips Tuesday-I learn so much from both!
I'm really enjoying our group too, Tipper!!! And I learn a lot from everyone as well.
Thanks, Erin. Hopefully we'll get back on track soon. Gotta just roll with it sometimes, right?


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text:
Forums - Gaming Discussion - This is why the PS3 needs to win this gen
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ssj12
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (PC)
Shattered Horizon (PC)
Dissidia: Final Fantasy (PSP)
ssj12 on 23 June 2007
Bodhesatva said:
I'm saying the Wii is destroying the consept of immersive gameplay
It can't be destroying it, can it? I mean, it's as immersive as it was last generation, at least. Saying that the Wii is as immersive as the PS2 doesn't make it "destroy immersive gameplay," although you could say it's not progressing it.
And even that comment, I would argue. Look at the hub bub over Manhunt 2: the Wii version was much more aggressively attacked precisely because it was too immersive.
i disagree video games are a form of art. A game being to immersive is like saying the monalisa is an incomplete painting. Censorship in this world has just become to stupid and strict on the media but doesnt restrict people like the idiots at the westboro church from "thanking god for dead soldiers" and protesting soldier's funerals. Oh, there is actually a story in ManHunt 2.
As for your pro gamer friends, I'm a former pro in Unreal Tournament 2004, for PC games we care about fast framerates with no lag, we will turn our games to low graphical settings and 800 by 600 resolution. For consoles we should have to suffer from lag, and framerate issues so graphics should be able to free to create wonderful worlds displaying each developer's own art styles.
PC gaming is better than console gaming. Always. We are Anonymous, We are Legion Kick-ass interview Great Flash Series Here Anime Ratings Make and Play Please
Amazing discussion about being wrong
Official VGChartz Folding@Home Team #109453
Dryden on 23 June 2007
ssj12 said:
What does any of this have to do with Nintendo? Wii devs are free to create and explore and render their own glorious art styles. Zelda fans would say Twilight Princess' art direction was magnificent, and it had no framerate issues at all, I might add.
Who gives a rats ass that TP wasn't drawn and textured for 1080p?
Bodhesatva
Bodhesatva on 23 June 2007
Several problems:
1) If you want to make art, you will make it on the PC. Why compromise your art and make games on the inferior PS3 console?
2) I sincerely hope games become an art form. The problem is it isnt there yet. The popular games today are incredibly violent, shallow, and aimed almost entirely at 15-25 year old males. God of War is a great example, as is Gears of War. In fact, any game where you go out and kill hundreds if not thousands of bad guys, beat "bosses" and ultimately "win" are pretty much not art. They're young male fantasies, like Spider Man or Dragon Ball Z -- shallow action stuff intended to be "cool."
If this were a serious art form, educated adults would be playing these games, and by and large, they're not. The games you love are played mostly by teenagers and 23 year olds. Adults ARE playing the Wii, however, which basically suggests you have it backwards.
For 15 years, video games have made almost no progress in capturing the educated adult market. Now, with the Wii, they are. What this suggests is that the Wii has a chance to be an art form, and it's the Playstation brand (and Gamecube, and Xbox, and N64, and any other brand that failed to capture the adult market) that is failing to be art.
Your Mona Lisa example is a great one, because it almost entirely annihilates your position. How many teenage boys do you know that are profoundly interested in Renaissance-era art? Classical painting of any kind? I've known maybe one or two. It's a serious art form, and it's almost entirely dominated by well educated adults. As are all the other serious art forms I can think of -- art house movies, canonized plays such as those of Shakespeare, canonized novels such as The Great Gatsby. These are things adults enjoy, because high art is complicated and, generally, not very fun, as the goal is to engage the mind.
By contrast, the top games on the PS and 360 (Metal Gear, Gears of War, God of War, Killzone) are almost entirely avoided by adults, and largely played by teenagers, especially male ones. This suggests that what you call "art" isn't really art at all -- it's just a young male fantasy.
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a324/Arkives/Disccopy.jpg%5B/IMG%5D"> http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a324/Arkives/Disccopy.jpg%5B/IMG%5D">
Again, it's interesting that we both want the same thing SSJ: video games to be something higher than games for little kids.
It's just that I don't see Playstation-style games getting us there, and there is zero evidence to suggest it will. These games have had their chance: ten years of Playstation dominance, and we are no closer to capturing the adult market.
But within 6 months of the Wii's release, we're already seeing adults come much more strongly into the market. This should make alarm bells go off in your head: you've got it backwards.
johnlucas
WarioWare D.I.Y. (DS)
Animal Crossing Clock (DSiW)
Touch Solitaire (DSiW)
Animal Crossing (GC)
johnlucas on 23 June 2007
I'm saying the Wii is destroying the consept of immersive gameplay.
The most ironic quote of the 21st century.
Pyramids on DeNile. Wii exponentializes the immersion. I think Piccolo destroyed the moon again because saiyajins seem to be losing their power. That or Yajirobe's out here cutting tails.
(these are all Dragonball Z references by the way)
Words from the Official VGChartz Idiot
WE ARE THE NATION...OF DOMINATION!
vanguardian1
vanguardian1 on 23 June 2007
Oy ve. ~_~
Nobody is crazy enough to accuse me of being sane.
For 15 years, video games have made almost no progress in capturing the adult, educated market market. Now, with the Wii, they are. What this suggests is that the Wii has a chance to be an art form, and it's the Playstation brand (and Gamecube, and Xbox, and N64, and any other brand that failed to capture the adult market) that is failing to be art.
Your Mona Lisa example is a great one, because it almost entirely annihilates your position. How many teenage boys do you know that are profoundly interested in Renaissance-era art? Classical painting of any kind? I've known maybe one or two. It's a serious art form, and it's almost entirely dominated by well educated adults. By contrast, the top games on the PS and 360 (Metal Gear, Gears of War, God of War, Killzone) are almost entirely avoided by adults, and largely played by teenagers, especially male ones. This suggests that what you call "art" isn't really art at all -- it's just a young male fantasy.
for one. I love Dragon Ball Z and cant wait till Bandai gets the license for the franchise like its supposed to in 2008 so theres a DBZ game on the PS3 =]
How can you say it isnt art? Every character is sculpted then re-sculpted into a program then slowly modeled into a full moving creature. Textures are created in photoshop. The music for the game is written and specifically tuned to that part of the game.
Honestly I really dont understand why adults avoid games like God of War or Final Fantasy in which have story lines that are enjoyable to follow through with and see what happens. Games like Wii Play are basically like board games, no real depth to it. It can be fun to play but after a while you realize nothing else will happen. Oh wait you can unlock a diamond ball. After that theres really nothing to do. The main reason why the Wii is so popular is because like DDR you are forced to move your body and lose wait and unfortunately theres so many people who are to lazy to just eat less and go to a gym think its the greatest diet thing there is and the media basically made it so thats what most people think the greatest part of it is. My friend's grandma bought herself a Wii, why? just for Wii Sports. Why? because it lets her work out. Does she plan on buying any more games? no, not even Wii Play. How many more people around the world are there that has the same mindset? who knows, probably quite a bit since for how many consoles have been sold software sales are lower then they should be.
twesterm
Punch-Out!! (Wii)
twesterm on 23 June 2007
http://media.ps3.ign.com/media/700/700186/vid_2030516.html
If the Wii wins designers wont be able to make truly spectular visually stunning games using techniques and technologies that the heavenly sword devs are. Things like what they are doing will make it so that you cant truly be taken in by the characters and make you feel right in the action.
I know im going to be flamed in every way for this but seriously think about it, does any Wii games other then maybe Zelda or Metroid really bring you into the action, or make you envision yourself as the character? I know the SNES and N64 did but I've played a lot of GC games, none really pulled me in (starfox kinda did).
You know why this argument will always be idiotic? Because it assumes that nothing spectacular was made before the PS3 and 360 and that every game before then looked like complete ass.
Also, you don't need to have machines capable of the most awesome graphics ever as long as you've got style. No More Heroes, God of War, Okami, Odin Sphere, RE4, Windwaker, Katamari Damacy, Rayman Raving Rabbids, and many many more will always look better than things like Call of Duty, Madden, Oblivion and all those other hyper realistic games will always be inferior to those previous games because they just don't have style.
As for Heavenly Sword, that game couldn't be more generic and cliche. I've watched all the videos for it and it does look interesting, pretty, and fun but it has no real style and everything just screams I'm a copy of something else or Hi! I'm not creative in any way at all. Some of the things they are doing with facial expressions is cool but lets look at Windwaker again. Link in that game has some of the most amazing facial expressions ever and that was don't on the Gamecube.
Lingyis
Lingyis on 23 June 2007
Artform argument: this is plain ridiculous. Just coz it's "art" doesn't mean all the adults like them. If "art" is a big deal, artists won't be struggling so much.
Only the trained few will appreciate "art". It is an acquired taste; like wine and the likes. If a commoner can pick up and understand art in a snap, it's not art. Some say art need the general appeal; sure, but that's one-dimensional. In short, art doesn't sell.
Art needs depth. Beautiful graphics is not depth. It's merely the media, and only skin deep. You can be wowed and amazed, but it's not art. Art needs to offer new insights.
Do I appreciate art? Sure, I've been trained in classical music for 20 years now. But ironically, it's very exhausting for me to listen to classical music. I immediately go in analysis mode, and it's not always enjoyable. It's nice once in a while to enjoy the experience, but I can't take too much of it.
Similarly, I can't take "real" art in large quantities.
Games don't need to become artforms. They just need to be games. A little bit a depth would be nice, and once in a while an artsy game would be nice for the diversity. Like "Sadness", I imagine it's an artsy game, although I heard it's also got substantial violence. Oh well.
Ultimately, adults are kids. We just want to have fun. Otherwise we'd all be going to museums instead of bars. But our notion of fun is more qualified, less mindless, and a tad bit more sophisticated.
Video games won't take over adults' lives. It's just a small part of it.
Just like the arts.
Now here's the practical issue. The chances of a profit-seeking video game publisher producing art-like games is low; andwhen they do so, you can sure as hell bet it won't be a $10 million endeavor. It will by necessity have a small budget. There is no way complicated architecture like PS3 is gonna get the nod for developing this kind of game. It will be on the least expensive platform, i.e. the PC, unless there's an immersive experience that the PC cannot offer, which leaves us the Wii with its controls. Obviously, the better the tools an artist has at his disposal the better, but graphics--the tool--is secondary--if an artist can't work around that, he's more of an engineer.
the Wii is an epidemic.
Spent so much time on the first part I completely forgot to mention this: has the PS3 done that yet? I know there were Gamecube and PS2 games (and even NES and SNES games) that pulled me in but there hasn't been anything for the PS3 that would do that to me yet. As for the Wii, they have RE4 (but I suppose you're not going to count that for good enough reasons) and Rayman's style actually pulled me in. Super Paper Mario had an absolutely amazing style that can not be ignored that pulled you into the game as well.