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NEWS@CENTERHILLSUN.COM
TENNESSEE NEWS
Featured, Outdoors, Small Farm and Homesteading
Chestnut Blight-Fighters Breeding Brighter Future
Tide slowly turning in war against against decimating spores
Grand stands of native chestnut trees, now absent from our forest landscapes, are the stuff of legends.
Hailed in its heyday as the "Redwood of the East," the once mighty and magnificent North American chestnut was a towering, commonplace presence across woodland countrysides, from the middle of Mississippi throughout Appalachia and New England up into Canada.
American chestnuts thrived in nearly all of Tennessee, save some of the western lowlands.
Throughout its 200 million acre range in the eastern United States, chestnuts provided a source of forage for the entire food chain.
Prior to the tree's calamitous demise in the early and mid-20th Century, chestnuts were "the single most important food source for a wide variety of wildlife from bears to birds," according to the Tennessee chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation's website. It was an "essential component of the entire eastern US ecosystem."
The wood and nuts served as a staple of survival and prosperity for humans as well. Prized not just as a food source for people and livestock, Chestnut trees were a nearly boundless source of sturdy lumber.
Chestnut is estimated to have at one point been the highest timber-volume tree in Tennessee.
Insidious Interloper Introduced
But nature's native chestnut bounty is no more in this country.
"Oh mighty, magic chestnut tree, how did you slip away from me?" asked Dolly Parton in a musical ode to the arboreal archetype.
The answer was a foreign invader.
Dr. Hill Craddock discusses chestnut blight disease characteristics at a field demonstration in Cookeville. The orange-colored blight spores can be seen encasing the trunk of this tree.
A fungus blight imported from across the Pacific Ocean on Oriental varieties of chestnut trees in the late 1800s and early 1900s took hold in New York. And over the course of just a few decades, the relentless pestilence — which was relatively innocuous to the Asian chestnut varieties — devastated the non-resistant American chestnut.
"There is no example of a forest disease that so quickly and completely eliminated its host," Dr. Hill Craddock, a biology professor and chestnut-breeding expert at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, told Center Hill Sun. "It spread very quickly in concentric circles, killing literally billions of trees."
Craddock said the distinction between "epidemic" and "pandemic" is tragically vital in the tale of the American chestnut tree's rapid descent toward oblivion.
"This was a true pandemic. There were no unaffected individuals," he said. "The chestnut blight pandemic may be the worst ecological disaster in the history of North America since the Ice Ages."
The blight pathogen, which kills back infected trees by scoring and splitting the bark with necrotic cankers, reached Tennessee in the 1930s. By the 1950s, mature American chestnut had been all but obliterated from forests throughout the United States.
However, if there was anything resembling a bright side to the blight plague, it was this: The fungus cankers terminate the tree's trunk and canopy growth, but the root systems lived on.
And the chestnut is famous for its ability to send up fast-growing new shoots.
"If you walk in the woods today, you can still find chestnut trees sprouting from the base," said Craddock. "So, therein lies the hope that we can bring them back."
Craddock, 56, is a celebrity and savant among chestnut restoration enthusiasts. He's committed his professional life to battling the blight through means of plant breeding and public education about how to engineer a rebound. In a 2004 Smithsonian magazine profile headlined "Chestnutty," he was described as a "chestnut evangelist."
This spring, Craddock led a group of regional foresters on a tour of a university chestnut-breeding plot he is managing near Tennessee Tech's Hyder-Burks Agricultural Pavilion.
"The strategy we're using is to create a hybrid between the blight-resistant Asian species and the American chestnut," said Craddock.
Backcrossing to the Future
The breeding process he is using to develop blight-resistant trees is known as "backcrossing." Parent trees of both Chinese and American are crossed, then back-bred to successive generations to eliminate most of the Chinese tree's physical characteristics — except for blight resistance.
"If we start with a tree that's fifty-fifty Chinese-American and we backcross that to an American, we get a tree that is three-quarters American and one-quarter Chinese. When we backcross that generation, then we get a tree that's seven-eighths American. Backcross that, and then we get a tree that is fifteen-sixteenths American."
Craddock selects for trees that have the look or "form" of the American chestnut, and also display blight resistance.
"When the trees get up to four or five years old and two or three inches in diameter, we deliberately inoculate the tree with the chestnut blight fungus," he said.
Trees that show acceptable resistance are used in future crosses, thus bringing forth evermore resistant varieties that are, genetically speaking, very close to native chestnuts.
Seeds from the most resistant strains are then planted in a seed orchard. "In those trees we expect to recover full resistance," he said.
So, in a nutshell, things are looking up for the iconic giant that once shaded the eastern United States and showered sustenance onto forest floors.
"Ultimate success," however, is measured not in decades, or even human lifespans, but more like centuries, said Craddock.
"We are talking about ecosystem restoration" he said. "We need a tree that can survive and reproduce on its own under natural conditions. We are hoping to be able to release these trees into the woods in a way that allows natural selection to take over."
For that to occur, trees must display a level of blight resistance enabling them to survive and reproduce in the wild. "In my lifetime, I think we will have initiated those plantings," Craddock said.
"A hundred or two hundred years from now, I think we will be able to measure success in another way: if we have naturally reproducing populations of chestnut trees in the forest," he said.
Interested in learning more about chestnut trees, or obtaining young trees that have been bred for blight-resistance? Contact Dr. Craddock through the American Chestnut Foundation at paul@acf.org, or visit the Tennessee chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation website at tnacf.org.
(Photo at top of page: Krystal Kate Place of Chattanooga is pollinating chestnut flowers. The bags over the blossoms are to prevent pollen pollution.)
June 29, 2016 /by Center Hill Sun
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The 17th March of the Living in Budapest, commemorating the victims of the Holocaust, will be held on Sunday, April 14. Marchers will leave from the Március 15 square at 6pm and proceed by torchlight to the Shoes on the Danube Bank monument in front of Parliament. This year's march will be dedicated to Jane Haining, leader of the Scottish Mission school in Budapest from 1932, who protected her Jewish charges from deportation until she was arrested in 1944. She died in Auschwitz aged 47. The opening speech will be given by David Mundell, the UK Secretary of State for Scotland. The event will be hosted by Gábor Gordon, board member of the Hungarian March of the Living Foundation, and Iain Lindsay, the UK's ambassador to Budapest. The commemoration will be followed by an outdoor screening of "Nicky's family", a film commemorating Nicholas Winton, a British man who saved 669 Czech Jewish children.


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Federal Prisoners Punished for Using Their Prescribed Medications
December 12, 2022 Bellingham Defense Attorney, Drug Offenses, Federal Crimes & Prosecutions, Mount Vernon Criminal Defense Attorney, Prison, Skagit County Criminal Defense, Whatcom County Criminal DefenseBellingham Criminal Defense Attorney, Mt. Vernon Criminal Defense, Mt. Vernon Criminal Defense Attorney, Skagit County Criminal Defense, Skagit County Criminal Defense Attorney, Whatcom County Criminal Defense AttorneyAlexander Ransom
Intriguing article from journalist Beth Schwartzapfel discusses federal prisons punish prisoners for using addiction medication. The article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, who spoke to more than 20 people struggling with addictions in federal prison. They described the dire consequences of being unable to safely access a treatment that Congress has instructed prisons to provide.
Last year, the Bureau of Prisons disciplined more than 500 people for using Suboxone without a prescription. When prescribed, Suboxone typically comes as a strip of film that patients dissolve under the tongue. On the illegal market behind bars, a strip is cut into 16 or 32 pieces, each of which sells for $20.
Some prisoners have overdosed. Many have gotten involved in dangerous and illicit money-making schemes to pay for Suboxone. The medication costs about $20 for a small fraction of a daily dose on the illegal market, several prisoners said. Many have lost phone or visiting privileges or been sent to solitary confinement because they were caught taking the medication.
"Believe me, 100% I recognize the irony there," said a bureau administrator familiar with the agency's addiction treatment programs, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the press. "It's maddening."
THE "FIRST STEP" ACT
Congress passed the First Step Act four years ago, requiring, among other things, that the Bureau of Prisons offer more prisoners addiction medications, the most common of which is Suboxone. The medications can quiet opioid cravings and reduce the risk of relapse and overdose.
Yet the federal prisons are treating only a fraction — less than 10% — of the roughly 15,000 prisoners who need it, according to the bureau's estimates.
At the end of October, 21 prisons were not offering any prisoners addiction medication, and another 59 were treating 10 or fewer people — in many cases, just one person, according to bureau data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The rest of the 121 facilities nationwide were each treating a few dozen people at most.
THE CHALLENGES OF PRESCRIBING MEDICATIONS TO PRISONERS
According to the article, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) is treating increasingly more people since it launched its opioid medication program. In 2019, 41 people were receiving addiction medications. As of October, that had risen to 1,035 people; more than 80% of them are receiving Suboxone. This is good progress.
However, the BOP has fought in court to prevent people entering the system from staying on the addiction medications they were prescribed by doctors in the community. That began to change in 2018, when the First Step Act was passed and prisons and jails across the country began losing lawsuits from prisoners who argued it was cruel and unusual to deny them the addiction medicine they'd been taking before they were incarcerated.
Presently, prisoners need to overcome several administrative hurdles before they can begin medication. They must also obtain clearance from psychological services, then health services, before seeing a prescriber. This process naturally involves extended wait times. Some say the issues stem from a culture at the BOP that is skeptical of addiction medication and pits staff against prisoners.
Federal law treats use of any narcotics without a prescription in federal prison — including Suboxone — as a "greatest severity level prohibited act." This infraction allows officials to punish prisoners by delaying their release date, confiscating their property. It also allows officials to withdraw visiting or phone privileges and hold prisoners for up to six months in solitary confinement. Experts say even a few days in solitary can exacerbate the mental illness that is often the cause of, or closely linked to, drug addiction.
According to the article, the lack of Suboxone treatment comes amid a rise in drug-related deaths behind bars. A variety of substances are routinely smuggled into prisons and jails through mail, drone drops, visitors or corrections officers and other staff. In the last two decades, federal data shows that fatal overdoses increased by more than 600% inside prisons and more than 200% inside jails.
Forty-seven incarcerated people died of overdoses in federal prison from 2019 through 2021, according to internal bureau data released via a public records request. The data does not specify how many of these overdose deaths were caused by opioids and could have been prevented by medications like Suboxone. However, other BOP data offers some clue: During the same period, correctional staff administered Narcan — a drug that reverses opioid overdoses — almost 600 times in federal prisons.
Prison is an awful experience. Serving a prison sentence while needing a prescription medication is even more challenging. Please contact my office if you, a friend or family member are charged with a crime. Hiring an effective and competent defense attorney is the first and best step toward justice.
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Baglihar Dam also known as Baglihar Hydroelectric Power Project, is a run-of-the-river power project on the Chenab River in the southern Doda district of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. This project was conceived in 1992, approved in 1996 and construction began in 1999. The project is estimated to cost USD $1 billion. The first phase of the Baglihar Dam was completed in 2004. With the second phase completed on 10 October 2008, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India dedicated the 900-MW Baglihar hydroelectric power project to the nation.


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Written by Matt Roseboom• January 11, 2006• 12:41 pm• Caribbean, Carnival
Cruise Guide: Carnival takes swing at Caribbean
By Michael Coleman
How does the world's most popular cruise line, and its latest mega-ship, improve the Caribbean vacation experience? It offers golf. Golf. And, more golf.Â
Those who love to tee it up can book either six- or eight-day voyages from Fort Lauderdale to the Caribbean and the Bahamas aboard Carnival Liberty, the same ship which ushered in an impressive European golf program last year.Â
The ship departs Sundays from Port Everglades, on six-day cruises to Freeport, Bahamas; George Town, Grand Cayman; and Cozumel, Mexico, and Saturdays on eight-day voyages to the eastern and western Caribbean and the Bahamas.Â
The eight-day eastern Caribbean voyages feature San Juan, Puerto Rico; St. Thomas/St. John, U.S.V.I.; Antigua, Lesser Antilles; Tortola/Virgin Gorda, B.V.I.; and Nassau, the Bahamas, while the western route includes Limon, Costa Rica; Colon, Panama and Cozumel, Mexico.Â
While the destinations would put a smile on most faces, the golf enthusiast among us could be excused for beaming. Some of the most challenging courses in the Caribbean and the Bahamas are being offered as part of the line's Golf Academy Program. Among them are:Â
Lucayan Golf Club (Bahamas, six-day Caribbean/Bahamas)Â Perched on the shores of Grand Bahama Island, this par-72, 6,824-yard course is known for its tight fairways, elevated greens and sharp doglegs. Designed by Dick Wilson, whose course offerings include Doral's legendary "Blue Monster" in Miami and Orlando's Bay Hill, the course will not disappoint, offering a test of precision and strength.Â
Hyatt Britannia Golf Club,(Grand Cayman, six-day Caribbean/Bahamas)Â the Caribbean's first signature golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus, features a nine-hole championship course and an 18-hole par-57 executive course. Combining features of classic layouts such as Royal Troon and Turnberry with magnificent sea vistas, these links-style courses reward players who keep the ball in play.Â
Wyndham el Conquistador (San Juan, eight-day eastern Caribbean/Bahamas)Â Designed by renowned course architect Arthur Hills, this 6,662-yard layout is known for its rugged contours, with 12 of 18 holes offering Atlantic and Caribbean vistas. The final few holes feature 200 feet of dramatic elevation changes, adding to the day's challenge.Â
Mahogany Run (St. Thomas, eight-day eastern Caribbean/Bahamas)Â Highlighting this Tom and George Fazio-designed course is the aptly named "Devil's Triangle" featuring three of the most challenging holes in the Caribbean. Recent renovations, including expanded fairways and refurbished greens, make this 6,022-yard, par-70 course one of the most popular in the Caribbean.Â
Cable Beach Golf Course (Nassau, eight-day eastern Caribbean/Bahamas)Â Recently redesigned, this 6,500-yard course offers spacious fairways surrounded by lakes. This challenging yet "resort-friendly" course appeals to golfers of all skill levels. Greens are surrounded by a series of mounds, protecting those who hit the occasional stray shot.Â
Cozumel Country Club (Cozumel, eight-day western Caribbean, six-day Caribbean/Bahamas)Â Cozumel's first and only world-class golf course, this Jack Nicklaus-designed gem incorporates the island's habitat, with native trees, red mangroves, and natural wetlands. Famous for its peaceful and tranquil setting, this 6,724-yard, par 72-course appeals to novice and experienced golfers alike.Â
Summit Golf & Resort (Panama, eight-day western Caribbean)Â This course offers 18 holes of world-championship golf. Designed by talented course architect Jeffrey Myers and built by Gregori International, it features a challenging layout, wide-open fairways and well-placed hazards and sand traps.Â
Can't wait to take up Carnival on its golf offer but can't stand lugging your clubs with you? Feel free to leave your gear at home and take advantage of the line's Nike Golf products and apparel available for rent, demonstration or purchase.Â
Carnival Liberty will operate a series of 12-day Mediterranean voyages beginning May 7, through Oct. 22, 2006. And, yes, European golf packages will be offered.
Disney, News, Trip Reports
I recently was invited to go on a brand new cruise ship. One like no one has ever been on before. This one doesn't sail the ocean, it...
Trip Reports, Virgin Voyages
I'm listening to the waves while enjoying the 75 degree weather on my cabin balcony. It's been an amazing first evening on the...
MSC, News, Trip Reports, Videos
The MSC Divina departed from Port Canaveral last week on Sept. 16. It was MSC Cruises first of many ongoing 3-, 4-, and 7-day cruises from the Central Florida port. We were invited to tour the ship.
Atlas Ocean Voyages, Luxury, News
'World Navigator' exclusively sails Egypt and Greek Isles voyages for the inaugural summer season.
Cruise Guide: Mass-market cruise lines ready for a busy 2006
Cruise Guide: Cruise ship celebrity sightings becoming common


It's already two months since May and that means my vacation is almost over and new semester on the edge, starting next month (August 26). While it's should be vacation, but i'm not really in vacation since i have been appointed as a coordinator for this year's YKFS service learning program. It really consume most of my time during the program.
After YKFS was completed early this month, my next task is focusing on the procurement and also preparing for next semester. We had lots of meeting in the office and so far so good. Everything is under control.
In the last two days, i have been playing with a new toy called Proxmox. It's a Debian-based Linux distribution used to provide virtual environment. I wanted to test this product so that i can use it to help students for their final project when they need additional resources.
So far, i have a fully working Proxmox 3.0 and also i have successfully installed a Slackware64-14.0 as the first VM client and it's working well. I had a problem of configuring it so that the client is able to access the Internet, but it has been sorted few hours ago. I might be able to use this VM client as my new build machine in the future.
It's a free product and easy to use. The default installation will take all of your hard disk, so make sure you have no data inside it, since it doesn't ask for manual or custom partition layout.
Google announced the availability of Android 4.3 Jelly Bean to public and it has powered the new Nexus 7 tablet and soon other devices as well (Nexus 4, Nexus 7, Nexus 10, and Galaxy Nexus HSPA+ devices across the world).
More detailed information about this new version can be seen at their platform highlights, API Overview, and DevBytes Videos. Google also released Android NDK (r9) and also Android Support Library (r18).
Apache OpenOffice 4.0 is finally released after so long of development took place between 3.4.1 and 4.0. It has new logo as a result of many design iterations, collaboration among talented designers and a contest where 40 logos were rated by over 50,000 users.
See the rest of the features on their Release Notes.
LibreOffice 4.1 is getting closer to the final version as they are now in RC3. If there are no showstoppers, this RC3 will be used as the base for the final version. The upcoming 4.1 will be the sixth major release in two and a half years, and comes with a nice set of new features.
International Service Learning - YKFS V is finally over after the HK team depart to Jakarta and then followed to Hong Kong at around midnight. It's been a great work for the past 3 weeks in Banjaroya Village and the strong bond between both students will be reminded even though they are separated.
We have prepared this program for some time along with the HK coordinator and staffs via email. There has been a lot of changes since last year, but we hope that the changes are for the best interest for both parties and it seems the changes i proposed does work as intended and gives us more advantages rather than disadvantages.
I must admit that it wasn't the best service we can do, but i have done my best to make sure they are enjoying the trip in the village and also having the best farewell party in the end of this program.
Lately i'm just simply to busy at work related to the service learning in which i was appointed as the main coordinator. I had to act as the finance officer as well, so it's quite tiring as i had to travel Jogja - Banjaroya several times a week, especially in the last few days since we are nearing the end and lots to be done here.
At this time, we are working on the banner and the final report which will be handed to the head of the regency on Wednesday. The deadline should be on last Friday, but somehow the students missed it and we had to work extra hard yesterday to collect them and revise it again and again. At the end, i didn't complete all of them and there are 2.5 reports left to be done. Hopefully it can be completed today and we can send it for production later.
Well, that's what keeping me busy these days along with managing all Slackware-related stuffs since -Current is now moving again with pretty big changes such as inclusion of KDE 4.10.5 and Linux Kernel 3.9.9 among other changes.
Twelve years ago, i asked my friend (now become my wife) to become my girlfriend at the church and she replied YES. That was our first official journey to create a bond of love between us and it lasts for ten years before we got officially married last 2011.
Although we now have our new anniversary during our wedding, we still celebrate our first anniversary, because without the original anniversary, there won't be any wedding and there won't be Alysia who has now joined our family and she's now six months old.


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Buy Captain America comics below
Captain America Comic Books 1968 series
Publisher Marvel • Super-hero Captain_America Ages_7-12 Ages_13-16
First Issue #100 - April 1968 Last #454 - August 1996
Continued from Tales of Suspense (1959 series) Continued in Captain America (1996 series)
Captain America comic books rejuvenated the Marvel comic book here from the Golden Age of comics. Another creation of the great Jack Kirby (along with Joe Simon). Captain America comic books tell the exploits of Steve Rogers, a rejected WWII army recruit who takes a super-serum and becomes Captain America. Falling into an iceberg at the end of WWII, Captain America is discovered, de-frosted and brought back to action by Marvel comics in the 1960s. His origin was substiantially altered by the imporant mini-series, Truth: Red White and Black. Early issues of Captain America (1968 series) were later reprinted in Marvel Super Action (1977 series).
100 101-125 126-150 151-175 176-200 201-225 226-250
Click to view # 101 103 106 107 121 127 128 131 135 136 175 186 187 188 194 201 202 205 206 208 209 210 212 213 214 217 220 222 226 238 240 243 247 251 252 255 258 260 261 264 265 266 273 274 283 288 289 292 301 302 303 304 305 306 308 309 311 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 325 326 332 336 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 346 347 348 350 351 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 361 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 375 377 378 379 380 381 382 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 397 398 399 400 401 403 404 406 407 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 417 418 419 420 421 422 423 424 425 426 427 428 429 430 431 432 433 435 436 437 438 439 440 442 443 444 445 446 447 448 449 450 451 452 453 454
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Captain America comic books shown are in stock. Ordering Captain America comic books is easy: Instructions
Agent 13's identity revealed as Sharon Carter. While on her date with Captain America, she is taken captive by Red Skull's minions.
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That the Spirit of God can inspire people with special dreams and visions we read in the Old Testament of the Bible. He inspired patriarchs, kings and prophets of Israel often with such experiences. The prophet Ezekiel seemed to have had a special gift to be an instrument of God for he received many messages and revelations in visionary experiences. When the Holy Spirit of the Lord fell at Pentecost in Jerusalem on the apostles, Peter referred to the prophecy of Joel where he had prophesied that in later times God would pour out His Spirit and inspire believers in dreams and with prophetic inspirations (Acts 2:16,17).
The history of Christianity tells of many believers that had mystical, visionary and prophetic experiences. Many of them heard the Lord speak and saw Him. Their faith and dedication to their calling received often a new depth and intensity and it inspired them to dedicate them to noble service in practical, helpful Christian living and preaching. I think of saints as the early Church fathers Ignatius and Augustine, later figures as Hildegard van Bingen in the 12th century, John of the Cross and Theresa of Avila, in the 16th century. However, there were also people who after such mystical experiences became more or less useless.
When the Holy Spirit of God gives dreams or visions they always contain a message. This message may be understood immediately, but sometimes to be interpretated and correctly understood they need much thought, prayer and study. Dreams or visions received from God must surely not be thought of as the product of a tired or confused mind and must not be qualified as hallucinations - as some people do. Dreams or visions of God may also be received while being in normal, clear consciousness. These visions may be experienced in a trance or in a sensation of being transported to another realm or place, as the prophet Ezekiel in chapter 8:3. When people come into a trance they usually loose contact with the normal world around them because their consciousness is taken up in that experience. The impressions they receive while being in such a mystical state of mind can usually be remembered when they return in the normal state of consciousness. That is why visions or messages can be written down afterwards as we see in the Bible and know from many interesting books.
In teaching about dreams and visions in the Church need to be made absolutely clear that they be should evaluated and checked by leaders of the Church, if they are indeed from the Holy Spirit and in harmony with Biblical teachings and revelations (1 Corinthians 14:29; 1 Thessalonians 5:19). This is very important as the inspirations may be influenced by the human mind or a strange spirit. It also needs to be accepted and understood that dreams and visions are never meant to become the foundation of our faith. The foundation of our faith is the Bible, the Word of God. Even when people are sure that God spoke to them in the vision or in the prophecy needs the teaching or message be examined and tried by the written Word of God in the Bible. Don't misunderstand me please, I do not mean to belittle the worth of such messages and visions as they can be a means of communication from God and contain an important message. However they can never be in contradiction with what He has previously taught and revealed as God never contradicts Himself or turns around (Hebrews 6:18; James 1:17).
Wesley was once warned to pay no attention to dreams and visions and to give no importance to people that seek to receive forgiveness of sins through tears and weeping . He reacted as follows: "The question between us is this in short: You deny that God can give such experiences and saying that God does not give them, but I believe, He does.
I confirm that He does use them and have seen that He gives such experiences. I have seen - in as much as we can evaluate them - that people were changed in a moment. Their fear, dispair and disgust were changed in a spirit of joy, love and peace. Their sinful desires that reigned over them till that moment were changed into a pure desire to do the will of God. These are the facts of which I have been an eyewitness till this day.
I know some people that experienced such a dramatic change in their life during or after seeing a vision, in a dream, or as a very powerful impression in their mind of the crucified or glorifyed Christ. These are facts, let everybody examine them as he is pleased to do. The change in their life was not the result of tears, or of fallling to the ground or through loud calling to God, but of the Spirit of God and their dedication of their heart to Christ. You must not think that I regard these unusual experiences as the fruit of their faith. The fruit of their faith is that they have become holy, righteous and good living people, while they were until that moment in many ways bad lving people.
I can show you that some people were before such an experience as lions but now have become as lambs,some were drunkards but now live as good examples of soberness and great selfcontrol. I can introduce you to people who were before going to the harlots, but now detest even the defiled garments. Such people are my living arguments. As in former days God gives forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit to people and their children. Yes, He gives these gifts often suddenly and often - as I have observed - through dreams and visions. If this is not true then I am a false witnness of God. But I do testify that God gives such experiences and through His grace I will keep testifying of them."
Do not deliberatedly stir up these experiences.
From time to time there are believers and movements that tried to generate or stimulate such mystical and ecstatic experiences. I want to emphasize that the Bible does not support in any way that we should deliberately try to generate or stimulate such experiences in our own strength. This is the reason why I do reject such ministries and methods that try to help or bring us into a mystical state of mind, like a spiritual trance. Self induced trance can open the door of our spirit for misleading spirits and is therefore dangerous. Many have already experienced this to their sorrow and horror. Having said this I want to point out that we want to give the Holy Spirit all the freedom to bless us with His sovereign dealings and blessings. Let us be convinced that He knows – as in the days of old – to whom He can minister in these special mystical, spiritual experiences.
In closing I want to point out two things.
a. Such special experiences and their results as described above are given to be a blessing for the whole Church and for the furtherance of the Kingdom of God. Sharing such experiences and messages with others is often not easy because there are many people that do not appreciate and understand them. However we have usually the task to share messages from God with others, (Romans 1:11; Ephesians 4:16).
<>b. In closing I give the warning that when deceased familymembers appear in a vision or a dream, it should be seriously investigated if there is perhaps a history of spiritism in the famly, for such experiences could be misleading. People who are contaminated with misleading spirits have often a hindrance to believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Saviour. In case of doubt or spritual contamination, I invite you to write me with giving me as much as possible particulars. May the Lord Jesus bless you and sanctify you.
T. J. de Ruiter, Dutch Pentecostal pastor and teacher, 21 January 2011.
I invite you to e-mail me if you have any question or are in need of counselling because of having had a mystical experience.


Chinese translation published in Science Fiction World / 科幻世界 (April 2009), English version published in Thoughtcrime Experiments. The text posted here has been edited and is slightly different from the form in which this story was first published.
Before he met Lydia, Tyler's life, like the lives of most people, involved the steady accretion of names.
Names were just shorthand for memories, and young Tyler did not yet understand that we define each name in life twice: the first time as a promise of the future, and again later, when it is a summary of the past.
— Tyler and every other kid avoided the new boy because he was bigger than all of them and stared at everyone like he was looking for a fight. But the only empty seat in Mrs. Younge's Art class that day was next to Tyler, and that was how Owen Last and Tyler became best friends.
— Tyler looked at her until the music stopped. He was just about to ask her to dance when her date showed up. "So it is possible to fall in love in half an hour," he thought. He wrote "Amber Ria" on a slip of paper and sealed it in a beer bottle with aluminum foil and threw the bottle as far into Long Island Sound as he could.
— San Francisco was just a dot on the map until he saw the seals sunbathing by Fisherman's Wharf.
— At the coffee house open mike, he read a poem called "Allure, Obsession, Desire and Devotion." Tyler could not understand why all the women were laughing until the woman sitting behind Owen showed him the perfume advertisements in the magazine in her hand. Lena Lyman and Tyler dated for exactly two months. Her favorite scent was Envy.
— Tyler didn't know what that bright star in the sky was called until he moved into his new apartment and found an abandoned star atlas in the kitchen, next to a bowl of fresh clementines. He tasted sweetness on his tongue whenever he thought about Sirius, the Dog Star.
The first time Tyler saw her was in a dumpster behind the Wholly Place two blocks from his apartment. He had gone around the back of the store to look for some empty boxes to carry his organic potatoes and free range chicken breasts home (the Wholly Place believed in neither paper nor plastic).
She was standing up in the dumpster, her hands lifting into the sun a giant jar of olives that had just passed their expiration date. A dark blue cotton tank top showed off the creases and dimples on her elbows. Her sun-bleached, ginger-red hair was pinned into lopsided coils on top of her head with a black barrette. A scattering of freckles gave color and vibrancy to her pale face.
She turned to him, putting the jar of olives down on top of the pile of other things she had fished out of the dumpster. She had chapped lips, the sort of lips that came from smoking cigarettes and laughing at statistics. Her eyes were the color of moth wings. She's going to smile, he knew, and he wanted to know if her teeth were white and crooked.
Tyler thought she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
We think we know a few things about the way memory works. We think that memories of things that actually happened, such as what you ate for dinner, thing that could have happened but didn't, such as the smart retort that came to mind too late, and things that simply could not have happened, such as the way sunlight might reflect from an angel's eyes, are encoded the same way at the level of neurons. To distinguish between them requires logic and reason, and a level of indirection. This is troublesome to some people in so far as they believe that our construction of reality is based on memories. If you cannot tell these kinds of memories apart, then it seems that you can be made to believe anything.
The consolation of philosophy and religion both was that they helped men classify the types of memories and keep their hold on the fragile authenticity of their waking lives.
When Tyler was very young, his grandmother was his favorite person in the world because, unlike his parents, who believed that children should always be told the truth as adults understood it, she would fill in the gaps in his knowledge — Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, God. And while his parents were always too busy and often a little too serious, his grandmother had a sense of peace about her, a lightness that lifted his spirit. A few times, when Tyler's parents were away, she took him with her to church. He remembered liking the singing and the colorful windows, and how safe he felt there, in that large, empty space, sitting on a hard bench next to her warmth.
When she died, grief overwhelmed Tyler. But like most adults, when he grew older he could only recall the intensity of that love in childhood in an abstract way. Making the common error of identifying maturity with worth, he assumed that the love he had for her as a young child must have been lacking in strength and depth.
For many years after her death, however, Tyler was tortured by the memory of a certain visit from her. He was five or so, and they were playing some board game at the kitchen table. As he swung his legs in his excitement, he kicked her repeatedly in the shins. She asked him to stop, and he refused, giggling. When she finally frowned at him and threatened to stop playing if he didn't stop he told her to go to Hell.
In Tyler's mind he could see her face grow taut, lose color, and then, for the only time he could remember, she began to cry. He also remembered his own utter confusion. "Go to Hell" was just something he had heard others say. His parents did not have much use for religion and so for him Hell was a word without much mystery or power. At that time he knew only vaguely that Hell was a place you did not want to go, like the dark basement and the even darker attic. He remembered feeling resentful that she was crying and he did not even understand why.
Tyler felt the guilt of this memory even in his teenage years. For him it summed up all his insecurities and fears about his own cruelty, ignorance, and the possibility that he was, in reality, not a good person. The fact that he had caused someone who loved him such pain with so little effort and understanding troubled him deeply.
One day Tyler looked through an old family photo album, and in it was a picture of the kitchen in the house they used to live in. He was surprised to discover that the small kitchen contained a central island, and had no space for the table in his memory at all.
With the discovery of that single error in his memory came a cascade of other revelations. Now he remembered that they always ate in the dining room, and when they did play board games, it was always on the coffee table in the living room. The memory that had caused him such pain over the years could not possibly have occurred. Somehow, he must have manufactured the whole scene in his imagination.
It was not very hard to explain what really happened, he thought. The death of his grandmother had probably caused in him feelings of abandonment and guilt. In his confusion he had taken elements from storybooks and imagined out of nothing this memory to punish himself. This was the sort of fantasy that could have occurred to any young child who lost an important relative. With that realization, the image of his grandmother crying faded in his memory and became less and less believable.
Tyler thought he was very lucky to have discovered the single error in his false memory, which enabled him to reason his way into distinguishing between reality and fantasy. He felt that it was a coming-of-age moment.
Nonetheless, he admitted to himself that he was a little sad also at the discovery. For however imaginary that memory was, it was also a part of his love for his grandmother. When that memory lost its compelling aura of truth, it was like another part of her died with it. He had no name for the emptiness that remained.
A month earlier he had helped her carry the olives and bread and grape juice she had salvaged from the Wholly Place dumpster to her apartment, which turned out to be in the same building as his, only on the floor below. What little furniture there was in the apartment was made from cardboard boxes with sheets draped over them. It was like being on the set of a minimalist play.
Lydia spread a blanket on the floor and they had a picnic in the middle of the afternoon in her twelve-by-ten studio. She broke the bread into pieces and handed the pieces to him, and they drank the grape juice from the bottle.
"The Eucharist," Lydia said, "à la Lydia." She said it with the same tone one would say, "Pollo Calabrese, my grandmother's recipe." It didn't sound like a joke. She offered him an olive from the jar.
It had been many years since Tyler had last gone to a church with his grandmother, and he didn't know what to say. But he wanted to stay with her and look at her face, which, though it broke into smiles only occasionally, was suffused with a happiness that Tyler felt as a wave of heat.
He told her about his job as a database programmer at a bank, and about his nights scribbling in his notebook and reading in smoke-filled coffee houses to other young men and women with dreams like his own. He told her a selection of the most important names of his life and the stories behind them. While he spoke, he marveled at her face, and how he was already crazy about her.
Tyler asked her questions. He wanted to know the life of the woman he was falling in love with, to understand her collection of names.
Lydia had grown up in New Camden, one of thousands of other towns just like it, exurbs cast adrift along the highways between Boston and New York. She was named in honor of a grandmother who died before she was born. When she was little her mother called her "Peapod" because she was chubby and loved the sun. Her father called her "Princess" because that was what he thought all fathers called their daughters.
For much of junior high she did not know who she was. Her parents fought and when they finally stopped fighting her father wanted her to continue to be called Lydia Getty, and her mother wanted her to be called Lydia O'Scannlain. She spent her summers at her father's new home in Arizona, where he took her to meet his friends at night. They called her "Baby Shark" because she beat them at poker. At school the girls called her Lydia O'Hara because her favorite color was red. The boys did not have a name for her because, as far as they knew, she had not yet kissed anyone.
In high school she was Lydia the Pothead, and she was popular with the boys for all the wrong reasons. Her mother called her names that she would rather not remember. Once a boy drove her to a building in Boston, where angry men and women waving signs and placards lined the driveway as she walked up, alone, and called her names that made her shiver. Later, as she lay in a small white room, recovering, a nurse told her to ignore the noises outside and to try to imagine herself as A Very Brave Young Woman.
She fell asleep, and was startled awake when she felt the room shake. Her life was transformed at that moment because she was visited by the angel Ambriel, the angel with eyes the color of moth wings.
Contrary to most accounts of angelic visitations — Lydia told Tyler, who did not yet quite understand what he was hearing — angels do not engage in conversation with the visited. The power of the visitation comes entirely from the presence of the angel itself, which is a fragment of the being of God.
Like that of millions of other people, Lydia's life, though not filled with extraordinary suffering, had had enough disappointments and betrayals by that point that she had lost what little faith the church had been able to instill in her. God had the same status in reality as neutrinos.
Now, Lydia looked upon the angel, and felt Ambriel's light punch through her eyes and fill her mind, and the pain was so glorious that she could not even conceive of closing her eyes. Everything she had ever learned about anything was simply wrong, irrelevant. Ambriel's light illuminated the deafening silences between her parents, the old and fresh scars from that zero-sum game known as social life in a high school, the humble, confusing and desperate inconsistencies of an ordinary life. In that light, all of it was coherent, sensible, and above all, beautiful.
In that moment Lydia was made anew. She was filled with such love for God that she finally understood why Hell is really the absence of God, and has nothing to do with fire or brimstone.
Tyler learned then what it was he saw in Lydia's face that so pulled at his heart. He saw in that face the signs of that species of happiness we used to call blessed. To be blessed is to be without fear, which is just another name for desire left unfulfilled. But the very presence of God, even through the intermediary of an angel, made unfulfilled desires meaningless for her. The only fear left after a visitation was the fear that one might be denied the presence of God. But since the only requirement to reach God is to love Him, and it is not possible to not love Him after having experienced the joy of His presence, Lydia's salvation was guaranteed.
At that moment, Lydia learned who she was. She was one of the Saved. This did not mean that she had to give up drugs and swearing, or that she had to put on a white robe and roam the streets stuffing pamphlets under people's doors. It simply meant that she could now go on with her life and everything she did in the future would be full of joy because she loved God.
And so Tyler was in love with Lydia because God's light, dim though it was by the time it was refracted through Lydia onto him, nevertheless dazzled him.
He took Lydia with him to poetry readings, where Lydia met his friends who wanted to write poetry and congregated in those smoke-filled basement cafés. When Tyler read from the cocoon of the spotlight, he sought out her luminous face and bright halo of red hair in the dim light of the café because she smiled when she heard him read and he loved to see her smile.
Because she couldn't tell an iamb apart from the Lamb; because she smelled of soap and sunlight; because when she told him she would go look at stars with him she really meant it; because when he made fun of people who said "irregardless," she made him look it up in a dictionary so that he learned that it really was a word; because he knew that he could always tell when she would laugh a fraction of a second before she did.
On Sundays Lydia did not go to church. She never went to churches because they had nothing to offer her, and in any case most churches in the city were embarrassed by her story. Instead, she brought him to meetings with people who had also been visited by angels and people who wanted to be visited by angels. These meetings occurred in the basements of churches and libraries, and they involved a lot of folding chairs and stale coffee, as well as a lot of desperation and phrases cribbed from the self-help aisles. Often Tyler wondered why he was in these meetings at all until he saw the light in Lydia's face as she told her story.
On other days they wandered the streets of the city after work. They took short road trips to small towns up and down the Pacific Coast. They talked about everything and nothing at all, and all the while Tyler gazed into Lydia's face and wanted to believe.
That month between the day he met her in a dumpster and the day she said yes, she would marry him, while feeding him pistachio ice cream was the happiest month of Tyler's life.
The only trouble was, he still did not believe in God.
On their way back from Las Aldamas, Lydia fell asleep in the passenger seat. The road was straight and smooth, and the traffic was light. Tyler put the car on cruise control and stretched his legs. He reached for Lydia's hand and turned his head to glance at her sleeping form.
Later, when Tyler tried to recall what he felt, as he watched Lydia slowly die in the seat next to him, her body upside down and held in place by the seatbelt, her back twisted at an impossible angle, the collapsed roof of the car trapping her arms, he was surprised to find that he could recall no pain from his own body at all.
But that could not have been the case. Both his legs were broken, and the heat from the flames must have been intense on his side of the wreckage, judging by the burns covering his face and arms. When he finally recovered enough to sit up on his own in the hospital, he also found that the blindness in his left eye would be permanent.
Be that as it may, the fact was that all Tyler could remember was how calm and unafraid Lydia was as she told him that she knew she was going to die, that she was not in any pain, and that she would see him in Heaven.
Tyler tried to twist around in his seat so he could see what she was seeing, even though he knew that he would see nothing. The steering wheel got in his way and he gave up after a few seconds. He would regret those few seconds later because he took his eyes off Lydia's face, and during those few seconds she died.
If Tyler were religious, he could have been comforted by the promise of reuniting with Lydia in Heaven. Or he could have been angry with God, and railed against Him until he could come to accept his life the way Job accepted his. But Tyler did not believe in Heaven or God.
But neither could his lack of faith give him comfort, for he loved Lydia for that light in her, and he had no name or explanation for that light except what Lydia told him. Her faith was what he loved.
To continue in his lack of faith would be to assert that Lydia's joy was an illusion, and that would kill the very heart of his memory of her. But to believe would require him to break down the barriers between fantasy and reality in his mind and embrace as fact what seemed to him a hallucination. While Lydia was alive he could delay that decision for as long as he was in love, but her death meant that he had to choose.
When Tyler finally recovered, he locked himself away from his friends. He quit his job and he unplugged his phone.
What he did was to find out everything he could about the accident, and to try to understand what happened. This was difficult because there was little the investigators could find out, and there were many blanks to be filled in. But Tyler had lots of time.
Much of a programmer's job — Tyler read — consists of untangling the web of links bridging the level of indirection between variables and values.
Variables are the electronic memory equivalents of names. Instead of working with individual bytes, a block of memory can be given a name with a variable. Variables can be made to name anything, throttle settings, social security numbers, a subroutine to wipe the disk.
Unfortunately, there is no way to tell if a variable is pointing at what it claims to be pointing at, or if it's pointing at anything at all. At the level of bits, the number of butterflies in Costa Rica looks just like the velocity of the tropical storm off the coast of Australia.
This is troublesome to every programmer in so far as the correspondence between variables and values lies at the foundation of any program's tenuous claim to correctness. If you can convince the computer that a variable names something real when it really points into the void, all bets are off.
In order to help programmers maintain the distinction between solid reality and fantastic disaster, type systems were introduced. These were mathematical constructs embodied in programming languages to ensure that a variable meant for the throttle setting would not point to, say, the current acceleration of the car. Type systems imposed the consolation of infallible order against the madness of an amoral sea of bits.
Like many other modern cruise control systems, the one in Tyler's car relied upon a microcomputer running a dedicated program.
Obviously it was very important that this program did its job correctly. The program in Tyler's car was written by a careful programmer who understood that lives depended on him getting it right. But more than that, the program was written in a language that had a very strong type system, one so strong that there was a mathematical proof showing that no matter how clever or careless the programmer was, a program that passed the type-checking would be guaranteed to never allow a variable declared to point at the fuel level to point at the subroutine for shifting gears. This was as close to infallibility as you could get in the world of bits.
All this is to say that Tyler had good reason to relax and lean back in his seat.
About two thousand years earlier — Tyler read some more — around the time of Christ, there was a star in the region of the sky dominated by the constellation Cassiopeia. The star was old and dying, and one winter night, it went supernova.
Out of this explosion emerged countless protons and neutrons traveling away from the wreckage of the old star at great speed. They are called cosmic rays, and most of them will go on hurling through the void of space till the end of time, and their fates need not concern us.
But one proton in particular arrived on Earth that sunny July day after traveling alone in the dark for two thousand years. It plunged through the ionosphere, gracefully dodging the lines of the Earth's magnetic field, and then straight through the thickening air, barely slowing down. It would have gone on and sunk itself straight into the California desert on that day, but something got in the way.
At that moment, Lydia was asleep and Tyler had his eyes off the road for a moment to look at her. Even in sleep, her face held that blessed quality of light. And their car intercepted the path of the lone escaped proton from that long ago death of a star.
The proton paid little attention to the metal casing and the plastic polymers interested it even less. It ripped right through them and, for a moment, it looked as if it would go on with its journey. It seemed that way until the proton came upon an infinitesimal bit of silicon, and for the first time in two thousand years, it took an interest in tangible matter and decided to knock the electrons out of it.
That bit of silicon happened to be a part of a capacitor. There were millions of other capacitors and transistors just like it, all of them parts of the integrated circuit that made up the memory of the computer running the program that controlled Tyler's car at that moment. The absence of those electrons, to be sure, was an insignificant anonymity by any measure in the scheme of things, but it was enough.
The loss of those electrons meant that the bit that used to represent a 1 would now be interpreted as a 0, and that bit happened to be located inside a memory cell that held a variable. The flip in that bit meant that the variable, which was supposed to give the address of the subroutine for computing throttle settings, was now pointing at the value for the fuel flow rate, exactly 1024 bytes away from where the variable was supposed to be pointing.
This was just the sort of violation the type system of the language in which the program was written was designed to prevent. A variable meant to point to a subroutine should never have been able to point at numerical data. But once that did happen, anything else was possible.
If a single-bit error on a circuit board could breach the mathematically perfect type system of a programming language, Tyler reasoned, wasn't it conceivable that a single-bit error in the brain could break down the system of distinctions between nurses and angels? All it would take was for one neural connection to be broken and randomly reattached somewhere else, somewhere it had no business to be connected to, and all the walls between the types of memories would come crumbling down.
Lydia's vision of Ambriel, and indeed her faith, was then simply the consequence of a misfiring of the neurons, a misfiring that could have been triggered by fatigue, by stress, by a stray elementary particle, indeed, by anything at all, on that long ago day in the clinic in Boston. It was really the same process that had conjured up his memory of making his grandmother cry.
In order to reason your way to faith, Tyler thought, all you needed was a single-bit error.
Contrary to what you might expect, this theory did not cheapen or degrade Lydia's faith in Tyler's mind. For this explanation allowed Tyler to understand, rationally, Lydia's life. Calling Lydia's faith an error was a level of indirection that bridged the gap between their worlds.
Moreover, errors, once understood, could be induced. The technically proficient could breach the best software security systems by deliberately inducing errors in the hardware. Couldn't the rational induce faith in themselves the same way?
Tyler decided that he would try to induce a single-bit error in his own brain. If the only way for him to meet Lydia was to go to Heaven, then rationally, he had no choice but to make himself believe in God.
One possibility was to weaken the body. Starvation, dehydration, exposure to the elements. Errors were more likely when the body's defenses were down. This was the path of the mystics of the desert. Tyler decided that he would try that first.
He drove the rental car south and then east until he was in Arizona, close to the border with Mexico, the edge and then the heart of the Sonoran Desert. He drove until the roads were no longer roads and then he walked. He walked until he decided he could no longer find his way back, and then he walked some more. Eventually he found himself surrounded on all sides by clumps of saguaro cactus. He was very hungry and thirsty by then, so he sat down and waited for his body to fail.
Tyler had not seen Owen for a few weeks while he was locked in his own apartment trying to understand Lydia's death. They were sitting in their favorite coffee shop, and it was raining outside, a rare autumn shower.
"I miss her," Tyler said, instead of arguing.
"A level of indirection then," Tyler said to the saguaro cactus beside him, and he began to laugh. How long had he been sitting in the desert? It seemed like days. Night was coming. It was going to be cold.
"You always think too hard," the cactus said.
"Lydia, is that you?" This is a good sign, Tyler thought. Auditory hallucinations always came first, didn't they? But the voice didn't really sound like Lydia. It was too distant and too fine, like a glass harmonica. He looked around for an angel.
"So you think my brain was broken? A missed connection, that's all it was?" The cactus said.
"No, not broken." That was the wrong name for it. That was the problem. He needed the right name.
Bright lights were approaching him in the dark. He waited for the feeling of being pierced by the light, of being overwhelmed by the certainty that it was all going to be okay, of love, of being saved. He waited for the walls in his mind to collapse.
The light stopped in front of him. Several figures appeared in the light. Their hair were halos of light and their bodies were limned in fire. He was a little surprised that the light was not as bright as he had expected. It was painful to look into the light, but not like Lydia had described it. Which angels are these?
"Maybe it's because I have only one eye now," he said to himself.
They carried him into the back of the ranger's car and began the long drive back.
He even went to the churches. But their faith seemed empty to him. He felt nothing sitting in the pews, mouthing the words to the hymns, listening to the sermons that seemed devoid of meaning.
I want to believe, and I can't. He looked around; no one had the kind of light in their faces that he had seen in Lydia. You think you believe, but you don't. Not really, not like Lydia.
Eventually Owen managed to convince him to come out to the cafés at night again. He thought the poems being read were wretched. Why wasn't anyone writing about the lack of that light? Why wasn't anyone writing about the persistence of memory or the type system that was at the same time so fragile and so difficult to breach? Why wasn't anyone writing about the pain that came from not being able to believe?
So he got a new job programming databases at a bank, and he started to write again. He even managed to get some of his poems published. His friends took him out to celebrate. He was excited and happy, and a girl who looked nothing like Lydia took him home, despite the scars on his face.
"Stephanie," she said, and turned off the light. And he would always remember her as Stephanie-Who-Looked-Nothing-Like-Lydia.
"Would you go get Lydia for dinner?" Jess said to Tyler from the kitchen.
Tyler was still cleaning up the last few paper plates and napkins and popped balloons in the living room left over from the birthday party earlier. He walked downstairs and into the garage. The garage door was open, and through it he could see Lydia lying on the front lawn, looking up at the winter evening sky.
He was going to point out that although she was born in the evening it didn't necessarily mean that she was "conceived" in the evening. Then he stopped himself. Some details could wait.
"That is worth waiting for," he said.
They waited together, shivering a little. It was still early winter, but you could already tell that it was going to be a cold one. Tyler sometimes missed the warm California winters.
"I think I've figured out why my bed has so much dust under it," Lydia said.
He looked at her, and was overwhelmed by his love for her. She was so like him, rational, clear-headed, not afraid of the facts. Her fairy tales had star dust, but not the magic kind. She did not believe in God, and he was glad of that. Like him, she would be immune to single-bit errors.
Jess was standing in the garage door, the light from the hallway behind her made her luminous.
"Look, mom looks like an angel." Lydia got up and ran towards the light.
Tyler stayed where he was a moment longer. He looked at Sirius, the Dog Star, and the other burning, exploding stars in the sky, all that light coming at him from different distances and therefore from different times. He realized that he was being bombarded simultaneously by protons and photons generated at the moment Lydia was conceived, at the moment Lydia, that other Lydia, had died, at the moment he was born, at the moment Saint Augustine stole his pear, and at the moment Christ was crucified. He felt a little lightheaded.
Ambriel chose that moment to visit him.
Tyler was filled with such love for God that he trembled. The beauty of God's design made him weep. He understood why he met Lydia, why she had died, and why he had failed to come to Him before that moment. He yearned to feel that light forever. He longed to be in Heaven. It was the happiest moment of his life because by experiencing what Lydia did, he was finally with her. To remember what it was like when he was in love with Lydia was better even than falling in love in the first place. The type system was breaking down.
But one detail was wrong.
He remembered looking at Sirius just before Ambriel appeared. For a fraction of a second Sirius appeared to glow a little brighter, barely perceptibly. It was a very slight twinkle. It could have been anything: an atmospheric distortion, a wisp of cloud passing, a trick of the eye.
Or maybe it was a solar flare on Sirius at the moment, eight-point-seven-five years ago, when Lydia was conceived. Maybe a proton from that explosion travelled through the emptiness of space for those years, paying nary a mind to anything in its path. Wasn't it possible that it had plunged through the earth's ionosphere, its stratosphere, its clouds and the wings of birds? Wasn't it possible that it finally entered Tyler's eye on that winter evening, piercing him to the depth of his being, and, while passing by the hypothalamus, decided to knock some electrons out of it?
It was a small error, just a bit off from the usual. But it was enough. It was enough for him to tell reality apart from illusions.
As soon as he realized it, Ambriel was gone. The type system held.
Tyler knew then that he was doomed. For the rest of his life to remember that feeling of rapture, that love for God, that sweetness of being. He had believed, even if only for a moment. He had been with Lydia, but then he had looked. And then there was the absence of God.
He would always have that moment in his memory, and he would always know it was a single-bit error that had both given him the memory and then taken its reality away from him.
He lived, sometimes even happily, until the day he died.
[Author's Note: Three sources inspired this story: Ted Chiang's short story, "Hell is the Absence of God"; Heather O'Neill's prose-poem, "Before It Had a Name," which she performed on This American Life; and Sudhakar Govindavajhala and Andrew W. Appel's paper, "Using Memory Errors to Attack a Virtual Machine".


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text:
Q: Embed an image in a mail and send it with Linux mail to Outlook 2007 How to send a HTML email with embedded image to Outlook 2007 using Linux's mail command.
I tried to send the following, but it doesn't work.
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html;
<html>
  <body>
    <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0l...IADs=" />
  </body>
<html>

A: Will not work in Outlook 2007, since it doesn't support data_uri scheme.
The only way is to get this done is by using creating multipart/related mail setting the content-id for the image then displaying.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Arctic Warming: Keeping Ice = Saving Climate More than polar bears at risk in the great Arctic melt-out
Doug Moss and Roddy Scheer January 22, 2016
Dear EarthTalk: Why are climatologists so concerned about Arctic warming especially?
—Joseph Constabile, Dedham, MA
The Arctic is an "indicator region" for the rest of the planet: small differences in temperature there can have profound ecosystem impacts — and can give us a better idea of the types of problems we can all expect down the road. Credit: Smudge 9000, FlickrCC.
The image of a polar bear standing on a shrinking iceberg has become one of the most iconic symbols of global warming, yet few of us realize just how important the Arctic's ice is, wherever we may live on the earth. Researchers consider the Arctic to be an "indicator region" for the rest of the planet, given that even small differences in temperature there can have profound ecosystem impacts and can give us a better idea of the types of problems we can all expect down the road. Arctic warming now can mean big trouble for the rest of the planet just a few years down the road.
Of course, the effects of global warming have been under scrutiny in the Arctic for decades already. Since 1979, the extent of the Arctic's permanent ice cap has shrunk by upwards of 20 percent. Even worse, the remaining ice has thinned by as much as two-thirds in some parts of the Arctic. Recent models suggest this ice loss will only accelerate in the next several years due to a global warming feedback loop called the "albedo effect," whereby less ice means less reflection of the sun's radiation back into space and thus more warming at the Earth's surface. And not only is the ice shrinking—parts of the ice cap are also rupturing: The , the largest block of ice in the Arctic and intact for some 3,000 years, finally cracked in 2000, and within two years split all the way through.
Arctic Warming: Species on the Move, Sea Level Rising
These changes up north are already starting to have ripple effects elsewhere. For starters, the entire Arctic ecosystem is being forced to shift with the changing climate. Animals like polar bears, whales and seals are changing migration patterns, in turn impacting native people who depend on them for sustenance. Meanwhile, other organisms are overpopulating, given all the new habitat opening up. Rising temperatures have allowed the spruce bark beetle to add an extra reproduction cycle each year. As a result the pesky little beetles decimated 3.4 million acres of Alaska's forests over just 10 years.
And then there's the issue of sea level rise. Thanks in large part to melting Arctic glaciers, sea level is expected to rise some three feet on average around the world in the next century, flooding over 22,000 square miles in the United States alone. This pressing issue threatens island nations especially. Countries like the Maldives, precariously perched just six feet above sea level, are as concerned as anyone about melting glaciers in the Arctic. And warming in the Arctic also affects weather patterns vital for food production all over the world. Cold water from the melting ice could also potentially halt the Gulf Stream, which brings warm weather to Europe. This would result in a steep drop in temperature for much of northwestern Europe and would affect weather patterns far beyond.
While it may seem futile for us to try to stop Arctic warming, we do in fact have the power. We can all work to reduce our carbon footprints by flying and driving less, turning down (or off) the heat or air conditioning, speaking up to our elected officials, and even divesting from companies that support the continued development of fossil fuels.


PE Explorer Adjuster tool: Change and Modify all the TimeDate Stamps to One Uniform Value.
What is Time Date Stamp?
It is a 32-bit value, giving the time and date the PE file was compiled. You can distinguish several versions of the same file by this value, even if the "official" version number was not altered. Apparently it is "seconds since January 1 1970 00:00:00" in UTC - the format used by most C compilers for the time_t. This timestamp is used for the binding of import directories. Some compilers tend to set this timestamp to absurd values.
Selecting TimeDateStamp Adjuster from the PE Explorer Tools menu will display the Adjuster dialog.
2. It sets every field to the adjusted TimeDate Stamp.
For version control purposes, you might want to modify all the TimeDate Stamps to one uniform value. This ensures that PE files compiled from the same source code do not appear different to your version control software because of differing TimeDate Stamps within the code.


text:
using System;

namespace EasyNetQ.Internals;

/// <summary>
///     This is an internal API that supports the EasyNetQ infrastructure and not subject to
///     the same compatibility as public APIs. It may be changed or removed without notice in
///     any release. You should only use it directly in your code with extreme caution and knowing that
///     doing so can result in application failures when updating to a new EasyNetQ release.
/// </summary>
public static class DisposableAction
{
    /// <summary>
    /// Wraps an action and a state with <see cref="DisposableAction{TState}"/>
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="action">The action</param>
    /// <param name="state">The state</param>
    /// <typeparam name="TState">The type of state</typeparam>
    /// <returns>Returns <see cref="DisposableAction{TState}"/></returns>
    public static DisposableAction<TState> Create<TState>(Action<TState> action, TState state)
    {
        return new DisposableAction<TState>(action, state);
    }
}

/// <summary>
///     This is an internal API that supports the EasyNetQ infrastructure and not subject to
///     the same compatibility standards as public APIs. It may be changed or removed without notice in
///     any release. You should only use it directly in your code with extreme caution and knowing that
///     doing so can result in application failures when updating to a new EasyNetQ release.
/// </summary>
public readonly struct DisposableAction<TState> : IDisposable
{
    private readonly Action<TState> action;
    private readonly TState state;

    /// <summary>
    /// Creates a disposable action from an action with a state
    /// </summary>
    /// <param name="action">The action</param>
    /// <param name="state">The state</param>
    public DisposableAction(Action<TState> action, TState state)
    {
        this.action = action;
        this.state = state;
    }

    /// <inheritdoc />
    public void Dispose()
    {
        action(state);
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


UK master of all things drifting, Driftworks has proudly announced that it has become the official UK distributor for the prestigious Japanese brand Work wheels.
Until now, the sought-after rims, featured on many PVW feature cars over the years, could only be sourced from overseas companies, meaning costs and the risks of complications were increased. One of the advantages of Work wheels is their almost tailor-made configuration service, with rims usually made to order.
Driftworks told us that it is not currently stocking specific wheels on its website, as there is a massive combination of styles available. Instead, it is taking specific orders tailor-made to customers' requirements. Buying through the UK company promises a risk-free experience, with no hidden import costs, and Driftworks covers everything if something goes wrong.
The company is also offering finance deals on wheel packages.If you fancy some rare JDM metal propping your ride up, hit up the Driftworks website to see what it can do for you. Do a big skid in the direction of Driftworks to learn more.


text:
Q: adding gnuradio in recipe Yocto Raspberrypi 4 I'm trying to create a yocto recipe to add gnu radio on my raspberrypi 4 but I get the following error when I generate my image:
| ERROR: ExecutionError('/home/norian/Yocto/build-rpi/tmp/work/cortexa72-poky-linux/boost/1.75.0-r0/temp/run.do_compile.503884', 1, None, None)
ERROR: Task (/home/norian/Yocto/poky/meta/recipes-support/boost/boost_1.75.0.bb:do_compile) failed with exit code '1'

This is what the bitbake-layers show-layers command returns to me:
layer                 path                                      priority
==========================================================================
meta                  /home/norian/Yocto/poky/meta              5
meta-poky             /home/norian/Yocto/poky/meta-poky         5
meta-yocto-bsp        /home/norian/Yocto/poky/meta-yocto-bsp    5
meta-raspberrypi      /home/norian/Yocto/poky/meta-raspberrypi  9
meta-oe               /home/norian/Yocto/meta-openembedded/meta-oe  6
meta-python           /home/norian/Yocto/meta-openembedded/meta-python  7
meta-filesystems      /home/norian/Yocto/meta-openembedded/meta-filesystems  6
meta-networking       /home/norian/Yocto/meta-openembedded/meta-networking  5
meta-qt5              /home/norian/Yocto/meta-openembedded/meta-qt5  7
meta-sdr              /home/norian/Yocto/meta-openembedded/meta-sdr  5
meta-my-layer         /home/norian/Yocto/meta-my-layer          6

my recipe is in meta-my-layer and is called radio-image.bb
Here is its content:
SUMMARY = "A small image just capable of allowing a device to boot."

IMAGE_LINGUAS = " "

LICENSE = "MIT"

inherit core-image

CORE_IMAGE_EXTRA_INSTALL = "\
    packagegroup-sdr-base-extended \
    packagegroup-sdr-base-debug \
    packagegroup-sdr-base-devel \
    packagegroup-sdr-base-python \
    packagegroup-sdr-python-extended \
    packagegroup-sdr-gnuradio-base \
    packagegroup-core-eclipse-debug \
    "
IMAGE_INSTALL += "nano"
CONF_VERSION = "1"
ENABLE_UART="1"

I copied the contents of the gnuradio-image.bb recipe which is from meta-sdr.
I also copy the folder packagegroups into my recipe.
I am using Ubuntu 20.04.
My version of poky is :
DISTRO_VERSION = "3.3.4"
DISTRO_CODENAME = "hardknott"

Can you explain to me what boost is for and how to correct its compilation please ?
EDIT: I found the following error in the boost compilation logfile:
{standard input}: Assembler messages:
{standard input}:4183: Warning: end of file not at end of a line; newline inserted
{standard input}:4801: Error: unknown pseudo-op: `.l'
{standard input}: Error: open CFI at the end of file; missing .cfi_endproc directive
aarch64-poky-linux-g++: fatal error: Killed signal terminated program cc1plus
compilation terminated.

{standard input}: Assembler messages:
{standard input}: Error: open CFI at the end of file; missing .cfi_endproc directive
aarch64-poky-linux-g++: fatal error: Killed signal terminated program cc1plus
compilation terminated.

gcc.compile.c++ /home/norian/Yocto/build-rpi/tmp/work/cortexa72-poky-linux/boost/1.75.0-r0/build/boost/bin.v2/libs/log/build/f79941b6f0ebe85fc9fba0b2ec31feac/syslog_backend.o

    "aarch64-poky-linux-g++" "-mcpu=cortex-a72" "-march=armv8-a+crc+crypto" "-Wl,-O1" "-Wl,--hash-style=gnu" "-Wl,--as-needed" "-Wl,-z,relro,-z,now" "-fstack-protector-strong" "-O2" "-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2" "-Wformat" "-Wformat-security" "-Werror=format-security" "--sysroot=/home/norian/Yocto/build-rpi/tmp/work/cortexa72-poky-linux/boost/1.75.0-r0/recipe-sysroot"  -ftemplate-depth-1024 -fvisibility-inlines-hidden  -O2 -pipe -g -feliminate-unused-debug-types -fmacro-prefix-map=/home/norian/Yocto/build-rpi/tmp/work/cortexa72-poky-linux/boost/1.75.0-r0=/usr/src/debug/boost/1.75.0-r0                      -fdebug-prefix-map=/home/norian/Yocto/build-rpi/tmp/work/cortexa72-poky-linux/boost/1.75.0-r0=/usr/src/debug/boost/1.75.0-r0                      -fdebug-prefix-map=/home/norian/Yocto/build-rpi/tmp/work/cortexa72-poky-linux/boost/1.75.0-r0/recipe-sysroot=                      -fdebug-prefix-map=/home/norian/Yocto/build-rpi/tmp/work/cortexa72-poky-linux/boost/1.75.0-r0/recipe-sysroot-native=  -fvisibility-inlines-hidden -fPIC -pthread -O3 -finline-functions -Wno-inline -Wall -fvisibility=hidden -fno-strict-aliasing -DBOOST_ALL_NO_LIB=1 -DBOOST_ATOMIC_DYN_LINK=1 -DBOOST_CHRONO_DYN_LINK=1 -DBOOST_FILESYSTEM_DYN_LINK=1 -DBOOST_LOG_BUILDING_THE_LIB=1 -DBOOST_LOG_DLL -DBOOST_LOG_HAS_PTHREAD_MUTEX_ROBUST -DBOOST_LOG_USE_NATIVE_SYSLOG -DBOOST_LOG_WITHOUT_DEBUG_OUTPUT -DBOOST_LOG_WITHOUT_EVENT_LOG -DBOOST_SPIRIT_USE_PHOENIX_V3=1 -DBOOST_THREAD_BUILD_DLL=1 -DBOOST_THREAD_DONT_USE_CHRONO=1 -DBOOST_THREAD_POSIX -DBOOST_THREAD_USE_DLL=1 -DNDEBUG -D_XOPEN_SOURCE=600 -D__STDC_CONSTANT_MACROS  -I"." -I"libs/log/src"  -c -o "/home/norian/Yocto/build-rpi/tmp/work/cortexa72-poky-linux/boost/1.75.0-r0/build/boost/bin.v2/libs/log/build/f79941b6f0ebe85fc9fba0b2ec31feac/syslog_backend.o" "libs/log/src/syslog_backend.cpp"

...skipped <p/home/norian/Yocto/build-rpi/tmp/work/cortexa72-poky-linux/boost/1.75.0-r0/build/boost/bin.v2/libs/log/build/f79941b6f0ebe85fc9fba0b2ec31feac>libboost_log.so.1.75.0 for lack of <p/home/norian/Yocto/build-rpi/tmp/work/cortexa72-poky-linux/boost/1.75.0-r0/build/boost/bin.v2/libs/log/build/f79941b6f0ebe85fc9fba0b2ec31feac>text_file_backend.o...
...skipped <p/home/norian/Yocto/build-rpi/tmp/work/cortexa72-poky-linux/boost/1.75.0-r0/boost_1_75_0/stage/lib>libboost_log.so.1.75.0 for lack of <p/home/norian/Yocto/build-rpi/tmp/work/cortexa72-poky-linux/boost/1.75.0-r0/build/boost/bin.v2/libs/log/build/f79941b6f0ebe85fc9fba0b2ec31feac>libboost_log.so.1.75.0...
...failed updating 2 targets...
WARNING: exit code 1 from a shell command.
ERROR: ExecutionError('/home/norian/Yocto/build-rpi/tmp/work/cortexa72-poky-linux/boost/1.75.0-r0/temp/run.do_compile.503884', 1, None, None)

A: I think it is RAM issue ,check here and here.
I suggest you compile boost alone first:
bitbake boost -c compile

or reduce build threads and number of parallel compile processes:

*

*local.conf
BB_NUMBER_THREADS = "2"
PARALLEL_MAKE = "-j 1"

You can change numbers to what you like (for threads its max is your cpu's cores)
Try adding PARALLEL_MAKE = "-j 1" in local.conf and :
bitbake boost -c compile


The Erasmus University College (Dutch: Erasmus Hogeschool Brussel) is located in the center of Brussels. EhB has 5.000 students, clustered in 4 departments and 2 Schools of Arts located in 5 campuses throughout the city. The departments offer Bachelors with a strong professional focus while the Schools of Arts offer Bachelors and Masters in Music, Audiovisual and Performing Arts.
The language of instruction in their Bachelor and Master programs is Dutch, but they have also courses in English. EhB offers a interesting range in study fields, check them out. If you would like to apply for a study period at EhB under the Erasmus+ or another mobility program, please check this information.
When your classes are over for the day, we recommend you to visit RITCS Café. This student bar is the perfect place to drink, chat and surf. You can attend concerts or you can play typical games like Monopoly, Risk… and have a nice and relaxing time with your friends. Since it is a cultural bar, you can listen to live music, go to the CINEMA RITCS and enjoy an English Comedy Night. The prices are really cheap, because it's a Student Bar, made just for you!


text:
Marisol Negrón
Assistant Professor of American Studies and Latino Studies at UMass Boston
Marisol Negrón rsvped for 50th Anniversary of the Struggle for Puerto Rican Studies at CUNY 2021-03-22 11:13:53 -0400
Film screening and Panel:
Q and A Tami Gold, Pam Sporn and Ricardo Gabriel
María Elizabeth Pérez y González and Dr. Virginia Sanchez Korrol
Q and A María Elizabeth Pérez y González, Dr. Virginia Sanchez Korrol and Ricardo Gabriel
Making the Impossible Possible, chronicles the story of the student-led struggle to win Puerto Rican Studies at Brooklyn College, CUNY, in the late 1960s. The documentary is a mosaic of voices, film footage, and photographs taken by student activists. This important intergenerational story highlights how students and faculty seized the moment to build upon an alliance of Puerto Rican, African American, and other progressive students forged in their communities and the civil rights movement. Together they changed the face of higher education, transforming the curriculum and expanding who gets educated. The film sheds light on the 50-year history of struggle that started with the founding of one of the first Puerto Rican Studies departments in the nation, and documents the continued movement to maintain their gains.
Speakers will also talk about their research on the 50 years of Puerto Rican studies for the City University of NY book project, as well as a current overview of Puerto Rican Studies at CUNY.
50 Years of Puerto Rican Studies at the City University of New York
Editors: María E. Pérez y González and Virginia E. Sánchez-Korrol
This book project will focus on the creation of Puerto Rican Studies and its founding leaders; its birthing of academic journals, the Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños (Centro)/Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, and the Puerto Rican Studies Association; it's often misunderstood mission to study the stateside Puerto Rican diasporic experience as connected to Puerto Rico, the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, and Latin America; the forging of a space within the "Ivory Tower" academy; its survival tactics in the face of austerity and elimination; its current status; and its future in the 21st century.
The editors seek the submission of photos, brochures, events flyers, relevant links/resources, and faculty and student reflections (written and audiovisual) from each of the PRS departments, programs, and institutes noted herein; they will be linked to the book project on the Centro website, resulting in an online archive of PRS in CUNY.
For more information contact María Pérez y González or Virginia Sánchez-Korrol at [email protected]
Tami Gold Professor at Hunter College CUNY https://fm.hunter.cuny.edu/facultystaff/full-time-faculty/tami-gold/, https://tamigold.co/
Tami is an award-winning filmmaker and educator. Her films have been at the forefront of social justice, focusing on issues of race, gender, sexual identity, labor and police brutality and have screened at the MOMA, Whitney, Chicago Arts Institute, Sundance, Tribeca and The New York Film Festival and have been screened on television worldwide. She is recipient of Rockefeller, Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships. [email protected]
Pam Sporn Director/Producer at Grito Productions https://www.gritoproductions.com/about
Pam is an award winning filmmaker and who taught in NYC high schools for 28 years. Her films have screened on PBS and at US and International film festivals. Some of her films include Detroit 48202, Cuban Roots/Bronx Stories, and With a Stroke of the Chaveta. Pam is a member of New Day Films and the Bronx Filmmakers Collective and New York Women in Film and Televisions. [email protected]
María Elizabeth Pérez y González, Ph.D., Associate Professor at Brooklyn College, CUNY, https://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/web/academics/faculty/faculty_profile.jsp?faculty=294
María is an Associate Professor in the Department of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Brooklyn College, CUNY, where she has served as faculty for 29 years with 17 of those years as Chairperson. Her research includes the Puerto Rican diaspora, Latinxs, women in ministry, and Pentecostals. She has published Puerto Ricans in the United States (2000) and scholarly pieces on Latinas in ministry. She is the co-editor of Puerto Rican Studies in CUNY: The First 50 Years (forthcoming 2021). Contact info and to submit to the digital archives: [email protected] [email protected]
Dr. Virginia Sanchez Korrol Professor Emerita, Department of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Brooklyn College, CUNY http://virginiasanchezkorrol-author.com/about
Virginia is Professor Emerita at Department of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies, Brooklyn College, CUNY. Dr. Sanchez Korrol writes about the Puerto Rican experience in the United States. Among her extensive publications, she authored From Colonia to Community: The History of Puerto Ricans in New York City, and co-edited Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia. Recipient of the Herbert H. Lehman Prize for Distinguished Contributions to New York History, 2020, she serves as historical consultant to media projects, government and cultural institutions. She is the co-editor of Puerto Rican Studies in CUNY: The First 50 Years (forthcoming 2021). Contact: v[email protected], [email protected]
Ricardo Gabriel Doctoral Candidate in Sociology at The Graduate Center CUNY, https://macaulay.cuny.edu/directory/ricardo-gabriel/
Ricardo is a scholar-organizer and a PhD candidate in sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center. His research interests include social movements, decolonial education, and climate justice. Ricardo's dissertation uses oral histories and other qualitative research methods to analyze the movement for Puerto Rican studies at The City University of New York, from 1969 to the mid-1970s. He has written for NACLA: Report on the Americas and other publications. Contact: [email protected] [email protected]
Co-sponsors:
Department of Film and Media Studies at Hunter College
Puerto Rican and Latino Studies Department at Brooklyn College
Making the Impossible Possible is a production of the Alliance for Puerto Rican Education and Empowerment and was directed by Pam Sporn and Tami Gold and co-produced by Gisely Colón López. It is available from Third World Newsreel,www.twn.org.
6:00 PM Eastern Time
Virtual Event: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85366244258?pwd=QTBDWW1KSGlkVXlYNGhPSU1ySE1tdz09
Marisol Negrón rsvped for Centro Webinar Disasters in PR 2020-09-23 16:17:54 -0400
412 rsvps rsvp


Nice "Long-ton-chair" made in Austria by Garbage Upcycling. Available from 115 euros.
Add a small lock on the storage compartment under the seat to keep out raccoons and kids and this would be a cool idea for weekend campers .


text:
Fonseca, Cecília ; Pereira, Luísa ; Ferreira, Helena ; Martins, Ana Paula
Generalized madogram and pairwise dependence of maxima over two regions of a random field. (English). Kybernetika, vol. 51 (2015), issue 2, pp. 193-211
MSC: 60G60, 60G70 | MR 3350556 | Zbl 06487073 | DOI: 10.14736/kyb-2015-2-0193
max-stable random field; dependence coefficients; extreme values
Spatial environmental processes often exhibit dependence in their large values. In order to model such processes their dependence properties must be characterized and quantified. In this paper we introduce a measure that evaluates the dependence among extreme observations located in two disjoint sets of locations of $\mathbb{R}^2$. We compute the range of this new dependence measure, which extends the existing $\lambda$-madogram concept, and compare it with extremal coefficients, finding generalizations of the known relations in the pairwise approach. Estimators for this measure are introduced and asymptotic normality and strong consistency are shown. An application to the annual maxima precipitation in Portuguese regions is presented.
[1] Beirlant, J., Goegebeur, Y., Segers, J., Teugels, J.: Statistics of Extremes: Theory and Applications. John Wiley 2004. DOI 10.1002/0470012382 | MR 2108013 | Zbl 1070.62036
[2] Cooley, D., Naveau, P., Poncet, P.: Variograms for spatial max-stable random fields. Dependence in Probability and Statistics 187 (2006), 373-390. DOI 10.1007/0-387-36062-x_17 | MR 2283264 | Zbl 1110.62130
[3] Coles, S. G.: Regional modelling of extreme storms via max-stable processes. J. Roy. Statist. Soc. B 55 (1993), 797-816. MR 1229882 | Zbl 0781.60041
[4] Haan, L. de: A spectral representation for max-stable proesses. Ann. Probab. 12 (1984), 1194-1204. DOI 10.1214/aop/1176993148 | MR 0757776
[5] Haan, L. de, Pickands, J.: Stationary min-stable stochastic processes. Probab. Theory Related Fields 72 (1986), 477-492. DOI 10.1007/bf00344716 | MR 0847381 | Zbl 0577.60034
[6] Fermanian, J. D., Radulovic, D., Wegkamp, M.: Weak convergence of empirical copula processes. Bernoulli 10 (2004), 847-860. DOI 10.3150/bj/1099579158 | MR 2093613 | Zbl 1068.62059
[7] Ferreira, H.: Dependence between two multivariate extremes. Statist. Probab. Lett. 81 (2011), 5, 586-591. DOI 10.1016/j.spl.2011.01.014 | MR 2772916 | Zbl 1209.62122
[8] Gilat, D., Hill, T.: One-sided refinements of the strong law of large numbers and the Glivenko-Cantelli Theorem. Ann. Probab. 20 (1992), 1213-1221. DOI 10.1214/aop/1176989688 | MR 1175259 | Zbl 0762.60025
[9] Krajina, A.: An M-Estimator of Multivariate Dependence Concepts. Tilburg University Press, Tilburg 2010.
[10] Naveau, P., Guillou, A., Cooley, D., Diebolt, J.: Modelling pairwise dependence of maxima in space. Biometrika 96 (2009), 1, 1-17. DOI 10.1093/biomet/asp001 | MR 2482131 | Zbl 1162.62045
[11] Neuhaus, G.: On the weak convergence of stochastic processes with multidimensional time parameter. Ann. Math. Statist. 42 (1971), 4, 1285-1295. DOI 10.1214/aoms/1177693241 | MR 0293706
[12] Resnick, S. I.: Extreme Values, Regular Variation and Point Processes. Springer-Verlag, Berlin 1987. DOI 10.1007/978-0-387-75953-1 | MR 0900810 | Zbl 1136.60004
[13] Ribatet, M.: A User's Guide to the Spatial Extremes Package. Unpublished, 2009. DOI
[14] Schlather, M.: Models for stationary max-stable random fields. Extremes 5 (2002), 1, 33-44. DOI 10.1023/a:1020977924878 | MR 1947786 | Zbl 1035.60054
[15] Schlather, M., Tawn, J.: A dependece measure for multivariate and spatial extreme values: Properties and inference. Biometrika 90 (2003), 139-156. DOI 10.1093/biomet/90.1.139 | MR 1966556
[16] Smith, R. L.: Max-stable processes and spatial extremes. Unpublished manuscript, 1990. DOI
[17] Smith, R. L., Weissman, I.: Characterization and Estimation of the Multivariate Extremal Index. Technical Report, Department of Statistics, University of North Carolina 1996. DOI
[18] Vaart, A. Van Der, Wellner, J. A.: Weak Convergence and Empirical Processes. Springer-Verlag, New York 1996. DOI 10.1007/978-1-4757-2545-2 | MR 1385671
[19] Vatan, P.: Max-infinite divisibility and max-stability in infinite dimensions. Probability in Banach Spaces V, Lect. Notes in Math. 1153 (1985), 400-425. DOI 10.1007/bfb0074963 | MR 0821994 | Zbl 0608.60008
[20] Zhang, Z., Smith, R. L.: The behavior of multivariate maxima of moving maxima processes. J. Appl. Probab. 41 (2004), 4, 1113-1123. DOI 10.1239/jap/1101840556 | MR 2122805 | Zbl 1122.60052
[21] Zhang, Z., Smith, R. L.: On the estimation and application of max-stable processes. J. Statist. Planning Inference 140 (2010), 5, 1135-1153. DOI 10.1016/j.jspi.2009.10.014 | MR 2581117 | Zbl 1181.62150


Kevin brings more than thirteen years of multi-disciplinary experience in intelligence analysis and operations, global security management, strategic risk analysis, and crisis management to the Lynx team. Prior to joining the Lynx, Kevin worked in global security operations for the software giant Oracle, with a focus on North America and Latin America. Before moving to the corporate sector Kevin spent more than decade in the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) focused on various high-profile intelligence issues related to counterintelligence and counterterrorism. Kevin has extensive knowledge and experience related to Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia issues, to include deployments to several conflict zones. Kevin holds a BA from Stonehill College and is currently pursuing an MS in Organizational Leadership and Development at the University of Denver.