text:
Famed Chinese dancer adapts to her new disability
BEIJING --Last August a 26-year-old dancer named Liu Yan was supposed to give the performance of her life at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics.
Considered China's leading classical dancer, she had prepared a six-minute piece called "Silk Road," which was to celebrate the rich cultural heritage along one of this country's earliest trade routes.
But two weeks before the show, during a rehearsal at National Stadium in Beijing, she leapt toward a moving stage that malfunctioned, causing her to fall into a deep shaft and crash against a steel rod.
Unconscious, she was taken to a military hospital, where doctors performed emergency surgery for six hours.
Not long after, her family was told the terrible news: Ms. Liu had severely injured her vertebra and was paralyzed below the waist. It was unlikely that she would ever walk or dance again. At the peak of a golden career Ms. Liu lost control of the very limbs that experts say made her dances so magical.
Today, after recuperating for more than six months at No. 306 Military Hospital in Beijing, she is back home, adjusting to life in a wheelchair.
"Life is not that sweet or beautiful after an injury," she said tearfully, during a recent interview here at the Westin Hotel. "You confront a lot of dilemmas and pain."
Strangely, Ms. Liu's story is barely known inside China because in August, fearing that news of her devastating fall would detract from Olympic celebrations, Beijing's Olympic Committee asked witnesses and family members not to talk about the accident.
Even today, China's state-controlled news media have not been given permission to tell the full story of what happened to a dancer so celebrated she was often selected to perform for China's top leaders, including President Hu Jintao.
But a few weeks ago, in a small break from that news blackout, Zhang Yimou, the acclaimed Chinese filmmaker and director of the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, honored Ms. Liu (pronounced LEE-oh) at an awards dinner here, and proclaimed her a heroine. When she accepted the honor, Ms. Liu was dressed elegantly in black, with her long silky black hair hanging off her shoulders. She smiled, brushed away a tear and told the audience: "Don't be too sad for me. I'll be strong."
But she says she is now struggling to come to grips with the unimaginable while hoping beyond hope that some day she will walk and even dance again.
"The biggest disappointment for me is that my doctors gave up hope," she said during an interview. "They think I should stay in a wheelchair for life. I'll never give up. I'm still hopeful."
Most days she goes through physical therapy, exercising her lower torso with stretches, hoping the lower part of her body will remember movement and somehow spring back to life.
But doctors say the chances of such a breakthrough are slim. The nerves that connect to her vertebra were severely damaged. Where she once had incredible control, now there is none. Ms. Liu's journey to the stage began in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of North China, where her mother works as a doctor and her father as a judge.
In an interview last April, months before her injury, her parents talked of their daughter's singular passion: classical Chinese dance, which traces back hundreds of years and has been influenced by martial arts, tai chi and Beijing opera.
"She was crazy for dance, even on rainy days," her father, Liu Xueming, said while sipping tea at a Beijing tea house. "I'd ride her on the back of the motorcycle to class. And the teacher would be shocked to see us."
At 10, he recalled, she was good enough to win admission to the middle school affiliated with the prestigious Beijing Dance Academy. Her parents took turns taking long train rides to Beijing to be with her on weekends.
She was enrolled at the academy by 18, earning praise for her emotional interpretations in Chinese classical dance dramas. At 23 she took the nation's top dance honor, the Lotus prize, for an original dance depicting the life of a poor girl who suffers the loss of her true love during the late Qing Dynasty.
Long before her selection as the only solo dance performer at the Olympics, videos of her were popular on YouTube. Choreographers praised her technique and fierce, even stubborn spirit.
"She was the most talented dancer," recalls Zhao Ming, one of China's leading choreographers, who worked with Ms. Liu several times. "She had the perfect waist and the most flexible legs. Dance is the art of beauty, and it requires the perfect figure. And she had that."
Zhang Jigang, deputy director of the Olympic opening ceremony, was so impressed by Ms. Liu's ability that he pushed organizers to cast her on opening night of the Beijing Olympics.
"I thought, 'She is just the one for the moment; she is the right person to dance in front of the whole world,' " he said in a telephone interview a few weeks ago.
When I first met Ms. Liu in March 2008, she had already signed a confidentiality agreement with the Beijing Olympic Committee, promising not to reveal anything about her opening ceremony performance. But she invited me to her studio, where she performed folk dances and meditations on classical Chinese dance.
Back then Ms. Liu was brimming with confidence. Five days before her fall, she said, she took a red scarf she had recently bought and posed with it on in front of Olympic stadium, the so-called Bird's Nest. The photograph, posted on her blog (http://blog.sina.com.cn/liuyan314), shows her in a confident, open stance, her arms and legs stretched out, as if to say, "I can conquer the world."
Then, on a balmy night in late July, with about 10,000 onlookers in the stadium for a rehearsal of the four-hour extravaganza, she tumbled off the platform and into darkness.
She still does not understand what went wrong. "I'm the most cautious dancer," she said afterward. "I never got hurt before. I never even had a fracture."
Her parents flew in from Inner Mongolia the next morning and rushed to the bedside of their only child. In the hospital a few days later they told me that their daughter had recently married. Her mother broke down. (Ms. Liu has recently declined to discuss her marriage.)
When rumors of her fall were leaked on the Internet days after the Olympic Games opened, China's state-controlled media responded with a small online report saying she had been injured. The posting was accompanied by a photograph of Ms. Liu in a hospital bed, smiling and waving to the camera.
The picture was apparently meant to deliver a message that everything was O.K. during the Games. But Ms. Liu said there was little happiness. In the Chinese press she puts on a happy face and says she's hopeful about the future. But in a series of interviews over the past eight months she admitted to feeling empty and even bitter.
Her dreams of creating her own dance dramas have evaporated, and she is still only 26. She said she could not bear to watch the opening ceremony on television in August, when a substitute dancer performed. In the hospital she battled depression and read medical journals to learn about her condition.
To her, she said, her body feels divided: the upper part is perfectly fine; the lower part is cold and feels like a stone.
"It's heavy and pulled away from me," she said. "Although doctors told me I'm completely destroyed, I think one possibility is my nerve system is sleeping."
But more recently Ms. Liu has been trying to put on a happy face. She has expressed no bitterness toward the government or the Olympic organizers. She recently joined the Communist Party and has begun to make public appearances.
She now talks about studying to be a television broadcaster and asked a friend to make fashion photographs of her. She wants to dream again, and on some days insists she's strong.
Now, her struggle to move beyond the recent past is starkly evident.
"From a dancer to a paralyzed person — it's a bitter reality," she once said while in the hospital. "I can't take it. Before I could lift my legs to my head. And now my legs lie dead on the bed."
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text:
Great Britain at the 2018 Winter Paralympics
Great Britain sent people to compete at the 2018 Winter Paralympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The team has people in para-snowboarding, para-alpine skiing and wheelchair curling. People are from Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland Unlike football and some other sports, citizens from these countries are part of the same team at the Olympics and Paralympics. The competition was also broadcast on television on Channel 4.
1 Team
3 Para-alpine skiing
3.1 Skiers
3.2 Schedule and training
4 Para-Nordic skiing
4.2 Schedule and results
4.2.1 Biathlon
4.2.2 Cross country skiing
5 Para-snowboarding
6 Wheelchair curling
7 Media coverage
Team[change | change source]
The first team announcement for Great Britain was made on 15 January 2018.[1] The full team for Great Britain was made on 15 February 2018.[1] Scott Meenagh has been selected to compete in both the biathlon and cross-country skiing competitions.[2]
The table below contains the list of members of people (called "Team GB") that will be participating in the 2018 Games.
James Barnes-Miller para-snowboarding male SB-UL Banked Slalom, SBX) [1]
Gregor Ewan wheelchair curling male mixed team [1]
Menna Fitzpatrick para-alpine skiing female B3 Slalom, Giant Slalom, Super-G, Super Combined and Downhill [1][3]
Kelly Gallagher para-alpine skiing female B3 [1][3][4]
Jennifer Kehoe para-alpine skiing female guide skier Slalom, Giant Slalom, Super-G, Super Combined and Downhill [1]
Millie Knight para-alpine skiing female B2 Slalom, Giant Slalom, Super-G, Super Combined and Downhill [1][3]
Chris Lloyd para-alpine skiing male Giant Slalom, Slalom, Super-G, Downhill [1]
Angie Malone wheelchair curling female wheelchair curling open class mixed team [1][5][6]
Robert McPherson wheelchair curling male mixed team [1]
Scott Meenagh para-Nordic skiing male [7]
Ben Moore para-snowboarding male SB-UL Banked Slalom, SBX [1]
Aileen Neilson wheelchair curling female mixed team [1]
Hugh Nibloe wheelchair curling male mixed team [1]
Owen Pick para-snowboarding male SB-LL2 Banked Slalom, SBX [1]
James Whitley para-alpine skiing male LW5/7.3 Slalom, Giant Slalom [1][3][8]
Brett Wild para-alpine skiing male guide skier Slalom, Giant Slalom, Super-G, Super Combined and Downhill [1]
Great Britain will send a total of 17 athletes to the games. This is the most sent by the British team since 2006.[2]
Alpine skiing 4 4 8
Biathlon 1 0 1
Cross-country skiing 1 0 1
Snowboarding 3 0 3
Wheelchair curling 3 2 5
History[change | change source]
Many times, Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland compete as separate countries at sports events around the world. Because of the past, these four countries compete as one country at the Olympic and Paralympic Games. Some Crown dependencies and some British Overseas Territories also are part of Great Britain for these sporting events. People in Northern Ireland do not like the name because it does not include them.[9][10]
Before the start of the 2018 Winter Olympics, people from Great Britain had won more medals in the Winter Paralympics than the Winter Olympics.[11] People won one bronze medal at the Winter Olympics.[11] People won over five medals in the Winter Paralympics.[11]
Para-alpine skiing[change | change source]
Skiers[change | change source]
Mille Knight became blind when she was a 6-year-old.[11] In 2017, she finished her A Levels.[11] That year, she also won seven gold medals at IPC Alpine Skiing World Cup races.[11] Kelly Gallagher is blind. She skis with her guide skier Charlotte Evans. They went to the 2014 Winter Paralympics. Gallagher and Evans won a gold medal in the Super-G.[11] Gallagher wanted to win more medals in South Korea.[11]
Schedule and training[change | change source]
Skiers had training runs for the downhill race on 7 March.[12] Their practice runs in the downhill on 8 and 9 March were cancelled.[13][14]
The first event on the para-alpine program was the downhill. It started on 10 March, running from 9:30 AM to 1:30 PM. The second event on the program is Super-G. All skiers raced between 9:30 AM and 1:00 PM on 11 March. The super combined takes place on 13 March. The Super-G part of the event is in the morning. The slalom part is in the afternoon. The slalom event gets underway on 14 March and conclude on 15 March. Women and men both race during the same sessions in the morning. The afternoon sessions start with the women doing their second run. Then the men go.The last para-alpine skiing race of the 2018 Games is the giant slalom. It takes place on 17 - 18 March. Men and women both race at the same time in the morning sessions. Women race first in the afternoon sessions, with the men racing a half hour after they end.[15]
Results[change | change source]
B2 classified skier Millie Knight won silver in women's downhill vision impaired race.[16] In the women's Super-G visually impaired race, Henrieta Farkasova of Slovakia won gold, Millie Knight of Great Britain won silver and Menna Fitzpatrick won bronze.[17]
Final/Total
Kelly Gallagher
Guide: Gary Smith
Visually impaired Giant Slalom
N/A 1:39.75 +9.58 8
Super Combined
Menna Fitzpatrick
Guide: Jennifer Kehoe
Visually impaired N/A DNF
Giant Slalom
N/A 1:34.54 +4.37
Millie Knight
Guide: Brett Wild
Visually impaired N/A 1:30.58 +0.86
Chris Lloyd Standing N/A 1:34.00 +8.55 20
James Whitley Standing N/A 1:29.85 +4.40 10
Para-Nordic skiing[change | change source]
Great Britain is not a country where people with disabilities do para-Nordic skiing. Scott Meenagh was the first para-Nordic skier to go to the Winter Paralympics in 28 years.[7] Meenagh was a service member in Afghanistan. After an attack, he lost both of his legs.[7] After his injuries, he tried para-athletics and adaptive rowing.[7] In March 2016, he first tried para-Nordic skiing.[7]
Schedule and results[change | change source]
On 12 March, the 15 km race takes place, with standing and vision impaired women starting at 10:00 PM. Thee sprint classic qualification takes place on 14 March from 10:00 AM – 11:25 AM for both men and women in all classes. It is followed in the afternoon by the semifinals and finals. The classic race takes place on 17 March. The standing and visually impaired women's race takes place from 10:00 AM - 12:30.[15]
Biathlon[change | change source]
Scott Meenagh Sitting Men's 7.5 km 27:28.1 18
Men's 12.5 km
Men's 15 km
Cross country skiing[change | change source]
Scott Meenagh Sitting Men's 1.1 km sprint
Men's 7.5 km|colspan="4" data-sort-value="" style="background: #ececec; color: #2C2C2C; vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; " class="table-na" | N/A
Men's 15 km|colspan="4" data-sort-value="" style="background: #ececec; color: #2C2C2C; vertical-align: middle; text-align: center; " class="table-na" | N/A 46:07.4 17
Para-snowboarding[change | change source]
James Barnes-Miller SB-UL Men's snowboard cross
Men's banked slalom
Ben Moore SB-UL Men's snowboard cross
Owen Pick SB-LL2 Men's snowboard cross
Wheelchair curling[change | change source]
The team starts playing on 10 March. They play against Sweden on 12 March.[18]
Media coverage[change | change source]
Some media for the 2018 Games in the UK is on the BBC Sport website and app and on BBC Radio 5 live.[1] The competition was also broadcast on television on Channel 4.[11]
↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13 1.14 1.15 1.16 1.17 "Winter Paralympics: Great Britain's team for Pyeongchang". BBC Sport. 2018-02-08. Retrieved 2018-02-13.
↑ 2.0 2.1 "Winter Paralympics: Great Britain's team for Pyeongchang". 24 February 2018 – via www.bbc.co.uk.
↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 "World Rankings - Alpine Skiing". www.paralympic.org. Retrieved 2018-02-13.
↑ "World Para Alpine Skiing - Classification - Classification Masterlist". www.paralympic.org. Retrieved 2018-02-13.
↑ http://results.worldcurling.org/Record/Appearances/28 World Curling
↑ "Capital Wheelchair curling" (PDF).
↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 "Winter Paralympics 2018: Scott Meenagh seals place in Nordic skiing events". BBC Sport. 2018-02-12. Retrieved 2018-02-13.
↑ "IPC results". Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
↑ "Graeme McDowell: Ireland Olympics situation difficult". USA TODAY. Retrieved 2018-02-16.
↑ "Team GB Olympic name row still simmering in Northern Ireland". BelfastTelegraph.co.uk. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2018-02-16.
↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 11.7 11.8 "The Complete Guide to the 2018 Winter Olympics and Paralympics, Pyeongchang, South Korea | InTheSnow". InTheSnow. 2018-02-07. Retrieved 2018-02-16.
↑ "Alpine Skiing". International Paralympic Committee. Retrieved 11 March 2018. Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
↑ "Alpine Skiing: 8 March". International Paralympic Committee. Retrieved 11 March 2018. Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
↑ 15.0 15.1 "Programm". Austrian Paralympic Committee (in German). 12 February 2018. Retrieved 17 February 2018. Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
↑ "Daily Schedule - Sat, 10 Mar". International Paralympic Committee. Retrieved 11 March 2018. Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
↑ "Alpine Skiing Live Results: 11 March". International Paralympic Committee. Retrieved 11 March 2018. Cite has empty unknown parameter: |dead-url= (help)
↑ "Så sänder SVT Paralympics 2018 - Sport | SVT.se". SVT Sport (in Swedish). Retrieved 2018-02-16.
Countries participating at the 2018 Winter Paralympics
Argentina • Brazil • Canada • Chile • Mexico • United States
China • Iran • Japan • Kazakhstan • Mongolia • North Korea • Pakistan • South Korea • Tajikistan
Andorra • Armenia • Austria • Belarus • Belgium • Bosnia and Herzegovina • Bulgaria • Croatia • Czech Republic • Denmark • Estonia • Finland • France • Georgia • Germany • Great Britain • Greece • Hungary • Iceland • Italy • Netherlands • Norway • Poland • Romania • Serbia • Slovakia • Slovenia • Spain • Sweden • Switzerland • Turkey • Ukraine • Uzbekistan
Australia • New Zealand
Neutral Paralympic Athletes • Korea
Retrieved from "https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Great_Britain_at_the_2018_Winter_Paralympics&oldid=6547285"
Sport in the United Kingdom
Nations at the 2018 Winter Paralympics
CS1 errors: empty unknown parameters
This page was last changed on 21 May 2019, at 17:57.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Beauty prevails amid desert sands
Case Kuwait University City
Rodrigo Ordóñez
The façade of the College of Science had to resist desert sand erosion and shield the building from strong sunlight and heat. The building was also to look flawless and timeless.
Outokumpu Supra austenitic stainless steel with dry polished finish was chosen for the façade because of its resistance to erosion and its stunning looks.
Steel grade: 500 tonnes of Outokumpu Supra 316L/4404
Product form: Coil and strip
Surface finish: Dry brushed
Kuwait is building a new university campus of massive proportions on the outskirts of its capital. Occupying 600 hectares, Sabah al-Salem Kuwait University City is a project of strategic importance for this Gulf country. Its modern architectural design and its intended legacy called for the timeless beauty and superior resistance of stainless.
Spanish company Imar recently manufactured the façade of the imposing College of Science and Faculty Club building. Measuring about 16,000 square meters, the façade is decorated with patterns formed by small perforations. "Stainless was the safest choice to give this project the quality it called for," explains the Director of Imar, Luis Asúa.
Imar used 500 tonnes of austenitic Outokumpu Supra 316L/4404 stainless. The specific choice of grade came from the architects. "They wanted a façade that looked absolutely homogeneous and minimalist; it could only be done with stainless," affirms Asúa.
Seamless beauty, iconic resistance
Unlike aluminium or other materials, stainless offers consistent shades and finishing across the surface without highlights or distortion. "It is the same as with cutlery," says Asúa. "Silver is beautiful, but it does not have the uniformity of stainless."
Beyond its aesthetic value, the façade has important structural functions. In Kuwait, temperatures range from 30 to 46 degrees Celsius in the summer, day and night. "The strong sunlight percolates through the perforations in the facade, which greatly reduces the energy consumption of the building," explains Asúa. Sandstorms from the Arabian Desert carry sand at speeds of up to 100 kilometers per hour, which causes erosion on buildings. Located near the sea, the building was also exposed to a saline air environment, which would have damaged inferior materials.
"The key for this project was to ensure the quality and durability of the material," notes Asúa. "Outokumpu stainless was exceptional."
World-class partner
With Imar embarking on one of Kuwait's most emblematic projects, it could only trust a leader in the building and infrastructure sector. "We picked Outokumpu because we knew we would be in the hands of one of the best companies in the world," says Asúa.
Outokumpu sent slit coils from Avesta, Sweden, to Castelleone, Italy, where they were cut, flattened and dry polished. Imar perforated the pieces in Bilbao, Spain, and sent them to Kuwait for assembly. "It looks great," proclaims Asúa. "The project went impeccably well and we are very happy with the work of Outokumpu."
Recommended products and insights
The Supra range contains stainless steel products designed for highly corrosive environments. Outokumpu Supra range stainless steels have a good resistance to uniform corrosion in many organic and inorganic chemicals. The addition of molybdenum enhances the alloy's corrosion resistance in many acidic environments.
Cold rolled coil, strip and sheet
Available for use in a wide variety of applications, Outokumpu cold rolled coil, strip and sheet products are put to work across all industries and markets.
Building façade material selection is critically important. The material must be visually appealing, low maintenance and impervious to weather and pollution.
Castelleone CSC, Italy
Home to both a coil service center and a plate service center, Castelleone is one of Outokumpu's biggest European service centers. Tailor-made solutions with short lead times set Castelleone apart from its competitors.
Avesta, Sweden
Fueled by a high-octane blend of advanced technology and a long, proud tradition, the Avesta mill showcases precision performance. One of Outokumpu's fully integrated production sites, Avesta redefines excellence.
Webinar, Nov 3
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text:
Africa Energy Forum
Mining Indaba 2020
Banking Software
bauma Africa
A2X joins Teraco data centre
Created: Friday, 02 February 2018 06:37
A2X Markets (A2X), an independent stock exchange, has joined Teraco, one of the largest vendors of neutral data centre in Africa, aiming to bring its trading platform closer to clients
A2X said that it's collaboration with Teraco is expected to enable the clients to connect and run in a quick and cost-effective way.
Notng that the company aims to compete in the South African Capital Markets space, Lex van Wyk, CEO of Teraco, said, "Internationally, stock exchange competition leads to improved responsiveness and innovation while providing more liquidity, ultimately making the cost of execution lower."
A2X competes with the JSE providing an alternative platform for companies to secondary list and trade shares. "We reviewed the local data centre market extensively and found Teraco to be the only true, network agnostic provider, which was critical to not only our decision, but more importantly, our value proposition," according to Neal Lawrence, chief technical officer of A2X.
"We wanted to make it easy and cost effective for our clients to connect to A2X. By hosting A2X's primary data centre at Teraco, we are able to offer our clients an extensive list of connectivity options including the low latency option of collocating their systems with A2X," Lawrence added.
Under tha partnership programme, Teraco will provide A2X and its clients with access to several leading companies via local Points of Presence (PoPs), cross connects or peering through Africa's largest Internet Exchange (IXP), NAPAfrica.
Van Wyk explained, "For A2X a competitive advantage comes down to being a part of the financial hub that exists in Teraco, and having a platform that provides direct connection allowing high frequency trading at super high speeds with very low latency. Brokers need to connect and trade within microseconds and, within Teraco's ecosystem, this is entirely possible."
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text:
Q: sci-kit learn: random forest classifier giving ValueError So my random forest classifier was running just fine until I added in new features. I keep getting the following error code when I try to run it:
   \Anaconda2\lib\site-packages\sklearn\utils\validation.pyc in _assert_all_finite(X)
         56             and not np.isfinite(X).all()):
         57         raise ValueError("Input contains NaN, infinity"
    ---> 58                          " or a value too large for %r." % X.dtype)
         59
         60

    ValueError: Input contains NaN, infinity or a value too large for dtype('float32').

train and test are both np.DataFrame objects read from csv files. I'm trying to add some more features for a better predictor, but end up getting the above error whenever I try fitting. I did try removing NaN and infinite values but still get the same error.
Below is my code:
from sklearn.ensemble import RandomForestClassifier
from sklearn.model_selection import train_test_split
from sklearn.metrics import log_loss
def features(df):
    df["num_photos"] = df["photos"].apply(len)
    df["num_features"] = df["features"].apply(len)
    df["year_created"] = df["created"].dt.year
    df["month_created"] = df["created"].dt.month
    df["day_created"] = df["created"].dt.day
    df["desc_len"] = df["description"].apply(lambda x: len(x.split(" ")))
    #New features begin here
    df["pricePerBed"] = df['price'] / df['bedrooms']
    df["pricePerBath"] = df['price'] / df['bathrooms']
    df["pricePerRoom"] = df['price'] / (df['bedrooms'] + df['bathrooms'])
    df["bedPerBath"] = df['bedrooms'] / df['bathrooms']
    df["bedBathDiff"] = df['bedrooms'] - df['bathrooms']
    df["bedBathSum"] = df["bedrooms"] + df['bathrooms']
    df["bedsPerc"] = df["bedrooms"] / (df['bedrooms'] + df['bathrooms'])

    df = df.replace([np.inf, -np.inf], np.nan)
    df = df.fillna(1)

    return df

features(train)
features(test)

key_features = ["bathrooms", "bedrooms", "latitude", "longitude", "year_created",
                "month_created", "day_created", "price", "num_photos", "num_features", "desc_len",
                "pricePerBed",
                "pricePerBath",
                "pricePerRoom",
                #"bedPerBath",
                "bedBathDiff",
                "bedBathSum"]

X = train[key_features]
y = train["interest_level"]

X.fillna(1) #I tried getting rid of NaN

X.isnull().any()

The bedPerBath variable was giving a True for isnull().any() so I left it out, and the rest all gave me False. However, when I try to fit the estimator I still get the "ValueError".
X_train, X_cv, y_train, y_cv = train_test_split(X, y, test_size = 0.3)

X_train.isnull().any()

clfRF = RandomForestClassifier(n_estimators = 1000)
clfRF.fit(X_train, y_train)

#CV
y_cv_pred = clfRF.predict_proba(X_cv)
log_loss(y_cv, y_cv_pred)

I noticed the error message says too large for dtype('float32'), while my values are largely float64, could this be leading to the error? If so why?
Thank you.

A: try:
import numpy as np
X_train, X_cv, y_train, y_cv = train_test_split(np.nan_to_num(X), y, test_size = 0.3)

clfRF = RandomForestClassifier(n_estimators = 1000)
clfRF.fit(X_train, y_train)

#CV
y_cv_pred = clfRF.predict_proba(X_cv)
log_loss(y_cv, y_cv_pred)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


2. How do I make a return/exchange?
3. Can I return Yossi Harari Jewelry purchased using a gift card?
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6. My Yossi Harari jewelry order has arrived and is damaged/faulty. What should I do?
7. I have received an incorrect/faulty item or an item is missing?
We want you to be completely happy with your order. If for any reason you are not satisfied, we will gladly accept items for exchange or refund within 7 days of order date, accompanied by a sales receipt. All refunds will be issued to the original form of payment. See question 3 below regarding items bought using Yossi Harari Gift cards.
Yossi Harari offers free complimentary shipping for any item that you'd like to return from a US or Canadian address. Simply complete and use the return shipping label provided with your order and then drop off your package at the nearest FEDEXshipper location/arrange home pick-up (please refer to shipping label to confirm if the shipper is UPS or FEDEX) . Please allow 2-3 weeks for the processing of your return. For any additional help or international returns, please contact customercare@yossiharari.com or call 1-855-967-7424. Please allow up to 3 weeks for the processing of your return.
Yes, you can return Yossi Harari jewelry purchased using a gift card. For gift card returns, you will be issued a new gift card of the same value of the merchandise returned. If your original method of payment was a gift card, you will be issued a new gift card of the same value of the merchandise returned. If your original method of payment was a physical gift card, you will be mailed a new physical gift card of the same value of the merchandise returned to the original shipping address.
If you have received an item from Yossi Harari as a gift you can of course return it for exchange. This must be done within the parameters outlined in this Return Policy. Please call us on to arrange your return.
Returns will be processed within 3 weeks of receipt of your item(s) by Yossi Harari. You will receive an email notification once your return is processed.
We are sorry to hear this. Please contact us at customercare@yossiharari.com or call 1-855-967-7424 to arrange any repairs (Mon – Fri: 9AM – 5PM EST). Please ship the order back within 7 days of receipt to avoid any delays or penalties.
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How the Energy Department Can Improve Cybersecurity in the Energy Industry
A note posted at a gas pump indicates the pump is out of premium gasoline at a Costco Warehouse fuel station, Tuesday, May 11, 2021, in Ridgeland, Miss. Rogelio V. Solis/AP
By Tasha Jhangiani and Madison Lockett
| August 4, 2021
The Energy Department has an obligation to protect both public and private energy interests on critical infrastructure.
This year has been a pivotal year for malicious cyber actors—particularly those interested in targeting U.S. critical energy infrastructure. In February, a hacker trying to infiltrate a water treatment plant in Florida attempted to adjust the sodium hydroxide levels to alarmingly dangerous levels. Just a few months ago, the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline disrupted one of the largest refined gasoline pipelines in the United States for almost a week, and states across the Eastern Seaboard felt the effects.
The federal government cannot afford to idly sit by and leave U.S. energy infrastructure vulnerable. The Energy Department, as the sector risk management agency for the energy industry, has an obligation to protect both public and private energy interests on critical infrastructure. One of the key ways Energy can fulfil this obligation is by providing incentives for private-sector companies to adopt regulations and best practices, like testing software supply chains, to further protect U.S. critical infrastructure.
Barriers Impeding Progress
There are several barriers currently impeding progress in protecting critical energy infrastructure. First, demand signals for cybersecurity in Energy changes with each administration. As a result, there is little clarity and consistency for private companies in the energy sector. There needs to be a deeper understanding of demand signaling from the government on what is specifically needed for the private sector to comply with government regulations.
Second, updating Federal Energy Regulatory Commission guidelines is an incredibly slow process. FERC regularly issues guidelines for industries to ensure "regulatory certainty" for relevant stakeholders, including government agencies and private companies. Because it takes a significant amount of time for FERC to update these standards, it leads to a long tail of investment, which in turn leads to lags in investment cycles in the private sector. Standards can be rendered obsolete after a single event, which then renders the investment obsolete. This hinders the effectiveness of FERC's guidelines for energy sector cybersecurity.
Third, there is a need for broader awareness and understanding of where the authorities are for cyber protections in the energy sector. Politicians on the Hill and analysts in the intelligence community often do not understand where relevant authorities exist within the energy sector to encourage or compel improved security behaviors and the extent to which they are successfully accomplishing these tasks.
Fourth, there is a lack of common understanding between the private sector and the intelligence community regarding intelligence sharing capabilities. Where the intelligence community is focused on national security issues and safety and security of the nation, private sector intelligence teams are often dedicated to support a product or service and tend to emphasize the security of their customers. How these respective processes are tasked, and prioritize collections, can lead to gaps where the intelligence community is unfamiliar with private sector needs, which makes it difficult to anticipate, collect and analyze valuable information collaboratively. This can create a frustrating loop. Further, the intelligence community rarely shares intelligence about related attacks and attackers with victims. This practice limits private and public sector collaboration, and pattern identification.
Despite these barriers, modern priorities, cyber technology and research initiatives promise new opportunities for Energy to incentivize private actors to improve the cybersecurity of critical energy infrastructure. Although administrations over the years have had varying demands for cybersecurity in Energy, continued threats and attacks to the energy grid increase the consensus that energy cybersecurity is a national security priority. In March, the Government Accountability Office's report, "Electricity Grid Cybersecurity," concluded that energy infrastructure is increasingly at risk from cyberattacks, and Energy must expand its plans to address and mitigate these risks. Both private and public actors recognize the importance of improving energy cybersecurity and are addressing these issues through research, product creation, and information sharing.
Energy's Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergence Response recently launched three programs to improve energy cybersecurity. Most notably, the Cyber Testing for Resilient Industrial Control System program (CyTRICS), scans software and firmware in energy sector equipment for cyber supply chain vulnerabilities to proactively address threats. CESER shares discovered vulnerabilities with vendors, manufacturers, and utilities to create mitigation strategies, alert partners and address the cybersecurity issues. This program simultaneously improves national energy security and empowers the private sector to strengthen cybersecurity. Schneider Electric, an energy systems equipment manufacturer, signed a formal agreement to participate in CyTRICS in 2020, signaling others may follow. At a recent event hosted by the Atlantic Council's Cyber Statecraft initiative, several industry and government leaders lauded CyTRICS's ability to move the energy industry out of a reactive state and into a strategic framework for "baked-in" cybersecurity and mitigation of future attacks.
As cyber capabilities embed themselves into the energy sector's foundation, critical infrastructure expands to include the technology supporting the energy industry. New industry products are being created with security in mind; however, cybersecurity culture has focused on patching existing code, tools, and products rather than paying for improved replacements. The long-term impacts of paying off hackers, creating patches, and business losses heavily outweigh the cost of investing in new products with "baked-in" security.
Expanding beyond patching to provide secure software, firmware, and products is germane to protecting critical infrastructure. This includes educating direct actors like electricians or IT professionals on basic cybersecurity priorities, concerns, and best practices. An informed body of workers will be able to set systems up securely and identify potential cybersecurity threats. Further integrating the cloud—despite its limits—in a secure fashion is another opportunity for improving cybersecurity and incentivizing the private sector to do the same. The cloud offers new opportunities, including adaptable and cost-effective service, along with new risks to companies of all sizes in the energy sector.
Effective information sharing and intelligence collection presents a challenge to the energy community. Nearly 80% of modern critical infrastructure is owned by the private sector but remains the government's responsibility to protect. Despite these challenges, both public and private sector actors agree: protecting energy cybersecurity and resilience is paramount. As the various public and private players navigate the best practices and learn to ask the right questions, collaboration will persist. To fulfill their mission of defending public and private critical energy interests, Energy must incentivize private companies to adopt cybersecurity practices and bolster critical infrastructure security.
Tasha Jhangiani is a research analyst with the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission. In addition to her work with the Commission, she is a Future Digital Security Leaders Fellow with the Institute for Security and Technology.
Madison Lockett is a graduate student at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service.
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Mocz (alt. Mócz, Móc) is a surname originating from Hungary

References

Surnames of Hungarian origin

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text:
DELEGATING ONE'S OWN LIFE
A few days ago, lazily watching TV, I came across the movie Papillon and I appreciated it. There's a scene that struck me and I didn't remember. The main character, locked in isolation, falls asleep and dreams of being in an uncultivated field with judge and jury in the distance who accuse him of having "wasted his life" and his answer is a whisper "guilty… guilty…". It seemed to me an emotionally intense scene and I asked myself: what does it mean to "waste one's own life"? Culturally there are goals, almost obliged, that we feel we must achieve so as not to feel "out of place" or incomplete. Find a job that makes us make good money, so that we can support a family, get married and have children, have a successful career. Yet, we see so many examples, close or far, of those who have followed perfectly all the cultural dictates, and yet…
I thought that the accusation that those judges make to our protagonist was for other reasons, like they had delegated their lives to others. Constantly waiting for the right moment that never comes, a greater (material) security, be chosen and never choose as De André said. Living your life without having the courage to say certain no, or certain yes, focusing on your own feelings.
And I think of children and their being scientists, investigators, researchers. They never stand still, for them the right moment is linked to a feeling and not to the useful, their spontaneity is unsettling. I do not believe those who say that children are in the throes of impulses or un-regulated and that it is the adult who must contain/regulate them. On the contrary, just after disappointing relationships with the adult who does not understand/see their internal reality, there is the risk that that little great researcher will hide and become frightened or even lose themselves, to say, once they grow up, I've never been curious and that that inner world made of affections, of "gut feelings" is not really important.
In the movie, our protagonist knows he is guilty but he is not depressed, he does not ally himself with the jailers, with the culture or with those who want to teach him to live. He knows that the truth of his life is beyond that cliff and tries to escape from being a rational adult, who imprisons the child. He jumps from the cliff with the certainty that he will make it, while his friend remains there, accepts his condemnation and becomes his own jailer, perhaps not believing that he can find that little researcher anymore or that it ever existed.
While Papillon, free in the waves and towards freedom, shouts that he is still alive "in their face". He turns to his jailers, but when I saw that scene, I thought he was a man yelling at anyone or anything that would stop him from actually being himself, if he believed that we were only made of what we're told, advised, taught or imposed.
Another film comes to mind, more recent, where an American boy, fed up with the social and family pressure, decides to abandon everything and everyone to live free in the wild. "Into the wild" indeed, but his rebellion does not go as he would like. His rebellion seems to be blind, because he thinks to be free by going away physically, rejecting everything, even valid relationships, without thinking he has to change himself.
So what's the difference between the two?
Papillon has that dream, which puts him in crisis, feels that the blame is also on him and tries to get out of it. He does not reject the human relationship by walking away from society as an ascetic, as it happens in Into the wild. He keeps his inner world and there he finds the courage to leave.
So I think that that movie, Papillon, tells us about something that was lost and that it's vital to find again. As if each of us had a palette of colours to paint our own world but that, as a result of deep disappointments, more or less visible, these colours dry out convincing us that what we had before had never existed. And then you find yourself unfairly in prison, like Papillon. But he knows he's responsible for something, he knows he played an active part in that conviction. He rebels as he can, like a child who knows he had those colours.
So might that leap, towards freedom, be the adolescent who doesn't agree on becoming a rational adult? They want to hold on to a deep dimension with which we are all born.
Because, after all, what are we without that?
"Guilty… guilty…"
Gianluca Ambrosini
Thanks to Chiara Fanasca for the translation of this article


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text:
USCHO.com Fan Forum | board.uscho.com > College Hockey > Men's Division I > Minnesota Gophers Offseason Thread 2014 - Quick, Reload!
View Full Version : Minnesota Gophers Offseason Thread 2014 - Quick, Reload!
Pages : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 [8] 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
mnstate0fhockey
you mean like this one:
This guy is obviously norwegian. ;)
That's one :D
5mn_Major
I remember my old school norwegian grandfather telling when I was very young in the 70s...I don't care who you marry, you can marry a woman of any race you want...but please just not a swede.
I think that posters in this article are missing two facts:
1. How many of our Europeans have been poor choices? Vanek and Haula were likely among the top player or two (with Bjugs) on their respective teams. These guys have every bit of potential to match (cept probably Hogland but he serves another hard to fill benefit for this year's team)
2. The Gophers are not handpicking 'rich' kids and ignoring the great high school players. We recruit the best kids possible and fill the rest of the roster to fill critical team holes. When we take the best kids we take them regardless of whether they play high school, NTDP, USHL or Shattuck.
But I'm sure I don't need to tell anyone on the board this.
Exactly and Exactly! Well said :)
HarleyMC
An $8M Mariucci Renovation Plan (http://www.startribune.com/sports/gophers/257438471.html#iqAV4AmscbjaisHO.97) is in the works which may scrap the Olympic size rink for NHL size to accommodate more seating and better sight lines.
With the tradeoff for more seating and better sightlines, scraping the O-size for NHL size makes a lot of sense to me. At present only 8 teams inc. MN currently use O-size (CC, N. Mich., SCSU, Mankato State, UAA, Alaska, New Hampshire...Kohl Center is close at 97'). It will accelerate their game, but I don't think it will make any difference at all in the execution of the Gopher's style of hockey.
purpleinnebraska
At present only 8 teams inc. MN currently use O-size (CC, N. Mich., SCSU, Mankato State, UAA, Alaska, New Hampshire...Kohl Center is close at 97'). It will accelerate their game, but I don't think it will make any difference at all in the execution of the Gopher's style of hockey.
Kato switched to a near-NHL size rink last year (90'). Coach Hastings said at the time, "Hockey's hockey, but if we have the opportunity to prepare them on an NHL sheet, we should try to help them." Obviously, the Gophers don't have that concern, having produced a busload of NHL players. But for us, if it helps us in recruiting against other schools, I'm OK with it. Not sure it made much difference in style or quality of play. All of our guys had experience on NHL-sized rinks before coming here, and we play a majority of our road games on the smaller rink. If we had Europeans like Bristedt coming in, there might be some adjustment, but that's not an issue for us.
The one concern I had was that we'd lose our home ice edge. That didn't seem to be a problem last year, but that's a pretty small sample size.
I'm all for it. I've never been a fan of the Big sheet. Good news as far as I'm concerned
The problem is 99% of fans in MN really only know the MN kids... that's their comfort zone. They don't grasp as much about what is outside of that. The layman Gopher fan (meaning the vast majority of fans that aren't as into things as us rubes on GPL and here) assume the MN prospect is the better route because that is what they know. They are aware of the HS star but that's about the extent of it. They have no real frame of reference to judge a kid like Fällström and so they doubt it.
The scouting report on Fällström that I received from somebody that has scouted him (in person) and has also extensively scouted MN tells me all I need to know that he is a high caliber recruit. When you're told the opinion from a well versed hockey guy that the kid is a 1st line NTDP type of forward, it says a lot. Those kinds of players don't grow on trees (in MN or anywhere else). They beat out BC for the kid and it's not like BC recruits 16 year old chumps.
I understand the unknown is sometimes more difficult to grasp (especially for the casual fan) but some people need to develop a little more faith considering how well the team has performed in recent seasons with this coaching staff.
Ok...funny CHN (http://www.collegehockeynews.com/almanac/arenas.php) has the Verizon Wireless at 87', but I think you're accurate at 90'. There's been a bit of an arms race in arena renovation in various venues throughout college hockey over the past couple years (Yost/$16M, Munn/$20M this year). State of the art facilities obviously attracts fans, helps create a competitive atmosphere and I agree provides a competitive edge in recruiting talent.
The O-size is a good fit for the Gophers puck possession game, but the downside is it also allows D time to play a more positional game as well. The O-size allows players to create time and space whereas the smaller NHL rink requires greater reaction times and instinctual playmaking. But as you said, they've all logged lots of ice time on NHL rinks and there doesn't seem to be any significant advantage in the W/L column on either sheet for the Gophers. I think it's a good move.
Is this a done deal? Or a done deal that needs money to change to NHL ice?
The B1G tourney or FrozFour are never on Olympic ice.
Done deal. Money is there via private donations.
Will the rink size be altered before the start of the upcoming season?
With the new arenas/renovations going up around the college hockey scene, the Gophers staff says its team areas (locker rooms, weight room) are now among the lower half of the Big Ten. As far as rink size is concerned, they're already on contract for a new refrig. system and locating a pre-design consultant for exact plans by the end of this month. Only guessing, but it seems feasible this will be done before the season starts.
"Kids go on a recruiting visit and, you know what, facilities are extremely important," Lucia said on his weekly show. "You want to be able to have kids come in and look through your arena and have a little bit of that 'wow' factor."
I thought I had heard not for a few years at least.
The only wow factor the Gophers should need is the mural. Cripes kids are entitled these days. I mean I get it that that's the way it is now, but I don't have to like it.
/grumpyoldman
goldy_331
My firm was recently competing for the design contract. If it has not yet been designed, there is no way it will be installed before the season, so not this year.
Thanks, goldy, for that bit of information. I suppose too the progress of the fundraising enters into just how quickly this aspect of the renovation gets done, as this would appear to be the most expensive component of all the improvements they're making.
I didn't think the money was fully raised yet, but l perhaps that update has been passed with new info.
I believe i remember reading that they have raised $8 million thru private donation (primarily from alums), but I could be wrong.
The Rube
I thought I saw that, too, but haven't been paying close attention.


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text:
Q: An exercise - cats in a hall
There are many mice in the hall of length n. An array of length n is given where a[i] describes the number of mice between the i-th and i+1-th meter of the hall.
You have k cats. Each cat can guard a connected fragment of the hall. The guarded segments may not intersect. Some segments may be left unguarded.
If a cat guards a segment from the i-th to the j-th meter of the hall, where s = a[i] + a[i+1] + ... + a[j-1] mice reside, it will catch max(s-(j-i-1)^2, 0) mice.
What is the maximal number of mice that can be caught?

I suspect that the algorithm should use dynamic programming, but I have no idea how to solve it.
I don't have any code since I don't have any algorithm yet (I try to create it), but my thoughts so far.
We can't use induction wrt to the number of cats. This could produce false results. For example if there's one segment where one cat can catch 7 mice and two disjoint places where a cat can catch 2 mice, then we'll get nothing from the result for one cat.
So we should solve the problem for a subsegment and calculate the answer from the answer for the subsegment.
But I don't know how to proceed further.

A: A cat has better effectiveness of protecting a smaller area, than protecting a bigger area.
Proof:
if i > j
|j-i-1| < |j-i| =>
(j-i-1)^2 < (j-i)^2 =>
s-(j-i-1)^2 > max(s-(j-i)^2, 0) =>
max(s-(j-i-1)^2, 0) >= max(s-(j-i)^2, 0) =>
max(s-(j-i-1)^2, 0) >= max(s-((j + j')-i-1)^2, 0) =>
A cat is more effective on smaller areas.
Since a cat is effective in smaller areas, if we use more cats, then a cat on average will protect smaller areas, so, we can arrange the cats in a more effective manner if we use more cats.
This means that all k cats should be used. With this, we have already excluded all cases when not all cats are used. Ok, except the case when there are more cats than meters, but that is a trivial case, when you should put a cat/meter to guard it.
So, when k <= n, we use all cats. The problem thus is partitioning. You want to find the optimal partitioning, with the heuristic described by the formula. This is very similar to chess.
Explanation: In chess, you have a starting position. You want to find the best move, so you calculate its main variations and variations that are sub-optimal are not calculated into the maximum depth. In your problem, you need to find the right move (positioning a cat to a given sector), just like in chess, but with different heuristics. The heuristics should be something, which is based on the depth (number of cats already positioned) and effectiveness (number of mice potentially caught / number of mice totally in the covered sector).
For instance, Alpha-Beta pruning is relatively easy to implement and according to this post, it has a complexity of O(b^(d/2)) in best case scenario. You can do further reading here.
EDIT: While the problem can be easily solved by Alpha-Beta pruning, RBarryYoung is right in his comment that the problem can be approached without modelling it like a game where an adversary moves, while modelling it like that is possible, since the "most negative answer" can be seen as the only answer, which increases the number of partitions needed and decreases the number of cats which can be used.

A: I would start by generating all possible single placements of cats (a placement is defined by the set of 1m-segments covered, for instance starting at meter 3 and ranging 2 meters from there), calculate their respective value (number of mice caught in the respective segment) and then find a selection of k (number of cats) such placements so that the placements do not overlap and the value is maximized. Since the overlap can be checked easily given two segments you don't have to construct a lookup table.
As Lajos-Arpad points out in his answer, it is always better to use all the cats you have available because there is a penalty for wider ranges/longer segments. When you can split a range in two using another cat, the total value always increases.
Optimizations:

*

*Eliminate placements spanning too many columns. Example: If your hall is 4 meters long and you have 3 cats, you don't place cats on 3 meter ranges.

*Eliminate placements that are dominated by other placements. If placement A spans a superset of the columns spanned by placement B but does not yield more mice, dismiss A. This can reduce the number of possible placements dramatically.
Implementation: The problem in this form lends itself well to 0-1 integer linear programming. The vector x to be found has length p (number of placements) and contains 1 or 0 at each position depending on whether the placement is in the solution or not. The value of a solution is trivially given by the sum of values of the placements. The constraints: Number of 1s is <= k and you have a constraint for each meter in your hall that prevents that two placements covering the respective meter are selected.
Another alternative is that you enumerate all possible combinations of placements and pick the best one (brute force). You can of course optimize this further. For instance you can sort the placements and pick the most valuable ones first. Keep track of the best solution so far and stop generating sub-selections when you see your current best solution cannot be bet in this branch.
Example: You have already selected 2 placements with a total value of 30, and you are to pick 3 more placements out 10 placements with the following values:
17, 10, 8, 4, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1
If your current optimal solution has value 70 you can stop right here and backtrack. Regardless of which three placements you would pick, you would never add more value than 35 (sum of first three) but you need at least 41.


Very rarely does a successful brand occur accidentally. A strong brand is usually one that has undergone research, planning and strategic implementation. A strong brand relays a clear, concise message about a company, its products or services and its values. It resonates with both current and potential customers, and its identity dominates its position in its respective market.
But before any of that can happen, companies need to determine their brand. To start building that brand, companies need to answer the following five questions.
As much as we would love every single consumer to be our target audience, it is too wide of a net to cast because not everyone is the right fit for your product. In addition to understanding your core audience demographics, such as age, gender and income, consider their personalities, their habits and their lifestyles.
Is your current target audience the market you want? If so, who are they? What do they value -- family, free-time, money? Create a fictional persona for your ideal customer. What do they do for a living? What do they do for fun? What is their yearly salary? When do they find that they need to purchase or use your product? By fictionalizing your ideal customer on paper, your brand will better position itself for the next questions.
2. What problem does your company solve? In other words, how do your customers benefit by using your products and services?
Think about your purpose as a company. Of course, we all want to make money, but by considering what problem your product or service fixes or what needs you are fulfilling for your customers, you can start to craft not only your brand's mission but its identity, too.
If you offer portable "pick-up-and-go" salads, then you are selling convenience and fixing a time problem for busy people who still want a healthy lunch. At Clearbridge Branding Agency, we offer social media management services. This sells not only assistance and time-savings to businesses, but also it fixes their problems of staffing, training and budget concerns, among other issues, if they were to hire an in-house team.
3. When people think about your company, what feelings does it elicit?
Once you have determined what problems your product solves, you have to evaluate how it makes people feel. There are eight types of core human emotions: joy, sadness, anger, fear, trust, distrust, surprise and anticipation. What feelings do you want your brand to convey to your customers?
Clearly, most companies want to stay away from any negative connotations like distrust. However, some typically negatively-associated emotions can work to a brand's advantage. At first glance, no brand wants to elicit fear of their product. But using fear to motivate people to go to a doctor to get a suspicious mole checked is one way of using a negative emotion as a positive. Many brands also capitalize on fear of missing out (FOMO). They create a sense of urgency that a product is needed before anyone else has it or the fear of just not owning it at all.
Eliciting joy, making people feel happy when they buy or use your product is also a popular method but one that can sometimes backfire. Remember McDonald's #McDStories? McDonald's asked consumers to share heart-warming tweets about experiences in their stores. Instead, it turned into a trending hashtag full of horror stories. Determining how you want your product and your company to make people feel will help craft the overall brand image as well as your digital and traditional marketing efforts.
4. What kind of personality will your brand have?
Just as you have to consider the personality of your target audience, you have to do the same for your brand. Think of your brand as a person. Who would they be? Are they funny and witty? Dry and serious? Sincere and knowledgeable? Would this person be friends with someone in your target audience?
From snarky and fun brand voices (think Wendy's Twitter) to serious and professional (LinkedIn's Twitter), a good brand personality will reflect the product being sold and the customers who use it.
5. Who are your competitors and what is their brand position?
Only after identifying your competition can you try to understand their brand position. What do consumers think and feel about their product? And, most importantly, do you want consumers to feel the same way about yours, or do you want your brand position to be the complete opposite of your competition? How is your product more relevant to those consumers than your competition's version, and what are the key points of difference between your brand and theirs?
Keep in mind that you can't definitively define your brand. Your customers and how they perceive your brand helps shape it as well. But when you can satisfactorily answer these five questions, you can start to put the pieces together and develop your brand and guide your audience's perception. From there, create a marketing campaign that captures your brand's personality, the feeling that your brand creates and that speaks directly to your target audience.


Making decisions about education starts very early for most parents. Basically as soon as you have a child you are bombarded with decisions and responsibilities regarding your child's education. Daycares – yes or no? Preschools – Relaxed, challenging, Montessori, Reggio, Waldorf, religious, non-sectarian? Elementary School – Public, Private, Magnet? And that's just the first five years! That's where our annual Huntsville Learning Expo can help save the day.
We get it. We feel those pressures too and we understand that most parents don't have time to go and visit every school, or talk to every educational expert, tutor, or financial planner.
Explore Education Options in One Stop!
What if you could put representatives from the various schools in one room and make it easy for parents to visit them all in ONE morning?
Then invite experts to come and answer questions about the most pressing and stress inducing issues (like how to pay for college, or how to best help your special needs child, or how to homeschool).
Then give the kids something fun to do while the parents get all this information.
Then make it all FREE!
CLICK HERE – Hurry! The application deadline is Jan. 21 and spots are limited!
Want to sell your old homeschool curriculum & books?
Individual educators can EMAIL US to reserve a table.
And that's how the Rocket City Mom Learning Expo was born. We talked to our friends at Earlyworks Children's History Museum who offered their space and were happy to let all Expo attendees into the museum for free (so feel free to look around and play after you've finished visiting our exhibitors). Finally, Progress Bank offered to help underwrite the expense so that we can donate 100% of the proceeds to a local non-profit organization benefiting the educational pursuits of area boys and girls*.
Homeschool Curriculum Sale – NEW this year!
Cost: FREE – attendance at expo, all activities, and museum entrance are all totally free!
* Previous recipients include the Village of Promise, Big Brothers Big Sister of North Alabama, Fantasy Playhouse Children's Theatre, Free 2 Teach, Sci-Quest, and the Boys and Girls Club of North Alabama.


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Joseph Gordon-Levitt: The Anti-Shia LaBeouf
It occurred to me recently that former child actors Joseph Gordon-Levitt ("Third Rock from the Sun") and Shia LaBeouf ("Even Stevens") have chosen career paths that are polar opposites. Gordon-Levitt has gone the respectable route with the recent 500 Days of Summer (which I look forward to watching, but has not out in theaters near me), and the critically acclaimed Brick and The Lookout. I found his performance in Killshot to be quite impressive as well. He seems to be searching for quality roles in low budget films and it has worked. His appearance in G.I.Joe is questionable, but I'll wait to see it before I cast judgment on him. Regardless of his upcoming big budget film, Gordon-Levitt has become a solid actor who adds prestige to any picture he is involved in.
LeBeouf, on the other hand, has starred in one big budget movie after another, usually playing clichéd or completely bland characters that require him to react to a green screen. But this has led to massive success. I must admit, I wanted to hate this guy from the get-go, but his unoffensive, plain characters are almost impossible to hate. The worst I can say is that I feel indifferent about each character he plays. Can anyone honestly say they cared about what happened to Sam Witwicky or Mutt Williams. To me, those two characters just got in the way of the action. This is not to say that I haven't enjoyed LaBeouf's movies. I enjoyed both Transformers movies for what they were (loud, hectic action movies) and I am even one of the few people out there that really enjoyed the latest Indiana Jones. Labeouf was amusing in his comedic side roles in other big budget films as well (Constantine and I, Robot), but there is really nothing to this guy. There are plenty of lesser known actors who could play the goofy, dorky high school kid. That might be the one thing that is keeping him going. He can play a high school kid (like in the unlikely hit movie Disturbia) and he seems sincere when freaks out about his lack of iTunes access and cell phone privileges.
So the younger crowd might be able to identify with him on a technological level, but he won't stay young forever, and that is obviously becoming a problem. LaBeouf went with a more adult type role in Eagle Eye (though he was a childish, scared adult) and that didn't turn out nearly as well as Transformers. He is about to hit a major brick wall: adulthood. Joseph Gordon-Levitt saw this coming a mile away and has been working on it for the past few years.
Take Brick, for instance. This is a film noir set in a high school. Gordon-Levitt takes the high school role, but he gets to play it like he's Bogart as Sam Spade. He acknowledges that he's not an adult, but he can act like one at least. Gordon-Levitt knows that he looks young, but that doesn't mean his characters have to act like it. The Lookout is another prime example of this. He plays a brain damaged (memory loss) former high school star athlete who gets caught up in a bank robbery scheme. This was his major step out into film adulthood. He followed this with a quality performance in Stop Loss, followed by a great turn as a redneck stick up man in the under seen Killshot. In Killshot, there is certainly an immature side to his character, but I would hardly consider him a high school kid. If anything, Gordon-Levitt played a kid who probably dropped out of school by the time he was sixteen. Now he is Cobra Commander and even if G.I.Joe turns out to be garbage, I doubt that people will claim that Gordon-Levitt is the problem.
I am not just comparing these two actors side by side because they both started out as child actors, though. I feel that these two actors represent two sides of American youth. The popular kids in school and the trendy people who don't follow movies too closely probably identify with LaBeouf because it's easy. The dorks and movie buffs out there shrug off LaBeouf (or downright hate him) and side with Gordon-Levitt because of his acting ability and his character decisions. I'm willing to bet that the people who identify with LaBeouf don't even know who Joseph Gordon-Levitt is. Me, I'm proud to be part of the dorks and geeks. I'm just a bit worried that Gordon-Levitt is entering LaBeouf land with Cobra Commander. But I'm sure it's just a bump in the road on his way to continued and more prominent critical success.
Posted by Eric Harris at 11:06 PM
Labels: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shia LaBeouf
Cannelton Crizzy August 6, 2009 at 9:35 AM
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the Anti-Shia LaBeouf, but probably not by choice. I'm willing to bet Levitt would have taken any of those roles that LaBeouf got. I agree that Shia has not been tested yet, I can't judge him as a talented actor until I see him in a drama. New York, I Love You & Money Never Sleeps (Wall Street 2) both should be challenging for him.
To be honest, Joseph is not attractive at all.
Many audiences aren't fascinated by his appearance and his performances.
but I think He can attract an audience, if he has sense of humor or he play comedy roles
I'm incredibly insulted by the way you chose to seperatr these two very talented actors by means of popularity. I love Shia labeouf he is phenomenal in every role he has. But it doesn't mean that I'm a stuck up ignorant person as you said. I have very high regard for Joseph gordon levitt as well he's absolutely astounding when given the right role.
Eric Harris April 2, 2010 at 2:58 AM
I usually don't comment on my own posts, but I feel I have to on this one. You wrote that I said people that like Shia LeBeouf are "ignorant." Please read my post again, because I never claim that. The only claim I make is that Shia LeBeouf is more known in popular circles than Gordon-Levitt is. I thought that I pointed out that LeBeouf is quite suitable in the roles he picks, I just think that Gordon-Levitt is a better actor and he makes better casting decisions. Do I think Gordon-Levitt is a better actor? Absolutely. Do I think less of anyone who prefers LeBeouf? No, not at all. If I came across as bitter or condescending towards LeBeouf fans then I apologize, because that was certainly not my intention.
you all suck!!!!!!!!!!!! do these people pay your bills...so who cares who is the better one.......Get a life!!!!!!!
"Inglourious Basterds"
"District 9"
"World's Greatest Dad"
"G.I. JOE: The Rise of Cobra"
"Funny People"


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Copyright 1998 by Naomi Shihab Nye.
Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions from Fuel: poems by Naomi Shihab Nye, 1998. Copyright 1998 by Julie Lechevsky. For further permissions information, contact Steven Huff, BOA Editions, Ltd., 260 East Ave., Rochester, NY 14604, www.boaeditions.org.
Naomi Shihab Nye (1952- ) is the author of ten poetry collections, including Transfer (BOA Editions, 2011). In addition to her poetry collections, Nye has produced fiction for children, poetry and song recordings, poetry translations, and essays.
Learn more about Naomi Shihab Nye at The Poetry Foundation.


An Open House will be held at the Harley Clarke Mansion on Wednesday, August 3, 2016 in order for groups and individuals interested in the long-term use of the facility to view the interior. Reservations are being accepted from groups and individuals for two-hour time slots between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m. An Open House for the general public will be held between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. A maximum of 20 people will be allowed in the house at any given time.
The mansion is owned by the City of Evanston and has been closed and secured since the Evanston Art Center moved out in early June 2015. It is located at 2603 Sheridan Road in Evanston.
To make an Open House Reservation or to learn more, please visit cityofevanston.org/mansion or call/text 847-448-4311. For convenience, you may dial 3-1-1 directly while in Evanston.
Posted on July 5, 2016 by Ted R. Glasoe and filed under Lakefront Stewardship, Development & Zoning, Evanston Community.