bonnieblog

2006-02-15T03:35:00.000-08:00

John-O\'Donoghue-(politician)

John ODonoghue (born May 1956) is a senior Irish Fianna F�il politician and is currently the Irish Minister for Arts, Sport & Tourism. He has been a TD (parliament) for County Kerry since 1987. He has previously served as Minister for Justice, Equality & Law Reform (1997-2002). ODonoghue was born in Caherciveen County Kerry and was educated locally at Caherciveen Christian Brothers and University College Cork. He qualified from the Incorporated Law Society of Ireland with a degree in law. He established himself as a solicitor in his home town before getting involved in local politics. In 1985 he was elected to Kerry County Council, serving as Chairman in 1990 until his retirement from local politics in 1991. In 1987 ODonoghue was elected to D�il �ireann as a Fianna F�il TD on his fourth attempt. He was appointed Minister of State at the Department of Finance in 1991. However, since ODonohue was a supporter of Charles Haughey he returned to the backbenches when Albert Reynolds became Taoiseach and Fianna F�il leader in 1992. In 1994 Bertie Ahern became leader of Fianna F�il. When he named his Irish Opposition Front Bench in early 1995 ODonoghue was appointed Opposition Spokesman for Justice. As spokesman for Justice he constantly critiscised the Fine Gael Irish Minister for Justice, Equality & Law Reform, Nora Owen. He demanded zero tolerance and campaigned for harsher sentencing and increased prison places. In 1997 Fianna F�il returned to power and ODonoghue joined the Irish Government as Irish Minister for Justice, Equality & Law Reform. In that portfolio he received criticism for his Departments poor handling of the ever-increasing rise in asylum seekers. This position also led to his involvement in the British-Irish negotiations leading to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 In 2002, in what was seen as a demotion, he was appointed Irish Minister for Arts, Sport & Tourism. He has worked hard and well in this portfolio and although mentioned as a contender for Foreign Affairs, he retained his position following the Cabinet reshuffle of September 29, 2004. This was mostly welcomed by the industry.

Cabinet Positions

Preceded by: Nora Owen	Irish Minister for Justice, Equality & Law Reform (1997-2002)	Followed by: Michael McDowell
Preceded by: Jim McDaid	Irish Minister for Arts, Sport & Tourism (2002-)	Followed by: (Current Incumbent)

2006-02-14T15:36:00.000-08:00

March

For alternative meanings, see March (disambiguation). MarchCalendar March is the third month of the year in the Gregorian Calendar and one of seven Gregorian months with the length of 31 days. March begins (astrologically, non-sidereal) with the sun in the sign of Pisces and ends in the sign of Aries. Astronomically speaking, the sun begins in the constellation of Aquarius and ends in the constellation of Pisces. March is named for Mars (god), the Roman Mythology of war. In Roman Empire, March was called Martius. It was named after the war god (Mars (god)) and was considered a lucky time to begin a war. In ancient Hellenic civilization, March was called Anthesterion. In Japanese calendar, the month is called Yayoi. March was originally the first month of the Roman calendar. Julius Caesars calendar Julian calendar in 45 BCE began the year on January 1. The tradition of starting the year in March continued in some countries for a long time. January 1 was only instituted as New Years Day in France in 1564. United Kingdom and her colonies continued to use March 25 until 1752, the same year they finally adopted the Gregorian calendar. Historical names for March include the Saxon term Lenctmonat, named for the equinox and eventual lengthening of days and the eventual namesake of Lent. The Saxons also called March Rhed-monat (for their goddess Rhedam), ancient Britons called it hyld-monath (meaning loud or stormy).

Events in March

On the first Sunday of March the Vasaloppet cross country ski race takes place in Sweden in honour of Gustav I of Swedens run in 1520.
March 10 is Harriet Tubman Day. Harriet Tubman Day, March 10, is dedicated to those who are willing to be of service to humanity and recognize all individuals who struggled to end tyranny and oppression. See and 17 is St. Patricks Day, one of the public holidays in the Republic of Ireland. In the Irish Calendar the month is called M�rta and is the middle month of Spring (season).
March 18 The Australian International Air Show. Largest and most comprehensive ever staged in the Southern Hemisphere. Visitors will be thrilled by the roar of high-octane attack helicopters and the zoom of vintage warbirds. Highlights include the Boeing Night Alight Finale.
March 19 is Saint Josephs Day.
The equinox named the vernal or spring (season) equinox in the northern hemisphere and the autumnal equinox in the southern hemisphere occurs on or around March 21. In the neopaganism wheel of the year the spring equinox is the time of Ostara and the autumn equinox is that of Mabon.
March 25 is one of the Irish Quarter days (no longer generally observed).
March 25 is Mothers Day in the United Kingdom.
March 25 - Lady Day or the Feast of the Annunciation.
In Western Christianity, Easter occurs on a Sunday between March 22 and April 25, inclusive.

Trivia

March begins on the same day of the week as November in all years and as February on regular years.
Marchs flower is the violet (plant).
Marchs birthstone is the aquamarine.

2006-02-14T03:34:00.000-08:00

Dublin-Area-Rapid-Transit

Dock station in 2001 The Dublin Area Rapid Transit (DART) is a suburban railway system in Dublin, Ireland, running primarily along the coastline of Dublin Bay, from Greystones in Wicklow to Howth and Malahide. Trains are electric, running from a 1500 Volts Direct current overhead power supply. The DART system is administered by the national rail operator, Iarnr�d �ireann (Irish Rail). At the time of its inception in 1984, the DART was run by Coras Iompair �ireann (CIE), of whom Iarnr�d �ireann is now a subsidiary. Part of the DARTs route, from the city centre to Dun Laoghaire, is of historical note � it was one of the first railways in Ireland, opening as the Dublin and Kingstown Railway in 1834.

Development, and Redevelopment, of the DART

The original DART service, provided from 1984 onwards, ran from Howth, a fishing village to the north of Dublin city centre, through the city centre stations of Connolly Station, Tara Street, and Pearse Station, to the port suburb of Dun Laoghaire and terminated at Bray. This was the route for some 15 years, when the electrification was extended south one stop to Greystones, and North from Howth Junction two stops along the Belfast main line to Malahide (the current route is schematically shown in the map below). In the early 1980s, in preparation for electrification, two new stations were provided which at the time were not in use by the existing diesel-electric service. Sandymount station at Sandymount Avenue was opened where a station had previously stood and a station called Salthill was built at the original terminus of the railway between Seapoint and Dun Laoghaire to the north of the West Pier. At the time of the electrification work in 1981-1982, the former branch to the railway station at Dun Laoghaire pier used by ferry passengers was disconnected as the main track had to be lowered in order to fit the overhead power cables under road bridges in Dun Laoghaire, some ten years later a brand new passenger ferry terminal was built immediately adjacent to the main Dun Laoghaire station.

Operational Details

The service is provided by a mixed fleet of electric multiple unit trains. 38 two-car sets by LHB of Germany � built in 1983, five two-car sets by Alstom of Barcelona, Spain � built in 1999 and most recently 17 four-car Japanese-built sets by Tokyu Car of Yokohama between 2000 and 2004. They normally run coupled as six-car trains in the peak periods (which typically are between 07:00-09:30 and 17:00-18:30) and four-car trains at other times. Japanese sets typically operate with an Alstom unit to make a six-car train. Work is currently ongoing to allow the original LHB sets to work in tandem with the newer built sets. 40 two-car trainsets were purchased initially � two were subsequently lost in a fire in 2001. DART now carries in excess of 80,000 passengers daily, and continued demand for increased capacity means that as of 2004 work that began in 2003 is currently in hand to strengthen power supplies to allow the use of eight-car trains. As far as manpower is concerned, each train is driven by a single person from the front cab (attached to the leading carraige). All trains have automatic doors under the control of the driver. All trains in the Dublin suburban area including DART are monitored and regulated by a Central Traffic Control (CTC) facility based in Connolly Station known as Suburban CTC. Passenger information in the form of electronic information displays on each platform are updated in real time based on the progress of trains. Automatic public address announcements are made in the event of delays, these announcements are tailored to each station. Thanks to extensive computer automation the main control room is staffed by only 4 people. Two signalmen, one with responsibility for level crossings, an electrical control officer (ECO) who supervises the electrical power supply equipment and an overall supervisor. Only the CTC control room is normally staffed, backup local control rooms are provided in the event of serious technical problems allowing services to continue. Journeys require a prepaid ticket to be purchased before beginning. A typical one way ticket would cost about �1.60-2.00, which for comparison, is about the price of a daily paper. To gain access to the platform, tickets must be electronically validated by passing the ticket through a special machine � the underside of the ticket is automatically printed with the date, time and a 3 digit code representing the station in which the ticket was validated. Ticket checks on the trains themselves are relatively rare and mainly occur during off peak. Most tickets are checked on arrival at the destination, but the main form of fraud prevention remains the inital validation. DART services begin at about 06:30 on weekday mornings, and finish before midnight. No DART services are run on Christmas Day or on the following day known in Ireland as St. Stephens Day, a national holiday.

DARTs Competitors

Iarnr�d �ireann currently operate a monopoly on Irish rail passenger transport. The only other company to operate on lines in the Republic of Ireland is Northern Ireland Railways (part of Translink). A number of other transport modes are available in Dublin. Apart from the two most popular modes of transport, which are walking and private vehicle, the CI� owned Dublin Bus is virtually ubiquitous, running all over the city. As such, it has many routes that run somewhat parallel to DART for stretches. However, it does not have any scheduled routes that traverse the entire length of the DART line. By and large, integration of bus services as feeder services for railway stations is minimal throughout Ireland, as well as in Dublin. However, there are some specific destinations (e.g. Dublin Airport, which has no direct rail service) that have buses providing feeder services to a DART station. Due to a lack of integrated ticketing, amongst other problems, these services are not widely used. The LUAS (pronounced LOO-ASS), which partially integrates with the DART at Connolly Station, is not seen as a competitor, as neither of its routes run along similar routes to DART.

Criticism of DART

Some aspects of the DART system may constitute fundamental structural shortcomings. Paramount amongst these is the non-exclusive nature of the railway route used. Apart from the short distance between Howth Junction and Howth/Malahide, DART shares its tracks with mainline services to Belfast in the north of Ireland and Rosslare in the south east, as well as non-DART commuter DMUs (known as Commuter services). Connolly Station is also shared with services to and from Sligo and Commuter services to the northwest of the city. Iarnr�d �ireann hope to separate the northwestern non-DART services from Connolly, running them below the northern line to a planned new station east of Connolly, Spencer Dock. The current shared line system means that an increase in frequency for the DART is almost impossible, thus although they are advertised as being every 10 minutes average times are 15-25 minutes. Although frequency on the DART is capped by accommodating other services, often DART services have priority, causing delays for the higher speed DMUs and locomotive-hauled trains. There are plans to quadruple-track the route for some distance north of Connolly station to alleviate rail congestion at peak times. Some critics focus on the lack of capacity on the system at peak times, and also the skeletal patronisation of some services outside peak times. However, this is an unavoidable problem, that the national road network also suffers from. There are plans however to increase overall capacity, in an attempt to alleviate severe overcrowding on the worst affected peak services. As of January 2005, major development works have been ongoing across the DART system to lengthen platforms at suburban stations so that they can accommodate 8-car trains (currently 6-car DARTs run). This work has been mostly completed south of Pearse Station, and is currently underway on the northern section.The power grid that the DART uses is also being upgraded. Due to the work schedule chosen, no DART services run on the Northern section at weekends (the Southern section previously saw similar disruption, with more expected in the second half of 2005). At such times, would-be passengers are compelled to make other arrangements.

Integration with road traffic

A further pressing problem for the DART, and for some road traffic in Dublin, is the existence of level crossings along some of its length. Since the DART mostly runs at ground level, there are a number of places where the DART both meets and has to cross roads. The mechanism in place for this involves automatic half barriers to stop the flow of traffic along the road. This can cause localised traffic jams. This is widely seen as a design flaw, that could have been avoided at the time of electrification.

Criticism of the DART concept

Some Irish commentators have been strongly critical of the willingness of successive Irish governments to invest in fixed line transport, such as the DART and LUAS. While some argue that the mass transport needs of the people of Dublin could be met both cheaper and quicker by investment in buses and bus lanes, others do not necessarily agree (it has been argued that bus lanes have higher maintanance costs than rail if carrying the same volume of traffic).

DART stations

One of the best-known stations is at Lansdowne Road, the home of the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) and the venue for Irish rugby and soccer international matches. Further south, the train stops at Sydney Parade Avenue, a street of some Georgian and many Edwardian and Victorian red-brick houses in the Dublin embassy belt. It is believed that the former station at Merrion Gates, between Sydney Parade Avenue and Booterstown will be redeveloped in the near future, though this awaits confirmation.

List of DART stations

North of Howth Junction Malahide, Portmarnock Northeast of Howth Junction Howth, Sutton, Dublin, Bayside South of Howth Junction Howth Junction, Kilbarrack, Raheny, Harmonstown, Killester, Clontarf Road, Connolly Station South of the River Liffey Tara Street Station, Pearse Station, Grand Canal of Ireland, Lansdowne Road, Sandymount, Sydney-Parade-Avenue, Booterstown, Blackrock, Seapoint, Salthill & Monkstown, Dublin, D�n Laoghaire, Sandycove & Glasthule, Glenageary, Dalkey, Killiney, Shankill, Bray, Greystones

2006-02-13T15:35:00.000-08:00

William-Henry-Harrison-Seeley

William Henry Harrison Seeley (April 21, 1840 - October 1, 1914) was an American recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest and most prestigious award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to United Kingdom and Commonwealth forces.

Details

He was 24 years old, and an Ordinary Seaman in the Royal Navy during the Shimonoseki Expedition, Japan when the following deed took place for which he was awarded the VC. On 6 September 1864 at Shimonoseki, Japan, during the capture of the enemys stockade, Ordinary Seaman Seeley of HMS Euryalus distinguished himself by carrying out a daring reconnaissance to ascertain the enemys position, and then, although wounded, continuing to take part in the final assault on the battery. He was presented his medal at Southsea on September 22, 1865 together with Thomas Pride (VC) and Duncan Gordon Boyes who also won their VCs at Shimonoseki.

Further information

First American citizen to win the VC.

The medal

not publicly displayed

Reference

Monuments To Courage (David Harvey, 1999)
The Register of the Victoria Cross (This England, 1997) This page has been Project Victoria Cross Reference Migration from the Victoria Cross Reference with permission.

2006-02-13T03:36:00.000-08:00

Niobe-(Matrix-character)

Niobe is a fictional character from the Matrix series film series. She had a supporting role in The Matrix Reloaded, and featured prominently in both The Matrix Revolutions and the video game Enter the Matrix. She is played by actor Jada Pinkett Smith, who is married to Will Smith. Niobe is a human from Zion (city), being one of the rebels participating in the war against the Machines and the Matrix (fictional universe). She is the captain and pilot of a Zion hovercraft, the Logos (ship), the smallest ship in the human fleet with a crew of only three: herself, weapons expert and First Mate Ghost (Matrix character), and Operator Sparks (Matrix character). Within the virtual world of the Matrix, Niobe is one of Zions most gifted martial artists. She has killed at least one Agent, survived multiple encounters with the Merovingians superhuman thugs, faced Seraph (Matrix character) in one-on-one combat, and even managed to survive and escape from a confrontation with the replicating entity Agent Smith. In the real world, she is the most skilled pilot among the rebel forces. She demonstrates this on several occasions. In one scene during The Matrix Revolutions, she manoeuvred the Hammer (ship) through the narrow, cluttered passage of a mechanical line - a feat no other pilot has successfully performed. Niobe was once romantically involved with Morpheus (Matrix character), but their relationship broke apart after Morpheus received his revelations from the Oracle (Matrix character) and started to preach the prophecy of the One (a prophecy Niobe has never truly believed in). After breaking up with Morpheus, Niobe eventually becomes involved with Commander Lock, a stern, practical man who is in many ways the exact opposite of Morpheus. Both Persephone (Matrix character) and The Oracle insinuate that Niobe is still in love with Morpheus when they confront her in Enter the Matrix.

2006-02-12T15:32:00.000-08:00

The-Book-of-Sand

The Book of Sand (El libro de arena) is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges. It may be seen as a radically stripped down version of his 1941 story The Library of Babel. It also has parallels to The Zahir, continuing the themes of self-reference, Motif-of-harmful-sensation and attempting to abandon the terribly infinite. The story appears in a book of the same name, the Spanish language version of which was first published in 1975. The English translation by Norman Thomas di Giovanni was first published in The New Yorker, the entire volume The Book of Sand (ISBN 0525475400) was published in 1977.

Plot summary

spoiler The titular Book of Sand is the Book of all Books, and is a monster. The story tells how this book came into the possession of a fictional version of Borges himself, and of how he ultimately disposed of it. The fictive Borges in the story, like the real Borges, lives in an apartment on Belgrano Street in Buenos Aires, surrounded by his books: encyclopedias, maps, sacred tomes, the worlds fantasies concerning itself. He receives an unnamed caller who initially introduces himself as a Bible salesman. Borges is by no means short of Bibles, but, as it develops, that is not what the visitor is there to sell. The salesman, who is a Presbyterian from the Orkneys, produces an bookbinding, bound in cloth, on whose spine are the words Holy Writ and Bombay. On opening the book, Borges finds that the pages are written in an indecipherable script appearing in double columns, ordered in versicles as in a Bible. When he opens to a page with an illustration, the bookseller advises a close look, since the page will never be found, or seen, again. It proves impossible to find the first or last page. This Book of Sand has no beginning or end: its pages are infinite. Each page is numbered, apparently uniquely but in no discernable pattern. The bookseller indicates that he acquired the book in exchange for a handful of rupees and a Bible, from an owner who did not know how to read. His conscience is clear with respect to that transaction: he feels sure of not having cheated the native in exchanging the Word of God for this diabolic trinket. He and the fictive Borges strike a bargain, and Borges exchanges a months pension check plus a black-letter John Wyclif Bible for the miraculous book. The Scotland philosopher David Hume is mentioned, and the poet George Herbert is referenced via the epigraph, Thy rope of sands. Above all, Herbert in his poetry wants us to see Gods revealed truth, which the Presbyterian bookseller believes is written in a book, in the Book, to the point that his evangelism extends to an illiterate Hindu. The Hindu has, in exchange, given him what to him must be the opposite of incontestable writ: a text which can never be read the same way twice. It can be by no means accidental that Borges (the author, not the character) has placed into the hands of an evangelical Presbyterian an immediate object, the sense of which undermines plain faith in a Christian eschatology. One imagines that to the Presbyterian Bible salesman, Gods truth is a simple truth. This simple religion was by no means shared by the philosopher Hume, who, according to James Boswell, although the son of Presbyterians,...owned that he had never read the New Testament with attention... and had been at no pains to enquire into the truth of religion, and had continually turned his mind the other way (Boswell, p.409). According to Hume,... evidence... for the truth of the Christian religion is less than the evidence for the truth of our senses, because, even in the first authors of our religion whose texts are founded on the testimony of the apostles, it was no greater, and it is evident it must diminish in passing from them to their disciples, nor can any one rest such confidence in their testimony, as in the immediate object of their senses. Borges underscores the distance between the bookseller and Hume by having his fictive persona express his great personal affection for Scotland, through my love of Robert Louis Stevenson and Hume. The salesman corrects him, adding, And Robert Burns. The worldly Borges ultimately proves no more able to live with the terrifying book than was the salesman. He considers destroying the book by fire, but decides against this after reasoning that such a fire would release infinite amounts of smoke, and asphyxiation the entire world. Ultimately, Borges transports the book to the Argentine National Library (of which the real Borges was, for many years, the head). Slipping past a member of the staff and trying not to notice at what height or distance from the door... he loses the Book of Sand on one of the basements musty shelves, the infinite book deliberately lost in a near-infinity of books.

References

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1909). London: Collins Clear-Type Press, online at David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X (Of Miracles), online at p://www.rbjones.com/rbjpub/philos/classics/hume/echu101.htm.

2006-02-12T03:34:00.000-08:00

Philippe-Auguste-Hennequin

Philippe Auguste Hennequin (1763 - May, 1833), France painter, was a pupil of Jacques Louis David. He was born at Lyons in 1763, distinguished himself early by winning the Grand Prix, and left France for Italy. The disturbances at Rome, during the course of the Revolution, obliged him to return to Paris, where he executed the Federation of the 14th of July, and he was at work on a large design commissioned for the town-hall of Lyons, when in July 1794 he was accused before the revolutionary tribunal and thrown into prison. Hennequin escaped, only to be anew accused and imprisoned in Paris, and after running great danger of death, seems to have devoted himself thenceforth wholly to his profession. At Paris he finished the picture ordered for the municipality of Lyons, and in 1801 produced his chief work, Orestes pursued by the Furies (Louvre, engraved by Charles Paul Landon, Annales du Mus�e, vol. i. p. 105). He was one of the four painters who competed when in 1802 Antoine-Jean, Baron Gros carried off the official prize for a picture of the Battle of Nazareth, and in 1808 Napoleon himself ordered Hennequin to illustrate a series of scenes from his German campaigns, and commanded that his picture of the Death of General Salomon should be engraved. After 1815 Hennequin retired to Li�ge, and there, aided by subventions from the Government, carried out a large historical picture of the Death of the Three Hundred in defence of Li�ge a sketch of which he himself engraved. In 1824 Hennequin settled at Tournay, and became director of the academy, he exhibited various works at Lille in the following year, and continued to produce actively up to the day of his death. 1911

2006-02-11T15:36:00.000-08:00

Louise-(crater)

characteristics
Latitude 28.5� N
Longitude 34.2� W
Diameter 1.5 km
Depth Unknown
Selenographic colongitude 336� at sunrise
List of lunar craters L German female forename Louise is a tiny lunar impact crater located on the western Mare Imbrium. It lies between Delisle (crater) to the north and Diophantus (crater) to the south. The narrow, meandering rille named Rima Diophantus comes within a few kilometers to the north of Louise crater. Despite its seemingly diminutive dimensions, this crater is actually about the same size as the Meteor crater in Flagstaff, Arizona.

2006-02-11T03:36:00.000-08:00

Eleventh-Amendment-to-the-United-States-Constitution

Amendment XI (the Eleventh Amendment) of the United States Constitution was passed by the Congress of the United States on March 4, 1794 and was ratified on February 7, 1795. The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State. The Amendment was passed after the Supreme Court of the United States 1792 ruling in Chisholm v. Georgia that Federal courts had the authority to hear cases in law and equity against states, and that states did not enjoy sovereign immunity from suits made by citizens of other states. The Amendment limits the jurisdiction of the Federal judicial system to exclude any suit initiated by a person against a state government. However, this does not limit the use of the Federal courts when a state consents to be sued, or when Congress in a valid exercise of its power abrogates state immunity from suit. See, e.g. Seminole Tribe of Florida v. Florida, 517 U.S. 44 (1996). The Supreme Court has interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution as granting Congress such power. See Congressional power of enforcement. Although the amendments text does not by its own terms include suits brought by a citizen against his own state, the Supreme Courts cases have found a broader principle of state sovereign immunity of which the Eleventh Amendment is but one example. Such immunity is commonly referred to as Eleventh Amendment immunity, though the court itself has referred to this designation as something of a misnomer Alden vs. Maine, 527 U.S. 706 (1999).

2006-02-10T15:35:00.000-08:00

Free-kick

A free kick in Football (soccer) describes the situation where a player on the opposing team has committed a foul, and the team receiving the free kick is given the Football (ball) to play from the position where the offence took place. At this point, the opposing teams players must stand at least ten yards away from the ball and may not encroach until the ball has been played. There are two types of free-kicks: direct free kick, and indirect free kick.
Direct Free Kick - Here, the attacking team may shoot for goal with the first kick after the Referee (football) has re-started play. If they have a good chance of scoring, the defending team may wish to form a wall between the attacker and the goal.
Indirect Free Kick - Here, the first kick may not be a shot for goal, but one attacker can tap the ball gently with his foot to allow another team-mate to shoot. To signal an indirect free-kick, the referee will leave his hand in the air to save confusion if a (illegal) goal is scored (and therefore will not be allowed). The player who takes a free kick must not take multiple touches of the ball when he or she takes the free kick. Through the years, there have been many expert practitioners of the art of the direct free kick, adept at swerving the ball past the men-wall. In particular, Brazilians down the generations are renowned for the power and swerve given to the flight of the ball.

2006-02-10T03:34:00.000-08:00

Clarence-Carter

Clarence Carter (born 14 January 1936, Montgomery, Alabama) is a singer and musician. Carters earliest releases were as half of the duo Clarence And Calvin. Also known as the C And C Boys, the Blindness duo made seven singles, the last of which was recorded at Fames Muscle Shoals studio. When his partner, Calvin Thomas (aka Scott), suffered serious injuries in a car accident in 1966, Carter became a solo act (Calvin himself later reappeared as a solo act to record two Dave Crawford-produced Atco Records singles in 1969/70 and a Clarence Paul-produced 1971 album for Stax Records, Im Not Blind... I Just Cant See, from which two singles were also taken). Tell Daddy, released in January 1967, began a fruitful spell of Fame-produced hits by Carter, released on the Atlantic Records label. Noteworthy were Thread The Needle, Looking For A Fox and Slip Away, where the singer combined his outstanding voice with his skill as an arranger and musician. Patches, first recorded by Chairmen Of The Board, was a United Kingdom number 2 and a US number 4 in 1970, but despite further strong offerings Clarence was unable to sustain the momentum. He remained with Fame until 1973, where he also helped guide Candi Staton, who was now his wife, before moving to ABC Records the subsequent year. Further recordings on Venture and Big C took Carters career into the 1980s and later the artist found a sympathetic outlet with the Ichiban Records label. Despite being blinded as a child, he developed a distinctive guitar style that complemented his earthy delivery, and was just as comfortable on Musical keyboards, writing songs or arranging sessions. The first two albums, This Is Clarence Carter and The Dynamic Clarence Carter show off his versatile talent to good effect. Clarence returned in the late Eighties with the album Dr. CC, which spawned the bawdy, comedic single Strokin, which has evolved into a favorite at clubs and weddings. He later followed it up with a sequel, Still Strokin, in 1989.

2006-02-09T15:33:00.000-08:00

Mesosaurus

Mesosaurus was a small marine reptile that lived during the late Carboniferous of the Permian period, roughly 280 to 220 million years ago. The animal is known from South Africa and parts of South America. It resembles a small alligator, although the largest specimen is almost 2 meters in length, 40 centimeters seems more common. It was probably the largest animal in its time. Mesosaur is believed to have fed on fish or possibly crustaceans by using its teeth as a sieve. Mesosaurus is the first known reptile to return to the water after evolving on land. Because the same genus of Mesosaurus was found in both Africa and South America, it was significant in demonstrating and proving continental drift.

2006-02-09T03:34:00.000-08:00

California-League

The California League is a minor league baseball league which operates throughout the state of California. The modern league is classified as a High-A league, indicating its status as a Class A league with the highest level of competition within that classification. A High-A team is often the first promotion for a minor-league player. A few draftees, generally early-round draftees with college experience, will be assigned to a High-A team upon signing a professional contract. The league was founded in 1941, and contained teams in Anaheim, California, Bakersfield, California, Fresno, California, Merced, California, Riverside, California, San Bernardino, California, Santa Barbara, California and Stockton, California. The following year, as a result of World War II, the league dropped to four teams, then ceased operations altogether. It came back in 1946, adding teams in Visalia, California, San Jose, California and Ventura, California by 1947. Reno, Nevada joined the league in 1955 and continued as a member for 37 years. All of the current teams are playing in stadiums that have been built or extensively renovated since 1990. League attendance continues to increase each season, with over one million fans attending games per year. The league is divided into a North Division and a South Division.

Current member teams:

North Division
Bakersfield Blaze
Modesto Nuts
San Jose Giants
Stockton Ports
Visalia Oaks
South Division
High Desert Mavericks
Inland Empire 66ers of San Bernardino
Lake Elsinore Storm
Lancaster JetHawks
Rancho Cucamonga Quakes

2006-02-08T15:34:00.000-08:00

Minoritaire

Minoritaire was a 1982 album by Jean-Jacques Goldman, his second solo album sung in French. It received a platinum album in 1983 and has sold over 900,000 copies. It was recorded at the Studio Gang by Olivier do Espirito Santo and Jean-Pierre Janiaud. It was released by NEF and produced by Marc Lumbroso. The musicians include:
Guy Delacroix, bass
Christophe Deschamps and Marc Chantereau, percussion
Albane Alcalay, Guy Alcalay, Jean-Jacques Goldman, and Jean-Pierre Janiaud, vocals
Jean-Yves dAngelo and Jean-Jacques Goldman, keyboards
Claude Engel and Jean-Jacques Goldman, acoustic guitar
Claude Engel, Jean-Jacques Goldman, Nono Krief (Jeanine Medicament Blues, Minoritaire) and Patrice Tison, electric guitar
Jumpin Ramon Roche, piano (Minoritaire)
Patrick Bourgoin and Philippe Delacroix-Herpin, saxophone
Georges Rodi, synthesizer
Patrick Mondon, violin (Comme toi)

Track listing

Au bout de mes r�ves
Comme toi
Toutes mes chaines
Jeanine Medicament Blues
Veiller tard
Quand la musique est bonne
Je ne vous parlerai pas delle
Etre le premier
Si tu memm�nes
Minoritaire
Quand la bouteille est vide

2006-02-08T03:33:00.000-08:00

Phineas-Freakears

Phineas T. Freakears is one of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, a trio of hippies portrayed in Gilbert Sheltons underground comix of that name. He is the hairiest of the trio, with an Afro-type hairstyle, a beard and moustache obscuring all of his face but his eyes, his long, pointy nose and his mouth. He is tall and skinny, and usually dresses in overalls. Like the other Brothers, he does not normally affect the more extreme counterculture styles. He is the only Brother to wear glasses. Phineas is idealistic, and will often veto, or at least attempt to veto, plans that conflict with his vision of how things should be. He is sometimes portrayed as a vegetarian, but will eat meat at other times. His beliefs are apparently fairly standard for the stereotypical hippie, being mainly concerned with pacifism, ecology, concern for Third World peoples, and for the downtrodden in general. He is the most educated of the Freak Brothers -he is apparently knowledgeable enough in chemistry to have created new drugs, and, as befits his idealism, he keeps up on current events. Phineas was born in Texas, and went back to visit his family once. The visit did not go well. As with the other Freak Brothers, Phineas is lazy, save only where the acquisition of drugs is concerned. He is an enthusiastic user of all drugs save possibly heroin.

2006-02-07T15:36:00.000-08:00

Newport-(town),-New-York

Newport is a town located in Herkimer County, New York. As of the 2000 census, the town had a total population of 2,192. The Town of Newport, located on the western edge of the county, contains the village called Newport (village), New York.

Geography

The western town line is the border of Oneida County, New York. According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of 84.2 square kilometer (32.5 square mile). 83.0 km� (32.0 mi�) of it is land and 1.2 km� (0.5 mi�) of it is water. The total area is 1.45% water.

Demographics

As of the censusGeographic references 2 of 2000, there are 2,192 people, 831 households, and 595 families residing in the town. The population density is 26.4/km� (68.4/mi�). There are 897 housing units at an average density of 10.8/km� (28.0/mi�). The racial makeup of the town is 98.77% White (U.S. Census), 0.41% African American (U.S. Census) or Race (U.S. Census), 0.00% Native American (U.S. Census), 0.05% Asian (U.S. Census), 0.00% Pacific Islander (U.S. Census), 0.23% from Race (U.S. Census), and 0.55% from two or more races. 0.82% of the population are Hispanic (U.S. Census) or Latino (U.S. Census) of any race. There are 831 households out of which 35.0% have children under the age of 18 living with them, 58.7% are Marriage living together, 9.1% have a female householder with no husband present, and 28.3% are non-families. 23.7% of all households are made up of individuals and 11.1% have someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size is 2.64 and the average family size is 3.11. In the town the population is spread out with 26.6% under the age of 18, 6.0% from 18 to 24, 28.6% from 25 to 44, 24.8% from 45 to 64, and 14.1% who are 65 years of age or older. The median age is 38 years. For every 100 females there are 89.9 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there are 93.0 males. The median income for a household in the town is $37,300, and the median income for a family is $42,273. Males have a median income of $30,433 versus $25,391 for females. The per capita income for the town is $17,044. 8.2% of the population and 5.3% of families are below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 14.1% of those under the age of 18 and 7.8% of those 65 and older are living below the poverty line. Communities and locations in the Town of Newport
Ferrel Corners
Martin Corner
Middleville, New York Part of the Village of Middleville.
Newport (village), New York The Village of Newport.
Poland, New York The south part of the Village of Poland.

2006-02-07T03:35:00.000-08:00

Sesquilinear-form

In mathematics, a sesquilinear form on a complex number vector space V is a map V � V C that is linear operator in one argument and antilinear in the other. (The name originates from the Latin root sesqui- meaning one and a half). Compare with a bilinear form, which is linear in both arguments. Conventions differ as to which argument should be antilinear. We take the first to be antilinear and the second to be linear. This is the physicists convention � originating in Paul Dirac bra-ket notation in quantum mechanics � but is becoming more popular among mathematicians as well. Specifically a map F V � V C is sesquilinear if

phi(x + y, z + w) phi(x, z) + phi(x, w) + phi(y, z) + phi(y, w),

phi(a x, y) bar{a}, phi(x,y)

phi(x, ay) a, phi(x,y)

for all x,y,z,w V and all a C. For a fixed z in V the map

w mapsto phi(z,w)

is a linear functional on V (i.e. an element of the dual space V). Likewise, the map

w mapsto phi(w,z)

is an antilinear functional on V. Given any sesquilinear form F on V we can define a second sesquilinear form via the conjugate transpose:

psi(w,z) overline{ phi(z,w)}

In general, and F will be different. If they are the same then F is said to be Hermitian. If they are negatives of one another, then F is said to be skew-Hermitian. Every sesquilinear form can be written as a sum of a Hermitian form and a skew-Hermitian form.

Hermitian forms

A Hermitian form (also called a symmetric sesquilinear form), is a sesquilinear form h V � V C such that

h(w,z) overline{h(z, w)}

The standard Hermitian form on Cⁿ is given by

langle w,z angle sum-{i 1}^n overline{w}-i z-i

More generally, the inner product on any Hilbert space is a Hermitian form. If V is a finite-dimensional space, then relative to any basis (linear algebra) {e_i} of V, a Hermitian form is represented by a Hermitian matrix H:

h(w,z) overline{ mathbf{w ^T mathbf{Hz}

The components of H are given by H_ij h(e_i e_j. The quadratic form assoctiated to a Hermitian form Q(z) h(z,z) is always real number. Actually one can show that a sesquilinear form is Hermitian iff the associated quadratic form is real for all z V.

Skew-Hermitian forms

A skew-Hermitian form (also called a antisymmetric sesquilinear form), is a sesquilinear form V � V C such that

varepsilon(w,z) - overline{ varepsilon(z, w)}

Every skew-Hermitian form can be written as imaginary unit times a Hermitian form. If V is a finite-dimensional space, then relative to any basis (linear algebra) {e_i} of V, a skew-Hermitian form is represented by a skew-Hermitian matrix A:

varepsilon(w,z) overline{ mathbf{w ^T mathbf{Az}

The quadratic form assoctiated to a skew-Hermitian form Q(z) (z,z) is always pure imaginary number.

2006-02-06T15:32:00.000-08:00

Youth-for-Understanding

Youth For Understanding (YFU) is a non-profit organisation which organizes high school and other student exchanges between countries all over the world, especially between the United States, Canada, Brasil, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, Russia, Finland, and Latvia. Its goal is to enhance an understanding of the host countrys culture as well as giving the host family a glance at the exchange students culture, thus promoting tolerance and peaceful global cooperation. See also: American Field Service

2006-02-06T03:33:00.000-08:00

Risk-free-interest-rate

The risk-free interest rate is the interest rate that it is assumed can be obtained by investment in financial instruments with no risk. Though a truly risk-free asset exists only in theory, in practice most professionals and academics use short-dated government bond (finance)s of the currency in question. For USD investments, usually Government of the United States treasury bills are used, whilst a common choice for EUR investments are German government treasury bonds. Those securities are considered to be risk-free because the likelihood of the government default (finance) is extremely low, and because the short maturity of the bill protects the investor from interest-rate risk that is present in all fixed-rate bonds. Since this interest rate can be obtained with no risk, it is implied that any additional risk taken by an investor should be rewarded with an interest rate higher than the risk free rate. The risk-free interest rate is thus of significant importance to Modern portfolio theory in general, and is an important assumption for Rational pricing. It is also a required input in financial calculations, such as the Black-Scholes formula for pricing stock options.

2006-02-05T15:33:00.000-08:00

Agfacolor

Agfacolor is a series of colour photograpic products produced by the Agfa company of Germany. It was originally introduced in 1932 as a screen plate version, similar to the Autochrome process, but in late 1936 Agfa introduced Agfacolor Neue. The new film was a tripack, like Kodachrome, introduced by Kodak the previous year. Unlike the Kodachrome tri-pack process however, the colour couplers were integral with the emulsion layers. (In Kodachrome the colour dyes have to be diffused into the film during development). This greatly simplified processing of the film.

reference

Coe Brian (1978) Colour Photography: the first hundred years 1840- 1940, Ash & Grant stub

2006-02-05T03:34:00.000-08:00

Spirit-rover-timeline-for-2004-January

Spirit rover timeline
Spirit rover timeline for 2004 January
Spirit rover timeline for 2004 February
Spirit rover timeline for 2004 March
Opportunity rover timeline
Opportunity rover timeline for 2004 January
Opportunity rover timeline for 2004 February
Opportunity rover timeline for 2004 March

landed Saturday 2004 January 3

January 3-January 4 (Time and date and astronomy on Mars 1 ends 2004-01-04 14:15 UTC) - JPL Images from 1/3/2004 20:35 PST - MER-A landed in Gusev (Mars crater) crater, however not exactly at its appointed landing spot within the crater (believed by scientists to once have been a crater lake). It later became apparent that the rover had landed six miles downrange from its planned landing site, but has landed in an area possibly even more favorable for the tests scientists want the rover to perform. A few hours after landing, first photography is received via relay through NASAs Mars Odyssey orbiter. first photography from nasa.gov Three descent images showed its progress as it came down. descent images from nasa.gov.

week starting 2004 January 5

January 5 (Sol 2 ends 2004-01-05 14:55 UTC) JPL Images from 1/5/2004 The lander locks on its high-gain antenna and begins transmitting color photographs directly to Earth. The first 3D Stereogram images are sent back from Spirit. Four of five planned tests on scientific instruments on MER-A have been successful, the fifth instrument test is expected to occur later tonight. See Mars Exploration Rover Mission Scientific instruments carried by the Rovers. January 6 (Sol 3 ends 2004-01-06 15:35 UTC) JPL Images from 1/6/2004 08:00 PST - President of the United States George W. Bush calls JPL to congratulate the MER team for a successful landing. The first high resolution, full color image is received from Spirit. the day, a series of high quality color images were sent from Spirit to NASA. During a news conference about the days events Steve Squyres, science chief of the MER mission said This is just a tiny taste of whats to come, referring to the first color images coming back. NASA Administrator Sean OKeefe today announced plans to name the landing site of the Mars Spirit rover in honor of the astronauts who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster of the Space Shuttle Columbia on February 1, 2003. The area in the vast flatland of the Gusev Crater where Spirit landed will be called the Columbia Memorial Station. A photo from Mars is released showing a memorial plaque mounted on Spirit in March 2003. 7 (Sol 4 ends 2004-01-07 16:14 UTC) JPL Images from 1/7/2004 09:00 PST - Daily news briefing broadcast from JPL over NASA TV. A few new images are released, mainly polished versions of earlier images. Events from Sol 4 are reviewed, including a diagnostic test of a high gain antenna motor voltage spike (which occurred on Sol 2), which did not show any problems and was attributed to debris in the antenna machine housing. Airbag retraction was continued on Sol 4. Sol 5 activities are discussed, scientists and engineers on the MER team are anxious to get Spirit separated from its lander and moving around the martian surface. A plot is released by JPL showing the Dust Optical depth of the Gusev (Mars crater) crater and Meridiani Planum areas of Mars. The plot shows a measure of the amount of dust in the martian atmosphere as taken by instruments on the orbiting Mars Global Surveyor satellite. Recent dust storms in December and January on Mars have greatly increased the amount of dust in the atmosphere around Meridiani Planum, the expected landing site of MER-As sister rover MER-B, landing 1/24/2004. It is unknown at this point if this increased dust activity will hinder Opportunitys mission. 8 (Sol 5 ends 2004-01-08 16:54 UTC) JPL Images from 1/8/2004 09:00 PST - Daily news briefing from JPL, apparently the activities to further retract the airbag under Spirits lander were unsuccessful. On Sol 6 JPL engineers will try 6 rotations to try and force the partially deflated airbags fully under the lander. If this attempt fails, Spirit may have to turn itself around on the lander and attempt egress via another route. Engineers will also begin Spirits two step lifting process to stand up on the lander. Step 1 is to raise Spirit up on its back 4 wheels, and Step 2 is to deploy the currently retracted front wheels. It is predicted that the airbag problem will delay Spirits egress from the lander to January 14 or later. Currently the plan is to lift landing petal on the lander that Spirit is preparing travel down and attempt to tuck the excess airbag material under the petal. 9 (Sol 6 ends 2004-01-09 17:33 UTC) JPL Images from 1/9/2004 During the night of Sol 6 Spirit successfully completed parts one and two of the stand up operation and now has its front wheels deployed and is almost ready to egress. Parts three and four of the stand up operation will be executed tonight. of data from Spirits Mini-TES were released attempt to pack the inflated airbags under the ramp petals of the lander failed. Now JPL engineers will attempt to turn the rover around while still on the lander and egress down one of the other ramps on the lander. This activity has been practiced before MER mission launch and is expected to work. January 10 (Sol 7 ends 2004-01-10 18:13 UTC) JPL Images from 1/10/2004 The Spirit Rover completed its stand up operation and is now standing with all six wheels deployed and locked, with one final connection between the lander and Spirit remaining. January 11 (Sol 8 ends 2004-01-11 18:52 UTC) JPL Images from 1/11/2004 At the conclusion of Sol 8 the Spirit Rovers science arm, which features tools for digging into and taking close up images of rocks, was moved from its stowed launch position to its forward drive position.

week starting 2004 January 12

January 12 (Sol 9 ends 2004-01-12 19:32 UTC) JPL Images from 1/12/2004 During Sol 9 the Spirit Rover performed science activities and returned data from the Pancam, completing the 360 panoramic image it took of its surroundings last week. Mini-TES data suggests more evidence that the Gusev site may have been a water filled lake. Engineers plan the egress operation Spirit will begin on Sol 10 using a replica of the Spirit rover and lander. The tests go well, and no problems are expected. January 13 (Sol 10 ends 2004-01-13 20:12 UTC) JPL Images from 1/13/2004 Sol 10 activities included successfully cutting the last link between the Spirit rover and lander. The first 45 degree turn was successful and the rover is preparing for egress. On Earth, mission details for the rovers exploration of the martian surface are being planned now that it is known exactly where Spirit is within Gusev (Mars crater) crater. January 14 (Sol 11 ends 2004-01-14 20:51 UTC) January 15 (Sol 12 ends 2004-01-15 21:31 UTC) Images from 1/15/2004 Spirit leaves the launch vehicle. January 16 (Sol 13 ends 2004-01-16 22:10 UTC) A 3-D perspective image is taken by the panoramic camera onboard the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit showing Adirondack, the rovers first target rock.

week starting 2004 January 19

January 20 (Sol 16 ends 2004-01-20 00:09 UTC) Images from 1/20/2004 NASA Mars Rover?s First Soil Analysis Yields Surprises Among these surprises, is the detection of olivine, which does not survive weathering well. January 21 (Sol 17 ends 2004-01-21 00:49 UTC) Spirit stops transmitting data and no longer responds to commands. January 22 (Sol 18 ends 2004-01-22 01:28 UTC) The rover radioed a 7.8 bit/s beep Thursday morning confirming that it had received a transmission from Earth. The 7.8 bit/s indicates that the spacecraft believes it is in a fault mode. Still, it has not returned any data since early Wednesday. Flight-team engineers for NASAs Mars Exploration Rover Project are working to diagnose the cause of communications difficulties. Project manager Pete Theisinger described the situation as a very serious anomaly. He did say however that If this problem on Spirit is somehow a software corruption issue, or memory corruption issue thats reflecting itself in software, and theres not a serious power fault, Spirit can go for quite a long time and we can pick up the pieces again. Steve Squyres, the Cornell University astronomy professor who heads the Mars missions science team, said Its cause for concern, certainly, but its not cause for alarm. Ive been in this business for almost 25 years now, and Ive been involved in over a dozen different planetary missions. I dont know of a single one that hasnt had a problem like this somewhere along the line, and I include in that list missions like Voyager program and Magellan probe that were spectacular successes. This kind of thing is part of the business of operating complicated spacecraft far from Earth. He continued stating that This vehicle knows how to protect itself when something goes wrong, and can do so for long periods of time. He concluded saying Im very optimistic that well get this straightened out, and get back to the business of exploring Gusev crater. The NASA team plans to instruct the craft to send back engineering data from Spirits onboard memory (for diagnostic purposes) and possibly send commands to restore normal communication at around 6 a.m. EST tomorrow. On NASA Television, JPL Director Charles Elachi said We are cautiously encouraged, and added It is a pretty smart machine that we have up there and the key thing that we are going to do next is to communicate with it tomorrow morning and ask it to send us some data down so we can do a diagnostic of whats the problem January 23 (Sol 19 ends 2004-01-23 02:08 UTC) NASAs Spirit rover communicated with Earth in a signal detected by NASAs Deep Space Network antenna complex near Madrid, Spain, at 12:34 Universal Time (4:34 a.m. PST) this morning. The transmissions came during a communication window about 90 minutes after Spirit woke up for the morning on Mars. The signal lasted for 10 minutes at a data rate of 10 bits per second. Mission controllers at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., plan to send commands to Spirit seeking additional data from the spacecraft during the subsequent few hours. flight team for NASAs Spirit received actual data from the rover in another communication session that began at 13:26 Universal Time (5:26 a.m. PST) and lasted 20 minutes at a data rate of 120 bits per second. before noon, controllers were surprised to receive a relay of data from Spirit via the Mars Odyssey orbiter. Spirit sent 73 megabits at a rate of 128 kilobits per second. At a news briefing, Pete Theisinger said, The software is in X-band fault mode. We surmise it got there because of some problem with the high-gain antenna pointing, and that is why the second High Gain Antenna pass on Wednesday did not work. It gives us a little bit of a tale-tell for what is going on with the processor now. But as I pointed out to you, the flight software is not functioning normally. The two times we have gone and communicated with the system, we have gotten different flight software behaviors. Therefore we do not have assurance the next time we go and ask for it we will get either one of those two behaviors or perhaps a third behavior. Later Theisinger said that the Spirit is in critical condition and stated that We do not know to what extent we can restore functionality to the system because we dont know whats broke. We dont know what started this chain of events. I think, personally, that is a sequence of things. And we dont know, therefore, the consequences of that. I think it is difficult, at this very preliminary stage, to assume that we did not have some type of hardware event that caused this to start. Therefore, we dont know to what extent we can work around that hardware event and to what extent we can get the software to ignore that hardware event, if that is what we eventually have to do. An anomaly team has been formed, completely separate from the Opportunity team. They will be working a schedule that will look like 0500 Mars Time to about 1500 Mars Time. At the press conference, Theisinger said that Spirit has been in a processor reset loop of some type, mostly since Wednesday, we believe, where the processor wakes up, loads the flight software, uncovers a condition that would cause it to reset. But the processor doesnt do that immediately. It waits for a period of time - at the beginning of the day it waits for 15 minutes twice and then for the rest of the day it waits for an hour - and then it resets and comes back up. He added that Spirits central computer has rebooted itself more than 60 times over the past two days. Theisinger also noted that The indications we have on two occasions is that the thing that causes the reset is not always perceived to be the same. At the press conference, two computer animations of Spirits landing were released. Also released was an image of Spirits landing site taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera on the Mars Global Surveyor. 24 (Sol 20 ends 2004-01-24 02:48) At a press conference which started at 3:00 EST, Theisinger says that the there is a problem with Spirits flash memory and the software that writes to it. The Spirit is in crippled mode and can operate using RAM instead of flash. In this mode, the rover has obeyed commands about communicating and going into sleep mode. Spirit communicated successfully at 120 bits per second for nearly an hour. The rover has been upgraded from critical to serious, said project manager Pete Theisinger. January 25 (Sol 21 ends 2004-01-25 03:27 UTC) At a press conference, Theisinger says that the NASA team been able to successfully run the first master sequence since the anomaly prevented the completion of a task on Wednesday. He adds that the team is moving towards regarding the situation as a guarded condition as opposed to the current serious condition. He says that the flash hardware is in fact believed to be working correctly but the file management module in the software is not robust enough for the operations the Spirit was engaged in when the problem occurred, indicating a software bug, as opposed to faulty hardware.

week starting 2004 January 26

January 27 (Sol 23 ends 2004-01-27 04:46 UTC) At todays 12:00 EST press conference, Jennifer Trosper explains the current situtation regarding Spirit: First comm window of the day is happening as we speak. Not a lot of new data yet. Subsystems all nominal. Batteries are in good shape. No degradation from discharge a couple nights ago. Thermal working. Today our intent was to try to get a trace of the task causing the problem. We dont have that data yet. Maybe at a later comm today. Weve done some analysis of data we already had on ground plus some testing in testbed. One data is the position of the HGA based on potentiometers. Rover doesnt rely on that, just for measurements. HGA was active when we started to get problems. We got info that in the mooring of sol 18 our comm dropped out 10 minutes early. As a result we attempted to command a HGA session. We saw nothing. It had a calibration where we move to hardstop and then track earth. Position now indicates that it only moved through calibration half way. Important because activity that started the reset was not in the HGA because it moved fully to the correct position after the reset problem. Thats good news. The other information we got was a result of running tests in our avionics test environment. Loading up a bunch of files. Couldnt reproduce it fully. Got some key aspects of the problem. Looking forward to getting more data down. Continuing to dump out the flash memory, get that data down. Yesterday only about 18.5 megabits. Expect to get 80 megabits today. January 29 (Sol 25 ends 2004-01-29 06:05 UTC) NASAs Mars Exploration Rover Spirit took and returned this image on January 28, 2004 (Sol 25), the first picture from Spirit since problems with communications began a week earlier. The image from the rovers front hazard identification camera shows the robotic arm extended to the rock called Adirondack. As it had been instructed a week earlier, the Mossbauer spectrometer, an instrument for identifying the minerals in rocks and soils, is still placed against the rock. Engineers are working to restore Spirit to working order so that the rover can resume the scientific exploration of its landing area. February 1 (Sol 28 ends 2004-02-01 08:04 UTC) After intensive diagnostic work, the working hypothesis is that Spirits problems were caused by the contents of the flash memory it uses for mission data storage causing Spirit to use all of its available RAM when mounting the flash memory. Work has commenced on fixing the problem.
MER-A timeline
MER-A timeline for 2004 January
MER-A timeline for 2004 February
MER-A timeline for 2004 March
MER-B timeline
MER-B timeline for 2004 January
MER-B timeline for 2004 February
MER-B timeline for 2004 March

2006-02-04T15:35:00.000-08:00

Lorentz-covariance

Lorentz covariance is a term in physics for the property of space time, that in two different frames of reference, located at the same event in spacetime but moving relative to each other, all non-gravitational laws must make the same predictions for identical experiments. A physical quantity is said to be Lorentz covariant if it transforms under a given group representation of the Lorentz group. Quantities which remain the same under Lorentz transformations are said to be Lorentz invariant (i.e. they transform under the trivial representation). According to the representation theory of the Lorentz group, Lorentz covariant quantities are built out of scalars, four-vectors, four-tensors, and spinors. The space-time interval is a Lorentz-invariant quantity, as is the Minkowski norm of any four-vector. Equations which are true in any inertial reference frame are also said to be Lorentz covariant (some use the term invariant here). Lorentz covariant equations can always be written in terms Lorentz covariant quantities. According to the principle of relativity all fundamental equations of physics must be Lorentz covariant. Note: this usage of the term covariant should not be confused with the related concept of a covariant vector. On manifolds, the words covariant and contravariant refer to how objects transform under general coordinate transformations. Confusingly, both covariant and contravariant four-vectors can be Lorentz covariant quantities.

Lorentz invariance and loop quantum gravity

Loop quantum gravity (LQG) is a quantization of a classical Lagrangian field theory. It is equivalent to the usual Einstein-Cartan theory in that it leads to the same equations of motion describing general relativity with torsion. As such, it can be argued that LQG respects local Lorentz invariance. Global Lorentz invariance is broken in LQG just like it is broken in general relativity (unless one is dealing with Minkowski spacetime, which is one particular solution of the Einstein field equations). On the other hand, there has been much talk about possible local and global violations of Lorentz invariance beyond those expected in straightforward general relativity. Of interest in this connection would be to see whether the LQG analogue of Minkowski spacetime breaks or preserves global lorentz invariance, and Carlo Rovelli and coworkers have recently been investigating the Minkowski state of LQG using spin-foam techniques. These questions will all remain open as long as the classical limits of various LQG models (see below for the sources of variation) cannot be calculated. Mathematically LQG is local gauge theory of the self-dual subgroup of the complexified Lorentz group, which is related to the action of the Lorentz group on Weyl spinors commonly used in elementary particle physics. This is partly a matter of mathematical convenience, as it results in a compact SO(3) or SU(2) gauge group as opposed to the non-compact SO(3,1) or SL(2.C). The compactness of the Lie group avoids some thus-far unsolved difficulties in the quantization of gauge theories of noncompact lie groups, and is responsible for the discreteness of the area and volume spectra. The infamous Immirzi parameter is necessary to resolve an ambiguity in the process of complexification. These are some of the many ways in which different quantizations of the same classical theory can result in inequivalent quantum theories, or even in the impossibility to carry quantization through. It should be pointed out that the reasons why one cant distinguish between SO(3) and SU(2) or between SO(3,1) and SL(2,C) at this level is that the respective Lie algebras are the same. In fact, all four groups have the same complexified Lie algebra, which makes matters even more confusing (these subtleties are usually ignored in elementary particle physics). The physical interpretation of the Lie algebra is that of infinitesimally small group transformations, and gauge bosons (such as the graviton) are Lie algebra representations, not Lie group representations. What this means for the Lorentz group is that, for sufficiently small velocity parameters, all four complexified Lie groups are indistinguishable in the absence of matter fields. To make matters more complicated, it can be shown that a positive cosmological constant can be realized in LQG by replacing the Lorentz group with the corresponding quantum group. At the level of the Lie algebra, this corresponds to what is called q-deforming the Lie algebra, and the parameter q is related to the value of the cosmological constant. The effect of replacing a Lie algebra by a q-deformed version is that the series of its representations is truncated (in the case of the rotation group, instead of having representations labelled by all half-integral spins, one is left with all representations with total spin j less than some constant). It is entirely possible to formulate LQG in terms of q-deformed Lie algebras instead of ordinary Lie algebras, and in the case of the Lorentz group the result would, again, be indistinguishable for sufficiently small velocity paramenters. In the spin-foam formalism the Barrett-Crane model, which was for a while the most promising state-sum model of 4D Lorentzian quantum gravity, was based on representations of the noncompact groups SO(3,1) or SL(2,C), so the spin foam faces (and hence the spin network edges) were labelled by positive real numbers as opposed to the half-integer labels of SU(2) spin networks. These and other considerations, including difficulties interpreting what it would mean to apply a Lorentz transformation to a spin network state, led Lee Smolin and others to suggest that spin network states must break Lorentz invariance. Lee Smolin and Joao Magueijo then went on to study doubly-special relativity, in which not only there is a constant velocity c but also a constant distance l. They showed that there are nonlinear representations of the Lorentz lie algebra with these properties (the usual Lorentz group being obtained from a linear representation). Doubly-special relativity predicts deviations from the special relativity dispersion relation at large energies (corresponding to small wavelengths of the order of the constant length l in the doubly-special theory). Giovanni Amelino-Camelia then proposed that the mystery of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays might be solved by assuming such violations of the special-relativity dispertion relation for photons. Phenomenological (hence, not specific to LQG) constraints on anomalous dispersion relations can be obtained by considering a variety of astrophysical experimental data, of which high-energy cosmic rays are but one part. Current observations are already able to place exceedingly stringent constraints on these phenomenological parameters.

2006-02-04T03:31:00.000-08:00

Removable-singularity

In complex analysis, a removable singularity of a function (mathematics) is a point at which the function is not defined (a mathematical singularity) but at which the function can be defined without creating any problems. Problems would be discontinuity or non-differentiability. For instance, the function f(z) sin(z)/z for z 0 has a removable singularity at z 0: we can define f(0) 1 and the resulting function will be continuous and even differentiable (a consequence of LHopitals rule). Formally, if U is an open subset of the complex plane C, a is an element of U and f U - {a} C is a holomorphic function, then z is called a removable singularity for f if there exists a holomorphic function g U C which coincides with f on U - {a}. Such a holomorphic function g exists if and only if the limit (mathematics) lim_za f(z) exists, this limit is then equal to g(a). Riemanns theorem on removable singularities states that the singularity a is removable if and only if there exists a neighborhood (topology) of a on which f is bounded. The removable singularities are precisely the pole (complex analysis)s of order 0. See also: analytic capacity

2006-02-03T15:33:00.000-08:00

Atlante-Internazionale-del-Touring-Club-Italiano

The Touring Club Italiano (TCI), the equivalent of the British Tourist Association, was founded in 1894. From early on TCI was occupied in producing road maps, guide books and atlases of all kind. In order to give Italy an extensive reference atlas modelled on foreign examples such as Stielers Atlas (Stielers Handatlas) in Germany, shortly after the Great War preparatory work to this end began under the direction Luigi Vittorio Bertarelli (founder of the TCI, 1859-1926) with collaboration of Olinto Marinelli as scientific editor and Pietro Corbellini as chief cartographer. The atlas, in which toponymy was based on the official language of each country, was presented to the public in 1927 as Atlante Internazionale del Touring Club Italiano, it had 169 leaves of maps, large folio format, and contained more than 200,000 entries. The second edition appeared already one year later and received the highest recognitions at the International Geographical Congress in Cambridge. Three more editions were issued up to World War 2. After the war the atlas maintained the same character with relief in the style of the great classic atlases (hachuring), in contrast to newly published works, that used isohypses (contour lines) to indicate altitudes. This, side by side with the superior typography of the hand-drawn type in the Atlante Internazionale, the lettering, gave the maps a very attractive appearance. The seventh edition was issued 1955/56, the last and eighth edition in 1968: an atlas of 50 x 32 centimetres with 94 tables, in total 173 pages of cartographic material, and an index, covering 250,000 geographical names, the map surface consisted of about 18 square metres The eighth edition was finally reprinted in 1978.

2006-02-02T13:06:00.000-08:00

Burt-Shevelove

Burt Shevelove (1915 - 8 April1981) was an United States musical theater writer, lyricist, librettist, and director..

Libretti

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum - 1962, revived 1972, 1996
No, No, Nanette - revisions made in 1971, from an original libretto by Otto Harbach and Frank Mandel
The Frogs - adapted from Aristophanes play in 1974, in 2004 Nathan Lane further adapted Sheveloves libretto for the works Broadway premiere
Happy New Year - 1980
Jerome Robbins Broadway - 1989, used some of Sheveloves A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum text

Directing

Small Wonder - 1948
Hallelujah, Baby - 1967
Rockefeller and the Red Indians - 1968
No, No, Nanette - 1971
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum - 1972
Stephen Sondheim: A Musical Tribute - 1973
Richard Rodgers & Lorenz Hart - 1975
So Long, 174th Street - 1976
Happy New Year -1980

Lyrics

Small Wonder - 1948

2006-02-01T12:43:00.000-08:00

EC

EC may stand for:
EC numbers (Enzyme Commission numbers) are used for the numerical classification of enzymes
Ecuador (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code)
Electron capture - a decay mode for chemical elements
Embedded C
Entertaining Comics
entorhinal cortex - important memory center in the brain
Eric Clapton
European Commission
European Community
European Council
Evolutionary computation
Coulomb (EC), an SI unit for electric charge equal to 10^{18 coulomb disambig}

2006-02-01T00:49:00.000-08:00

Ignacio-Zaragoza

Ignacio Segu�n Zaragoza (March 24, 1829 � September 8, 1862) was a Mexico general best known for his 1862 defeat of invading France forces in the Battle of Puebla on May 5 (the Cinco de Mayo). Zaragoza was born in the town of Presidio de la Bah�a del Esp�ritu Santo in what what was then the Mexican province of Texas, now the city of Goliad, Texas. Young Ignacio studied in the seminary of Matamoros, then moved to Monterrey, Mexico. During Mexicos political unrest of the 1850s Zaragoza joined the army supporting the cause of Mexicos Liberal Party, opposing dictator Antonio L�pez de Santa Anna. He played a part in several important victories which led to the reestablishment of a constitutional democratic government in Mexico. Zaragoza served as Secretary of War from April through October 1861 in the cabinet of President Benito Ju�rez. When the French forces of Napoleon III invaded Mexico, Zaragoza fought them, first engaging the French at Acultzingo on April 28, 1862, where he was forced to withdraw. Zaragoza understood the favorable defensive position outside of the city of Puebla, where with a smaller and more poorly equipped force he beat back repeated French assaults on May 5th. The French then retreated to Orizaba. Ignacio Zaragoza was known for visiting his sick and injured soldiers, and shortly after his famous victory he contracted typhus, of which he died at the age of 33. See also: History of Mexico