Owning a Private Island: Far From a Dream

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eratapAs the Chinese economy continues to grow in leaps and bounds more and more Chinese are exploring the Private Island Market. More and more English Chinese news outlets are running stories about the privilege of private island ownership and travel. Here is what one article recently had to say.

 

“Owning one’s own private island is a fantasy for many people, poor and wealthy alike. For some people, it’s even a realistic possibility. Is it a risky investment or a lucrative strategy?

For many of China’s wealthy, owning a private island has become a reality as a result of China’s April listing of 176 uninhabited islands available for lease and development.”

To read the rest of the article visit Xinhua.net

need help a.s.a.p

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I have 2 black bags of money. I was looking for anyone who is willing to help me to wash all the money-this money because I already store more than one year. hopefully anyone who is willing, can come see me perform. If successful cleaning of all the money .. I will pay you for a lucrative

Doyle Rotary News Updates

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I have been posting updates on the DRE homepage about the various media reports about the engine. Most recently my dad and the engine were featured on energyNOW! on the Bloomberg channel. The updates also include links to the Popular Mechanics article that was posted this last week and to an article

The fiscal conservative argument for Legalized Prostitution

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From Eric Dondero:

Legal brothels are a cash boom for Nevada's rural counties. A brothel owner makes the case, you close down the cathouses, you will need to close down the fire departments, police protection and a vast number of city services soon thereafter.

And from the individual liberty perspective, one prostitute reacts to Democrat Harry Reid's recent appeal to the state legislature to outlaw the practice statewide:

"My first reaction was, why is my elected official trying to make me a criminal? I was shocked hurt, felt disrspected."

Orifice straight run requiremnts

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Could someone please tell me how to calculate straight run for orifice with more than 2 fittings preceding it?

As per my intrepretation of ISO 5167-2, when we have 2 fittings preceding the orifice, the straight length req is either the straight length req for fiitting 2 with the beta ratio of the a

Happy Birthday David Hume | Cosmic Variance

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David Hume, famous scolder of those who would derive “ought” from “is,” was born 300 years ago today. In point of fact Hume, while not enjoying the name recognition of Plato/Aristotle/Descartes/Kant, is certainly in the running for greatest philosopher of all time. He was a careful thinker, resistant to dogmatic answers, and a relatively sprightly writer as philosophers go. An empiricist who was as persuasive about the temptations of radical epistemological skepticism as anyone, but was still able to resist them. His tercentenary is well worth celebrating.

Dan Sperber, via Henry Farrell, suggests that we celebrate by posting quotes from Hume. When I first encountered him as a college freshman, it was in the context of a theology course where we were reading Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. I was intrigued when our professor pointed out a passage that seemed to prefigure Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which wasn’t going to appear until 82 years later. My dog-eared copy seems to have gone missing, but I found the quote at The Rough Guide to Evolution.

“And this very consideration too, continued PHILO, which we have stumbled on in the course of the argument, suggests a new hypothesis of cosmogony, that is not absolutely absurd and improbable. Is there a system, an order, an economy of things, by which matter can preserve that perpetual agitation which seems essential to it, and yet maintain a constancy in the forms which it produces? There certainly is such an economy; for this is actually the case with the present world. The continual motion of matter, therefore, in less than infinite transpositions, must produce this economy or order; and by its very nature, that order, when once established, supports itself, for many ages, if not to eternity.

But wherever matter is so poised, arranged, and adjusted, as to continue in perpetual motion, and yet preserve a constancy in the forms, its situation must, of necessity, have all the same appearance of art and contrivance which we observe at present. All the parts of each form must have a relation to each other, and to the whole; and the whole itself must have a relation to the other parts of the universe; to the element in which the form subsists; to the materials with which it repairs its waste and decay; and to every other form which is hostile or friendly. A defect in any of these particulars destroys the form; and the matter of which it is composed is again set loose, and is thrown into irregular motions and fermentations, till it unite itself to some other regular form.”

To me now, it looks like something of a cross between Darwin — successful forms persevering among the chaos — and the Lucretius/Boltzmann scenario of the universe coming into existence through the random motion of atoms. (What makes Lucretius and Hume brilliant thinkers but Boltzmann and Darwin influential scientists is that the latter grappled closely with data, not just with ideas.)

The common thread among all these thinkers: trying to explain the origins of order in the absence of teleology. The fact that we can do that successfully in biology, and are hot on the trail in cosmology, is a milestone achievement in the history of human thought.


Lautoka, Fiji Islands

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Fiji's second city, Lautoka, is a likable place with a row of towering royal palms lining the main street and a lovely seaside walk along Marine Drive.

How Lunar Orbiter Images Were Recorded 45 Years Ago

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How Lunar Orbiter Images Were Recorded 45 Years Ago

April 1967: "Fifty Years of Data in One Week: Recently, Oran W. Nicks, NASA's Director of Lunar and Planetary Programs, remarked: "one astronomer has said that more information has been obtained in the first seven days of the Lunar Orbiter I project than in the last 50 years of study of the Moon." Truly, the matchless cooperation and inspired creativity exhibited in the design and construction of Lunar Orbiter spacecraft and, supporting equipment by NASA, the scientific community, and American industry has helped us to take those longer-strides that President Kennedy called for in 1961 when he first spoke of the Apollo landing of a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the earth."

Boccioni’s Portrait of Signora Cragnolini Fanna on display for limited time

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Umberto Boccioni’s Ritratto della Signora Cragnolini Fanna (1916)
from the collection of Margherita Sarfatti

May 4-14, 2011
Galleria Russo, Milan

Il 4 maggio 2011 alle ore 19,00 l’opera Ritratto della Signora Cragnolini Fanna di Umberto Boccioni verrà presentata durante un’esclusiva serata ad inviti presso la Galleria Russo::Asso di Quadri di Milano (via dell’Orso 12). L’opera, una delle ultime realizzate dall’artista a pochi mesi di distanza dalla sua tragica scomparsa, proviene dalla collezione di Margherita Sarfatti, importante figura di riferimento della scena artistica italiana. Datata 1916 l’opera è citata, in un elenco autografo dello stesso Boccioni, come di proprietà di Antonio Fanna, di Milano. Se nella gamma coloristica il dipinto risente ancora dell’impronta futurista, nell’impianto compositivo come nella scomposizione delle masse, Boccioni conferma il tentativo di assimilare la tradizione del post impressionismo francese e di Cézanne in particolare, secondo un processo creativo avviato dall’artista già da qualche tempo. Un’occasione unica per vedere una delle opere più importanti di Umberto Boccioni.

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