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Chase Freedom: Cash Back Credit Card | Chase.com

Posted on May 11, 2018 by jessica

Siempre acumula un 1% de reembolso en efectivo ILIMITADO en todas las dems compras5

1 Para obtener ms informacin, consulte Chase Freedom opens new windowPreguntas Frecuentes.

2 Incluye las transacciones realizadas usando su tarjeta Chase Freedom con PayPal para compras o envo de dinero. Solo las transacciones elegibles califican para un total del 5% de recompensas de reembolso en efectivo. Las compras realizadas usando PayPal en otras categoras trimestrales actuales del 5% recibirn un total del 5% de recompensas de reembolso en efectivo hasta un mximo de $1,500 en compras combinadas. Cuando enva dinero a amigos y familia a travs de PayPal utilizando su tarjeta Chase Freedom, se aplican los cargos estndar de transaccin. Consulte opens overlaylos cargos de PayPal. Las pginas de Internet y otra informacin proporcionada por PayPal no estn bajo el control de Chase y es posible que no estn disponibles en espaol. Debe abrir o tener abierta una cuenta de PayPal para enviar y recibir dinero.

3 No incluye compras realizadas en Walmart o Target, tiendas de descuento o clubes de almacn, excepto por las compras realizadas con estos comercios utilizando Chase Pay o PayPal (una categora del 5%). Si no utiliza Chase Pay o PayPal, seguir acumulando el 1% de reembolso en efectivo ilimitado en estas compras.

4 Incluye las compras realizadas usando su tarjeta Freedom con su billetera mvil Chase Pay al finalizar la compra. Solo las compras elegibles califican para un total del 5% de recompensas de reembolso en efectivo. Las compras realizadas usando Chase Pay en otras categoras trimestrales actuales del 5% recibirn un total del 5% de recompensas de reembolso en efectivo hasta un mximo de $1,500 en compras combinadas.

5 Consulte el Contrato del Programa de Recompensas para ms detalles.

Los comercios indicados no estn de ninguna manera afiliados con Chase, ni los comercios indicados se consideran patrocinadores o copatrocinadores de este programa. Todas las marcas comerciales son propiedad de sus respectivos dueos.

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Chase Freedom: Cash Back Credit Card | Chase.com

freedom | Definition of freedom in English by Oxford …

Posted on May 11, 2018 by jessica

nounmass noun

1The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants.

we do have some freedom of choice

count noun he talked of revoking some of the freedoms

More example sentences

he was a champion of Irish freedom

More example sentences

Synonyms

independence, self-government, self-determination, self-legislation, self rule, home rule, sovereignty, autonomy, autarky, democracy

Example sentences

Synonyms

scope, latitude, leeway, margin, flexibility, facility, space, breathing space, room, elbow room

2The state of not being imprisoned or enslaved.

the shark thrashed its way to freedom

More example sentences

Synonyms

liberty, liberation, release, emancipation, deliverance, delivery, discharge, non-confinement, extrication

the shorts have a side split for freedom of movement

More example sentences

the dog has the freedom of the house when we are out

More example sentences

3freedom fromThe state of not being subject to or affected by (something undesirable)

government policies to achieve freedom from want

More example sentences

Synonyms

exemption, immunity, dispensation, exception, exclusion, release, relief, reprieve, absolution, exoneration

4the freedom of British A special privilege or right of access, especially that of full citizenship of a city granted to a public figure as an honour.

he accepted the freedom of the City of Glasgow

More example sentences

5archaic Familiarity or openness in speech or behaviour.

Example sentences

Synonyms

naturalness, openness, lack of inhibition, lack of reserve, casualness, informality, lack of ceremony, spontaneity, ingenuousness

impudence

Old English frodm (see free, -dom).

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freedom | Definition of freedom in English by Oxford ...

The Epic Relation Between Bitcoin and the Stock Market

Posted on May 11, 2018 by ev1

Bitcoin Prices Are Less Independent Than You Think
Inside the world of cryptocurrencies, some truths go unquestioned: 1) centralization is terrible, 2) fixed money supplies are great, 3) cryptocurrencies are uncorrelated from stocks.

The last “truth” is now in question.

Many analysts, myself included, have raised questions about Bitcoin following the stock market before, but none of us made the case as strongly as Forbes contributor Clem Chambers.

Chambers recently used intraday trade charts to show that Bitcoin prices often follow the same patterns as the Dow Jones Index. (Source: ".

The post The Epic Relation Between Bitcoin and the Stock Market appeared first on Profit Confidential.

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The Epic Relation Between Bitcoin and the Stock Market

College of Arts and Humanities The central page for the …

Posted on May 11, 2018 by ev1

Creativity. Culture. Collaboration.College of Arts and Humanities

The arts and humanities fuel innovation across the university by the creative process itself. The arts and humanities help our students see the world through different lenses. They are where you learn to write and communicate more effectively, explore creativity, and study culture to better understand how we interact with each other."

Dean Jeff Moore

Learn More

May 4

Carissa Baker is a professor at Seminole State College, founding member of the LGBT Scholarship Committee and embodies the innovative climate at UCF

May 3

Music MA graduate Arleen Ramirez didnt know the full strength of her music until it mattered the most.

May 2

Aquifer: The Florida Review Online from the Department of English has been named a finalist in the Best Debut Magazine category of Community of Literary Magazines and Presses Firecracker Awards.

May 1

The app Boo Boo Snap, which projects 3D images, talking characters and medical advice onto regular bandages, has been awarded first place by a panel of medical experts and game developers.

Extropy: The UCF Biannual BFA Exhibition celebrates the work of 54 graduating BFA students from the UCF School of Visual Arts and Design. Extropy will be featuring various forms o...

The Department of Philosophy will be conducting on-campus interviews for potential candidates for adistinguished professor position within the Religion and Cultural Studies program. Part of...

Two men communicate through thoughts in an intuitive yoga class, questioning their shame, self-worth and pride.By Sofya Levitsky-WeitzDirected by Cynthia WhitePart of Pe...

The College of Arts and Humanities is home to a diverse range of disciplines, centers, and institutes, which allows for both immersive training in a single area and collaborative, interdisciplinary activities.

The college has more than 120 of degree programs and areas of study

College of Arts and Humanities The central page for the ...

Hedonism Wines Hedonism Wines

Posted on May 9, 2018 by Danzig

Established in August 2012 & located in the heart of Londons Mayfair, Hedonism is a fine wine& spirits boutique which has already become the most talked about wine project of recent times.

The hedonistic way of thinking originated in the early Greek philosophic schools where it was believed that pleasure was the only intrinsic good. However, we firmlybelieve that there are many things which one should enjoy in life& with the word hedonism frequently used in tasting notes wine is certainly one of them. What better name for a shop which stocks the finest& rarest wines& spirits?

The UKs best buyers have sourced around 6,500 wines& 3,000 spirits, taking the crme de la crme from each region of the world whilst carefully checking the provenance of every bottle.

From classics including the Macallan 1946 Select Reserve, Highland Park 50YO,Ararat Noyan Tapan 70YO & a magnum of Domaine delaRomane ContiRomaneConti 1966toavast collection ofthe outrageous& quirky Sine Qua Non, acomplete vertical ofMasseto, Torbreck The Laird 2006 ina spectacular27-litre bottle& a whole host of old & rare liqueurs, gins & vodkas.

We are also delighted to offer guests the opportunity to sample nearly 50 wines on site using our 5 Enomatic machines. Tasting highlights in the past have included Screaming Eagle 2010, Latour 1996, 2002 & 2008, Lafite-Rothschild 1959 & 2004, Chteau Rayas 2005, Sine Qua Non Midnight Oil, Atlantis Syrah, B20, Sublime Isolation, Hoodoo Man & The Monkey, Masseto 1994 & 2002, Chteau d'Yquem 1981, 1983, 1999 & 2001, Gaja Barbaresco 1985 & many more...

Alongside this, we also regularly host tastings with top winemakers & distillers giving guests a unique insight in the production, history & expertise in each & every bottle on our shelves. Over the years, we have been lucky to welcome some of the stars of the wine & spirits world to the shop & have hosted such tastings as Harlan Estate with Don Weaver, Screaming Eagle with Mary Margaret McCamic MW, Chteau Haut Brion with Prince Robert of Luxembourg, The Balvenie with Kirsten Grant, Dom Prignon with Richard Geoffroy &Staglin with Garen & Shari Staglin.

Each ofour guests can expect toreceive the very highest level ofcustomer service from our dedicated wine specialists, many ofwhom are former sommeliers from top Michelin starred restaurants. With apassion for Hedonism project our extremely friendly& knowledgeable team understand how tomake our guests feel welcome. They are always looking tobehelpful& gothe extra mile. In line with this, we also offer expressshipping to over 60 countries worldwide & delivery within the hour in central London.

Furthermore, if(although highly unlikely) wedonot have the bottle you are after, wewill try our very hardest tosource itfor you.

Should you wish your wine tobedelivered toyou either inLondon, theUK oroverseas wewill get ittoyou asquickly and carefully aspossible. With deliveries within one hour incentral London, our wine specialists are also available tocome toyou should you need their advice and expertise.

Given that itmight take some time tobrowse our entire collection, donot beafraid tobring your children with you asthey can have fun inour kids area. With parking always being aproblem wehave spaces for Hedonism Wines guests.

Being a team of perfectionists, we wanted to create the leading wine shop in the world and, as such, we have made no compromises in terms of quality. Our space is fully temperature& humidity controlled with heat free lights in order to keep the wines in pristine condition. However, please do not worryto keep warm you can wrap up in a nice throw& taste some exquisite fine wines from our Enomatic machines at our cosy tasting table.

Since 2012, we have been nominated for & won many awards for our selection of wines & spirits & our customer service, these include Drinks Retailing Awards' Independent Wine Retailer of the Year 2015, Mayfair Awards' Best Speciality Food & Beverage Store 2014 & 2015, Decanter Awards' London Wine Merchant of the Year 2013 & Luxury Retailer of the Year 2017 & The Drinks Business Awards' Independent Retailer of the Year 2015.

We look forward to seeing you in our beautiful store in the near future & helping you find that perfect bottle, whatever your tastes & whatever your preference.

Originally posted here:

Hedonism Wines Hedonism Wines

The cartoon that sums up the world’s ‘migrant crisis …

Posted on May 9, 2018 by ev1

In recent months, Europe has looked on with horror at the deaths of thousands of people in the Mediterranean as they drowned trying to make their way from the Middle East and North Africa into the EU.

Many people have been left alienated by the rhetoric surrounding the story, from accusations of hate speech directed at Sun columnist Katie Hopkins to home secretary Theresa May confirming she wanted to return people fleeing their own countries back to where they came from.

The below cartoon has been shared a lot on social media in relation to the deaths in the Mediterranean.

But the cartoon is actually from 2014 and from Australian cartoonist Simon Kneebone, who drew it in response to boats of people trying to reach Australia from Indonesia.

Sadly, the cartoon could just as easily be applied to the thousands of Rohingya migrants - Burmese Muslims - stranded on boats in the Andaman Sea.

i100.co.uk spoke to Simon to talk about the cartoon, the issues surrounding it, and why it still resonates with people.

What prompted you to draw the cartoon?

"In recent years there have been many boatloads of people, originally from Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and now Syria attempting to reach Australia from Indonesia. There have been incidents that have shown just how dangerous the voyage could be - a film of a boat breaking up on rocks at Christmas Island in a storm, refugees struggling in the waves, is hard to forget. However, what inspired the cartoon was the hardening attitude shown by our government in talking about these people. Slogans like 'stop the boats' morphed into 'turn back the boats'; refugees, if they did get picked up, would be sent to offshore detention centres and told that they could expect never to be resettled in Australia. To me this attitude purposely ignored the actual people who were driven to leave their homes, family, culture and former lives. I don't think anyone would do that lightly. So the cartoon tried to take a step back, and show that we are all humans on a small planet, trying to hang on."

Are you surprised that a year on, the issue has gotten so much worse?

"It is depressing, but not surprising. I think that the causes of these great movements of people escaping terrible circumstances, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for example, have radiated seismic waves of social collapse that are going to be harder than ever to repair. An unfortunate outcome is that life has become devalued. People have become commodities, trafficked by the disposable boatload, tainted as 'economic migrants' because they paid the traffickers."

Why do you think your cartoon is being shared again now?

"The issues are complicated and complex. I think that we perhaps have mixed emotions, that we might not always be comfortable with. We feel for the refugees but are threatened a bit as well. The cartoon sidesteps getting bogged down in the angst, and says simply that we all fellow humans on this planet And where we happen to be on the planet isn't that important. I think it is being shared because it resonates with our inner human."

Do you think labels such as 'migrants' or headlines like 'Europe's migration crisis' obscure people's humanity?

"These labels do carry a lot of assumptions - 'migrant' and 'economic migrant' do imply self-determination and financial motivation - upwardly mobile go-getters! They do not explain the reasons why people are heading for Europe (or Australia). Here in Australia 'asylum seeker' is not used, nicely removing the idea that anyone would be seeking asylum. The media cannot speak directly to the refugees. We do not hear their stories and they are anonymous."

The cartoon tried to take a step back, and show that we are all humans on a small planet, trying to hang on.

How is the issue perceived in Australia, as compared to Europe?

"The Australian government's tough stance does resonate with quite a lot of people I suspect. John Howard, a former prime minister said 'we will determine who comes here', which was a 'are you with us or against us?' type of statement. That sort of thing helps some people decide what they think! It is uncomfortable to see other countries in SE Asia using the Australian policy as justification for their treatment of the refugee boats from Myanmar. The attitude in Europe does seem more generous and humanitarian. I do feel that, given the opportunity, very many Australians would welcome and support refugees who came by boat (as we do the refugees who come through the official system). We did have a detention centre a few miles from where I live. There was opposition to it at first, but that waned as the children settled into local schools and the community became involved in various ways. When it was closed, and the refugees moved, there was strong community anger. The local politician explained on radio that as they had stopped the boats they could no longer 'get the stock'."

For more information about what you can do to stop people drowning in the Mediterranean, visit Amnesty International's 'Don't Let Them Drown' campaign page.

Thanks to Simon Kneebone for permission to reproduce the cartoon.

All other images via Getty.

More: [How different European countries feel about helping migrants, in one graphic]3

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The cartoon that sums up the world's 'migrant crisis ...

Progress (history) – Wikipedia

Posted on May 9, 2018 by jessica

In historiography, progress (from Latin progressus, "advance", "(a) step onwards") is the study of how specific societies improved over time in terms of science, technology, modernization, liberty, democracy, longevity, quality of life, freedom from pollution and so on. Specific indicators can range from economic data, technical innovations, change in the political or legal system, and questions bearing on individual life chances, such as life expectancy and risk of disease and disability.

Many high-level theories, such as the Idea of Progress are available, such as the Western notion of monotonic change in a straight, linear fashion. Alternative conceptions exist, such as the cyclic theory of eternal return, or the "spiral-shaped" dialectic progress of Hegel, Marx, et al.

Historian J. B. Bury argued that thought in ancient Greece was dominated by the theory of world-cycles or the doctrine of eternal return, and was steeped in a belief parallel to the Judaic "fall of man," but rather from a preceding "Golden Age" of innocence and simplicity. Time was generally regarded as the enemy of humanity which depreciates the value of the world. He credits the Epicureans with having had a potential for leading to the foundation of a theory of Progress through their materialistic acceptance of the atomism of Democritus as the explanation for a world without an intervening Deity.

Robert Nisbet and Gertrude Himmelfarb have attributed a notion of progress to other Greeks. Xenophanes said "The gods did not reveal to men all things in the beginning, but men through their own search find in the course of time that which is better." Plato's Book III of The Laws depicts humanity's progress from a state of nature to the higher levels of culture, economy, and polity. Plato's The Statesman also outlines a historical account of the progress of mankind.

During the Medieval period, science was to a large extent based on Scholastic (a method of thinking and learning from the Middle Ages) interpretations of Aristotle's work. The Renaissance of the 15th, 16th and 17th Centuries changed the mindset in Europe towards an empirical view, based on a pantheistic interpretation of Plato. This induced a revolution in curiosity about nature in general and scientific advance, which opened the gates for technical and economic advance. Furthermore, the individual potential was seen as a never-ending quest for being God-like, paving the way for a view of Man based on unlimited perfection and progress.[1]

The scientific advances of the 16th and 17th centuries provided a basis for the optimistic outlook of Bacon's 'New Atlantis.' In the 17th century Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle argued in favor of progress with respect to arts and the sciences, saying that each age has the advantage of not having to rediscover what was accomplished in preceding ages. The epistemology of John Locke provided support and was popularized by the Encyclopedists Diderot, Holbach, and Condorcet. Locke had a powerful influence on the American Founding Fathers.[2]

In the Enlightenment, French historian and philosopher Voltaire (16941778) was a major proponent of the possibility of progress. At first Voltaire's thought was informed by the Idea of Progress coupled with rationalism. His subsequent notion of the historical idea of progress saw science and reason as the driving forces behind societal advancement. The first complete statement of progress is that of Turgot, in his "A Philosophical Review of the Successive Advances of the Human Mind" (1750). For Turgot progress covers not simply the arts and sciences but, on their base, the whole of culturemanner, mores, institutions, legal codes, economy, and society.[3]

Immanuel Kant (17241804), the German philosopher, argued that progress is neither automatic nor continuous and does not measure knowledge or wealth, but is a painful and largely inadvertent passage from barbarism through civilization toward enlightened culture and the abolition of war. Kant called for education, with the education of humankind seen as a slow process whereby world history propels mankind toward peace through war, international commerce, and enlightened self-interest.[4]

Scottish theorist Adam Ferguson (17231816) defined human progress as the working out of a divine plan. The difficulties and dangers of life provided the necessary stimuli for human development, while the uniquely human ability to evaluate led to ambition and the conscious striving for excellence. But he never adequately analyzed the competitive and aggressive consequences stemming from his emphasis on ambition even though he envisioned man's lot as a perpetual striving with no earthly culmination. Man found his happiness only in effort.[5]

The intellectual leaders of the American Revolution, such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, were immersed in Enlightenment thought and believed the idea of progress meant that they could reorganize the political system to the benefit of the human condition; both for Americans and also, as Jefferson put it, for an "Empire of Liberty" that would benefit all mankind. Thus was born the idea of inevitable American future progress.

The most original 'New World' contribution to historical thought was the idea that history is not exhausted but that man may begin again in a new world. Besides rejecting the lessons of the past, the Jeffersonians Americanized the idea of progress by democratizing and vulgarizing it to include the welfare of the common man as a form of republicanism. As Romantics deeply concerned with the past, collecting source materials and founding historical societies, the Founding Fathers were animated by clear principles. They saw man in control of his destiny, saw virtue as a distinguishing characteristic of a republic, and were concerned with happiness, progress, and prosperity. Thomas Paine, combining the spirit of rationalism and romanticism, pictured a time when America's innocence would sound like a romance, and concluded that the fall of America could mark the end of 'the noblest work of human wisdom.'[6]

That human liberty was put on the agenda of fundamental concerns of the modern world was recognized by the revolutionaries as well as by many British commentators. Yet, within two years after the adoption of the Constitution, the American Revolution had to share the spotlight with the French Revolution. The American Revolution was eclipsed, and, in the 20th century, lost its appeal even for subject peoples involved in similar movements for self-determination. Thus, its life as a model for political revolutions was relatively short. The reason for this development lies in the fact that its concerns and preoccupations were overwhelmingly political; economic demands and social unrest remained largely peripheral. After the middle of the 19th century, all political revolutions would ultimately have to involve themselves with social questions and become revolutions of modernization. But the American Colonies in the 1770s, in contrast to all other colonies, had been modern from the beginning. The American patriots were protecting the modernity and liberty they had already achieved, while later revolutions were fighting to obtain liberty for the first time. However, since so few modern revolutions have evinced much concern for the preservation and extension of human freedom, the American model may still come to provide a lesson for the future.[7]

Social progress is the idea that societies can or do improve in terms of their social, political, and economic structures. The concept of social progress was introduced in the early 19th century social theories, especially those of social evolutionists like Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer. It was present in the Enlightenment's philosophies of history.

In Europe's Enlightenment, social commentators and philosophers began to realize that people themselves could change society and change their way of life. Instead of being made completely by gods, there was increasing room for the idea that people themselves made their own society - and not only that, as Giambattista Vico argued, because people practically made their own society, they could also fully comprehend it. This gave rise to new sciences, or proto-sciences, which claimed to provide new scientific knowledge about what society was like, and how one may change it for the better.[8] In turn, this gave rise to progressive opinion, in contrast with conservative opinion, according to which attempts to radically remake society normally make things worse.

GDP growth has become a key orientation for politics and is often taken as a key figure to evaluate a politician's performance. However, GDP has a number of flaws that make it a bad measure of progress, especially for developed countries. For example, environmental damage is not taken into account nor is the sustainability of economic activity. Wikiprogress has been set up to share information on evaluating societal progress. It aims to facilitate the exchange of ideas, initiatives and knowledge. HumanProgress.org is another online resource that seeks to compile data on different measures of societal progress.

Scientific progress is the idea that science increases its problem solving ability through the application of the scientific method.

Several philosophers of science have supported arguments that the progress of science is discontinuous. In that case, progress is not a continuous accumulation, but rather a revolutionary process where brand new ideas are adopted and old ideas become abandoned. Thomas Kuhn was a major proponent of this model of scientific progress, as explained in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Another model of scientific progress, as put forward by Richard Boyd, and others, is history of science as a model of scientific progress. In short, methods in science are produced which are used to produce scientific theories, which then are used to produce more methods, which are then used to produce more theories and so on.

Note that this does not conflict with a continuous or discontinuous model of scientific progress. This model supports realism in that scientists are always working within the same universe; their theories must be referring to real objects, because they create theories that refer to actual objects that are used later in methods to produce new theories.

A prominent question in metaphilosophy is that of whether or not philosophical progress occurs, and more so, whether such progress in philosophy is even possible. It has even been disputed, most notably by Ludwig Wittgenstein, whether genuine philosophical problems actually exist. The opposite has also been claimed, most notably by Karl Popper, who held that such problems do exist, that they are solvable, and that he had actually found definite solutions to some of them.

Some philosophers believe that, unlike scientific or mathematical problems, no philosophical problem is truly solvable in the conventional sense, but rather problems in philosophy are often refined rather than solved. For example, Bertrand Russell, in his 1912 book The Problems of Philosophy says: "Philosophy is to be studied not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves."[9]

However, this is not universally accepted amongst philosophers. For example, Martin Cohen, in his 1999 iconoclastic account of philosophy, 101 Philosophy Problems, offers as the penultimate problem, the question of whether or not 'The problem with philosophy problems is that they don't have proper solutions'. He goes on to argue that there is a fundamental divide in philosophy between those who think philosophy is about clarification and those who think it is about recognising complexity.

In historiography, the "Idea of Progress" is the theory that advances in technology, science, and social organization inevitably produce an improvement in the human condition. That is, people can become happier in terms of quality of life (social progress) through economic development and the application of science and technology (scientific progress). The assumption is that the process will happen once people apply their reason and skills, for it is not divinely foreordained. The role of the expert is to identify hindrances that slow or neutralize progress.

Historian J. B. Bury wrote in 1920:[10]

Sociologist Robert Nisbet finds that "No single idea has been more important than [...] the Idea of Progress in Western civilization for three thousand years.",[11] and defines five "crucial premises" of Idea of Progress:

The Idea of Progress emerged primarily in the Enlightenment in the 18th century, although some scholars like Nisbet (1980) have traced it to ancient Christian notions.[12] The theory of evolution in the nineteenth century made progress a necessary law of nature and gave the doctrine its first conscious scientific form. The idea was challenged by the 20th century realization that destruction, as in the two world wars, could grow out of technical progress.

The Idea of Progress was promoted by classical liberals in the 19th century, who called for the rapid modernization of the economy and society to remove the traditional hindrances to free markets and free movements of people. John Stuart Mill's (18061873) ethical and political thought assumed a great faith in the power of ideas and of intellectual education for improving human nature or behavior. For those who do not share this faith the very idea of progress becomes questionable.[13]

The influential English philosopher Herbert Spencer (18201903) in The Principles of Sociology (1876) and The Principles of Ethics (1879) proclaimed a universal law of socio-political development: societies moved from a military organization to a base in industrial production. As society evolved, he argued, there would be greater individualism, greater altruism, greater co-operation, and a more equal freedom for everyone. The laws of human society would produce the changes, and he said the only roles for government were military, police, and enforcement of civil contracts in courts. Many libertarians adopted his perspective.[14]

The history of the idea of Progress has been treated briefly and partially by various French writers; e.g. Comte, Cours de philosophie positive, vi. 321 sqq.; Buchez, Introduction a la science de l'histoire, i. 99 sqq. (ed. 2, 1842); Javary, De l'idee de progres (1850); Rigault, Histoire de la querelle des Anciens et des Modernes (1856); Bouillier, Histoire de la philosophie cartesienne (1854); Caro, Problemes de la morale sociale (1876); Brunetiere, "La Formation de l'idee de progres", in Etudes critiques, 5e serie. More recently M. Jules Delvaille has attempted to trace its history fully, down to the end of the eighteenth century. His Histoire de l'idee de progres (1910) is planned on a large scale; he is erudite and has read extensively. But his treatment is lacking in the power of discrimination. He strikes one as anxious to bring within his net, as theoriciens du progres, as many distinguished thinkers as possible; and so, along with a great deal that is useful and relevant, we also find in his book much that is irrelevant. He has not clearly seen that the distinctive idea of Progress was not conceived in antiquity or in the Middle Ages, or even in the Renaissance period; and when he comes to modern times he fails to bring out clearly the decisive steps of its growth. And he does not seem to realize that a man might be "progressive" without believing in, or even thinking about, the doctrine of Progress. Leonardo da Vinci and Berkeley are examples. In my Ancient Greek Historians (1909) I dwelt on the modern origin of the idea (p. 253 sqq.). Recently Mr. R. H. Murray, in a learned appendix to his Erasmus and Luther, has developed the thesis that Progress was not grasped in antiquity (though he makes an exception of Seneca), a welcome confirmation. Bury, J.B. (1920). The Idea of Progress. London: The Macmillan and Co., p. 353.

Progress (history) - Wikipedia

What is NIT? Neurotechnology Innovations Translator

Posted on May 8, 2018 by Danzig

NIT started with a clean slate, asking a simple question: How can neurotech companies pioneer these innovations in todays medtech world? The result? Neurotech development, completely reimagined.

NIT is a cutting-edge translational center--a private, for-profit company, formed in collaboration with over a dozen Partners, with a mission to develop and commercialize pioneering neurotechnology solutions to improve patient well-being.Built with the vision of developing a select number of high-quality, commercially-oriented companies, NIT brings together the vision, leadership, expertise,network, resources, personnel and capital to create the pre-eminent development ecosystem in the compelling frontier of neuroscience. NIT's translational approach substantially reduces risk and required capital for companies and their investors by accelerating the development cycle, avoiding pitfalls, and propelling companies through development to commercial success.NIT will create or attract multiple companies sourced from a global pipeline of innovation.Whether an idea on a napkin, or a more mature neurotech company that is further along in the development pathway, NIT will invest in, and engage with, a select number of attractive neurotechnology companies that will benefit from NITs resources and model to accelerate their success.

NIT is not an incubator; not a venture capital firm; not a contract manufacturing house; not a clinical trialing organization...per se.Instead, NIT brings the best of what each of these other entities has tried to deliver, comprehensively, under one translational center, borrowing their best attributes, but transforming them into an entity that provides a cocoon for your companys success in todays challenging landscape.The result: far more than just capital or seasoned advice--a comprehensive solution, providing the expertise, resources, and capital to propel your company from concept-to-clinic, and subsequently to commercial success.

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What is NIT? Neurotechnology Innovations Translator

AMERICA LATINA REBELDE | Spectacle Theater

Posted on May 8, 2018 by ev1

The conquest of the Americas did not end with the defeat of the Aztecs and Incas, it was only the initiation of a procession of protests, strikes, and uprisings between the indigenous peoples and colonizers, immigrant workers and landowners, slaves and masters, mass movements and dictatorships. The films that retell these struggles portray a dramatic history fixed in flux.

The ability for South American artists to capture such struggles changes with the regimesif one favorable to the people manages to obtain power, the heroism and atrocities of previous generations may finally be told. Argentinian director Hector Olivera is a case in point, his sometimes satirical but always deadly serious work focuses on the individuals who struggle through dark times of political violence. In 1973 he made a REBELLION IN PATAGONIA, a film telling the story of a Patagonian wool farmers strike in the 1920s, based on a previously banned book by the anarchist writer Osvaldo Bayer. When the dictatorship returned the book and its adaptation were once again banned. With a renewal of democracy in the 1980s Olivera was free to make political work again, telling the story of the dictatorships torture and execution of student activists in NIGHT OF THE PENCILS.

With a majority indigenous population, many of whom continue to live a largely traditional lifestyle, landlocked Bolivia historically lagged behind the economic advances of its neighbors. In the 20th century, the States solution to lagging modernization occasionally relied on neo-eugenics, and Jorge Sanjiness BLOOD OF THE CONDOR tells of an uprising of an indigenous village against North American Progress Corp volunteers who they believe sterilized women without their consent.

Together with the indigenous at the lowest rung of the caste system was the African slave, who, likewise, had a long history of struggle against their masters. The Maroon culture developed independently in Brazil with the Quilombos, the Black Seminoles in Floria, and Palenques in Colombia and Cuba. In the Cuban film MALUALA, a village of runaway slaves is depicted in colorful detail, both in terms of their music, traditions, and fashion, and their lifestyle of constant resistance to renewed subjugation.

REBELLION IN PATAGONIA(aka LA PATAGONIA REBELDE)Dir. Hector Olivera, 1974.Argentina. 110 minutes.In Spanish with English subtitles.

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Oswaldo Bayers historical novel Patagonia Rebelde, about an anarcho-syndicalist labor unions insurrectionary uprising against the Argentinian elite in the 1920s, was banned and publicly burned in the 70s before becoming a bestseller and feature film. The story begins with a hotel workers strike so successful one forgets why the working class would ever lose given its objective strength. But as the victorious anarchists sing their anthem, a group of Chilean laborers, immigrants among immigrants, sit quietly in the back of the labor hall. Although they have been elevated to equals by the principal of international solidarity, their silence foreshadows the bloodshed to come.

For decades, Argentinian politics swung between the Nationalist populism of Juan Peron and a series of military coups, eventually centrally coordinated under Operation Condor, aimed at suppressing the socialist elements that made him so widely popular.

In 1970 Bayers book was banned and publicly burned, but with Perons return in 1973, the leftist Jorge Cepernic was elected governor of the Patagonian state of Santa Cruz. He worked with Bayer and director Hector Olivera to create an epic film version of Patagonia Rebelde, featuring large scale protest and battle sequences. In 1976 the military seized power once again, ushering in a brutal 7 year dictatorship in which the film was banned, Bayer, Olivera, and several of the films actors were blacklisted, and Cepernic was imprisoned. In jail, he asked his warden if he deserved such cruel treatment simply for being a member of a Left-of-center party. No, youre not a prisoner because of your affiliation, the warden reportedly said. Youre a prisoner because you allowed Rebellion in Patagonia to be filmed.

THE NIGHT OF THE PENCILS(aka EL NOCHE DE LOS LAPICES)Dir. Hector Olivera, 1986.Argentina. 105 minutes.In Spanish with English subtitles.

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The repression of Operation Condor was centrally organized by military commanders of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Broliva, and Brazil, aiming to finally wipe out any traces of marxist or revolutionary thought. Argentina saw the highest numbers of disappeared and executed leftists, between 15-30,000. When democracy returned to Argentina in 1983, Olivera was free to make films about the State terror he witnessed. El Noche de los Lapices depicts the organization of a student strike against increased bus fares in La Plata. Only a few months into the dictatorship, some of these students were kidnapped, raped, tortured, starved, and killed.

Beginning with an seemingly innocent protest against the increase of bus fares in La Plata, a student march is attacked by police. In the night, several of the organizers are rounded up by men posing as police and taken to a dungeon. Used as test subjects for torture, the fate of the students would mirror tens of thousands of others in the coming years. A cultural element in the process for justice and reconciliation, which included the imprisonment of some of the students torturers in 1985, Olivera used the testimony of one of the few survivors for his adaptation.

BLOOD OF THE CONDOR(aka YAWAR MALLKU)Dir. Jorge Sanjines, 1969.Bolivia. 70 minutes.In Quechua, English, and Spanish with English subtitles.

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Ignacio, the tragic hero of Jorge Sajiness first film, was a perfect stand-in for the utterly impotent situation Bolivias indigenous population faced in the 1960s. When his wifes third consercutive pregnancy terminates, he is driven into a rage, and she is the target. A series of flashbacks and flashforwards shows more violence in every direction. We soon find out the reason for all of it is the sketchy, but outwardly well-meaning American aid workers who recently appeared in the village.

Inspired by anti-Imperialist Marxism and new wave European cinema, this was the first feature of Sanjines, who would become one of Bolivias most awarded directors and a central figure in Latin Americas Third Cinema movement. The heavy-handed villainy of the Progress Corps gringos and the obedient facilitation of their schemes against the indigenous population by Bolivian authorities represents a political cosmology that radiates through the history of post-Colonial South America.

Sanjines worked with native actors and audiences alike, designing the film to be watched in indigenous communities that were not yet familiar with cinema. The results were mixed, as many did not understand narrative motifs such as the flashback sequences. Overall, the film was influential enough that repelling Peace Corps volunteers became a cause of cultural autonomism, and they were expelled altogether in 1971. Although its unlikely the Peace Corps was running a sterilization program, the history of condescension, instrumentalisation, and exploitation of indigenous people made the allegations ring true. Their very presence, along with the self-congratulatory Western doctor character, were symptomatic of an all-pervasive imperialist influence, alluded to by use of rock music and the culturally assimilated but still helplessly subservient Sixto, ensuring repressive hierarchies, and the violence inherent within them, remain firmly in place at every level.

MALUALADir. Sergio Giral, 1979.Cuba. 95 minutes.In Spanish with English subtitles.

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With several historical films reflecting on the experience of slavery in Cuba, Sergio Giral is perhaps Cubas best known Afro-Cuban director. In Maluala, he takes up the subject of Cubas Palenques, a network of about 30 communities hidden in Cubas Eastern coast mountains comprised of runaway slaves with different ethnic origins, but a common cultural rejection of the bondage that brought them across the Atlantic.

Among these was Maluala, whose chief, Gallo, present a petition to be left alone by the Colonial government. The counteroffer is for the habitants of the Palenques to turn themselves in before being formally freed, a proposition three other chiefs accept, but Gallo refuses in a conflict reminiscent of Gillo Pontecorvos divide-and-conquer epic BURN!, only from the colonizeds perspective.

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Free gattaca Essays and Papers

Posted on May 8, 2018 by ev1

Title Length Color Rating Gattaca, A Film by Andrew Niccol - Gattaca, A Film by Andrew Niccol Exactly five seconds after he came into the world, Vincent Freeman was already considered to be a loser. His first genetic test revealed high probabilities of hyperactivity, sight troubles and serious heart diseases, a life expectancy of 30 years and 2 months and quite low intellectual faculties. At that time, the artificial insemination of test tube babies selected according to their genetic potential had become for many people the natural way of making children.... [tags: Movie Films Gattaca Niccol Essays]1596 words(4.6 pages)Powerful Essays[preview] A Brave New World and Gattaca - Anti-humanity; people arent even people. Could you possibly visualize that type of world. A world where people are invented and controlled. That type of world is inhuman, and inhumanity is an interesting concept pointed out in the perfect/not so perfect world that Aldous Huxley describes in his classic novel, Brave New World, and what Andrew Niccol describes in his famous film Gattaca. In the stories presented by both of these writers, viewers and readers witness a dystopian world where the government controls the people, and people are conditioned to like the social class set for them, whether it be lower, middle, or upper class.... [tags: science fiction film vs utopian-dystopian fiction]1219 words(3.5 pages)Better Essays[preview] General Science and GATTACA - General Science is a study involving biology, chemistry, physics and environmental sciences. Students from Year 7 to Year 10 are introduced to these various disciplines to gain general knowledge about science and can later be develop into deeper concepts. Science is not just fat laboratory coats, Einsteins equations, mixing chemicals, massive space shuttles, or peeking through microscopes but involves critical thinking, analysing data and apply understandings in the natural world to solve real problems.... [tags: vincent freeman, movie analysis]993 words(2.8 pages)Better Essays[preview] Gattaca: A Philosophical Analysis - Brimming with ultramodern scenery and metaphysical speculation, Gattaca is a profound glimpse into the not-so-distant future of humanity. Vincent, the main character, is a frustrated faith birth living in a world in which his genetically manipulated peers have succeeded him in every competition. Motivated by an unquenchable fascination with space, Vincent recruits the chronically petulant but genetically flawless Jerome Morrow, who allows Vincent to assume his genetic identity in exchange for companionship and free alcohol.... [tags: Literary Themes]:: 2 Works Cited 1070 words(3.1 pages)Strong Essays[preview] Gattaca: A Dystopian Society - 1.Gattaca is a world where only people with perfect genetics are valid. A natural born, Vincent, forges an identity to follow his dream of becoming a space traveler. Gattaca is an imaginary place where perfect society is created by cloning. The subject of human cloning that does not currently exist which makes this movie science fiction. They have unreal technology like, the machines that determines health issues and life expectancy right at birth. The advancement in technology and new scientific research has made cloning possible.... [tags: film/story analysis]:: 7 Works Cited 1025 words(2.9 pages)Strong Essays[preview] Gattaca and Jurassic Park - The films Gattaca, directed by Andrew Niccol in 1997, and Jurassic Park, directed by Stephen Spielberg in 1993 seem like two films that have no connection. Gattaca is a film about a man, Vincent Freeman, overcoming his genetic disadvantage to become an astronaut. Jurassic Park on the other hand is a film about bringing dinosaurs back to life, while also causing massive chaos. However, despite these major differences in plot, both films are based on a similar idea, genetic engineering. Genetic engineering is defined as the process of directly affecting the genetic makeup of an individual using biotechnology.... [tags: film, andrew niccol, stephen spielberg]:: 3 Works Cited 1110 words(3.2 pages)Strong Essays[preview] The Debate for Genetic Engineering Exposed in Gattaca - ... The child will get fed up and decide to leave. I believe that children should be left to chance or be genetically modified. There can be no in between; it puts too much pressure on society and on individual parents and kids. While the movie states that there are laws against genetic discrimination, it still does not protect those who were brought into this world by chance, because of illegal urine or blood tests. While greed and competition is evident in our society, this genetically perfect world would create a whole new battle field.... [tags: imperfect, fear, society]593 words(1.7 pages)Good Essays[preview] Movie Review: Gattaca - Vincent Freeman was born into a futuristic society dominated by biological technology. In this society, genetic technology has become so advanced, a drop of blood at the time of your birth can tell you any diseases you might develop the day you will die. More importantly, wealthy parents can choose to have their unborn children engineered to be as perfect as their potential would allow. This type of technology created a prejudice society of the genetically altered against natural-borns. Vincents parents did not have the foresight to know that the future of a natural-born would be laden with prejudice and discrimination, and they conceived him through the power of love, rather than techn... [tags: sicence fiction films]819 words(2.3 pages)Better Essays[preview] Analysis of the Bioethical Issues in Gattaca - Analysis of the Bioethical Issues in Gattaca Biology is the science of life. Technology uses science to solve problems. Our society has progressed in its understanding of life to the point that we are able to manipulate it on a fundamental level through technology. This has led to profound ethical dilemmas. The movie Gattaca explores some important bioethical issues that are currently the focus of much dispute. The underlying thematic issue presented is the question of the extent to which biologically inherent human potential determines the true potential of a person.... [tags: Papers]843 words(2.4 pages)Better Essays[preview] Brave New World and Gattaca - Brave New World and Gattaca Huxley Living in a genetically perfect world is not necessarily a great achievement to mankind. It makes one think, "where do you draw the line in the advancement of eugenics?" Both worlds, the Brave New one and Gattaca, are alternative futures (clearly dystopic), written and shown in a believable way (not as much in BNW, though) through the use of satire. Also, for GATTACA, the director incorporates the traditional elements of movie - a murder-mystery tied in with a love story PLUS a science fiction touch - very effectively. Satire in Huxley's novel is glaringly obvious (mockery of the education system and the morals of today along wi... [tags: Brave New World]624 words(1.8 pages)Strong Essays[preview] Gattaca The Movie And Discrimination - In the movie Gattaca the main character Anton was discriminated against because of his gene makeup. Anton never even had a chance in the society in Gattaca because the potential employees of companies were not tested on their skills or knowledge but on their physical and mental possibilities. The same society also used derogatory terms for people like Anton. Just because his parents decided that he would come into the world naturally instead of through gene therapy or alteration. Terms like faith birth'; and invalid'; were used against Anton.... [tags: essays research papers]409 words(1.2 pages)Strong Essays[preview] Dehumanization in Never Let Me Go vs. Gattaca - The movie Gattaca and the novel Never Let Me Go, both display a form of dehumanization and the relationship between those who have been dehumanized and those who are brought up in a more ideal way. Gattaca and Never Let Me Go, try and show an alternative future based on the advancement of genetics and how they affect our world in a possible future. They do this by genetically cloning individuals for organ harvesting and attempting to create a perfect world by creating perfect humans. Living in a world where they have successfully created human clones for organ donations, is not a great achievement to mankind in any way, shape, or form. It makes you wonder, where exactly do you draw the... [tags: genetics, cloning, humans, perfect]828 words(2.4 pages)Better Essays[preview] Gattaca - Gattaca is a movie directed by Andrew Niccol and the film is set in the "not too distant future." Andrew Niccol's perception of the future isn't what most people expect, but once thought about carefully it seems quite believable. This movie presents us with a new method in which society strives for perfection and it also makes us wonder if genetic engineering is morally correct. Your place in society in Gattaca is based on your genetic makeup and the way you were born. People born the way we know as natural are "in-valids".... [tags: Movies Film]703 words(2 pages)Strong Essays[preview] How Genetic Engineering will Affect the Human Race in Gattaca - If you could change things about yourself whether physical or mental, what would you change, and why. In the movie Gattaca, a science fiction film directed by Andrew Niccol, characters are genetically modified before birth to avoid all and any imperfections that could occur in their lifetime. This movie stars Ethan Hawke and Jude Law as the main characters Vincent Freeman and Eugene Morrow. Supporting roles are played by Uma Thurman and Loren Dean as Irene Cassini and Anton Freeman. Gattaca gives us a futuristic idea of how genetic engineering will affect the human race and discriminate those of less genetic superiority.... [tags: dna, traits, superiority]:: 1 Works Cited 1598 words(4.6 pages)Powerful Essays[preview] Comparison of Scales of Justice and Gattaca - Comparison of Scales of Justice and Gattaca The texts Scales Of Justice and Gattaca are two texts which allow the reader to witness a variety of interpretations and explore the relevant issues that are visible within contemporary society. Such issues as corruption within the police force, racism, sexual harassment, discrimination and manipulation of power are shown to give different interpretations of issues which plague todays society and potentially our future. Scales Of Justice shows the corruption in the police force.... [tags: Contemporary Society Literature Essays]3904 words(11.2 pages)Strong Essays[preview] Gattaca - The story of Vincent shows in Gattaca that there is possibility of beating the genetic engineering system. Vincent is one of the last naturally born babies born into a sterile, genetically enhanced world, where life expectancy and disease likelihood are ascertained at birth. Myopic and due to die at 30, he has no chance of a career in a society that now discriminates against your genes, instead of your gender, race or religion. Vincent an invalid, dreams of working within Gattaca and making it into space.... [tags: essays research papers]667 words(1.9 pages)Good Essays[preview] Gattaca - Film Name: GATTACA Director / Writer: Andrew Niccol Producers: Danny DeVito, Michael Shamberg, and Stacey Sher Co-Producer: Gail Lyon Main Characters: Ethan Hawk as Jerome Morrow / Vincent Uma Thurman as Irein Jude Law as Eugene / Jerome Morrow Summary of Film: The film starts out in the not-too-distant future. The setting is a dark almost surreal view of Nineteen-Fifty Retro. In fact, every object in the film has a Fifties look to it, yet every thing was operated with future technology.... [tags: essays research papers]799 words(2.3 pages)Strong Essays[preview] 1984, by George Orwell and Gattaca, by Andrew Niccol - Nineteen Eighty-Four written by George Orwell and Gattaca directed by Andrew Niccol are prophetic social commentaries which explore the broad social wrong of a totalitarian government. Both texts depict a futuristic, dystopian society in which individuality is destroyed in favour of faceless conformity. Niccol and Orwell through the experiences of their protagonists reflect the impact isolation from society has on individuals. The authors of both texts also use their protagonists Winston, who cannot understand the rhetoric of the government party and Vincent, who is trapped, unable to achieve his dreams because of his imperfect genome, to demonstrate individual rebellion against society and... [tags: Prophetic Social Commentaries]987 words(2.8 pages)Better Essays[preview] Genetic Perfection in Gattaca - Genetic Perfection in Gattaca Topic: "The world of Gattaca is focused on genetic perfection, yet it is the imperfect Vincent that achieves the most" Discuss. Set within a world governed by genetic engineering, Andrew Niccol's film, Gattaca, portrays the dire consequences of such a society in "the not too distant future". Given a pre-determined life as a "god child" due of his parent's adherence to religious beliefs, Vincent Freeman is an individual who "refuses to play the hand he was dealt". Vincent although seemingly cursed with an imperfect genetic composition manages to overcome considerable odds in order to achieve his dream of space travel.... [tags: Movie Film Review]1051 words(3 pages)Good Essays[preview] Cross-Cultural Film Analysis - Gattaca - Cross Cultural Film Analysis - Gattaca Film Summary Vincent is destined to be a second class citizen, conceived naturally, rather than in a laboratory. He is born into a world which discriminates against genetics, rather than religion, race or gender. In order to gain access into the Gattaca Corporation and reach his dream of going to Titan he takes on the identity of Jerome Morrow, a person with ideal genes but crippled from an accident. He uses Jeromes hair, blood, urine and skin to pass all tests and is set to reach his lifelong desire when the mission director is murdered.... [tags: Film Movie Analysis]1219 words(3.5 pages)Strong Essays[preview] Human Genetic Screening and Discrimination in Gattaca - Human Genetic Screening and Discrimination in Gattaca Works Cited Missing A few months ago I watched a movie called Gattaca, which dealt with the issue of genetic discrimination in the near future. In the movie, people were separated into two classes, those that were genetically screened and positively altered before birth and the class that was unaltered. The separate classes had stark divisions, from what jobs that you were able to apply for to where you could eat. Security was aimed at keeping unaltered people away from the enhanced people.... [tags: Movie Film Biology Biological Papers]1808 words(5.2 pages)Strong Essays[preview] Andrew Niccols Film, Gattaca - Andrew Niccols 1997 film Gattaca supports the belief that nature, despite its defects, is preferable to a flawless genetically engineered existence. This idea is explored through the character of Vincent who exhibits desire, resilience and determination, natural human elements that cannot be manufactured and are seemingly not present in the faultless future that is presented in Gattaca. These characteristics appear to be contrasted by the other characters in the film, such as Anton and the conforming Irene, who are perceived to be flawless in the context of their surroundings but are quite mechanical and emotionless.... [tags: Movies, Films]711 words(2 pages)Better Essays[preview] Exploring the Future - Science Fiction often opens the eyes of humanity so we can try to imagine what the future will hold. More specifically, Science Fiction movies allow us to explore examples of utopian or dystopian societies. They allow us to explore different planets in outer space. Due to all of the creative components found in the set designs of several science fiction movies, a viewer can watch the movie and escape reality. The interesting innovations seen in the set designs look very futuristic so the viewers imagination is inspired and lets you indulge in the film.... [tags: Science Fiction, Gattaca]1252 words(3.6 pages)Strong Essays[preview] The Idea of Discrimination Based on Genetic - The film Gattaca was released in 1997, just six years prior to the completion of the Human Genome Project (completed in April 2003), with a working draft completed in June 2000. The name of the film refers to an Aerospace corporation featured in the movie; however, its letters correspond to the 4 nucleotide bases that make up the integrity of the human genome. The sequencing of the human genome poses tremendous benefits not only in the future, but in the present. From identifying pharmaceutical targets in the body, screening for diseased genes, or determine if individuals are predisposed for certain hereditary or nonhereditary illness.... [tags: human genome, gattaca, genetic discrimination]1245 words(3.6 pages)Strong Essays[preview] Cracking Your Genetic Code: A Review of Genetic Testing - Cracking Your Genetic Code: A Review of Genetic Testing In Gattaca, the plot focuses on the ethics, the risks, and the emotional impact of genetic testing in the nearby future. The film was released in the 90s; yet in the present, the film does not give the impression of science fiction. Today, genetic testing is prevalent in many aspects of the scientific community. This paper will describe genetic testing, its purpose, diagnostic techniques that use genetic testing, relating Huntingtons disease to genetic testing, and the pros and cons of genetic testing.... [tags: film analysis, gattaca, ethics, risks]:: 9 Works Cited 1554 words(4.4 pages)Powerful Essays[preview] Comparing Dystopian Dream of Brave New World, The Handmaids Tale and GATTACA - The Dystopian Dream of Brave New World, The Handmaids Tale and GATTACA In Utilitarianism, John Stuart Mill writes that it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. By this he meant there are qualitative degrees of satisfaction and if to be satisfied were lowered in status to that of a pig, its better for us to be dissatisfied humans. The film GATTACA and the books Brave New World and The Handmaids Tale create fictional places where the needs and desires of humans are met, but not as well as they should be and not without a price.... [tags: comparison compare contrast essays]3033 words(8.7 pages)Strong Essays[preview] Discussion of Whether Gattaca Portrays A Realistic View Of The Future And Gene Manipulation - Discussion of Whether Gattaca Portrays A Realistic View Of The Future And Gene Manipulation Media. It controls a lot of what we think, what we believe and so changes our attitude and behaviour towards certain things. It has changed our thinking so much so that we believe almost anything and everything the media say and do. Without the media, life would not be as it is. Newspapers, magazines, television, internet, radio, the lot have very much altered our thinking. Lately, there have been many talks on the issues regarding genetic manipulation and human cloning.... [tags: Papers]1548 words(4.4 pages)Powerful Essays[preview] Eugenic Decision-Making - Eugenics is defined, in some way or the other, as the process of reshaping the human race by determining the kinds of people who will be born. As such, there is much debate in the field of eugenics, with authors, like Philip Kitcher, who support laissez-faire or a minimalist approach of eugenics in which eugenic decision-making should be limited only to avoid neurological illnesses and in which parental free choice is valued. Gregory Stocks essay, The Enhanced and Un-Enhanced, presents otherwise by supporting the position of maximalist eugenics, allowing individuals the full extent in the selection of genes.... [tags: Gattaca, Laissez-Faire, Maximalist Eugenics]1482 words(4.2 pages)Strong Essays[preview] Evolution of Human Characteristics - Human characteristics have evolved all throughout history and have been manipulated on a global scale through the use of science and technology. Genetic modification is one such process in which contemporary biotechnology techniques are employed to develop specific human characteristics. Despite this, there are a countless number of negative issues related with genetic modification including discrimination, ethical issues and corruption. Hence, genetic modification should not be used to enhance human characteristics.... [tags: genetic modification, ethics, discrimination]794 words(2.3 pages)Better Essays[preview] Creating the Perfect Child - Everyone wishes for their child to be perfect, and new measures are being taken to ensure their child is everything and more. To make sure a child has all the desired traits necessary, humans genetically modify them. In doing so, changes are being made to the DNA code of the child to take the best characteristics of the parents and pass it down to the child. The ideal traits, such as being athletic, tall, and smart are given to the child and undesirable traits, such as being colorblind and having other genetic mutations, are prevented.... [tags: genetics, moral, design]834 words(2.4 pages)Better Essays[preview] A Critique on the Transhumanism Movement - When did being human become not good enough. Transhumanism theories strive toward the perfect human, a posthuman, which can be achieved through modern technology. In the opinion of transhumanists, humans are constantly subject to change and their calling is to transcend their body and brain in order to reach their full potential. While this may have positive effects for the people involved, such as immunity toward hereditary diseases, Down syndrome for example, the question arises what is considered ethical in these practices.... [tags: Genetic Manipulation, Nanotechnology]:: 18 Works Cited 3010 words(8.6 pages)Powerful Essays[preview] Fishing in the Gene Pool - I belonged to a new underclass, no longer determined by social status or the color of your skin. No, we now have discrimination down to a science.-Vincent. The previous statement was said by the main character Vincent in the futuristic movie known as Gattaca. In the movie Gattaca, parents who wish to have a child are recommended to go to a geneticist in order to help pre select their future child. The reason for this is to help avoid the chances of the child inheriting genetic diseases such as heart disease, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia, etc.... [tags: heart disease, cystic fibrosis, hemophilia]:: 1 Works Cited 965 words(2.8 pages)Strong Essays[preview] The Dangers of Genetic Engineering - The Dangers of Genetic Engineering Science is defined as knowledge based on observed facts and tested truths arranged in an orderly system. It has had an extreme effect on technology, which covers production, transportation, and even entertainment. In the past, though, science has always remained distant. However, with the birth of genetic engineering, science has become something that will deeply affect lives. Advancements are being made daily with genetic engineering: the Human Genome Project is nearly done, gene replacement therapy lies within reach, and cloning is on the horizon.... [tags: Papers]1248 words(3.6 pages)Good Essays[preview] The Battle Between Science and Religion: The God of the Gaps Theory by Neil DeGrasse Tyson - Imagine a world where many people are not born the way they are just by chance, but by design. Not a design by a god but by men. What is one of the most common science fiction topics. Well thanks to scientific advancement people can start moving cloning more into science and less into fiction. Thanks to the impeccable work of many scientists across the world the world is moving forward in many ways. But it begs the question, what limits do politicians have to place on science. Is best to let them have free reign over their domain, as politicians have on their own, or do they need to be tethered.... [tags: god, scientific ignorance, bias, media]:: 5 Works Cited 1676 words(4.8 pages)Powerful Essays[preview] Programmed To Be Free: Exploring Andrew Niccol's Gatacca - Programmed To Be Free Gatacca by Andrew Niccol tells the story of Vincent, a young man naturally and traditionally engendered in a world where genetic engineering is the followed pattern to have a child. Few minutes after his birth, Vincents fate is revealed through a DNA analysis. Two important facts in the analysis will mark Vincents life, a fail in his cardio system and his life expectancy, only thirty years. The film shows a world where life is highly determined by genetics, and happiness is mostly based on the quality of the genetic profile, a kind of identity card for people.... [tags: Film Analysis, Movies, Films]:: 4 Works Cited 1231 words(3.5 pages)Strong Essays[preview] The Case Against Perfection by Michael Sandel - Michael Sandel is a distinguished political philosopher and a professor at Harvard University. Sandel is best known for his best known for his critique of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice. While he is an acclaimed professor if government, he has also delved deeply into the ethics of biotechnology. At Harvard, Sandel has taught a course called "Ethics, Biotechnology, and the Future of Human Nature" and from 2002 to 2005 he served on the Presidents Council on Bioethics (Harvard University Department of Government, 2013).... [tags: ethics, biotechnology, genetic engineering]:: 4 Works Cited 972 words(2.8 pages)Better Essays[preview] Testing an Authors Vision Organization Guide - Testing an Authors Vision Organization Guide Introduction You will need to transition us, the readers, from our world into your paper. Make sure you give us a sense of context (what gave rise to your paper?), conflict (give us a sense of They Say/I Say), and focus (give us a question that focuses your paper or give us your thesis statement). So, for the focus you might have: ---Is this vision of genetic manipulation in literature possible, and if so, should we be afraid. ---OR.This vision of genetic manipulation is occurring in small amounts today and could blossom into a world in which individuals fear imperfection and groups of perfect people wield power over those less than the visio... [tags: Assignment]1045 words(3 pages)Strong Essays[preview] ?Vincent is not a hero? Discuss - Vincent is not a hero Discuss Andrew Niccol has created a character that is portrayed as being a struggler from the moment he was born, he was destined to play this role as soon as he was conceived naturally as he was to wear the label of God child for the rest of his life , this label determines they life style and quality of life he will lead and the prospects are not good -They used to say that a child conceived in love has a greater chance of happiness. They don't say that anymore. 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Marketing Darwinism | by Paul Dunay

Posted on May 8, 2018 by Danzig

Marketing Darwinism met up with Tom Taylor, Managing Director of Blueprint Technologies on his recent trip to NYC. Excerpts from the conversation:

MD: Tom, Blueprint has won award after award for phenomenal growth and customer satisfaction. Whats going on?

Tom: Thanks a ton; we are humbled by the recognition. We believe our success can be attributed to a combination of our unique perspective, drive for innovation, laser focus on the customer, and the quality of our team, our customers, and our partners. Weve been very agile in addressing market and customer needs we move quickly and have established a solid track record of delivering superior customer value.

MD: Great. You lead Client Development at Blueprint, tell us about your approach and where Marketing fits in.

Tom: Our approach is very execution-oriented. We hire entrepreneurial doers with amazing track records in industry and surround them with top-notch technologists and delivery professionals to amplify their effectiveness. Thats a core part of the collaborative approach we take at Blueprint Client Development doesnt end with the team I lead, it runs across the entire company. At Blueprint, all hands on deck really means that everyone aligns around customer value, and delivery excellence.

MD: Marketing?

Tom: Were constantly refining the sophistication of the handshake between Marketing and Client Development, and investing strategically to really accelerate this. Tight integration between Marketing and Client Development is what will continue to drive momentum and support scale as we continue to grow.

MD: What do you see in the Marketplace?

Tom: Were lucky to be in the Seattle area, which is at the forefront of a good number of key technology trends. Data Science, AI, Machine Learning, Business Process Automation, Cloud Solutions all of these are top of mind for many of our customers right now. We often find that while the organizations we work with aspire to these higher order capabilities, they have foundational enablers that need to be addressed at the core infrastructure level around cloud migration, data engineering, modern workforce tool sets, etc. One of Blueprints key value propositions is our ability to traverse and up-level the entire organizational capabilities stack from core infrastructure up to customer experience optimization this allows our customers to achieve wholistic digital transformation rather than just incremental single-point solutions.

I sat down with Srivats Srinivasan, an associate and entrepreneur. Srivats company, Nayamode, just acquired a Bay-Area agency called Bluewave. Interesting to see Seattle companies buying Bay Area outfits! I was particularly interested in this because of the role Marketing plays in Digital Transformation- this acquisition was based on Nayamode rounding out its Digital Transformation services.

Some excerpts from the chat

Marketing Darwinism: Srivats, congratulations on both Nayamodes success and the recent acquisition of Bluewave. Tell us more about your strategy.

SS: Thanks. We felt strongly that growth and evolution really our journey to the next phase required deepening elements of our skill-set as it pertains to the overall rubric of Digital Transformation. In this case, we were enamored with Bluewaves deep design and visual storytelling track-record and understood that it was a key element in this next phase for us. The strong team and delightful customer base was a wonderful addition too!

Marketing Darwinism: You mentioned Digital Transformation. In your conception, what does it mean exactly?

SS: Yes, we understand that it is a term bandied about, almost in fact too much. In our view, Digital Transformation is about using technology judiciously and in context to create products, processes, and services that enhance and accelerate the best parts of the organization and keep the worst tendencies at bay. Digital Transformation is neither a one-size fits all thing nor is it an overnight turn. As with most fundamental shifts, there is a journey required and technology plays only so big a role.

Marketing Darwinism: Nayamode is one of those interesting stories insofar as youve grown without really marketing yourself in a broad sense. As Marketers, our readers would love to understand a bit more about your strategy here.

SS: You are no doubt generally correct but we are changing! At the outset, we grew through the sales process, leveraging our connections and experience in Marketing in large organizations, mostly in technology. As we grew, we certainly evolved, but were lucky in that our customers and we created deep partnerships in which as long as we continued to do great work and listen, we remained loyal to each other. Also, we had a bit of the Cobblers Children problem in which we paid so much attention externally that at times we neglected ourselves. That has changed however. In this phase, very much the most exciting phase in our history as a company, telling our story will be an integral part of the strategy. We are humbled to be included, for instance, in this blog.

Editors Note: While in some cases Marketing is an afterthought, we believe that Marketing firms can lead the process of Digital Transformation because of their keen view of the customer and their expertise in pivoting quickly based on business models and customer needs. This traverses the B to B and B to C spaces. We want to hear about other cases of M&A by Marketing companies looking to complete their Digital Transformation portfolios.

Heres a great video of me and Aseem Badshah the CEO of Socedo, a social media lead generation tool, talking about 7 ways Blockchain can transform marketing! We hope you enjoy it

Two of my very good friends, Romi Mahajan of the KKM Group and Aseem Badshah of Socedo shot a video discussing our most recent blog post on the Return of the Marketing Mix. Ultimately, marketing is a mix of channels, tactics, and bets, of which some are measurable and some are not. Its time for marketers to reclaim their role as engagers, risk-takers, and experimenters!!

Fashions change.

This clich doesnt apply just to hemlines and jeans, but to business as well.Anyone who claims that business is all about logic and data needs to get a reality-check; Marketers are perhaps the worst offenders here, much to their detriment.Of late, Marketers have suffered from a deep alienation from the real essences of their profession and we hope that 2018 will usher in a return to sanity.

This alienation or departure from sanity in Marketing- stems from the over-indexing on Data and Measurement.While this sounds strange, even counterintuitive and heretical, it stands the test of logic and does not require a deep knowledge of Marketing to understand.Data and Measurement are no doubt valuable but they can also be the refuge of scoundrels.

The key in the above paragraph is the term over-indexing.In other areas of life, the tendency to over-index is called zealotry.In Marketing, the zealotry of measurement has created an untenable situation in which Marketing is asked to be as resilient as Physics or Mathematics; So too are Marketers, who feel forced to conform to the fashions of the day.For the past decade or so, the fashion has been Performance Marketing or, in a wild conflation of strategy and channel, Digital Marketing.

The genesis story here is a good one.Marketing for a long time appeared to be a cocktail of guesses mixed with a dose of manipulation.Organizations started to get frustrated with the lack of predictability and rising costs associated with Marketing and the ecosystem of agencies and media companies that had to be invoked when even considering bringing a product, service, or brand to market.Theories of consumer reception abounded, but the overall logic of Marketing appeared to be something akin to do it and it will work.Since no company could afford to shut off all Marketing, they continued in an inertial frame for decades.

Then came the Internet.Almost overnight- or so it seemed- behavior patterns changed.In addition, the almost infinite real estate and low cost of replication on the Internet, allowed for a completely different cost structure for Marketing. Completing the hat-trick was the fact that digitized Marketing can be revved quickly and tests of efficacy can be run in record time.A heady mix indeed!

And for a while it seemed great.Marketers could go to market quickly and bypass the usual middle-men.

Soon, however, the false quants took over and started writing how Marketing was both a Science and Predictive.Tomes could be written about the false attribution that plagued the marketing scene with the eminent measurability of Digital Marketing.We neglectedPater Semper Incertus Est.

Marketers new to the profession became one-channel ponies. They only knew Digital Marketing. They also grew up under the totalitarianism of measurement.They believed in the falsity of attribution and hewed only to the channels that provided an easy story for attribution.

Lo and behold, pundits declared the demise of traditional marketing.Some said TV was dead. Others eulogized radio.Still others print and outdoor.Digital Marketing was ROI Marketing and ROI Marketing was King (forgive the pun!)

The zealotry created real problems for real Marketers.First, they were subjected to Wall Street-type time-frames. What would in a sane world take a year, had to be measured in weeks or months.Second, the need to show ROI created a channel bias in which they were forced to market in only those channels which were eminently measurable.Third, they lost the Art which defined Marketing and chose, instead, to genuflect at the altar of a false science.CMOs lost their jobsin 18 monthsbecause they could not prove the ROI they agreed to.Marketing lost its way.

Fast forward to now.

Are Marketers ready to reclaim their profession?Are they ready to bring back that Evergreen-yet-needs-to-be-green-again concept that defined their art?Yes, you know what we mean- The Marketing Mix.

We predict that 2018 will be the year in which Marketers re-embrace the notion of managing a portfolio of bets, of which some are measurable and others are not.The rush to measurement restricts the channels Marketers pick to engage with, not unlike a Chef with an infinitude of ingredients but only one ladle and one pan with which to create a gourmet meal.

The portfolio will no doubt contain elements of Digital Marketing but will also likely concentrate on what the current and future audience really needs and could, thus, index on physical marketing, TV, Radio, Outdoor, even Print.Who knows.Why discount ideas and channelsa priori?

Ironically, the zealotry around measurability and ROI lands Marketers in an ironic soup- they restrict themselves from generating real ROI by thinking of it as an input and not as an outcome.

All fashions have their arc.Its high time we reclaim Marketing from the ROI zealots and re-engage with the world as it is and as it could be.

Guest post by:Romi Mahajan, Blueprint ConsultingSteven Salta, Agilysys

No matter how much technology has changed our day to day lives, both at home and at work, what remains essential to running a successful business is customershow you treat them, how they feel about your product or service, and whether they share those good (or bad) feelings.

In decades past, interacting with customers and helping to manage their problems and expectations was something that was left mostly to humans, which meant any good or bad things could also be subject to staffing or competing deadlines. But technology has helped with that in a unique way: by automating much of the customer journey through artificial intelligence, or AI.

Customers may not realize it, but a part of the process with many companies is already managed by AI. Its helping with predictive needs, to name just one area. And its use will only continue to grow. This graphic explains what its doing and how business will continue to use AI.

Click To Enlarge

Via Salesforce

On April 6, 2016, the Department of Labor released a 1000-page document known as the Fiduciary Duty rule (DOL fiduciary) requiring financial advisors to always act in the best interest of the client, expanding the meaning of investment advice fiduciary originally defined under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 to also include retirement investment advice. Asset managers have since faced a new set of intricate regulations to comply with, tight timelines to meet, and structural/operational changes to enact within their own firms.

From the very beginning, the fiduciary rule had the weight of inevitability and the social pressure of protecting investors morality behind it. Assets under management in America alone nears $40 trillion, most of which is managed by the USs largest 50 banks.

While the industry foresaw change with the DOL fiduciary rule, my marketing team saw opportunity. What if we could prepare our subject matter experts to react quickly, time our content with the news cycle, and launch an advertising campaign that could help demystify the rule for our clients and potential prospects? Better yet, what if we could be the leading consulting firm on the rule and how to implement it? We immediately got to work.

Program execution

Over the course of 14 months, we helped PwC grow a dedicated DOL team of nearly 200 employees serving 25 clients, 120 projects, and of course we booked business. Best of all we got the call every marketer dreams of from the project team to please turn your marketing off we have too much demand!

In much of industry, the idea of Digital Transformation has taken root. At the core of this process is the need to replace antiquated and slow processes, products, and service offerings with agile, automated, and smart processes, products, and service offerings. In addition, digital transformation is about the inclusion of all potentially interested parties (employees, partners, customers, influencers) in the creation and execution of new lines of business and innovation.

While the concept of Digital Transformation has been around in the entire Internet Age, necessary elements have indeed been missing. First, not always were the underlying technologies ready for prime-time. What works in manicured and controlled environments doesnt always work at scale or in fast-moving, instant-decision environments. Second, the culture of transformation has not always been present with many forces internally and externally being focused on the power of the status quo. Third, Digital Transformation requires the foregrounding of certain parts of the organization at the perceived expense of others parts. With these constraints, the prevailing scenario for transformation has been characterized by the gap between intention and execution.

Of the organizational barriers that impede the progress for Digital Transformation, the schism between IT and Business is perhaps the most profound. Business users in organizations are governed by entirely different imperatives than IT teams are. While business changes, roles and cultures do not always keep up with the dynamism of business models and the directives that come out of the C-suite.

Business users are defined by the Power of NOW! while IT is chartered with issues of security, governance, compliance (and at times control) that if applied in the canonical methodology, are antagonistic to the time-based agility that has come to define modern business.

This happens even when IT teams and Business teams are friendly and believe in the same overall set of goals. This is the result of technology configurations that were not flexible or adaptive, two defining characteristics of true Digital Transformation.

When IT and Business are in Harmony, agility is possible in a way that does not run afoul of the core mandates of IT. When IT and Business are in structural harmony, all of the manic energies of the organization can be trained on the same end goal.

Running IT like a Business and running Business in an IT-native world are keys to Digital Transformation. At stake here is the ability of organizations to navigate the shoals of modernity and complexity, in which every expanding pools of data and ever-growing avenues of expansion characterize business.

As such, Digital Transformation is the ultimate expression of IT-Business Harmony and IT-Business Harmony is the starting point of real Digital Transformation.

Guest post by:Romi Mahajan, KKM GroupSrini Venugopal, Epicor Software

Data is the watchword in organizations large and small. In fact, how an organization frames data is the single most important determination of future success or failure. As some put it, Data is the new oil, the commodity of most value in the modern age.

Many business leaders understand this intuitively. As business-users in the organization are forced to make larger number of critical decisions with larger payloads on a more frequent basis, the idea that these decisions must be data-driven is at the fore. Gut instinct is fine but gut instinct inflected with timely, contextual, and comprehensive knowledge of relevant data is a winning strategy.

While the idea of being data-driven is fundamental and powerful, most organizations fall short. Intentions are necessary but not sufficient. For most organizations, the technology and operational infrastructure that defines their data is predicated on notions that made sense in an earlier era in which there were simply less sources of data and less change to existing sources. The size of the data question makes for a complexity that is not pre-defined and therefore the solution to the data problem has to be flexible and adaptive. Data infrastructure maturity is necessary in todays business environment and has 4 basic qualities: Governance, Security, Agility, and Automation.

Without these 4 qualifiers, 2 core facets of the solution are absent- democratizing access to data and liberating IT from the backlog and fatigue associated with constantly-changing business needs. Business-users work in the NOW timeframe while IT has its own rhythms. In order to truly be data-driven in a way that scales, organizations must empower business-users while simultaneously freeing IT to innovate. While there are cultural hurdles to this state, the biggest blockers are infrastructural.

Until very recently, good enough was, alas, good enough. The internecine conflict between Business and IT was considered just a fact of life, a cost of doing business. With automation technology, business users data needs can be managed on the fly and without the need for reactive hand-coding, conferring agility to the business teams and handing time back to the IT teams to innovate and more resources from lower value tasks to higher value tasks. This structural win-win is available today and harmonizes the needs of Business and IT.

If data is the new oil then an infrastructure to capitalize on it is necessary- an infrastructure that is mature and Hub-like. While all organizations are different, they are similar in their data needs and the data platforms that win will accommodate diversity and change inherently.

Guest post by:Romi MahajanChief Commercial Officer, TimeXtender

Its no secret that the rise of computer apps is transforming both the marketing and customer experience. One of the most intriguing developments in app development is in the area of chatbots that not only can send communications to customers but also respond intelligently to conversations.

Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with Christian Brucculeri, the CEO at mobile messaging company Snaps, a developer of chatbots and other marketing technology products for companies. Brucculeri explained some of the background of how chatbots came to be, as well as their usefulness as a marketing tool.

Typically chatbots represent a conversational interface between a consumer and a machine, Brucculeri said. Theyre applications that have linguistic structure. It might allow you to ask a question and try to find an answer. They enable one-to-one communication between brands and consumers at scale, and they leverage technology in order to do that.

Certainly chatbots have close technological relatives were already used to, like Apples Siri, Google Home and Amazon Alexa. You might call automated phone systemsthe kind people love to hateas a chatbots second cousin. But so far these are far from able to use artificial intelligence to understand language, and respond appropriately.

And while the technology can be used for entertainment purposesthink Snapchat or Facebook Messenger, for exampleits greatest impact is potentially coming in marketing, Brucculeri told me.

Creating conversations, not messaging

We work with brands across several industry verticals, including tourism, hospitality, entertainment, media, CPG, retail, quick-serve restaurants and more, he said. For example one apparel brand delivers a 30-day workout experience using basic Facebook Messenger. For some hospitality brands, theyre trying to manage their ongoing relationship with consumers and help them manage their rewards accounts.

In many ways, this sounds similar to most apps were used to. So, what makes chatbots a different kind of app?

Where chatbots get really interesting is in personalizing media and responses, Brucculeri suggested. Here, you can really do one-to-one marketing at scale. Brucculeri said Snaps has developed such chatbots for sports teams, where a fan might receive notices of games, results and highlight videos. In the stadium, a chatbot might help a fan find restrooms and snack counters, based on physical location.

Brucculeri said Snaps is developing chatbots that function on a variety of existing platforms. Facebook Messenger, which launched a chatbot in 2016, may be most appropriate in accessing consumers, he said, but theres also Kik, WeChat, Slack and many others, each of which may be experience-specific.

Chatbots also can be connected to customer relationship management platforms, such as Salesforce, to deliver notifications at the right time to the right person, Brucculeri said.

We do CRM integration and user matching to log in and do account management, he said. The result might enable companies to find new customers, engage with existing customers in a fun way, getting customers to take some form of action, or managing the relationship in other ways.

Improving the customer experience

Customer service, driven by artificial intelligence, also can be aided powerfully by such matching, Brucculeri said. Instead of hitting a bunch of digits to get routed to the right person, the artificial intelligence capabilities of chatbotsthe two-way ability to listen and respond appropriatelycan improve this experience immensely.

A chatbot can do this in ways that are more convenient, simple, fast, and better for the customer and probably less expensive for the customer-service function, he said.

The future of chatbots is an intriguing one, as technology evolves and as the bots themselves get smarter and more humanlike in their analyses and responses.

Were long on the idea that conversational interfaces will continue to evolve. Whether consumers are texting with or talking to them, automated systems like bots are almost certainly going to have a role in our future lives Brucculeri said. We see conversational media becoming the next wave and being potentially bigger than application media itself. I think in three years, people might be talking to bots more than theyre typing in bots.

But the main idea remains the same, he said. Might I one day launch a chatbot on Alexa, Amazons voice control system? How about getting some type of visual element to go along with that, such as HoloLens, Microsofts holographic headset? Can these things become really rich experiences, far better than just staring at our phones and typing?

I think some of the form factors are going to change, but I think the fundamental elements are going to be the same, which is conversational commerce. People increasingly will be talking to their computers, and theyre going to get a lot done by doing it.

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Marketing Darwinism | by Paul Dunay

Evolution – Conservapedia

Posted on May 8, 2018 by jessica

The theory of evolution is a naturalistic theory of the history of life on earth (this refers to the theory of evolution which employs methodological naturalism and is taught in schools and universities). Merriam-Webster's dictionary gives the following definition of evolution: "a theory that the various types of animals and plants have their origin in other preexisting types and that the distinguishable differences are due to modifications in successive generations..."[2] Currently, there are several theories of evolution.

Since World War II a majority of the most prominent and vocal defenders of the evolutionary position which employs methodological naturalism have been atheists and agnostics.[3] In 2007, "Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture...announced that over 700 scientists from around the world have now signed a statement expressing their skepticism about the contemporary theory of Darwinian evolution."[4]

In 2011, the results of a study was published indicating that most United States high school biology teachers are reluctant to endorse the theory of evolution in class. [5] In addition, in 2011, eight anti-evolution bills were introduced into state legislatures within the United States encouraging students to employ critical thinking skills when examining the evolutionary paradigm. In 2009, there were seven states which required critical analysis skills be employed when examining evolutionary material within schools.[6]

A 2005 poll by the Louis Finkelstein Institute for Social and Religious Research found that 60% of American medical doctors reject Darwinism, stating that they do not believe man evolved through natural processes alone.[7] Thirty-eight percent of the American medical doctors polled agreed with the statement that "Humans evolved naturally with no supernatural involvement." [8] The study also reported that 1/3 of all medical doctors favor the theory of intelligent design over evolution.[9] In 2010, the Gallup organization reported that 40% of Americans believe in young earth creationism.[10] In January 2006, the BBC reported concerning Britain:

Furthermore, more than 40% of those questioned believe that creationism or intelligent design (ID) should be taught in school science lessons.[11]

Picture above was taken at Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University Press reported in 2014: "Over the past forty years, creationism has spread swiftly among European Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Hindus, and Muslims, even as anti-creationists sought to smother its flames."[13] In addition, China has the world's largest atheist population and the rapid growth of biblical creationism/Evangelical Christianity in China may have a significant impact on the number of individuals in the world who believe in evolution and also on global atheism (see: China and biblical creationism and Asian atheism).

The theory of evolution posits a process of transformation from simple life forms to more complex life forms, which has never been observed or duplicated in a laboratory.[14] Although not a creation scientist, Swedish geneticist Dr. Nils Heribert-Nilsson, Professor of Botany at the University of Lund in Sweden and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, stated: "My attempts to demonstrate Evolution by an experiment carried on for more than 40 years have completely failed. At least, I should hardly be accused of having started from a preconceived antievolutionary standpoint."[15]

The fossil record is often used as evidence in the creation versus evolution controversy. The fossil record does not support the theory of evolution and is one of the flaws in the theory of evolution.[16] In 1981, there were at least a hundred million fossils that were catalogued and identified in the world's museums.[17] Despite the large number of fossils available to scientists in 1981, evolutionist Mark Ridley, who currently serves as a professor of zoology at Oxford University, was forced to confess: "In any case, no real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist, uses the fossil record as evidence in favour of the theory of evolution as opposed to special creation."[18]

In addition to the evolutionary position lacking evidential support and being counterevidential, the great intellectuals in history such as Archimedes, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and Lord Kelvin did not propose an evolutionary process for a species to transform into a more complex version. Even after the theory of evolution was proposed and promoted heavily in England and Germany, most leading scientists were against the theory of evolution.[19]

The theory of evolution was published by naturalist Charles Darwin in his book On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, in 1859. In a letter to Asa Gray, Darwin confided: "...I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science."[20]Prior to publishing the book, Darwin wrote in his private notebooks that he was a materialist, which is a type of atheist.[21] Darwin was a weak atheist/agnostic (see: religious views of Charles Darwin) .[22] Charles Darwins casual mentioning of a creator in earlier editions of The Origin of Species appears to have been a merely a ploy to downplay the implications of his materialistic theory.[23] The amount of credit Darwin actually deserves for the theory is disputed. [24] Darwin's theory attempted to explain the origin of the various kinds of plants and animals via the process of natural selection or "survival of the fittest".

The basic principle behind natural selection is that in the struggle for life some organisms in a given population will be better suited to their particular environment and thus have a reproductive advantage which increases the representation of their particular traits over time. Many years before Charles Darwin, there were several other individuals who published articles on the topic of natural selection.[25]

Darwin did not first propose in his book Origin of Species that man had descended from non-human ancestors. Darwin's theory of evolution incorporated that later in Darwin's book entitled Descent of Man.

As far as the history of the theory of evolution, although Darwin is well known when it comes to the early advocacy of the evolutionary position in the Western world, evolutionary ideas were taught by the ancient Greeks as early as the 7th century B.C.[26] The concept of naturalistic evolution differs from the concept of theistic evolution in that it states God does not guide the posited process of macroevolution.[27]

In 2012, the science news website Livescience.com published a news article entitled Belief in Evolution Boils Down to a Gut Feeling which indicated that research suggests that gut feelings trumped facts when it comes to evolutionists believing in evolution.[28] In January of 2012, the Journal of Research in Science Teaching published a study indicating that evolutionary belief is significantly based on gut feelings.[29][30] The January 20, 2012 article entitled Belief in Evolution Boils Down to a Gut Feeling published by the website Live Science wrote of the research: "They found that intuition had a significant impact on what the students accepted, no matter how much they knew and regardless of their religious beliefs."[31]

In response to evolutionary indoctrination and the uncritical acceptance of evolution by many evolutionists, the scientists at the organization Creation Ministries International created a Question evolution! campaign which poses 15 questions for evolutionists. In addition, leading creationist organizations have created lists of poor arguments that evolutionists should not use.[32] See also: Causes of evolutionary belief

Transhumanism Foreign Policy

Posted on May 8, 2018 by ev1

For the last several decades, a strange liberation movement has grown within the developed world. Its crusaders aim much higher than civil rights campaigners, feminists, or gay-rights advocates. They want nothing less than to liberate the human race from its biological constraints. As "transhumanists" see it, humans must wrest their biological destiny from evolutions blind process of random variation and adaptation and move to the next stage as a species.

It is tempting to dismiss transhumanists as some sort of odd cult, nothing more than science fiction taken too seriously: Witness their over-the-top Web sites and recent press releases ("Cyborg Thinkers to Address Humanitys Future," proclaims one). The plans of some transhumanists to freeze themselves cryogenically in hopes of being revived in a future age seem only to confirm the movements place on the intellectual fringe.

But is the fundamental tenet of transhumanism that we will someday use biotechnology to make ourselves stronger, smarter, less prone to violence, and longer-lived really so outlandish? Transhumanism of a sort is implicit in much of the research agenda of contemporary biomedicine. The new procedures and technologies emerging from research laboratories and hospitals whether mood-altering drugs, substances to boost muscle mass or selectively erase memory, prenatal genetic screening, or gene therapy can as easily be used to "enhance" the species as to ease or ameliorate illness.

Although the rapid advances in biotechnology often leave us vaguely uncomfortable, the intellectual or moral threat they represent is not always easy to identify. The human race, after all, is a pretty sorry mess, with our stubborn diseases, physical limitations, and short lives. Throw in humanitys jealousies, violence, and constant anxieties, and the transhumanist project begins to look downright reasonable. If it were technologically possible, why wouldnt we want to transcend our current species? The seeming reasonableness of the project, particularly when considered in small increments, is part of its danger. Society is unlikely to fall suddenly under the spell of the transhumanist worldview. But it is very possible that we will nibble at biotechnologys tempting offerings without realizing that they come at a frightful moral cost.

The first victim of transhumanism might be equality. The U.S. Declaration of Independence says that "all men are created equal," and the most serious political fights in the history of the United States have been over who qualifies as fully human. Women and blacks did not make the cut in 1776 when Thomas Jefferson penned the declaration. Slowly and painfully, advanced societies have realized that simply being human entitles a person to political and legal equality. In effect, we have drawn a red line around the human being and said that it is sacrosanct.

Underlying this idea of the equality of rights is the belief that we all possess a human essence that dwarfs manifest differences in skin color, beauty, and even intelligence. This essence, and the view that individuals therefore have inherent value, is at the heart of political liberalism. But modifying that essence is the core of the transhumanist project. If we start transforming ourselves into something superior, what rights will these enhanced creatures claim, and what rights will they possess when compared to those left behind? If some move ahead, can anyone afford not to follow? These questions are troubling enough within rich, developed societies. Add in the implications for citizens of the worlds poorest countries for whom biotechnologys marvels likely will be out of reach and the threat to the idea of equality becomes even more menacing.

Transhumanisms advocates think they understand what constitutes a good human being, and they are happy to leave behind the limited, mortal, natural beings they see around them in favor of something better. But do they really comprehend ultimate human goods? For all our obvious faults, we humans are miraculously complex products of a long evolutionary process products whose whole is much more than the sum of our parts. Our good characteristics are intimately connected to our bad ones: If we werent violent and aggressive, we wouldnt be able to defend ourselves; if we didnt have feelings of exclusivity, we wouldnt be loyal to those close to us; if we never felt jealousy, we would also never feel love. Even our mortality plays a critical function in allowing our species as a whole to survive and adapt (and transhumanists are just about the last group Id like to see live forever). Modifying any one of our key characteristics inevitably entails modifying a complex, interlinked package of traits, and we will never be able to anticipate the ultimate outcome.

Nobody knows what technological possibilities will emerge for human self-modification. But we can already see the stirrings of Promethean desires in how we prescribe drugs to alter the behavior and personalities of our children. The environmental movement has taught us humility and respect for the integrity of nonhuman nature. We need a similar humility concerning our human nature. If we do not develop it soon, we may unwittingly invite the transhumanists to deface humanity with their genetic bulldozers and psychotropic shopping malls.

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Transhumanism Foreign Policy

Design Diary 1 Posthuman Saga Intro Mighty Boards

Posted on May 7, 2018 by jessica

From the arrogance of Mankind a new life is born.This new life shall pave the way.The future shall be pure.The old world shall be cleansed.The Evolved shall inherit the Earth.

-fromNo Human, by Edgar Hollow 2033

The beauty of the board game medium is that it relies so much on what is arguably the most private and personal aspect of our existence: our imagination.

No, thats not quite right.

Lets try again: the beauty of the board game medium is that it fuels our imagination and it does so in a social context. It is one of those prized activities that taps into the inner life of our minds and brings it to the fore, using cardboard, plastic, wood and language to make that inner experience shareable. That is truly a thing of beauty. This is particularly so in a world where portable, networked technology and social media platforms are carefully designed to hijack our attention in every waking moment, luring us into a hive-minded feedback loop of increasing velocity.

I have a confession. Im not a fan of learning new games. I love learning new systems, but that initial hump of wrestling with a rule-book is not on my top ten fun things to do. Yes, that is indeed shocking for a game designer, but there it is. But when those rules sink in and start interacting with the physical pieces in front of me, the effect is magical. I am truly fascinated by how vivid that mental image of a world, a scene or situation becomes through the calibrated confluence of rules, visuals and physical props and if at all possible, sound. When a group of friends is sharing that experience with me theres few things I enjoy more in the world. To have the possibility to create those experiences for others, or at least encourage them, is simply a privilege. This design diary is an attempt at sharing that privilege with players, designers and critics, in the hope of inspiring others or at least offer a window into the process.

The initial idea was to start off with a few entries about board game design in general, but after a few failed attempts I have to concede defeat to the monster thats occupying every ounce of creativity I have at the moment: Posthuman Saga. Every thing I tried to write in abstract simply got raided by Posthumans mutant tentacles beckoning me to talk about it. I give in. The creation wins.

Posthuman Saga is a tactical survival adventure set in the post-apocalyptic world of Posthuman infused with narrative. Lets break that down some and substantiate those descriptors.

The tactical in tactical survival refers to the fact that while there is an element of randomness in the game, the emphasis is on player choices and their outcome. Thus, every sub-system of the game requires meaningful choices from the player and often has an opportunity cost. If I play my best Combat card in this encounter, I have a good chance of winning it, but that card is going to be exhausted until I take a Camp action, which stalls me from progressing in the game. When I do Camp Ill have to spend a recovery point to gain the Combat card back, which comes at the cost of not gaining back a point of Health or Morale, or one of the crucial Stat Boosts that can determine the outcome of both narrative and combat encounters This is, of course, a basic aspect of most games, particularly euro-games, but tends to be less present in more theme-heavy, adventure games (with various notable exceptions) which use randomness to generate excitement and emergent story (see below). In the first board game set in the Posthuman world, Posthuman certain choices were in the hands of the players (such as which action to play, how to organize tiles etc), but major sub-systems in the game were more random (such as combat). In Fallout the combat is fun and quick, but determined by a die-roll with little agency afforded to the player in that particular sub-system. The choices there are primarily in which actions to take, where to move to etc. We see similar sub-systems dominate adventure games such as Merchants and Marauders and Descent. One is not inherently better or worse than the other, of course. There are pros and cons to each and it all depends on the desired experience and, especially when it comes to thematic heavy adventure games, how that sub-system fits with the feel and story the game is aiming to create. Ill be dedicating an entry to Posthuman Sagas combat system, comparing it to the first Posthumans combat system

The survival part of tactical survival refers to the fact that the mechanics of the game are designed to convey the feel of the setting: scarcity, danger and attrition. Most elements of the game can be seen as an inverse resource management game: you have a set of resources when you start which deplete continuously as you progress in your path to victory. The more you push for that victory, the more resources youll most likely lose in the process and a big part of the game is managing that attrition, while simultaneously growing your character through development cards, weapons, equipment and even positive, stable mutations (but watch out there, mutation is not something you have a lot of control over and will quickly get out of hand and see you hobbling around a tree your newly boosted senses blown away by the sound of leaves floating towards the ground). Im gonna be sassy and coin a term here: attrition management. Your health, morale, stat boosts and combat cards WILL deplete. You can recover them, but they will deplete. If you try to advance unblemished, you will most likely lose the game to the player who is teetering on the edge of exhaustion and depression but has just grabbed the story book and is reading off the final story of his mission objective Fatigue, on the other hand, is not easily recovered. Its a permanent hit you take when you go hungry, march on through the night or troop on through a nasty storm. But again, these will be your choices to make.

Ok, lets talk story now. What do I mean by infused with narrative?. While narrative is not the primary focus of the game, it features heavily in it both in scripted and emergent ways. By scripted narrative I here mean sections of story, sometimes with variable outcomes, others times fixed, that we have written into the game. Emergent narrative is the story that is generated from the interaction of game-play elements and other players. While not everyone interprets mechanical events in a narrative manner, the way mechanics and rules are implemented creates more or less likelihood for them to generate mental images in the mind of the player and interpret such actions and events narratively. I will dedicate a separate entry or ten to game narrative and theme specifically as its both a complex subject and one which I am fascinated by and have researched professionally in my day-job incarnation as a game researcher.

The aim was thus to create a hybrid that combines euro-style mechanics with the imagination-stimulating qualities of thematic story games. That implies that those two are different categories of games, which is not exactly right at all, but since its an established way of grouping board games, lets go with it (for now).

And finally, the question Ive been bombarded with since we announced Posthuman Saga: is this a second edition or on an expansion of the first Posthuman? No, this is an entirely different game set in the same world. It progresses the story of the first Posthuman and it features a journey with declared actions on a modular board, but thats about where the similarity ends. The two games systems are totally different and have completely different components. Familiar mutants will make an appearance, and some of the characters from the first Posthuman have survived (while others have turned mutant and been sent into exile out of the Fortress and beyond the Perimeter) and become hardened contributors to the Fortress society, all the art in the game has been re-done from scratch. So, this is a new game in a freshly visualized Posthuman world.

Thanks for reading and please feel free to ask questions or leave input in the comments below!

-Gordon

Gordon Calleja splits his time between game design and academic game research. He designed Posthuman, a post-apocalyptic survival board game that was a big hit on Kickstarter in 2015, and was published in 2016. He recently designed and published Vengeance, a board game adaptation of revenge movies that was also a success on Kickstarter and has been published by Mighty Boards and co-published in German, French and English in 2018 by Asmodee and Greenbrier Games. He is currently working on a new board game in the Posthuman world called Posthuman Saga.

Gordon also designs video games and is the designer of the critically acclaimed Will Love Tear Us Apart, a video game adaptation of Joy Divisions track that was nominated for several international awards. He is currently also working on Posthuman:Sanctuary, a video game adaptation of the Posthuman board gametogether with the team at Mighty Box.

His research is multi-disciplinary in nature but features mainly on: game narrative game ontology and player experience, with a particular focus on immersion and presence in game environments. The latter is the subject of his book In-Game: From Immersion to Incorporation, published by MIT Press. His current research and subject of his next book focuses on board game design and player experience.

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Design Diary 1 Posthuman Saga Intro Mighty Boards

Satoshi Nakamoto – Wikipedia

Posted on May 7, 2018 by Danzig

Nakamoto has not disclosed any personal information when discussing technical matters.[4] He provided some commentary on banking and fractional-reserve banking. On his P2P Foundation profile as of 2012, Nakamoto claimed to be a 37-year-old male who lived in Japan,[25] but some speculated he was unlikely to be Japanese due to his use of perfect English and his bitcoin software not being documented or labelled in Japanese.[4]

Occasional British English spelling and terminology (such as the phrase "bloody hard") in both source code comments and forum postings led to speculation that Nakamoto, or at least one individual in the consortium claiming to be him, was of Commonwealth origin.[4][6][26] Moreover, the first bitcoin block that could only be mined by Satoshi contains the encoded text The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks which implies that he was reading the London's The Times newspaper at the time of the inception of bitcoin.[16][27]:18

Stefan Thomas, a Swiss coder and active community member, graphed the time stamps for each of Nakamoto's bitcoin forum posts (more than 500); the resulting chart showed a steep decline to almost no posts between the hours of 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time. This was between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Japanese time, suggesting an unusual sleep pattern for someone presumably living in Japan. As this pattern held true even on Saturdays and Sundays, it suggested that Nakamoto was asleep at this time.[4]

Nakamoto's initial email to Dai is dated 22 August 2008; the metadata for this PDF (pdftk bitcoin.pdf dump_data) yields as the CreationDate the value 20081003134958-07'00' this implies 3 October 2008 or a bit over a month later, which is consistent with the local date mentioned in the Cypherpunk mailing list email. This is an earlier draft than the final draft on bitcoin.org, which is dated 20090324113315-06'00' or 24 March 2009; the timezone differs: 7 vs 6.[28]

Gavin Andresen has said of Nakamoto's code: "He was a brilliant coder, but it was quirky".[29]

There is still doubt about the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto.[30]

In December 2013, a blogger named Skye Grey linked Nick Szabo to the bitcoin whitepaper using a stylometric analysis.[31][32][33] Szabo is a decentralized currency enthusiast and published a paper on "bit gold", which is considered a precursor to bitcoin.[32][33] He is known to have been interested in using pseudonyms in the 1990s.[34] In a May 2011 article, Szabo stated about the bitcoin creator: "Myself, Wei Dai, and Hal Finney were the only people I know of who liked the idea (or in Dai's case his related idea) enough to pursue it to any significant extent until Nakamoto (assuming Nakamoto is not really Finney or Dai)."[35]

Detailed research by financial author Dominic Frisby provides much circumstantial evidence but, as he admits, no proof that Satoshi is Szabo.[36] Speaking on RT's The Keiser Report, he said "I've concluded there is only one person in the whole world that has the sheer breadth but also the specificity of knowledge and it is this chap...".[37] However, Szabo has denied being Satoshi. In a July 2014 email to Frisby, he said: 'Thanks for letting me know. I'm afraid you got it wrong doxing me as Satoshi, but I'm used to it'.[38] Nathaniel Popper wrote in the New York Times that "the most convincing evidence pointed to a reclusive American man of Hungarian descent named Nick Szabo."[39]

In a high-profile 6 March 2014 article in the magazine Newsweek,[40] journalist Leah McGrath Goodman identified Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto, a Japanese American man living in California, whose birth name is Satoshi Nakamoto,[40][41][42] as the Nakamoto in question. Besides his name, Goodman pointed to a number of facts that circumstantially suggested he was the bitcoin inventor.[40] Trained as a physicist at Cal Poly University in Pomona, Nakamoto worked as a systems engineer on classified defense projects and computer engineer for technology and financial information services companies. Nakamoto was laid off twice in the early 1990s and turned libertarian, according to his daughter, and encouraged her to start her own business "not under the government's thumb." In the article's seemingly biggest piece of evidence, Goodman wrote that when she asked him about bitcoin during a brief in-person interview, Nakamoto seemed to confirm his identity as the bitcoin founder by stating: "I am no longer involved in that and I cannot discuss it. It's been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now. I no longer have any connection."[40][43] The article's publication led to a flurry of media interest, including reporters camping out near Dorian Nakamoto's house and subtly chasing him by car when he drove to do an interview.[44] However, during the subsequent full-length interview, Dorian Nakamoto denied all connection to bitcoin, saying he had never heard of the currency before, and that he had misinterpreted Goodman's question as being about his previous work for military contractors, much of which was classified.[45] In a Reddit "ask-me-anything" interview, he claimed he had misinterpreted Goodman's question as being related to his work for Citibank.[46] Later that day, the pseudonymous Nakamoto's P2P Foundation account posted its first message in five years, stating: "I am not Dorian Nakamoto."[47][48] However, it is generally believed that Nakamoto's P2P Foundation account had been hacked, and the message was not sent by him.[49][50][51]

Hal Finney (4 May 1956 28 August 2014) was a pre-bitcoin cryptographic pioneer and the first person (other than Nakamoto himself) to use the software, file bug reports, and make improvements.[52] He also lived a few blocks from Dorian Nakamoto's family home, according to Forbes journalist Andy Greenberg.[53] Greenberg asked the writing analysis consultancy Juola & Associates to compare a sample of Finney's writing to Satoshi Nakamoto's, and they found that it was the closest resemblance they had yet come across (including the candidates suggested by Newsweek, Fast Company, The New Yorker, Ted Nelson and Skye Grey).[53] Greenberg theorized that Finney may have been a ghostwriter on behalf of Nakamoto, or that he simply used his neighbor Dorian's identity as a "drop" or "patsy whose personal information is used to hide online exploits". However, after meeting Finney, seeing the emails between him and Nakamoto and his bitcoin wallet's history (including the very first bitcoin transaction from Nakamoto to him, which he forgot to pay back) and hearing his denial, Greenberg concluded that Finney was telling the truth. Juola & Associates also found that Nakamoto's emails to Finney more closely resemble Nakamoto's other writings than Finney's do. Finney's fellow extropian and sometimes co-blogger Robin Hanson assigned a subjective probability of "at least" 15% that "Hal was more involved than hes said", before further evidence suggested that was not the case.[54]

On 8 December 2015, Wired wrote that Craig Steven Wright, an Australian academic, "either invented bitcoin or is a brilliant hoaxer who very badly wants us to believe he did".[55] Craig Wright took down his Twitter account and neither he nor his ex-wife responded to press inquiries. The same day, Gizmodo published a story with evidence obtained by a hacker who supposedly broke into Wright's email accounts, claiming that Satoshi Nakamoto was a joint pseudonym for Craig Steven Wright and computer forensics analyst David Kleiman, who died in 2013.[56] A number of prominent bitcoin promoters remained unconvinced by the reports.[57] Subsequent reports also raised the possibility that the evidence provided was an elaborate hoax,[58][59] which Wired acknowledged "cast doubt" on their suggestion that Wright was Nakamoto.[60]

On 9 December, only hours after Wired claimed Wright was Nakamoto, Wright's home in Gordon, New South Wales was raided by at least ten police officers. His business premises in Ryde, New South Wales were also searched by police. The Australian Federal Police stated they conducted searches to assist the Australian Taxation Office and that "This matter is unrelated to recent media reporting regarding the digital currency bitcoin."[61] According to a document released by Gizmodo alleged to be a transcript of a meeting between Wright and the ATO, he had been involved in a taxation dispute with them for several years.[56]

On 2 May 2016, Craig Wright posted on his blog publicly claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto. In articles released on the same day, journalists from the BBC and The Economist stated that they saw Wright signing a message using the private key associated with the first bitcoin transaction.[62][63] During his BBC interview (which was also video recorded, aired and published by BBC News) Wright said:

Some people will believe, some people won't, and to tell you the truth, I don't really care.... I didn't decide [to reveal my identity now]. People decided this matter for me. And they're making life difficult not for me but my friends, my family, my staff.... They want to be private. They don't want all of this to affect them. And I don't want any of them to be impacted by this. None of it's true. There are lots of stories out there that have been made up. And I don't like it hurting those people I care about. So I am going to do this thing only once. And once only. I am going to come in front of a camera once. And I will never, ever, be on the camera ever again for any TV station, or any media, ever.

Wright's claim was supported by Jon Matonis (former director of the Bitcoin Foundation) and bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen, both of whom met Wright and witnessed a similar signing demonstration.[64]

However, bitcoin developer Peter Todd said that Wright's blog post, which appeared to contain cryptographic proof, actually contained nothing of the sort.[65] The Bitcoin Core project released a statement on Twitter saying "There is currently no publicly available cryptographic proof that anyone in particular is bitcoin's creator."[66][67] Bitcoin developer Jeff Garzik agreed that evidence publicly provided by Wright does not prove anything, and security researcher Dan Kaminsky concluded Wright's claim was "intentional scammery".[68][69]

On 4 May 2016, Wright made another post on his blog intimating his intentions to publish "a series of pieces that will lay the foundations for this extraordinary claim".[70][71] But the following day, he deleted all his blog posts and replaced them with a notice entitled "I'm Sorry", which read in part:

I believed that I could put the years of anonymity and hiding behind me. But, as the events of this week unfolded and I prepared to publish the proof of access to the earliest keys, I broke. I do not have the courage. I cannot.[72][73]

On Thursday 5 May 2016 shortly before closing his blog, Wright sent around an email link to a news story from an impostor site resembling SiliconAngle saying "Craig Wright faces criminal charges and serious jail time in UK". Wright stated that "I am the source of terrorist funds as bitcoin creator or I am a fraud to the world. At least a fraud is able to see his family. There is nothing I can do."[74].

In June 2016, the London Review of Books published an article by Andrew O'Hagan about the events, based on his book "The Secret Life: Three True Stories" in which O'Hagan spends several weeks with Wright at the request of Wright's public relations team; which, as revealed in the book, was set up as a result of a business deal between Wright and various individuals including Calvin Ayre after bitcoin was created. All of those involved in the described business deal seemed to agree that they wanted a significant event in human history to be documented by a writer with complete impartiality and freedom to investigate. O'Hagan was with Wright during the time of his various media interviews. O'Hagan also interviews Wright's wife, colleagues and many of the other people involved in his claims.[75][76][77] It also reveals that the Canadian company nTrust was behind Wright's claim made in May 2016 (perhaps referencing nTrust as being the same entity which created the public relations team for Wright). Further, O'Hagan suggests that Wright provided an invalid private key because he was legally unable to provide the valid one as a result of legal obligations agreed as part of a Seychelles trust deal previously reached. O'Hagan's book also corroborates the suggestion that both Wright and David Kleiman were the identies of the moniker "Satoshi Nakamoto".

Following O'Hagan's article, BBC journalist Rory Cellan-Jones (who interviewed Wright on camera for the BBC) wrote a follow up article citing O'Hagan's account as the possible reasons for Wright's apparent unwillingness to declare himself as Nakamoto:

To me, the key revelation is about this motivation.

He had told the BBC that he had not wanted to come out into the spotlight but needed to dispel damaging rumours affecting his family, friends and colleagues.

But O'Hagan shows us something rather different - a man under intense pressure from business associates who stood to profit from him if he could be shown to be Nakamoto.[78]

This is in reference to O'Hagan's firsthand account, which describes business associates as being furious when they learned that Wright had provided invalid proof (despite showing them valid proof privately) and for his failure to disclose the details of the Seychelles Trust deal which meant that he could neither provide said proof publicly or yet gain access to the bitcoin attributed to Nakamoto. Cellan-Jones concludes his article by expressing doubts about Wright but admits "It seems very likely he was involved, perhaps as part of a team that included Dave Kleiman and Hal Finney, the recipient of the first transaction with the currency."

The 2017 Netflix documentary titled Banking on Bitcoin concluded with an extract of Wright's 2016 interview with the BBC.[79][80]

On February 14, 2018 a suit against Wright (said to be living in London) for more than US$10bn was lodged in a Florida court on behalf of David Kleiman's estate, alleging that Wright has fraudulently appropriated Kleiman's share of the bitcoins that he and Kleiman mined together.[81][82] The suit sets out much detail of the collaboration between Wright and Kleiman, but does not speculate on whether they or either of them created bitcoin.[83]

Ian Grigg, who is credited with inventing triple entry accounting[84] describes the events as follows[85]:

Firstly, Satoshi Nakamoto is not one human being. It is or was a team. Craig Wright named one person in his recent communications, being the late Dave Kleinman. Craig did not name others, nor should I. While he was the quintessential genius who had the original idea for Bitcoin and wrote the lion's share of the code, Craig could not have done it alone. Satoshi Nakamoto was a team effort.

New Liberty Dollar issuer Joseph VaughnPerling says he met Wright at a conference in Amsterdam three years before publication of the bitcoin white paper and that Wright introduced himself as Satoshi Nakamoto at that time.[86][87]

In a 2011 article in The New Yorker, Joshua Davis claimed to have narrowed down the identity of Nakamoto to a number of possible individuals, including the Finnish economic sociologist Dr. Vili Lehdonvirta and Irish student Michael Clear,[88] then a graduate student in cryptography at Trinity College Dublin and now a post-doctoral student at Georgetown University.[89] Clear strongly denied he was Nakamoto,[90] as did Lehdonvirta.[91]

In October 2011, writing for Fast Company, investigative journalist Adam Penenberg cited circumstantial evidence suggesting Neal King, Vladimir Oksman and Charles Bry could be Nakamoto.[92] They jointly filed a patent application that contained the phrase "computationally impractical to reverse" in 2008, which was also used in the bitcoin white paper by Nakamoto.[93] The domain name bitcoin.org was registered three days after the patent was filed. All three men denied being Nakamoto when contacted by Penenberg.[92]

The late Dave Kleiman has been also named as a possible candidate, and Craig Wright claimed an association with him as well.[94]

In May 2013, Ted Nelson speculated that Nakamoto is really Japanese mathematician Shinichi Mochizuki.[95] Later, an article was published in The Age newspaper that claimed that Mochizuki denied these speculations, but without attributing a source for the denial.[96]

A 2013 article[97] in Vice listed Gavin Andresen, Jed McCaleb, or a government agency as possible candidates to be Nakamoto. Dustin D. Trammell, a Texas-based security researcher, was suggested as Nakamoto, but he publicly denied it.[98]

In 2013, two Israeli mathematicians, Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir, published a paper claiming a link between Nakamoto and Ross William Ulbricht. The two based their suspicion on an analysis of the network of bitcoin transactions,[99] but later retracted their claim.[100]

Some have considered that Nakamoto might be a team of people: Dan Kaminsky, a security researcher who read the bitcoin code,[101] said that Nakamoto could either be a "team of people" or a "genius";[26] Laszlo Hanyecz, a former Bitcoin Core developer who had emailed Nakamoto, had the feeling the code was too well designed for one person.[4]

A 2017 article[102] published by a former SpaceX intern espoused the possibility of SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk being the real Satoshi, based on Musk's technical expertise with financial software and history of publishing whitepapers. However, in a tweet on November 28th, Musk denied the claim.[103]

Original post:

Satoshi Nakamoto - Wikipedia

Institute for Astronomy

Posted on May 7, 2018 by Danzig

May 3, 2018: University of Hawaii Astronomer John Tonry Elected to National Academy of Sciences

University of Hawaii at Mnoa astronomer John Tonry has been named as one of the National Academy of Sciences' 84 newly chosen members. Tonry, who has been with the UH Mnoa Institute for Astronomy since 1996, joins an elite group of fewer than 2,400 exceptional scientists worldwide. NAS members are recognized for their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

Press Release

Today, NASA launched the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), its newest telescope to search for planets beyond our Solar System, and astronomers from the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy and Maunakea telescopes will be a part of the adventure.

Press Release

Paul Coleman, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, passed away at his home on January 16th, 2018. Paul was the first Native Hawaiian with a doctorate in astrophysics. In his 15 years with the IfA, Paul played a key role in our education and public outreach efforts, and advocated tirelessly for astronomy in Hawaii.

Obituary

The University of Hawaii ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) telescope on Mauna Loa captured images on February 8, 2018 of the Tesla Roadster launched into space as part of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy test.

Press Release

Extremely distant galaxies are usually too faint to be seen, even by the largest telescopes. But nature has a solution - gravitational lensing, predicted by Albert Einstein and observed many times by astronomers. Now, an international team of astronomers led by Harald Ebeling from the University of Hawaii has discovered one of the most extreme instances of magnification by gravitational lensing.

Press Release

University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (IfA) Director Gnther Hasinger will be leaving UH to be the next Director of Science at the European Space Agency (ESA), Europe's equivalent to NASA.

UH will name an interim Director for the IfA and begin a search for a new Director.

UH Press Release

A team of astronomers from Maryland, Hawaii, Israel, and France has produced the most detailed map ever of the orbits of galaxies in our extended local neighborhood, showing the past motions of almost 1400 galaxies within 100 million light years of the Milky Way.

Press Release

Since astronomers first measured the size of an extrasolar planet seventeen years ago, they have struggled to answer the question: how did the largest planets get to be so large? Thanks to the recent discovery of twin planets by a University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy team led by graduate student Samuel Grunblatt, we are getting closer to an answer.

Press Release

In October, astronomers at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy (IfA) made a stunning discovery with the Pan-STARRS1 telescope - the first interstellar object seen passing through our Solar System. Now, an international team lead by Karen Meech (ifA) has made detailed measurements of the visitor's properties. "This thing is very strange," said Karen Meech.

Press Release

A small, recently discovered asteroid - or perhaps a comet - appears to have originated from outside the solar system, coming from somewhere else in our galaxy. If so, it would be the first "interstellar object" to be observed and confirmed by astronomers. This unusual object - for now designated A/2017 U1 - was discovered Oct. 19 by the University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on Haleakala during the course of its nightly search for Near-Earth Objects for NASA.

Press Release

UH astronomers and their international collaborators announced the discovery and study of the first binary neutron star merger detected in gravitational waves in articles published today in Science, Nature, and the Astrophysical Journal. The study of this event shows that at least some of the elements heavier than iron were originally created in binary neutron star mergers like this one.

Press Release

The brightest members of the Pleiades cluster form a spectacular group of naked-eye stars that have played a central role in cultures around the world for millennia. Now, an international team of astronomers, including Daniel Huber from the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, used the Kepler Space Telescope to perform the most detailed study to date of their variability - with some interesting new discoveries.

Press Release

The cosmic web - the distribution of matter on the largest scales in the universe - has usually been defined through the distribution of galaxies. Now, a new study by a team of astronomers from France, Israel, and Hawaii demonstrates a novel approach. Instead of using galaxy positions, they mapped the motions of thousands of galaxies. Because galaxies are pulled toward gravitational attractors and move away from empty regions, these motions allowed the team to locate the denser matter in clusters and filaments and the absence of matter in regions called voids.

Press Release

The University of Hawaii's 2.2 meter (88-inch) telescope on Maunakea will soon be producing images nearly as sharp as those from the Hubble Space Telescope, thanks to a new instrument using the latest image sharpening technologies. Astronomer Christoph Baranec, at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy (IfA), has been awarded a nearly $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to build an autonomous adaptive optics system called Robo-AO-2 for the UH telescope.

Press Release

The UH Institute for Astronomy celebrates its 50th Anniversary with a special three-day meeting in Honolulu from June 28-30, 2017. Everyone with a history or relationship with the IfA is invited to attend, including former and present graduate students, postdocs, staff and faculty. See below for two free public events that are also part of the celebration.

Event Information

June 27th, 7:30PM, UH Manoa Orvis Auditorium: Perpetual Motion: Galileo and His RevolutionsSarah Pillow, soprano & Mary-Anne Ballard, viola da gamba, with guests Daniel Swenberg, lute and theorbo; author Dava Sobel & Marc Wagnon, video artistA moving and compelling account of a remarkable moment in the history of science, human thought and music, Perpetual Motion ties together the groundbreaking repertoire of Galileo's day, narration by acclaimed best-selling science writer Dava Sobel, and images of Earth and the cosmos. The UH Bookstore will have copies of Dava's books for sale, and she will be signing them!

Free Tickets (required) via Ticketbud

June 28th, 7:30PM, UH Manoa Orvis Auditorium: Dava Sobel talks on "The Glass Universe"The acclaimed author of Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time (Walker, 1995), Dava Sobel will be speaking about her new book, The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars (Viking, 2016), which tells the story of the women who worked at the Harvard College Observatory from the late 1800s through the mid-1900s. The UH Bookstore will have copies of Dava's books for sale, and she will be signing them!

Free Tickets (required) via Ticketbud

Since the mid-1990s, when the first planet around another sun-like star was discovered, astronomers have been amassing what is now a large collection of exoplanets - nearly 3,500 have been confirmed so far. In a new study, whose lead author is an IfA graduate student, researchers have classified these planets in much the same way that biologists identify new animal species and have learned that the majority of exoplanets found to date fall into two distinct size groups: rocky Earth-like planets and larger mini-Neptunes. The team used data from NASA's Kepler mission and the W. M. Keck Observatory.

Press Release

An international team of astronomers, including IfA graduate student Jason Chu and Astronomer David Sanders, has used the Herschel Space Observatory to take far-infrared images of the 200 most infrared-luminous galaxies in the Local Universe.

Press Release

A team of astronomers, lead by IfA graduate Trent Dupuy and IfA astronomy Michael Liu, have shown what separates real stars from the wannabes. Not in Hollywood, but out in the universe. They found that an object must weigh at least 70 Jupiters in order to start hydrogen fusion. If it weighs less, the star does not ignite and becomes a brown dwarf instead.

Press Release

Starting the week of May 1, the University of Hawaii 88-inch telescope (UH88) will undergo much needed repair and maintenance. The renovation will include fresh paint and repaired siding on the exterior, roof repair and weather sealing of the dome, improved lightning protection, as well as safety upgrades.

Press Release

A good showing today for the IfA at the UH Awards Ceremony. Faculty members Christoph Baranec and Jeff Kuhn received the Board of Regents' Medal for Excellence in Research awards for excellence in research, while graduate student Will Best received the award for Student Excellence in Research (Doctoral Level).

More Information

Join us at our Manoa Headquarters on April 23rd, from 11am-4pm, for a day of family-friendly activities and talks!

More Information

The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST), currently under construction on Haleakala, Maui, is expected to start observing the Sun in 2020. When it does, it will rely on two complex infrared instruments being built by the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (IfA). Their goal is to measure the Sun's weak magnetic field.The first of these to be completed is called the Cryogenic Near-Infrared Spectropolarimeter (CryoNIRSP). In a major milestone, it took its first look at the Sun from the laboratories at the IfA's Advanced Technology Research Center on Maui.

Press Release

The IfA mourns the loss of our long-time faculty member and professor emeritus Toby Owen. Tobias (Toby) C. Owen, passed away on March 4, 2017, in Sacramento, California, where he had been living after retiring from the IfA in 2012.

Obituary, by Alan Tokunaga

In a groundbreaking study published in Nature Astronomy, a team of researchers, including Brent Tully from the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, reports the discovery of a previously unknown, nearly empty region in our extragalactic neighborhood. Largely devoid of galaxies, this void exerts a repelling force, pushing our Local Group of galaxies through space.

Press Release

IfA Astronomer Nick Kaiser has been awarded the Gold Medal in Astronomy by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS). The Medal's past recipients include Albert Einstein, Edwin Hubble, Arthur Eddington and Stephen Hawking. Dr. Kaiser is receiving the award for his extensive theoretical and observational work on cosmology, including how matter - both dark and visible - is distributed on the largest scales.

Press Release

The Pan-STARRS project at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy is publicly releasing the world's largest digital sky survey today, via the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland.

Press Release

At first glance, Ceres, the largest body in the main asteroid belt, may not look icy. Images from NASA's Dawn spacecraft have revealed a dark, heavily cratered world whose brightest area is made of highly reflective salts -- not ice. But newly published studies from Dawn scientists, including University of Hawaii astronomer Norbert Schrghofer, show two distinct lines of evidence for ice at or near the surface of the dwarf planet. These findings, which verify predictions made by scientists formerly at UH, are being presented at the 2016 American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco, California.

Press Release

Astronomers from the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (IfA), Brazil, and Stanford University may have solved a long-standing solar mystery.Two decades ago, scientists discovered that the outer five percent of the Sun spins more slowly than the rest of its interior. Now, in a new study to be published in the journal Physical Review Letters, IfA Maui scientists Ian Cunnyngham, Jeff Kuhn, and Isabelle Scholl, together with Marcelo Emilio (Brazil) and Rock Bush (Stanford), describe the physical mechanism responsible for slowing the Sun's outer layers.

Press Release

"A Magnificent Celestial Show in 2017: The August 21 Total Solar Eclipse in North America " with IfA astronomer Shadia Habbal, 7:30 p.m., UH Mnoa Art Building Auditorium (room 132). Free Admission (Campus Parking $6). Poster

One of nature's most spectacular celestial sights is the magnificent solar corona, visible only during a total solar eclipse. On August 21, 2017, the moon's shadow will sweep across the entire United States from Oregon to South Carolina over a span of approximately 90 minutes. Everyone in the 48 contiguous states and Alaska will witness at least a partial solar eclipse. Those directly under the moon's 60 mile-wide shadow will have 2 minutes of totality - one of life's most awesome experiences. Learn why people become eclipse chasers, traveling the world to enjoy their beauty - and do some science.

The annual IfA Maui Open House will be held Friday, Oct. 7, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Maikalani building in Pukalani, Maui. Free Admission. Flier

Comet 332P/Ikeya-Murakami survived for 4.5 billion years in the frigid Kuiper Belt, a vast reservoir of icy bodies on the outskirts of our solar system. But within the last few million years, the unlucky comet was gravitationally kicked to the inner solar system by the outer planets - and this new home, closer to the sun, has doomed the comet. The Hubble Space Telescope caught the latest cloud of debris ejected by Comet 332P. The images, taken over three days in January 2016, represent one of the sharpest, most detailed observations of a comet breaking apart. The doomed comet may disintegrate in only 150 years.

Press Release

A team of astronomers known as the Kepler Habitable Zone Working Group, including University of Hawai'i Institute for Astronomy astronomer Nader Haghighipour, has identified which of the more than 4,000 exoplanets discovered by the NASA Kepler mission are most likely to be similar to our rocky home.

Press Release

Original post:

Institute for Astronomy

Litecoin – Litecoin Price Live, LTC Value, Mining, Wallet …

Posted on May 7, 2018 by ev1

Regardless of what people say, Bitcoin is always the first to scoop the headlines, virtually taking the lead in both good and what seems to be wrong. The early Bitcoiners are smiling to the bank whenever you criticize of what is not going right in bitcoin.

Last month, a cryptocurrency which regarded its self as the silver to bitcoins gold made an all-time high of 2000% in the market capitalization. That cryptocurrency is called Litecoin. The Litecoin team should be seeing it as gold not silver after such an unprecedented surge in value. With quickest transaction time in cryptocurrency blockchain, improved network and less volatility, Litecoin should be aiming to be among the top two in cryptocurrency market.

TEAM

Litecoin was founded by Mr. Charlie Lee, a cryptographic expert who brought his wealth of experience to make Litecoin, what it is today.

He is being assisted by other Directors in the persons of Mr. Xinxi Wang and Mr.Franklyn Richards. I will not forget to mention these two developers who have worked tirelessly to make Litecoin, the fastest blockchain transaction platform. They are losh11 and fancycedar.

Practical Uses of Litecoin

Mining Of Litecoin

Mining LTC is cost-effective because of low computational power it uses.It can be mined in minor hardware or computers. Litecoin uses Script Proof of Work to verify transactions, and every transaction produces new blocks which are added into the Litecoin blockchain. A reward is given to the miner whose effort in solving the computational puzzle led to the addition of more blocks.

Litecoin and Bitcoin are different in the usage of algorithms when hashing. Bitcoin uses the popular SHA-256 which is known for its complexity and high computational power consumption. On the other hand, Litecoin uses a script which is a memory based algorithm and uses less computational power to mine.

Notes to Invest

Litecoin is the cheapest amongst the top three: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin, with the price hovering around $70.I think, what drives Litecoin presently is the relatively low price, and I feel, they management should take advantage of that.

LTC is a currency, and it doesnt act like a stock or bond, When buying shares of Litecoin, you are only swapping your money with Litecoin currency. Litecoin has the potentials to hit it big in the coming years based on the steady increase(In July 2013, 1 LTC = $2.80 and now,1LTC= $70) in the market cap,

MUST READ!

You need to note that, cryptocurrency investment is speculative and unpredictable, and it involves risks. The market is full of uncertainty, susceptible to attack and capital loss. There are many parameters one needs to check before investing. Dont invest only based on what you have read here, but invest based on the fact that, you have sought advice.I wish you success!

Originally posted here:

Litecoin - Litecoin Price Live, LTC Value, Mining, Wallet ...

Use volunteer in a sentence | volunteer sentence examples

Posted on May 7, 2018 by ev1

I volunteer to sleep there tonight, if the love of my life is willing to come along.

The camp ground was manned on a volunteer basis.

She turned to Ryland, who looked like he wanted to volunteer for disappearance in the witness protection program.

He was an enthusiastic and most useful leader of the volunteer movement from its beginning, and a writer, composer and singer of humorous and patriotic songs, some of which, as "The Three Foot Rule" and "They never shall have Gibraltar," became well known far beyond the circle of his acquaintance.

Mom was "resting comfortably," the only news a night volunteer at the hospital would convey.

A volunteer force was established in 1904, for service within the Transvaal, or wherever the interests of the country might require.

In the same year he joined as a volunteer against the Pretender, and was taken prisoner at the battle of Falkirk (1746).

As I passed by the volunteer resident keeper's site, I saw an elderly couple in lounge chairs by a cold fire pit.

The entire trip took just over an hour with the driver, a volunteer from Amarillo, Texas who never stopping his constant drawl of friendly conversation, little of which Dean heard.

In connexion with the last, he made a cruise in the Channel fleet, on board the "Victory," as a volunteer under the command of Admiral Sir Charles Hardy.

In fact, if she confronted him now and then, he might be more inclined to volunteer information before she found out about it.

At the last moment he hesitated, but Crispi succeeded in persuading him to sail from Genoa on the 5th of May 1860 with two vessels carrying a volunteer corps of 1070 strong.

There are a military cantonment, the headquarters of the volunteer corps known as the Assam Valley Light Horse; a government high school, a training school for masters; and an aided school for girls.

In 1832 he accompanied the Liberal expedition to Terceira as a volunteer, and was one of D.

From the age of 13 he belonged to the Canadian volunteer militia, with which he saw service in 1870 at the time of the Fenian raids.

While we presumed Daniel Brennan and Merrill Cooms had gleaned much about our group from our many conversations, we continued to volunteer nothing concrete.

When war seemed imminent volunteers from all parts of Italy, especially from Lombardy, had come pouring into Piedmont to enrol themselves in the army or in the specially raised volunteer corps (the cornrnand of which was given to Garibaldi), and to go to Piedmont became a test of patriotism throughout the country.

The volunteer forces consist of the Rangoon Port Defence Volunteers, comprising artillery, naval, and engineer corps, the Moulmein artillery, the Moulmein, Rangoon, Railway and Upper Burma rifles.

On the next day the Sixth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry started south for the defence of Washington, and was the first fully armed and equipped volunteer regiment to reach the capital.

I won't volunteer I heard a siren, but if I'm pressed, I won't deny it either.

A'Ran was uncertain what to expect but found himself disappointed she didn't instantly volunteer to stay.

On the next day the Sixth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry started south for the defence of Washington, and was the first fully armed and equipped volunteer regiment to reach the capital.

Then she added, Every volunteer fire buck and EMT has a noise on his wheels.

A delicate balance of local easements, public involvement and volunteer labor was slowly assembled.

He resigned from the volunteer service in October 1865, was commissioned lieutenant-colonel of the 26th Infantry in March 1867, served in Texas, mostly in garrison duty, until 1874, and in 1886-1890 (except for brief terms of absence) commanded Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and the infantry and cavalry school there.

At the entry of William and Mary into London he is said to have served as a volunteer trooper "gallantly mounted and richly accoutred."

At the outbreak of the Civil War he joined the parliamentary army as a volunteer in the artillery, a branch of the service with which he was constantly and honourably associated.

Owing to a destructive fire at Nicomedia, Pliny suggests the formation of a volunteer fire-brigade, limited to 150 members.

When the relieving force arrived from Madras under Colonel Clive and Admiral Watson, Hastings enrolled himself as a volunteer, and took part in the action which led to the recovery of Calcutta.

In 1815 he interrupted his studies at Berlin to serve as a volunteer in the campaign against Napoleon, and was wounded in the battle of Ligny.

When the Civil War broke out, he became a major in a Missouri volunteer regiment and served as chief of staff to Major-General Nathaniel Lyon until the death of that officer.

A wave of military enthusiasm arose throughout the empire, and as the formation of a seventh division practically drained the mother-country of trained men, a scheme for the employment of amateur soldiers was formulated, resulting in the despatch of Imperial Yeomanry and Volunteer contingents, which proved one of the most striking features of the South African campaign.

Entering the navy as a volunteer, he served in the Dutch Wars and became postcaptain in 1673.

On being released, the young count obtained leave to accompany as a volunteer the French expedition to Corsica.

Among other public buildings are the assembly rooms, St George's hall, the volunteer drill hall, and the Crichton Institution chapel, completed at a cost of 30,000.

The state furnished four regiments (a total of 5313 officers and men)' to the volunteer army during the Spanish-American War (1898),(1898), the service of the 13th Regiment for more than a year in the Philippines being particularly notable.

ANHALT-DESSAU (1712-1760), who entered the Prussian army in 1725, saw his first service as a volunteer in the War of the Polish Succession (1734-35), and in the latter years of the reign of Frederick William held important commands.

After a period of vacillation he deserted Louis and joined the Holy League, which had been formed to expel the French from Italy; but unable to raise troops, he served with the English forces as a volunteer and shared in the victory gained over the French at the battle of the Spurs near Therouanne on the 16th of August 1513.

After serving as a volunteer in the campaign of 1814 he went to Copenhagen to edit the posthumous papers of the Danish archaeologist Georg Zoega (1755-1809), and published his biography, Zoegas Leben (Stutt.

In 1916 the Yugoslav Committee had also set itself to recruiting among its compatriots in America, but in this case its success was hampered by many cross currents of republican, clerical, Austrian and Montenegrin feeling: and those who did actually volunteer showed considerable lack of discipline and were not always treated with the necessary tact by the Serbian military authorities.

But I guess there's no reason to volunteer the information to her.

In the War of 1812 Sackett's Harbor was an important strategic point for the Americans, who had here a naval station, Fort Tompkins, at the base of Navy Point, and Fort Volunteer, on the eastern side of the harbour.

The statement was an open invitation but she was several conversations wiser now, and waited for him to volunteer the rest of the story.

For seven years (1876-1883) he commanded the 10th Middlesex (Artists) Rifle Volunteers, retiring with the rank of honorary colonel, and subsequently receiving the Volunteer Decoration.

Another son, Charles King (1789-1867), was also educated abroad, was captain of a volunteer regiment in the early part of the war of 1812, and served in 1814 in the New York Assembly, and after working for some years as a journalist was president of Columbia College in 1849-1864.

Their eldest son, Henri Auguste Georges, marquis de La Rochejacquelein, born at Chteau Citran in the Gironde on the 28th of September 1805, was educated as a soldier, served in Spain in 1822, and as a volunteer in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828.

Landing at Nice on the 24th of June 1848, he placed his sword at the disposal of Charles Albert, and, after various difficulties with the Piedmontese war office, formed a volunteer army 3000 strong, but shortly after taking the field was obliged, by the defeat of Custozza, to flee to Switzerland.

He first studied theology at Giessen, but after the campaign of 1814, in which, like his brother August, he took part as a Hessian volunteer, began the study of jurisprudence, and in 1818 established himself as Privatdocent of civil law at Giessen.

Afterwards, Davis himself, as president of the Confederate states, was to appoint many volunteer officers.

Object of training the able-bodied citizens of Buenos Aires in military exercises and creating a volunteer army, ready for service if called upon, to withstand by force the pretensions of their opponents.

Banks was one of the most prominent of the volunteer officers.

On the outbreak of war in 1866 he assumed command of a volunteer army and, after the defeat of the Italian troops at Custozza, took the offensive in order to cover Brescia.

At Breda he enlisted as a volunteer, and the first and only pay which he accepted he kept as a curiosity through life.

The principal buildings within the parish are the old town hall, now used as a volunteer drill hall and armoury; the county buildings, containing the town hall and court house; the academy; reformatory and the Wigtownshire combination poorhouse.

He was wounded at Busaco, became brevet-major after Fuentes de (Moro, accompanied the stormers of the 52nd light infantry as a volunteer at Ciudad Rodrigo and specially distinguished himself at the storming of Badajoz, being the first to mount the breach, and afterwards showing great resolution and promptitude in securing one of the gates before the French could organize a fresh defence.

Excerpt from:

Use volunteer in a sentence | volunteer sentence examples

Psoriasis Types and Pictures | Psoriasis.com

Posted on May 6, 2018 by ev1

People often think of psoriasis as a single skin condition. In fact, there are multiple types of psoriasis, though people will typically have only one type at a time.

Each type of psoriasis has very distinct symptoms and characteristics and can appear on the skin in a variety of ways.

It's important to knowand share with othersthat no matter where it is on the body or what it looks like, psoriasis is not contagious.

Characterized by raised, inflamed, red lesions covered by silvery white scales. Typically found on the elbows, knees, scalp, and lower back. The most common type of psoriasis, about 80% of those who have psoriasis have this type.

Often starts in childhood or young adulthood. Appears as small, pink, individual spots on the skin of the torso, arms, and legs. These spots are not usually as thick as plaque lesions.

Found in the armpits, in the groin, under the breasts, and in other skin folds around the genitals and the buttocks. This type of psoriasis appears as bright-red lesions that are smooth and shiny.

Primarily seen in adults, pustular psoriasis is characterized by white blisters of noninfectious pus surrounded by red skin. It may either be localized to certain areas of the body, such as the hands and feet, or covering most of the body.

A particularly inflammatory form of psoriasis affecting most of the body surface, it is characterized by periodic, widespread, fiery redness of the skin and the shedding of scales in sheets.

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Psoriasis Types and Pictures | Psoriasis.com

Rencol Automation Ltd – Our Products

Posted on May 6, 2018 by ev1

Welding Positioners

An extensive range of ISO and CE Certified, European Standard Welding Positioners. Our Welding Positioners range from 50kg capacity table-top machines for small workpieces, and up to heavy duty 200 tonnes capacity for very large workpieces.

An extensive range of ISO and CE Certified, European Standard Welding Rotators and Turning Rolls. Our Welding Rotators range from 1 tonne capacity up to 650 tonnes capacity and are suitable for a wide range of tubular and cylindrical work pieces.

A unique space-saving swing-arm racking system. Our racking has been specifically designed to meet the needs of Steel Stock Holders and Metal Workshops. Store materials of up to 3m or 6m length, including pipes, tubes, solid bars, rolled strips and more.

An extensive range of high quality work holding and clamping solutions. Our Chucks, Self Centering Vices and Jaws are suitable for a broad range of workpiece shapes, weights and size. Compatible with most Welding Positioners.

A comprehensive selection of large and small Lifting Magnets with lifting capacity from 70kg to 6 tonnes. Our Lifting Magnets are ideal for lifting flat and cylindrical work pieces including long pipes and large sheets.

Electric and pneumatic thread tapping machines able to tap from M3 up to M42. Features include quick change collets with overload clutches, plus mounting accessories including work-tables or magnetic-feet.

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Rencol Automation Ltd - Our Products

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