Stone Mountain Carving: A Symbol of White Supremacy Which Should Be Removed?
“T hose who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is a famous quote attributed to George Santayana; but it has been misquoted over the years as “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.”
If Richard Rose has it his way, the famous carving on the face of Stone Mountain would be sandblasted into history. The president of the Atlanta branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People — more popularly known as the NAACP, which is a civil rights group representing black people — believes that what is considered to be the largest high relief sculpture in the world represents three men who enacted “laws that institutionalized economic oppression and denied educational opportunities, equal treatment under the law and voting rights to the descendants of the stolen Africans”, according to this article posted by the staff of WAGA-TV Fox 5 News in Atlanta.
The three men depicted on the carving — Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy; Robert E. Lee, a general of the Confederate army; and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, also a general of the Confederate army — are considered Confederate heroes of the Civil War of the United States, which occurred greater than 150 years ago; but Rose reportedly said that “in the 150 years since, state and local governments in the South (including Georgia) have lionized these men as symbols of the cause of white supremacy”.
Stone Mountain is one of the more popular tourist attractions in the Atlanta metropolitan area which local people also enjoy. The mountain is 825 feet tall and covers 583 acres; while the top of the mountain is 1,683 feet above sea level. The entire carved surface — known as the Confederate Memorial Carving — measures three acres, which is larger than a football field and Mount Rushmore. The carving of the three men towers 400 feet above the ground; measures 90 by 190 feet; and is recessed 42 feet into the mountain.
Originally intended to be completed in 1928, it took approximately 60 years for the carving to progress from concept to its final completion in 1972.
An ever-popular laser show using the carving as a backdrop has become a beloved tradition in the Atlanta area for both visitors and residents alike — of numerous races, religious beliefs, sexual preferences, genders and ages. Although I have not attended recently, I have enjoyed a picnic while relaxing on a blanket on the great lawn to that laser show — which is set to music — more than once; and it is included in the parking fee of $15.00, which is good all day long…
…so should it be permanently removed?
I say no.
This statement attributed to Jimmy Carter — a former president of the United States — summarizes his feelings, which are similar to what I feel: “there should be a distinction between the battle flag and tributes to Confederate figures, such as the large carving at Stone Mountain Park or statues in his home county in Georgia.”
What he calls the “battle flag” refers to the Confederate flag, which is seen by many people as a symbol of hate; while others whose families have been located in the southern United States for generations consider it a symbol of heritage. Many people have joined the recent movement to remove the Confederate flag from public buildings and monuments — a movement which gained a significant amount of momentum as a result of the killing of nine innocent people by suspect Dylann Roof in a house of worship in Charleston, South Carolina on Wednesday, June 17, 2015. Here is an article with the latest information on this story as written by Andrew Knapp of The Post and Courier, which is a newspaper based in Charleston.
My roots are not in the southern United States, so I am far from qualified to enter the debate of whether or not the Confederate flag represents hate versus heritage — but I do not believe that erasing history is the answer.
Concentration camps were certainly institutions of hate and symbols — examples of some of the blatantly worst of human behavior in recorded history where millions of people were killed simply because of reasons of fallacy and ignorance: they believed in something specific or were not perfect in terms of their appearance. Should concentration camps such as Dachau — of which I posted my thoughts and photographs in this article and this article — be razed? Let the bulldozers flatten Auchwitz and forget about it?
“Never again” and “never forget” are two phrases uttered by those who suffered at the hands of those who perpetuated the Holocaust greater than 70 years ago; and I would believe that similar sentiments would be expressed by those whose ancestors were forced out of Africa and sold as slaves — a major issue which led to the aforementioned Civil War in which as many as 850,000 people died.
Slavery was abolished after the deadliest war in the United States ended by official declaration on Tuesday, May 9, 1865; and the Confederacy was dissolved shortly thereafter.
It is important to note that Stone Mountain Park has been operated by a private entity for greater than 15 years — before that, it was under the operation of the state of Georgia — but because the park celebrates the heritage of the Confederacy, it cannot remove symbols such as the Confederate flag and the carving without approval from the state of Georgia.
Regardless, I believe that the carving is a work of art which depicts an important era in the history of the United States — good or bad — and it would be a mistake to remove or erase it.
What are your thoughts? Please participate in the poll and share how you feel in the Comments section below.
All photographs ©2015 by Brian Cohen.


Order of constructionThe radiocarbon evidence from the models for the stone settings provides a most likely order for the all of the dated constructional events of:
Model 1Sarsen Circle > Stonehole E > Sarsen Trilithons > Beaker burial > Bluestone Circle > Bluestone Horseshoe > Z Holes > Y Holes.
The probability of this is though only 27%.
Model 2Stonehole E > Sarsen Trilithons > Beaker burial > Bluestone Circle > Bluestone Horseshoe > Z Holes > Y Holes.
The probability of this is only 31%.
Model 3Sarsen Circle > Stonehole E > Sarsen Trilithons > Beaker burial > pit_WA_2448 > Bluestone Circle > Bluestone Horseshoe > Z Holes > Y Holes.
The probability of this is though only 13%.
All three chronological models for the stone settings at Stonehenge presented above have produced stable model outputs with the prior beliefs they contain being compatible with the available radiocarbon dates. Thus, although the statistical models have allowed us to combine different types of information, we ultimately still need to use archaeological judgement to decide between them.
The models are all based on the belief that the major settings are the product of single (relatively quick) unitary episode of activity rather than the result of longer and more piecemeal episodes of construction (Bayliss et al 2007b, 46). Given the limited number of samples available at present such an assumption remains the only pragmatic way of modelling the chronology. Sensitivity analyses have highlighted the key component of these models that determines the differences in the monuments chronology is the relationship between the Sarsen Circle and Trilithons. The choice of a preferred model is therefore at present a simple matter of archaeological interpretation, and without further excavation to provide more samples associated with the major constructional events (for example the Sarsen Circle), reaching agreement is likely to be some way off.
Model 3 is our preference for the chronology of the monument because it incorporates what we believe to be the most reliable reading of the stratigraphy of the stone settings (Darvill and Wainwright 2009, Darvill et al 2012; Parker Pearson et al 2007, 2009).
Notes:Stonehole E is by the Slaughter Stone.
Pit WA 2448 is the large hole that was dug by the Great Trilithon that was identified by Atkinson as the erection ramp, an idea that Mike Parker Pearson et al dismissed: http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/9174/1/Age_of_Stonehenge_Antiquity-2.pdf
The probabilities only add up to 71% which indicates there is still a large amount of uncertainty in the results.


Recognize the Symptoms of Teen Mental Health Issues
The symptoms of teen mental health issues can be difficult to detect due to the natural moody and impulsive nature of adolescents. Normal teen behavior can include irritability, secretive behaviors, concern about self-image, or changes in sleep patterns. However, these same symptoms can also be indicators of a serious mental health concern.
One in twenty teens in the US has mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders, bipolar disorders, or schizophrenia. Therefore, parents of teens need to watch for not just one or two symptoms, but a broad range of symptoms that persist and become more severe over time.
Symptoms of teen mental health problems include a sudden change in personality, often with an increase in aggression or volatility. Another is a change in self-confidence.
Watch for a teen who had previously been confident, but who begins to put himself down or to use self-depreciating comments about their abilities, appearance, or skills. Watch for dramatic changes in weight, as many teens struggle with body image issues and may turn to anorexia or bulimia.
Alternatively, individuals with depression may overeat and stop exercising which can lead to an increase in weight. Be aware of sudden changes in academic performance, as mental illness often prevents teens from concentrating, or causes them to be distracted.
Lack of interest in previously enjoyed activities is also a sign of problem. Finally, watch for a change in sleep patterns. If your teen is sleeping excessively and still is tired, this may be an indicator that there is a problem.
If you have noticed any symptoms of teen mental health issues in your teen, then you should contact a mental health professional for further information and guidance.


Buddha taught that happiness comes from inner peace, rather than external conditions. If we integrate Buddha’s teachings into our daily life, we will be able to solve all our inner problems and attain a truly peaceful mind. Without inner peace, outer peace is impossible. If we first establish peace within our minds by training in spiritual paths, outer peace will come naturally; but if we do not, world peace will never be achieved, no matter how many people campaign for it.
To progress along the spiritual path to attaining inner peace and eventually full enlightenment, Buddhists engage in regular practices both in meditation and in our daily activities.
The main practice of Kadampa Buddhism is that of Lamrim, or the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment. Lamrim is a special set of instructions that includes all the essential teachings of Buddha Shakyamuni arranged in such a way that all his Hinayana and Mahayana teachings can be put into practice in a single meditation session. By contemplating and meditating on the Lamrim regularly, we can subdue our negative minds and cultivate positive, peaceful minds. For a practical handbook on Lamrim meditation, check out the New Meditation Handbook.
The New Meditation Handbook is available at the temple bookstore, along other titles appropriate for all levels of practitioner.


Acclaimed historians Robert M. Utley and Wilcomb E. Washburn examine both small battles and major wars - from the Native rebellion of 1492 to Crazy Horse and the Sioux War to the massacre at Wounded Knee.
In this enthralling narrative, professor and award-winning author Jeffrey Ostler recounts the Lakota Sioux’s loss of their spiritual homeland and their remarkable legal battle to regain it. Moving easily from battlefields to reservations to Supreme Court chambers, Ostler captures the strength that bore the Lakotas through the worst times and kept alive the dream of reclaiming their cherished lands.
Indian peoples made some 400 treaties with the United States between the American Revolution and 1871, when Congress prohibited them. They signed nine treaties with the Confederacy, as well as countless others over the centuries with Spain, France, Britain, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, Canada, and even Russia, not to mention individual colonies and states. In retrospect, the treaties seem like well-ordered steps on the path of dispossession and empire. The reality was far more complicated.
First published in 1984, Robert Utley's The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890, is considered a classic for both students and scholars. For this revision, Utley includes scholarship and research that has become available in recent years.
"There are a lot of players!"
This newest volume in Oxford's acclaimed Pivotal Moments series offers an unforgettable portrait of the Nez Perce War of 1877, the last great Indian conflict in American history. It was, as Elliott West shows, a tale of courage and ingenuity, of desperate struggle and shattered hope, of short-sighted government action and a doomed flight to freedom.
"New Insights Into An Old Story"
When Europeans first arrived in North America, between five and eight million indigenous people were already living there. But how did they come to be here? What were their agricultural, spiritual, and hunting practices? How did their societies evolve and what challenges do they face today?
"So much information!"
With the end of the Civil War, the nation recommenced its expansion onto traditional Indian tribal lands, setting off a wide-ranging conflict that would last more than three decades. In an exploration of the wars and negotiations that destroyed tribal ways of life even as they made possible the emergence of the modern United States, Peter Cozzens gives us both sides in comprehensive and singularly intimate detail.
Between 1846 and 1873, California's Indian population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000. Benjamin Madley is the first historian to uncover the full extent of the slaughter, the involvement of state and federal officials, the taxpayer dollars that supported the violence, indigenous resistance, who did the killing, and why the killings ended. This deeply researched book is a comprehensive and chilling history of an American genocide.
"Not for the faint at heart"
Empire of the Summer Moon spans two astonishing stories. The first traces the rise and fall of the Comanches, the most powerful Indian tribe in American history. The second entails one of the most remarkable narratives ever to come out of the Old West: the epic saga of the pioneer woman Cynthia Ann Parker and her mixed-blood son, Quanah, who became the last and greatest chief of the Comanches.
In 1885, while The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was becoming one of the best-selling American classics of modern times, Mark Twain began this sequel in which Huck Finn, Tom Sawyer, and Jim head west on the trail of two white girls kidnapped by Sioux warriors. Fifteen thousand words into the work, Twain stopped in the middle of a sentence, never to go back. The unfinished story sat on dusty shelves for more than a hundred years until author Lee Nelson decided to finish it.
This one-volume narrative history of American Indians in the United States traces the experiences of indigenous peoples from early colonial times to the present day. It demonstrates how Indian existence has varied and changed throughout our nation's history. Although popular opinion and standard histories often depict tribal peoples as victims of US aggression, that is only a part of their story. In this book Roger L. Nichols focuses on the ideas, beliefs, and actions of American Indian individuals and tribes.
In Brethren by Nature, Margaret Ellen Newell reveals a little-known aspect of American history: English colonists in New England enslaved thousands of Indians. Massachusetts became the first English colony to legalize slavery in 1641, and the colonists' desire for slaves shaped the major New England Indian wars, including the Pequot War of 1637, King Philip's War of 1675-76, and the northeastern Wabanaki conflicts of 1676-1749.
Dee Brown's eloquent, meticulously documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the 19th century uses council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions. Brown allows great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated.
Apart from The Last of the Mohicans, most Americans know little of the French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years' War, and yet it remains one of the most fascinating periods in our history. In January 2006, PBS will air The War That Made America, a four-part documentary about this epic conflict. Fred Anderson, the award-winning and critically acclaimed historian, has written the official tie-in to this exciting television event.
"A thorough and absorbing history"
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor tells the riveting story of a war that redefined North America. In a world of double identities, slippery allegiances, and porous borders, the leaders of the American Republic and the British Empire struggled to control their own diverse peoples. Taylor’s vivid narrative of an often brutal—sometimes farcical—war reveals much about the tangled origins of the United States and Canada.
"A proper history of an obscure epoch"
This is the true story of a unique man who lived among the Indians in the early 1800's, and who in his twenties learned to read and write this book. He was a favorite in Europe. He spent time with Thomas Jefferson, shortly thereafter Mr. Hunter was assassinated in Texas while attempting to establish a home for numerous Indian tribes.
Just before starting second grade, Jim Kristofic moved from Pittsburgh across the country to Ganado, Arizona, when his mother took a job at a hospital on the Navajo Reservation. Navajos Wear Nikes reveals the complexity of modern life on the Navajo Reservation, a world where Anglo and Navajo coexisted in a tenuous truce. After the births of his Navajo half-siblings, Jim and his family moved off the Reservation to an Arizona border town where they struggled to readapt to an Anglo world that no longer felt like home.
"Rez life, live and in color"
Charles Alexander Eastman (1858-1939), an educated and well-known Sioux, saw both sides of the great divide between Indians and whites, and he wrote 11 books attempting to reconcile the two cultures. This book is his illumination of Indian spiritual beliefs and practices. A convert to Christianity, Eastman never lost his sense of the wholeness and beauty of the Indian's relation to his existence and to the natural world.
"This should be on any 'must read' list"
When superstar athlete Jim Thorpe and football legend Pop Warner met in 1904 at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, they forged one of the winningest teams in American football history. Called "the team that invented football", they took on the best opponents of their day, defeating much more privileged schools such as Harvard and Army in a series of breathtakingly close calls, genius plays, and bone-crushing hard work.
On the world maps common in America, the Western Hemisphere lies front and center, while the Indian Ocean region all but disappears. This convention reveals the geopolitical focus of the now-departed 20th century, but in the 21st century, that focus will fundamentally change. In this pivotal examination of the countries known as “Monsoon Asia”—which include India, Pakistan, China, Indonesia, Burma, Oman, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Tanzania—best-selling author Robert D. Kaplan explains how crucial this dynamic area has become to American power.
"A Heavy Read"


If you’re new to using computers, mobile devices, the internet, or just want to learn more, we’ll help you out! Below are a few selected resources that will help build your tech skills. All of these resources are free and are accessible wherever is convenient for you. If you would like additional assistance, or just want to learn more about technology, click this link to schedule a one-on-one Tech Help session with a librarian.
General Beginner Tutorials
- Digital Learn – Learn essential digital skills with short and digestible videos from basic computing and internet use to learning how to sign up for health insurance or purchasing plane tickets online.
- Digital Skills Library – The Digital Skills Library is an open repository of free learning resources designed to help all adult learners develop the digital skills needed to achieve their personal, civic, educational, and career goals.
- GCF Global – From Microsoft Office and email to beginner computer skills and more—GCFGlobal.org offers more than 200 topics, including more than 2,300 lessons, more than 2,000 videos, and more than 50 interactives and games, completely free.
- Applied Digital Skills on Grow with Google – Learn job-ready skills from anywhere with Google’s video-based lessons, free of charge. Lessons range from digital wellness and safety, evaluating credibility of websites, and learning Google Workspace.
- Learn My Way – Learn My Way is a website of free online courses for beginners, helping you develop digital skills to make the most of the online world. Some courses require registration with email and password to track progress in lesson.
- Techboomers – Text and image based tutorials on a variety of apps and websites that cover topics such as entertainment, shopping, travel, online dating, and social media.
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- LinkedIn Learning – Contains over 16,000 professionally produced courses in Business, Technology, and Creative Arts. All courses are structured by instructional designers, taught by real-world experts, and shot with extremely high production quality. **LinkedIn Learning is available for Orion residents with a valid library card only**
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Plants were now beginning to stabilise land surfaces. Proliferating into estuaries, river plains and deltas, they generated habitats not only for a great range of invertebrates but also for freshwater fish and amphibians. The amphibians were tetrapods, animals with four legs, and the first tetrapods were predators, attracted to the animals that had entered these habitats before them. Having held on to life in what were far from ideal circumstances, they appeared in places as far apart as Australia and North America, in close association with the plants, arthropods and fish that made up their natural world.
Only when there was sufficient shelter and humidity under the plant canopy and sufficient invertebrates to supply them with food is it likely that vertebrates would have begun to explore the terrestrial environment.
Jennifer A. Clack, Gaining Ground, p 96 (2002).
Environments were diversifying, and animals were diversifying in tandem, availing themselves of the new opportunities: being fruitful and multiplying. The amphibious legged animals swam rather than walked, invading these brackish to freshwater coasts because their prey was invading them. Far from being pioneers, they were following where fish had gone before.
Not all fish have jaws, but those that do can be classified into two groups, those with a cartilage skeleton (such as sharks) and those with a bony skeleton, which ossifies from cartilage during development. Bony fish in turn group into those with ray fins and those with lobe fins. At these levels of classification, the origins of fish are obscure; they were diversifying and multiplying too fast for the fossil record to keep up with them, making the bounds of evolution impossible to define.
The Devonian was when suddenly a huge variety of fish appeared – at least 70 families. The dominant group was the lobe-fins, from which certain tetrapods apparently evolved. Lobe-fins still exist in the form of coelacanths and lungfish, but they are no longer dominant. ‘The age of fishes’ soon came to an end, as massive perturbations at the end of the period tore into the oceanic world, rendering 75% of fish families extinct.
With their belief in a single tree of life, palaeontologists sought for most of the 20th century to trace the ancestry of tetrapods back to lungfish. The combination of gills and lungs seemed an obvious intermediate stage. However, the natural world is not a simple place. Air breathing has arisen independently several times in the course of fish evolution, and the view that lungfish went on to become committed land-dwellers has been dropped. They are now characterised as ‘living fossils’ – animals that have changed little over tens, even hundreds, of millions of years. Try as they might, they failed to climb ‘Mount Improbable’.
Today there are just three genera of lungfish, one occurring in parts of Africa, one in South America, one in Australia. They live in a variety of habitats, such as lakes, rivers and wetlands, and their breathing apparatus varies accordingly. In addition to gills for breathing under water they have highly modified swim bladders (lungs) with which to absorb oxygen gulped from the air. The most proficient air-breathers are the African lungfish. They have overcome the hazards of drought conditions not by evolving legs and abandoning water altogether – or permanently returning to the water – but by developing a cardio-pulmonary system that minimises loss of oxygen and by instinctively burying themselves in the mud. There, sometimes for months, they lie cocooned in a state of suspended animation, a behaviour which fossilised burrows from the early Carboniferous show to be very ancient. Australian lungfish, by contrast, live in areas that are wet all the time. They obtain most of their oxygen from the water.
The transformation of swim-bladders into lungs, concomitant changes in heart design and blood circulation and the ability to slow down metabolic rate to a trickle are no less remarkable innovations than the transformation of fins into legs. And they occurred remarkably quickly. Since the earliest lungfish were completely marine and date to the beginning of the Devonian, their specialised lungs must have arisen during the Devonian itself, not long after their first appearance. As soon as lungfish were numerous enough to impact the record, their forms were already highly distinctive. They reached their peak of diversity in the mid to late Devonian. By the Permian the number of genera had declined by over 70%, after which they ceased to innovate.
Stasis since then shows that fish on the interface between sea and land are not in transition from one to the other. Despite its hazards, the intermediate zone was what they were ultimately designed for, after their marine beginnings. Their genetic make-up also evokes ‘design’. Despite representing an evolutionary dead-end, lungfish have the second largest genomes in the animal world, with one species, the African lungfish Protopterus aethiopicus, weighing in at a staggering 130 billion DNA base pairs. The largest genomes of all are those of some amoebas! Human beings have around 3 billion.
Polypterus is a genus that has true lungs. Probably the best known species is the Nile bichir. Polypterids breathe through a nostril, or spiracle, on top of their head, and – unlike lungfish – can use their pectoral fins to move about on land, in ungainly fashion. Unfortunately for the idea that tetrapods evolved from lobe-fins, polypterids are ray-fins, not lobe-fins. Moreover, they sit near the base of the ray-fin family-tree and there- fore date back to at least the Devonian. They are examples of fish with lungs and some walking ability that failed to evolve into tetrapods, despite the presumed hundreds of millions of years between then and now.
Panderichthys differed from other lobe-fins in having just two pairs of fins: one at the front (the pectoral fins) and another at the back (the pelvic fins). The next closest candidate, Eusthenopteron, also had just two pairs. This arrangement, resulting from the loss of the dorsal and anal fins, is analogous to that of tetrapod limbs, and the loss appears to have been abrupt – i.e. the genetic module for them was switched off by genetic regulation.
The early tetrapods were mostly ‘rear-wheel drive’ animals with larger hind limbs than fore limbs; the fins of their presumed ancestors tended to be larger in the front than the rear. In the case of Panderichthys this difference is pronounced. The pelvic fin is ‘more primitive’ (evolutionarily earlier) than the front fin and the pelvic girdle ‘even less tetrapod-like’ than that of Eusthenopteron (Boisvert 2005). Unlike either Eusthenopteron or the early tetrapods, Panderichthys also lacked an iliac process.
No structure has ever been found intermediate between fins and feet. In technical language Boisvert enumerates the ‘radical changes’ that have not been documented:
The pelvic girdle became a weight-bearing structure by evolution of an ischium, a full mesio-ventral contact between the two sides of the girdle, an ilium, and a contact between the vertebral column and the girdle through a sacral rib. Fore and hind-limbs shifted laterally by reorientation of the glenoid and the acetabulum. The pectoral girdle became detached from the skull by loss of the extrascapulars, posttemporal and supracleithrum, and became adapted for limb support and muscle insertion by enlargement of the scapulo-coracoid. Lepidotrichia [rays around the fins] were lost and digits were gained. The proportions of the limb elements changed … . The postaxial processes of the ulnare and the fibula were lost, and the radius and ulna, as well as the tibia and fibula were realigned to be parallel rather than diverging. In the course of this transition, there was a shift in locomotory dominance from the forelimb to the hindlimb, which was first demonstrated by Acanthostega and Ichthyostega.
All this had to have happened in 5 million years or less (after Panderichthys and before a fragmentary fossil called Elginerpeton). A big gap in morphology is exacerbated by a small gap in time.
Partly for this reason, Tiktaalik roseae, a fish whose discovery was announced to the world in April 2006, has supplanted Panderichthys in the story of how vertebrates crawled out of the water. In the paper describing the new fossil it could now be admitted that Panderichthys possessed ‘relatively few’ tetrapod-like features. Tiktaalik’s evolutionary significance is discussed elsewhere. As a result of footprint evidence predating the fossil, this animal too has had to be sidelined.
No fewer than ten tetrapod genera are known from the Late Devonian. They are diverse from their first appearance. Some were mainly aquatic in lifestyle, others, as suggested by trackways in southwest Ireland, more amphibian. The best preserved are Acanthostega and Ichthyostega, from Greenland. Apart from similarities attributed to their ultimate common ancestry, the two species ‘have almost nothing in common’ (Clack, p 121) and therefore, although contemporary, cannot be closely related to each other.
|Ichthyostega, comprising a unique mixture of features, with massive shoulders and seven hind digits, had an amphibian life style. Acanthostega, its late Devonian contemporary, was wholly aquatic, with limbs functioning as paddles.|
Acanthostega (which means ‘spine armour’, referring to features of its skull) was entirely aquatic. A great number of fossils were found in the fill of an ephemeral channel running through a floodplain; what kind of water body they normally inhabited is unknown. They were all juveniles, apparently arrested in development, with bones only partially ossified. The gill skeleton was fish-like and closely resembled that of the Australian lungfish. The limb joints were not weight-bearing, and the digits – eight of them, not five as had long been expected – were linked by webbing. The hind limbs functioned as paddles, pushing towards the rear. All in all, the animal was a mosaic of primitive and derived features, prompting some authorities to suggest that its lineage represented a reversion back to the water from a more terrestrial ancestry!
Ichthyostega, stocky and heavily built, was ‘a very strange animal, and parts of it are like no other known tetrapod or fish’ (Clack, p 115). Among its many unique features were a narrow braincase, massive shoulders, and broad, overlapping ribs. The ribcage may have had some role in breathing, and in storing air during long periods under water.
Unusually for a tetrapod, the hindlimbs were diminutive compared with the forelimbs. The hindlimbs were paddle-like, as with Acanthostega, and ended in seven digits, two more than the world had been told about before 1990 and one less than Acanthostega had. Its shoulder and hip joint mobility were restricted, and its pelvis could not have been lifted free of the ground (Pierce et al. 2012). If it moved on land at all, Ichthyostega moved like a seal, arching its back, advancing both forelimbs, and finally bringing up the rest of its body. This would have been quite unlike the sinuous, side-to-side motion of fishes swimming in water. Its forelimb musculature enabled it to raise its head above water. Other aspects of its anatomy – its fish-like tail, paddle-like hindlimbs, deeply grooved gill bars, highly specialised ear for hearing underwater, and lateral line system (a network of nerves which detected changes in water pressure) – point to a predominantly aquatic existence. Its sharp teeth suggest a diet of fish and invertebrates.
Owing to its specialisations Ichthyostega is considered to be a side-branch of the tetrapod family tree rather than a direct ancestor; it was a short-lived evolutionary ‘experiment’, a ‘dead-end’. The tetrapods that led to reptiles must therefore have predated Ichthyostega and remain to be discovered. Panderichthys and Acanthostega are also thought to represent side-branches. There are no fossils that have a truly transitional status.
The story of tetrapod evolution has changed radically in recent years. The possession of lobe fins, it turns out, had nothing to do with being adapted for life in the shallows. Some lobe-finned fish lived in deep water, as do coelacanths today. Some modern ray-finned fish, such as frogfish, have fleshy lobe-like fins, which they use for walking along the sea bottom. The diversity of modern fishes and ancient tetrapods seems purposely to subvert any attempt to construct a story where limbs and digits are acquired in the course of ‘conquering the land’. Gone is the picture of fish crawling on their fleshy fins out of ponds that had dried out under the tropical sun, in search of deeper ponds, and discovering that they could survive without them. (In reality, fish stranded in desiccated pools would simply die.) Limbs and digits were acquired while the animals concerned were still adapted for life in the water. Acanthostega, to judge from its anatomy, had no thoughts of venturing onto the land. If Ichthyostega did, it moved like a seal, not a reptile.
The characteristics which the Devonian tetrapods had in common with certain lobe-finned fish, such as flattened skulls and dorsally placed eyes, were those concordant with a similar kind of life. The tetrapods were predators lurking in the shallows, fringed here and there with vegetation. While Ichthyostega resembled a seal in some respects, others had limbs arranged more like a crocodile’s or newt’s, with the shoulders facing sideways and arms projecting out at right angles. Just as crocodiles or newts now are not in evolutionary transition, so there is no reason why the Devonian tetrapods should have been.
No reason (ideological commitment aside) except one: the tetrapods appeared at the right time. They were preceded by lobe-finned fish and followed by four-footed, fully terrestrial reptiles. While the time gap between the most tetrapod-like fish and the first actual tetrapod is uncomfortably small, at least there is a gap.
Palaeontologists do not study body fossils in isolation; they study them in relation to their ecology. And it is a remarkable fact that, almost as soon as new environments presented themselves, there were almost always animals to exploit them, turning up apparently out of nowhere. Encouraged by the overall order of appearance – a recolonisation sequence which in some respects mimics the expected evolutionary sequence – Darwinians interpret the phenomenon as animals becoming adapted to these environments by natural selection, as if the existence of a new habitat of itself produced the variations on which selection could act. Life apparently originated from the sea, and since evolution by natural selection is the only game in town, that must have been the mechanism. The morphological gaps are interpreted as accidents of an incomplete record.
But even the argument that the fossils appear in the right order is no longer available. In 1995 Iwan Stössel reported several trackways made by tetrapods in the Valentia Slate Formation of southwest Ireland, and these, it was subsequently determined, were of the same age as Panderichthys. When several years later Jennifer Clack discussed them, she was unaware of the dating work and supposed they were significantly younger. Convinced from the body fossil evidence that tetrapods came into being midway through the Frasnian, she ventured the opinion that ‘tracks made by a terrestrial tetrapod are unlikely to be found before the late Frasnian’.
That the tracks were those of a tetrapod was evident from the difference in size between the front and the hind foot, and from the way the angle of stride varied as the animal moved. Two of the trackways included sinuous drag marks left by its belly. Whether it could walk clear of the ground without the support of water is unknown, since, like crocodiles, which sometimes crawl on their bellies, it may have been capable of more than one type of gait. The environment was not one choked with vegetation, but an apparently barren floodplain.
Once one has stripped away the Darwinian language, the story actually told by the fossils is that of a world going through stages of ecological recovery. From a distance, recolonisation can appear like evolution, because the organisms concerned appear progressively, not all at once, and in the process they diversify into new species. Exploiting the waters of the coastal margins, the Devonian tetrapods were an ecological as much as an evolutionary step up – rare in the fossil record because they were rare, at this stage, in fact.
Almost immediately after the appearance of the first aquatic tetrapods, a host of other highly evolved tetrapods moved in to make the evolutionary picture even more challenging. One example is the lepospondyls (click on diagram), quite small animals that are ‘highly derived when they first appear in the fossil record, with no plausible intermediates between them and any other groups’ (Carroll 2001). While sharing some features, they are, like Tiktaalik, Acanthostega and Icthyostega, a disparate group in relation to each other. Perhaps most anomalous are the snake-like aïstopods, which appeared in the early Carboniferous and had neither limbs nor limb girdles. On the evidence of the skull, vertebrae and ribs, they are classified as tetrapods, so are presumed to have completely lost their limbs after only just acquiring them. Even supposing that this did happen, it is difficult to see how it could have happened in the interval between the evolution of the first lepospondyl, some time after the first tetrapods, and the first aïstopod in the Visean. The aïstopods may have been aquatic. The early-Carboniferous tetrapod Crassigyrinus certainly was, and is believed to have somehow retraced the evolutionary journey of its terrestrial ancestors back to the sea. Bizarre indeed!
As Smithson et al (2012) observe, recent discoveries ‘suggest that many tetrapod lineages have their origins much earlier than previously appreciated’.


U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told law students at the University of Hawaii on Monday that the nation's highest court was wrong to uphold the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, but he wouldn't be surprised if the court issued a similar ruling during a future conflict.
Scalia was responding to a question about the court's 1944 decision in Korematsu v. United States, which upheld the convictions of Gordon Hirabayashi and Fred Korematsu for violating an order to report to an internment camp.
"Well of course Korematsu was wrong. And I think we have repudiated in a later case. But you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again," Scalia told students and faculty during a lunchtime Q-and-A session.
Scalia cited a Latin expression meaning, "In times of war, the laws fall silent."
"That's what was going on — the panic about the war and the invasion of the Pacific and whatnot. That's what happens. It was wrong, but I would not be surprised to see it happen again, in time of war. It's no justification, but it is the reality," he said.
Avi Soifer, the law school's dean, said he believed Scalia was suggesting people always have to be vigilant and that the law alone can't be trusted to provide protection.
Soifer said it's good to hear Scalia say the Korematsu ruling was wrong, noting the justice has been among those who have reined in the power of military commissions regardless of the administration.
"We do need a court that sometimes will say there are individual or group rights that are not being adequately protected by the democratic process," Soifer said.
Scalia was appointed to the nation's highest court in 1986, making him the longest-serving justice currently on the court.
The 77-year-old spoke after teaching a class. He didn't take questions from media.


Japanese Samurai Swords Forging Process
Since ancient times, as a weapon, it has been known for its graceful shape. Many famous knives have been collected as works of art, and they contain the symbolic meaning of the soul of a samurai. Different from knives in other countries, one of the biggest features of Japanese samurai swords is that the knife body itself shows an artistic sense in addition to the appearance decoration. In Japan, knife makers are called "sword workers", "sword craftsmen" or "sword blacksmiths".
1. The method of making samurai swords in Japan
Japanese samurai swords have assembled quite high technology in the manufacturing method, and the material steel of Japanese samurai swords is called Hegang, or jade steel. Jade steel is made by traditional Japanese methods. This is a low-temperature steelmaking method where the furnace temperature does not exceed 1000°C. This method may seem primitive, but compared with the modern high-temperature steelmaking method, it can produce high-quality and pure steel. However, the steel produced at high temperature is softer and easy to form, while the steel produced at low temperature is harder and more difficult to form. It can be said that the production of Japanese samurai swords is a labor-intensive fortification, and the quality is paid for by blood and sweat.
According to different regions and different genres, the composition of the steel used will vary. In addition, the process of water reduction is quenching. From the perspective of modern material science, this step can be regarded as a method for swordsmiths to control the carbon content of steel. The seemingly simple process is actually not the case. In order to control the carbon content of the steel, the heating times are strictly limited; and the hardness of the steel will change as it gradually cools. Under the limited heating times, the jade steel is beaten into thin slices with uniform thickness. After the steel sheet is formed, the knife maker will rapidly cool it with water. The excess carbon-containing part of the steel can be stripped. Make the knife body have good elasticity, and the knife edge is hard and not easy to chip. The knifemaker must have an extremely accurate grasp of the temperature of the steel sheet and the amount of water used to obtain materials with a suitable carbon content.
When tempering the knife material, the knife worker beats the red-hot steel block for forging, the steel block is opened and then folded and beaten, and so on, until the 10th time, there will be 1024 layers of steel. Through this step, impurities such as sulfur and excess carbon in the steel can be removed to enhance the elasticity and toughness of the steel. This is like kneading dough. The more layers of beating, the more uniform the carbon and various components in the steel, and the finer the iron crystals. The final forged steel is of uniform quality, with thousands of layers, and is very strong. .
2. Japanese samurai swords steel matching
The shape of Japanese samurai swords is based on a circle, regardless of the tip or the entire blade. The reason why the blade is curved is mainly caused by the combination of steel and quenching. First of all, the knife craftsman uses the hard blade metal and leather iron with high carbon content to wrap the soft core iron with low carbon content. This double structure is a major feature of Japanese samurai swords. The edge metal and leather iron on the outside make the knife sharp and have proper hardness so as not to bend. In the subsequent firing stage, the difference in volume expansion between the tip of the blade and other parts is controlled by the amount of carbon and the cooling rate of the firing. As a result, strong compressive stress is generated on the tip of the knife, making the knife less prone to breakage and forming the curvature of a machete.
3. The last fire forging process of Japanese samurai swords is also called burning the blade with soil
The process is probably that black katana knife workers first use clay, charcoal powder and whetstone powder to prepare burnt blade soil, and then encapsulate the shaped blade with burnt blade soil. The soil used for blades is thinner, and the soil used for picks and ridges is thicker. Basically, the distribution of burnt clay can be seen from the blade text of the finished product, and the composition and preparation methods of different schools of burnt clay are also different. The sealed blade will be put into the fire at 750℃-760℃. Knife workers judge the temperature in the furnace by the color of the flame based on experience. If the temperature exceeds 800°C, it will affect the strength of the knife. After a specific heating time, the knifemaker will put the knife in the water to cool it rapidly, and carry out another quenching process.
After the above steps are completed, the work of the black katana knife worker has reached a stage, and the grinding, sheath making, decoration, handle rolling and other processes will be handled by a special person, which is not within the scope of work of the knife worker.


OFFICIAL SITE OF THE
Cracking the Code One Base at a Time
What do you see when you look at a DNA sequence like ATAGCAGCCGACCGACGACGGCA? Do you see four letters repeated at random? Encoded in these four letters are the genes that create the proteins used to build our entire bodies. But genes aren’t the only information hidden in these four letters. Using new computational methods, we can analyze genomic sequences to learn about the evolutionary past, the phenotypic present, and even about future potential. In the LaBella Lab we study the patterns encoded in DNA focusing on the following major questions
What information is encoded in “silent” synonymous genomic variation?
What role does “silent” synonymous genomic variation play in evolution?
How can genomics inform complex trait evolution?
Every trait present in organisms today - including human diseases - are associated with evolutionary innovations in the past. Therefore, studying the evolutionary history of traits can help us reveal their underlying mechanisms and even predict how these traits may evolve in the future. We have examined the evolutionary history of complex traits in both fungi and humans. Including the evolution of human pregnancy!
Why are some synonymous codons used more than others? And what can the biases in codon usage tell us? Recent studies have shown that biased codon usage affects many different cellular processes including translation and protein folding. As a result of these processes codon usage encodes information about the expression of genes. Our work harnesses this correlation to learn about ecology, evolution, and more!
While you probably know Saccharomyces cerevisiae from the lab or it's products (beer, bread, wine), you may not know there are over 1,200 other budding yeast species! The budding yeast clade serves as a model group for studying evolution, codon usage, and reverse ecology. Due to the heroic efforts of the Y1000+ Collaborative we now have genomes and growth phenotypes for nearly all known species!


What can I use instead of yeast in pizza dough? Instead of using yeast, you can use baking powder. The correct combination of baking powder to flour and salt will cause the dough to rise in the oven and have a similar texture to a crust with yeast.
Can you put baking powder in pizza dough?
A: Baking powder can and has successfully been used in making pizza crusts for ma…
What does baking powder do to pizza dough?
The dough’s raising agent is baking powder, which activates once you add the water, so there is no waiting around for proofing dough. It can be made and the whole pizza can be baked in a fraction of the time it takes to make yeasted pizza dough.
What can I substitute for yeast in pizza dough?
You can use lemon juice, buttermilk, or milk combined with an equal part of vinegar as your acid. Add all the ingredients according to the recipe. Then, add equal parts baking soda and lemon juice to equal the amount of yeast called for in the recipe.
How do you make pizza dough from scratch without yeast?
- Mix flour, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl; stir in milk and olive oil until a soft dough forms. Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead 10 times. Shape dough into a ball. Cover dough with an inverted bowl and let sit for 10 minutes. …
- Roll dough into a 12-inch circle on a baking sheet.
How do I make my pizza dough fluffy?
How to make ANY pizza dough recipe LIGHT and FLUFFY!
- First things first. …
- The first secret is to not add oil when it is mixing. …
- The second secret to making a spectacularly light and fluffy pizza dough is in you handle it after it is mixed. …
- The third secret is to bake on a pizza stone.
Is yeast necessary for pizza dough?
Yeast is the one ingredient a pizza dough needs the most. Yeast is the primary leavening agent in dough, which means it’s what causes the pizza dough to rise. The best pizza dough recipes produce dough that rises quickly, making for an airy and bubbly crust.
What does cream of tartar do to pizza dough?
Cream of tartar (an acid byproduct of making wine) is used as a dough relaxer. It slightly hinders the gluten protein in the wheat and causes yeast dough to rise at slower rate.
Does baking powder make dough rise?
D. Baking powder is used in baking to make cake batter and bread dough rise. The big advantage of baking powder over yeast is that it works instantly.
What happens if you don’t use baking soda?
Baking soda is a salt that makes food light and fluffy. If you don’t have this ingredient at hand, use a baking soda substitute. Without it, your cake won’t rise and can turn out flat.
What can I use if I don’t have yeast?
You can substitute yeast with equal parts lemon juice and baking soda. So if a recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of yeast, you can use half a teaspoon of lemon juice and half a teaspoon of baking soda.
What type of yeast is best for pizza dough?
What kind of yeast do you use for pizza crust?
- Active Dry Yeast is what I’ve used for years. This yeast requires being “bloomed” before you make your dough. …
- Fast Acting Yeast (aka Rapid Rise Yeast or another name dependent on brand) is just that: it works faster.
How do I make homemade yeast?
- Place three to four tablespoons of raisins in your jar. …
- Fill the jar ¾ full with water. …
- Place jar at constant room temperature. …
- Stir at least once a day for three to four days.
- When bubbles form on the top and you smell a wine-like fermentation you have yeast. …
- Place your new yeast in the refrigerator.
Does dough rise without yeast?
With No Yeast : The Salt Bacteria can make a bread rise and give it a cheesy flavor. That’s the secret ingredient in salt rising bread, which dates to the late 1700s in Appalachia, when bakers didn’t have yeast on hand.
What can you use instead of pizza dough?
Save time by swapping your regular pizza dough for simple substitutes. Our alternative bases include pitta bread, naan, puff pastry, wraps and polenta. Whether you’re short of flour or don’t have time to make a pizza base, we’ve compiled 10 simple shortcuts using shop-bought substitutes.
How do you make Jamie Oliver pizza without yeast?
Whisk the flour, baking powder, and salt together in a mixing bowl. Measure out a cup (250ml) of water, and slow add, while stirring, just until a soft dough comes together. I usually need between a 1/2 and 3/4 of a cup. If the dough is too wet, add a bit more flour.


Recent archaeological discoveries have revealed a wealth of information supporting events and details that are described in the Bible.
One of the most revealing things about studying archaeology is realizing that archaeology itself really didn’t exist until about 150 years ago. Archaeology wasn’t even a “soft” science prior to the 19th century—it was merely treasure hunting conducted by self-seeking opportunists. Therefore, many excavations were botched, and many discoveries were lost. With the rise in academic interest and the proliferation of technological tools, a systematic approach to archaeology has taken off in the last century, revealing a great deal about the ancient world.
To date, many sites and artifacts have been uncovered, revealing a great deal about the ancient Mesopotamian culture. One of the most dramatic finds is the “Sumerian King List”, which dates to approximately 2100 B.C. This collection of clay tablets and prisms is most exciting because it divides the Sumerian kings into two categories: those who reigned before the “great flood” and those who reigned after it.1 Records of a global flood can be found throughout most ancient cultures. For instance, the “Epic of Gilgamesh” from the ancient Babylonians contains an extensive flood story. Discovered on clay tablets in locations such as Nineveh and Megiddo, the Epic even includes a man who built a great ship, filled it with animals, and used birds to see if the water had receded.2
Archaeology in the last century has also shed light on the great military civilizations of ancient Mesopotamia and their impact on law and culture throughout the region. One significant find is the “Law Code of Hammurabi”, which is a seven-foot-tall carving containing about 300 laws of Babylon’s King Hammurabi. Dated to about 1750 B.C., the Law Code contains many civil laws that are similar to those found in the first five books of the Bible. Another dig at the ancient city of “Nuzi” near the Tigris River uncovered approximately 20,000 clay tablets. Dated between 1500 and 1400 B.C., these texts explain the culture, customs, and laws of the time—many of which are similar to those found in the early books of the Bible.3
As far as major ancient empires, the Hittite civilization is mentioned throughout the Old Testament as ruling the area of present-day Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon, yet nothing was known about these people outside of the Bible. About 100 years ago, ancient Boghazkoy was discovered east of Ankara, Turkey, which revealed itself as the expansive capital city of the Hittite Empire. Since then, archaeologists have uncovered a wealth of information about the history, language, and culture of a people considered “imaginary” by many scholars until the 1900s.4
The Bible tells us a lot about Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian Empire, which destroyed Jerusalem in 586 B.C. and exiled the Jews to Babylon for 70 years. Ancient Babylon has now been uncovered, comprising nearly 3,000 acres about 55 miles south of current-day Baghdad in Iraq. The ruins include the famous ziggurat structures, the Palace of King Nebuchadnezzar, and enormous walls that measured 80 feet thick (wide enough to allow a four-horse chariot to make a full turn on the top of the wall).5
The Philistines were known as one of the “Sea Peoples” that constantly warred against the Israelites for control of early Canaan. Mentioned over 200 times in the Old Testament, the Philistines had a major fortified seaport at Ashkelon on the Mediterranean Sea, which was discovered just north of present-day Gaz. Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Ashkelon in 604 B.C., as predicted by Jeremiah and other Old Testament prophets.6
Mentioned more than 50 times in the Bible, Jericho was the initial entry point into the “Promised Land” for the Israelite people.7 Archaeology has now confirmed the location of this fortified city of walls and towers that guarded entry to the land of Canaan from the east.8 Shechem was also an important city throughout the Old Testament. In fact, King Jeroboam made it the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel in the 10th century B.C.9 Excavations have uncovered huge walls and a fortified gate system containing such important finds as the temple of Baal from the biblical story of Abimelech.10
The “Merneptah Stele” (also known as the Israel Stele) is an upright stone slab measuring over seven feet tall that contains carved hieroglyphic text dating to approximately 1230 B.C. This Egyptian monument describes the military victories of Pharaoh Merneptah and includes the earliest mention of “Israel” outside of the Bible. Although the specific battles covered by the stele are not included in the Bible, the stele establishes outside evidence that the Israelites were already living as a people in ancient Canaan by 1230 B.C.11 In addition to the stele, a large wall picture was discovered in the great Karnak Temple of Luxor (ancient Thebes), which shows battle scenes between the Egyptians and Israelites. These scenes have also been attributed to Pharaoh Merneptah and date to approximately 1209 B.C.12 The Karnak Temple also contains records of Pharaoh Shishak’s military victories about 280 years later. Specifically, the “Shishak Relief” depicts Egypt’s victory over King Rehoboam in about 925 B.C., when Solomon’s Temple in Judah was plundered.13 This is the exact event mentioned in the Old Testament scriptures.14
Outside of Egypt, we also discover a wealth of evidence for the early Israelites. The “Moabite Stone” (Mesha Stele) is a three-foot stone slab discovered near Dibon, east of the Dead Sea, that describes the reign of Mesha, King of Moab, around 850 B.C.15 According to the Book of Genesis, the Moabites were neighbors of the Israelites.16 This stele covers victories by King Omri and King Ahab of Israel against Moab, and Mesha’s later victories on behalf of Moab against King Ahab’s descendants.17 The “Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser” is a seven-foot, four-sided pillar of basalt that describes the victories of King Shalmaneser III of Assyria, including the defeats of Tyre, Sidon, and “Jehu, son of Omri.” Dated to about 841 B.C., the Obelisk (now located in the British Museum) was discovered in the Northwest Palace at Nimrud and shows Israel’s King Jehu kneeling before the Assyrian king in humble tribute.18
If the places, dates, wars, and descriptions of the cities and culture of the Israelites are right, wouldn’t it be wise to consider whether the spiritual message of the Bible might be right as well?
- Alfred Hoerth, Archaeology and the Old Testament, Baker Books, 1998, 188.
- Ibid., 192–96. See also, Genesis, chapters 7 & 8.
- Randall Price, The Stones Cry Out: What Archaeology Reveals About the Truth of the Bible, Harvest House Publishers, 1997, 92–94. See also, Hoerth, Archaeology and the Old Testament, 119, 102.
- Pat Zukeran, Archaeology and the Old Testament, Probe Ministries, www.probe.org/docs/arch-ot.html, 2003, 2–3. See also, Price, The Stones Cry Out, 82–83.
- Hoerth, Archaeology and the Old Testament, 372–378.
- Ibid., 233–234.
- Joshua 6.
- Zukeran, Archaeology and the Old Testament, 4-5. Hoerth, Archaeology and the Old Testament, 209–210. Price, The Stones Cry Out, 52–53.
- 1 Kings 12:25.
- Judges 9:46.
- Price, The Stones Cry Out, 145–146. Hoerth, Archaeology and the Old Testament, 228–229.
- Hoerth, Archaeology and the Old Testament, 230.
- Ibid., 301–302.
- 1 Kings 14 and 2 Chronicles 12.
- Hoerth, Archaeology and the Old Testament, 308–310.
- Genesis 19.
- 2 Kings 3.
- Hoerth, Archaeology and the Old Testament, 321–22. See also, 2 Kings 9–10.


The format of an operating system’s executable file is in many ways a mirror of the operating system.
PE or Portable Executable is the Windows executable file format. Studying the PE format helps us understand how windows internals function which in turn makes us better programmers. It is even more important for reverse engineers who want to figure out the intricate details of often obfuscated binaries.
Mobile platforms provide botnet creators with new threats and challenges. There is a significant need for academic papers that analyse, predict, or mitigate the production of mobile botnets. Even designing a new botnet as a warning and proof of concept can be beneficial to security researchers. This article describes the state of research in mobile botnets and suggests open problems for academics to solve.
There are several ways to analyze Android applications for suspicious behavior. These are typically categorized as static or dynamic analysis. Static analysis evaluates code without executing it while dynamic analysis tests the behavior of code during execution. This article will discuss current dynamic analysis techniques for Android applications and the open problems associated with them.
In this new series, we are going to be looking at the Machine Learning research occurring in the malware analysis domain and seeing where the individual pieces of research fit into the “big picture” of malware analysis. Look for new posts every Friday!


I have had a Civil War and Reconstruction course this semester, and we have been studying the Lost Cause. For those that don't know, the Lost Cause was started by Confederates who wanted to change the perception of the South after it was defeated in the Civil War. Those who took part often tried to misconstrue the idea that the South was wrong in its stances during the time leading up to and during the war. They tried to leave the impression that the Confederate's cause was noble, and that they were defeated by the Union because of force, not skill(partly true). This has led to an awful lot of confusion for historians who are trying to get the perception of how the war should be remembered. What are y'alls thoughts on this? I for one, think it is complete bs that they did this, but Iguess if I was in their shoes, I would have done the same. Thoughts? It is believed that Jubal Early was the first one to really do this with his 'My Account on the War".


FALCON is the world's first airborne gravity gradiometer (AGG) and is the only operating AGG technology developed specifically for airborne purposes. It measures minute changes in the earth's gravity to high accuracy and high spatial resolution using both helicopter and fixed-wing platforms.
FALCON technology has enormous applicability and provides our clients with unique advantages in the search for water, minerals and hydrocarbons. This advantage is backed by Fugro’s exclusivity on the best AGG technology coupled with our unique value-added processing and interpretation capabilities.
FALCON provides high accuracy and high spatial resolution gravity and gravity gradient data for a wide range of mineral, hydrocarbon and water exploration applications, and gives you a competitive edge with:
- The Highest Resolution AGG: FALCON simultaneously provides the highest sensitivity to gravity, the best spatial resolution, and the best rejection of the effects of aircraft motion.
- Complete Access: Allows complete access to prospective terrains when ground access is limited.
- Fast and Cost Effective Surveying (than current gravity surveying alternatives): Areas which once took years to survey using ground gravity crews can now be covered in days.
- Complementary Data: Gravity data complements Magnetic, EM, Radiometric and DTM data and provides additional insights for geological Interpretation.
- Mature and Reliable Technology: FALCON over 1.5 million survey km in 244 surveys over 17 countries.
- Proven global success for a wide range of mineral, hydrocarbons and water exploration applications.
- Lower Risk: Health, Safety, Environment & Community (HSEC) risks lowered compared to intrusive ground and ship-based programs.
Four Falcon AGG systems have been built to date and operate around the world. Three are currently operational in Cessna Grand Caravans. The fourth system uses smaller and lighter digital electronics and can be installed on fixed-wing or helicopter platforms.
The FALCON airborne geophysics system always acquires FALCON AGG data, and industry standard, high resolution aeromagnetic data. In addition, a high resolution laser scanner or LIDAR provides detailed topographic mapping data for use in terrain corrections for gravity. These data can also be useful for a variety of other purposes. Optionally, the fixed-wing systems can also acquire radiometric data, and the helicopter system can also acquire electromagnetic data.
The Falcon AGG system installed in a helicopter has the following advantages:
- Better terrain following capability.
- Increased spatial resolution due to lower altitude and speed.
- Increased signal due to lower ground clearance.
- Superior signal-to-noise ratio resulting in better anomaly detection as a result of flying lower and slower.


Preparing to Write a Synthesis Essay Day 1: A Summary and Questions
Lesson 2 of 6
Objective: SWBAT summarize their essay topic and the resources they will use by following a model summary written by the instructor.
Today students will come in having written summaries of at least five texts they may use as resources and questions that arise from each. They will use these as resources as they spend the majority of their day in the library writing a summary of their argument and a list of specific questions that they have about their topic that they wish to address with their peers.
Before they go to the library, however, I will review my model with them (Synthesis problem model.docx) so they see what they need to do. I will note on the Smartboard how I state my central idea and use references to resources to help establish my claims (modeling reading informational standard one and two, and why those standards are important for pre-writing academic essays). I will also explain my questions and how they emerged from the text. This fifteen minute discussion will serve not only as an explanation of the model, but also as a model for how they will share their summaries tomorrow in peer response groups.
After reviewing this, I will bring students to the library where they will type these summaries and questions. I am having them do this writing in class so I can guide them some before they go into their peer groups (so the peer responses will be stronger) and also because I want them to print copies to send home with their group members (I will set the groups today). Their task this evening will be to read their group members' summaries and questions and write responses to the questions, including specific references to resources. By doing this, they will be prepared to participate in the group discussion and be able to provide more thoughtful feedback.
Additionally, students will write responses to my model; I will model the consultancy procedures tomorrow by being the presenter, so students will use their responses as part of the model.


Find the equation if the generating curve, y=2x+1 is revolved about the y axis.
How do we do this?
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Focus on a single point (x, 2x + 1). When you revolve this point around the y-axis, it forms a circle. What is the radius of that circle? What coordinate plane is the circle parallel to? Therefore, what is the equation of that circle?
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Just before famed Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés pillaged the Aztec capital city Tenochtitlan in 1521, toppling one empire to make room for another, he was astounded by the immense size of its buildings and the wealth of its rulers. The city, he recalled in a letter to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, was just as large as his home town of Seville. Like any modern city, Tenochtitlan was not without its boulevards, thriving marketplaces for trade, lavish courthouses, temples, and an intricate network of canals. Clearly, the Aztecs had no European cities to model their capital off of, in the way Washington, D.C. was modeled after Paris, but something about it struck a chord as familiar – to Cortes’ own experience home in the Old World.
All cities have their own personality – landmarks and dialects that stand out as well as food staples, but now some anthropologists believe that there is something that transcends cultural barriers – universal laws that gradually find their way into the structure of all urban regions – mathematical rules that may be found in ancient cities as well.
To accomplish their study, the team of researchers analyzed archaeological data from excavations at Tenochtitlan and a number of other sites around it throughout Mexico, finding predictable ways in which all the buildings were put together.
“We build cities in ways that create what I like to call social reactors,” said complex systems researcher Luis Bettencourt, of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico.
Bettencourt and his collaborators in Santa Fe have long been working on a theoretical system for understanding where modern cities come from – how they originate and how they gradually expand. The primary reason for urban development is the increased opportunity for people to interact, networking with other people. Due to these increasing relationships among groups, the cities increase in their efficiency. It is actually due to an influx of people that there is a positive correlation with the respective city’s economy. When a city’s population doubles, Bettencourt’s team noticed that very often there’s an estimated 15 percent increase in the city’s overall productivity — a 15 percent jump in wages, in GDP, and also in patents. However, the increase is also associated with about the same increase in violent crime, thus not all increases in population are good.
Bettencourt’s work is challenging the common perception of a city as a pile of brick and steel buildings, and instead beginning to see them as specific constructs to maintain day to day social interactions. To be specific, it is a means of pooling together people of different skill to solve problems that no single individual can solve on their own. It was this realization that caused the team to suspect that this pattern might be observed in ancient cities as well.
“What I realized was that none of the parameters they were discussing in these models had anything to do with modern capitalism, democracy or industrialization,” said Scott Ortman, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, of Bettencourt’s work. “Their parameters are basic properties of human social networks on the ground. And so I thought, ‘Well, gosh, if that’s true, then these models should apply very broadly.”
To conduct their analysis, the team analyzed over 2,000 years of history in Mexico City, from its very beginnings around 500 B.C., right into the colonial period which began in the 16th century. They looked at over 1,550 square miles of land, which contained thousands of settlements throughout its history, starting as little towns containing only a few hundred people, which then burgeoned into immense cities like Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan, which exceeded 200,000 people.
They published a study in PLOS ONE last year that showed a pattern of population growth similar to cities of today. As they grew larger, populations doubled. Then, when the populations increased, development of the living area slowed by about 83 percent. Their conclusions, Bettencourt said, showed the relationship between social networks and living quarters – in which the former maintains priority over the latter. If cities doubled each time populations increased, cost of living would be too high to maintain.
To compare modern urban economics with these cities, the researchers compared them with the construction of public monuments and temples, with much of these projects being commissioned after the city populations increased. They even noticed a distribution of income similar to today – with wealthier citizens buying larger houses.
“What’s interesting is that this expresses exactly the same as GDP,” Bettencourt said.
The study was published today in the journal Science Advances. Although their research is limited to ancient Mexico, Ortman is intrigued by the possibility that studies of ancient cities throughout the rest of the world might yield similar results – each being the product of ages of social interaction.
“It implies that some of the most robust patterns in modern urban systems derive from processes that have been part of human societies all along,” said Ortman. “I just think that’s an amazing concept.”


Creative Bible Learning Activities is packed full of simple Bible learning activities that involve children in hands-on learning. These creative options will help each child in your class to remember what they've learned. Every activity includes suggestions to plug into one or more Bible stories. Use the comprehensive index to find specific activities recommended for any Bible story or choose and adapt any activity you like.
Use this resource to find additional or alternative activities that will reinforce the Bible message and meet the needs of your kids.
Paperback. Copyright 2005. 166 pages.


Reproduced and excerpted from DISCOVER. Article by, Curtis Rist
The type of rod also affects the speed and distance a line travels. Salespeople call some rods fast and others slow in describing how far they might cast a fly. Graig Spolek, a mechanical engineering professor from Portland State University in Oregon, set up an experiment to quantify these vague terms. He hauled a bundle of rods into a darkened gymnasium, set up a strobe light, and took a sequence of photographs to examine the movement of the rod and the line during the forward cast.
Rods have to be stiff enough to handle the lunges of a caught fish but flexible enough to transfer energy effectively from the arm to the line during a cast. This allows the tip to wiggle quickly back and forth, which Spolek calls the rod’s frequency. In another experiment, he counted how many times the tip of each rod moved back and forth per second, and this number, he discovered, allowed him to predict which rods would cast the farthest. High frequency gives you a faster tip speed, creating swifter line speed. “And that allows you to cast a long way,” Spolek says.
Still, Spolek was not satisfied. “Who cares about finding a unified theory of the universe?” he asks. “What we need is a unified theory of fly-fishing.” In 2006 he took a yearlong sabbatical to make progress toward that theory. In his research he deconstructed the mechanical limitations of the rod that cause its tip to swirl during casting, preventing the line from aiming true. To make a rod, manufacturers tightly wrap graphite-fiber fabric around a thin steel cylinder. Spolek found that if the manufacturers changed the way they roll the fabric, they could minimize the swirling problem. He also concocted a new way to measure the flexibility of fishing line leaders, the part of the line nearest the lure, using a technique he had previously developed to gauge the bending stiffness of the tiny wires in pacemakers. In this way, he discovered that newer fishing lines made of fluorocarbon were actually less flexible than standard nylon lines.
Of course, a perfect cast still depends on the skill of the person heaving the rod—but science is helping there, too. Noel Perkins, a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Michigan, has built a fly-casting robot that can imitate the casts of both experts and novices. His technology could enhance the sport of fly-fishing by permitting researchers to analyze the differences between casts. The end result could be better advice for newcomers to casting. And because the robot can cast repeatedly at the same angle and force, it can test fishing lines and rods objectively. Perkins and his team have also created a fly-casting analyzer that attaches to the reel. Using motion-sensor technology, it gives a detailed printout about the rod’s speed and angle over the course of a cast—feedback critical for casters to develop control over distance and placement.
In the meantime, Joan Wulff offers her own, starkly simple explanation for how she handles a rod with such flawless grace: “It’s all in the arm,” she says.
Discover Magazine: The latest in science and technology news, blogs and articles - The Whip-Like Physics of Fly Fishing


Ways to Test Gold Ore in the Field
Gold is very heavy. If you have a piece of rock that seems heavy when compared to its volume and there is evidence of a golden yellow, you may have gold. Gold is very soft and can be scratched easily. Using your finger nail or a hard implement can sometimes dent the surface.
Tests To Determine Mineral Type: Step One in Determining Gold Ore Type
Gold ore combines with few elements. Because of this, it is found in nature in pure form, and to a limited extent in gold ores. The gold ores that exist produce a relatively small percent of discovered gold. Nagyagite, calaverite, sylvanite and krennerite are 4 examples of low yield gold ore. Since gold forms few compounds, it has been a characteristic that has contributed to its rarity. Learn about luster, streak, hardness, and cleavage, physical characteristics which may help identify gold ore prospects.
Glazed tile and pyrite - the streak test - Abrading a specimen to get a powder
Mohs Testing of Minerals
Down to the Nitty Gritty
So why learn about luster, streak, hardness, and cleavage? If you are reading this hub, you more than likely have an interest in learning about and/or finding gold. I do too.
So if you stumble upon an abandoned mine, or start to take a miner's pick to a piece of rock with quartz streaks in it, how do you know, or have good reason to believe, the ore you have attained is a classic gold ore? You can use Mohs tests in the field to determine the ore characteristics and see if that jives with what the Mohs test has to say about gold ore. Though rather rare, gold does appear other than in pure nugget or string form. It can be mixed in with the minerals calaverite, kennerite and silverite.
On Mohs Test Scale, calaverite has a hardness of 2.5 to 3. Cleavage is absent. Its luster is bright metallic. Its color is silver white to brass yellow, and its streak is yellow gray. Using various tools and minerals of KNOWN hardness, one can perform a scratch test. The first object or mineral to scratch the ore gives an approximate value for hardness.
Scratching repeatedly over a white glazed tile with a pocket knife gives a measure of powder. When smeared, if it is calaverite, the streak should be, as mentioned above, yellow gray. In this manner many of the tests can be made that will give the prospector a better idea of what ore he has discovered.
Carrying a handbook that identifies minerals helps also. The Handbook of Rocks, Minerals, & Gemstones by Walter Schumann Dr. and R. Bradshaw is reasonably priced and thorough.
Useful Information About Gold Prospecting
- There is a lot to know when starting the hobby of gold prospecting.
- The prospective gold prospector needs to understand the tools peculiar to gold prospecting.
- One needs to understand how gold placer (alluvial gold) winds up where it is.
- One needs to know about hard rock mining.
- One needs to figure out where to go on a claim for the first time.
- One needs to know where gold has been found historically.
- One needs to understand his or her state laws and the federal mining laws regarding an individual recreational prospector.
- State geologic survey sites are a good source of information about gold mining. The U.S. Geologic Survey has maps of large gold mining areas.
Streak plates are glazed white tiles so that a powdered mineral can be seen clearly. The streak contrasts with the white quite vividly.
Rubbing a piece of gold across white unglazed porcelain tile will not leave a dark streak. If the streak is black it is not gold. Such a steak could indicate pyrite. Gold will reveal itself as a golden yellow.
If you know you have a piece of gold, hold a magnet near it. If the piece is attracted, there are other metals causing the attraction. Pure gold is not magnetic. If you have a sample you believe is gold and it is not magnetic, it proves nothing. Copper, brass, and stainless steel are not magnetic, for example.
I have found hand lenses for as little as $5. These loupes are 30 power, while some even have LED lights in them. They are lightweight and small, fitting comfortably in the pocket. Many are made with silver colored metal frames, but reflection of light off of these may interfere with identification. Others are black and made of plastic.
Since all (as far as I know) extraction methods involve chemicals that can produce noxious and deadly gas vapor, there are articles that can lay out the procedures. Simply google "gold extraction". Remember to always wear a mask/ventilator if you wish to separate gold from ore (in its pure form) chemically. The building should also have good ventilation. Deferring to professionals when using chemicals may be the right decision.
Of Interest to Gold Prospectors
Finding gold may not be as simple as seeing a gold stringer in a quartz outcropping. Sometimes gold is mixed in ore with manganese. Other times, it can be found in reddish rock, occurring due to iron oxide (rust), with lines of quartz. Another form of volcanic rock, basalt, can contain gold and quartz and varies from a dark black to grey. Yet other times it is in the form of placer, flakes that have washed down a mountain in some kind of water pathway. To increase your yield, you really need to get some basic equipment.
Hobart M. King, PHD, RPG, The Most Important Gold Prospecting Tools, 2005 - -2018, Geoscience News and Information, https://geology.com/articles/gold-prospecting-tools/
Harold Kirkemo, USGS, 2016, Prospecting for Gold in the United States, https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/prospect2/prospectgip.html
Jay Motes, In What Rock Formations Can Gold Be Found?, April 24, 2017, https://sciencing.com/rock-formations-can-gold-found-7439756.html
Staff, How To Test Gold, 2017 Prospecting.com, https://www.goldfeverprospecting.com/howtotestgold.html
Staff, Gold Prospecting for Beginners, 2017, https://www.rockseeker.com/gold-prospecting-for-beginners/
Questions & Answers
© 2013 John R Wilsdon


The Woman Suffrage Movement
By the second decade of the 20th century, woman suffrage–women’s right to vote–had become an issue of national importance in America. To win public support for their cause, two rival women’s organizations conducted a massive campaign of lobbying, picketing, petitions and nonviolent demonstrations. The growth in the numbers of American working women and the valuable contributions women made in war production during World War I further increased the suffragists’ support. On August 20, 1919, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, giving women the right to vote.
In this image, German actress Hedwig Reicher wears a costume of ‘Columbia’ with other suffrage pageant participants in front of the Treasury Building in Washington, D.C. on March 3, 1913.
Photo: Library of Congress


On July 29, 2016, the USDA Food and Nutrition Service finalized a new set of requirements governing school wellness polices. The ruling affects all schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program and/or School Breakfast Program and must be completed by June 30, 2017.
Wellness policies are written documents drafted by individual school districts which guide their “efforts to establish a school environment that promotes students’ health, well-being, and ability to learn.” The new regulations are intended to strengthen these goals, as well as increase transparency and accountability.
According to the USDA’s summary of the ruling, the revised wellness policies must include:
- Specific goals for nutrition promotion and education, physical activity, and other schoolbased activities that promote student wellness. [Local educational agencies] are required to review and consider evidence-based strategies in determining these goals.
- Standards and nutrition guidelines for all foods and beverages sold to students on the school campus during the school day that are consistent with Federal regulations for:
- School meal nutrition standards, and the
- Smart Snacks in School nutrition standards.
- Standards for all foods and beverages provided, but not sold, to students during the school day (e.g., in classroom parties, classroom snacks brought by parents or other foods given as incentives).
- Policies for food and beverage marketing that allow marketing and advertising of only those foods and beverages that meet the Smart Snacks in School nutrition standards.
- Description of public involvement, public updates, policy leadership and evaluation plan.
Schools will be assessed by state agencies every three years to check for compliance. You can view the USDA’s ruling in its entirety here.
Source: United States Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Science. (2016). Local School Wellness Policy Implementation Under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010: Summary of the Final Rule.


Career success largely depends on the skills that an individual possesses, his or her employability skills, and the ability to demonstrate these in the workplace and at an interview.
Employers look for a combination of personal, employability and technical skills in job applicants and in their employees as the ability to get a job done, and participate effectively in the workplace. Employers believe that employability skills and an individual's personal qualities hold a job seeker in greater stead than the focus on one's qualification. The skills that we possess and develop are important not only for our present career, but for the rest of our lives.
A skill is the learned ability to carry out a task. In other words, the abilities that we possess. The three categories of skills that prospective employers look for are: personal skills that relate to our qualities and the ability to work with others; generic or transferable skills that can be applied across different jobs and technical skills, which are those skills required for a specific job.
Personal skills are the individual attributes such as personality and work habits that demonstrate how individuals work, and the qualities they display when they are at the workplace that makes them who they are. These attributes enable an employer to determine one's fit into an organisation, and the ability to work with a team. Examples of personal skills include:
- Honesty, integrity and reliability
- Planning and organisational skills
- Working under pressure
- Positive self-esteem
- Common sense
- Personal presentation
- Ability to balance work and personal life
Generic or transferable skills are those required to perform a variety of tasks, which can be transferred from one job to another. In 2002, the Business Council of Australia and Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry identified eight key generic employability skills as part of the Australian Core Skills Framework. These are:
3. Problem solving
4. Initiative and enterprise
5. Planning and organising
These skills are applied in a job role, and when an individual is seeking to make a career change.
Technical skills are the specialised skills and knowledge required to work in specific occupations and to perform specific duties. The importance and mix of skills will vary from job to job. Examples are undertaking bookkeeping tasks using specific accounting software, writing and editing, teaching, nursing, or driving a forklift.
Technical skills can be demonstrated via qualifications, professional registration, competency to undertake a job role, and references by workplace managers or supervisors.
Although employers seek a combination of personal, transferable and technical skills in employees and job seekers, many individuals focus on technical skills and qualifications as a work requirement. This is merely one component, and this approach limits one's ability to broaden a skill set.
How can employability skills be developed? They can be developed in a variety of ways – learned at school, or through tertiary or vocational studies and in one's personal life through hobbies and sport, or in the workplace.
Formal education provides the learning of theory and skill development in a course to obtain a recognised qualification to enable an individual to work in an occupation. Many occupations require qualifications that range from certificate to higher level.
Informal education entails learning while undertaking a hobby or interest, reading magazines, watching demonstrations, attending trade fairs, or in one's personal life undertaking activities such as giving a speech at a personal celebration, writing a household budget, arranging home and family life, or cake baking, fixing cars, cleaning, or household repairs.
In the workplace, recognise that some skills have greater relevance for a job role than others so that they are prioritised in importance and job application. Focus on developing these through a variety of ways such as undertaking a project in the workplace, performing in a particular role even for a short time while a staff member is on leave, reading professional publications, or participating in mentoring programs.
Employers have identified personal qualities and skills they are seeking from employees and job applicants. Individuals need a broad range of skills to successfully undertake their occupation, and to use their skills in a future career. Lifelong learning provides the opportunity for employment, personal and career development, and the platform to perform at a higher level.
Leah Shmerling is the director and principal consultant of Crown Coaching and Training. Visit crowncoaching.com.au


I often hear a lot of people saying “He is so brave and fearless!” Every time I hear this statement, I disagree. Why? It’s because I simply disagree ;D
Does being courageous imply being fearless? What does being courageous exactly mean?
First, let's define what the words fear and courage mean.
Fear is the acceptance of potential danger and the motivation to take action for protection. It sets you in action for facing danger or fleeing from it. Meanwhile, courage is the ability to persist with your objectives and take action even in the face of fear. Courage is not the absence of fear. Being courageous forces you to pursue your objectives despite fear. Fear helps you protect yourself from danger, whereas courage helps you take action despite being fearful. Do not be afraid to be afraid. Fear is necessary. However do not let fear stop you. Be courageous and take action. Fear and courage go hand in hand. Fear is necessary for survival, whereas courage is required to succeed.Now, after reading the excerpt above, you also disagree with the statement “He is so brave and fearless!”