3 years, 7 months ago
Chaos theory is the principle of mathematics that states dynamical systems which are subject to any number of individual initial conditions, such as the commonly cited example of a butterfly flapping its wings ultimately leading to a dramatic shift in weather at the opposite end of the planet, behave in such a way that defies prediction in the long-term. These systems are called chaotic
, where by this definition chaos is not random, but is so impossible to predict by any meaningful system of measurement that it might as well be random.
This is ostensibly the premise “Rivals” was pitched under. But the neutrino-spinning gambling machine Martus Mazur brings to Deep Space 9
hardly constitutes an example of chaos theory. Instead, it operates by altering the laws of probability, as numerous characters state at various points in the episode. Far from large-scale effects being generated seemingly at random by an otherwise inconsequential initial event, the device arbitrarily dispenses good luck and bad luck across the station, which is a very different sort of phenomenon. Perhaps it's small wonder than that the “chaos theory” pitch languished around in production hell for over a year before Michael Piller got around to it, by which point the finished product could hardly be called something that could be traced back to its source. Actually, that
's a better example of chaos theory than anything in the actual episode as aired.
But this isn't a blog about mathematical models of scientific processes. I'm sure you can find oodles of critique of Star Trek's clumsy handling of those issues elsewhere. We all know that Star Trek's scientific concepts are usually the least interesting thing about any given story, and the same is certainly true here. The only trouble is there's not a whole lot else to “Rivals”: It's an aggressively unfunny attempt at a low-stakes story that leaves me without a lot to talk about. I suppose that's the first thing I could mention, because it's not a good sign to see Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
trip up on a low-stakes story like this. “Rivals” is precisely the sort of episode that should be absolutely in this show's wheelhouse and it should be able to churn out this kind of material practically on autopilot. This is what the series was built to do, and that it can't seem to wrap its brain around it is concerning. Maybe the show has epiced itself out following the season opening three-parter and big dramatic attempts like “Necessary Evil”, “Invasive Procedures”, “Cardassians” and “Sanctuary”.
Maybe the answer is that troublesome brief. Either chaos theory doesn't make a great Star Trek story, or the creative team doesn't know how to make
it a good Star Trek story. The fumble on the chaos theory thing has tripped me up for years
, and I've spent longer than any human being should trying to piece together what this story actually has to do with a field of theory I've actually found kind of interesting at varying points in my life, only to finally realise it actually has fuck all to do with it. What the events of this episode are actually closer to, and what's potentially even more interesting, is the concept of synchronicity: Meaningful coincidences that make themselves obviously visible to us in such a way they forces us to facet of reality we were heretofore ignorant of. Even if the truth turns out to be something boring like there's a weird gambling machine that's causing the station's neutrinos to rotate in an unorthodox matter (which, according to particle physicists, isn't even accurate either). Real chaos theory tends to get you the weather forecast. But regardless, there are far better and far more memorable Star Trek stories that examine synchronicity you can partake of than this.
There is something of a real Star Trek story here. Or at least what I'd consider a Star Trek story, or the germ of one. And that's in Martus Mazur himself. He's an El Aurian, a member of a “race of listeners”, whom I am informed Guinan is also one of. Now, I'm not sure why people would want to pin down a mundane origin story for Guinan like that, but whatever, we'll roll with it for now. In fact, the link with Guinan was originally going to be even more overt, with Martus being her “wayward son” and Guinan herself getting called in at the end to deal with him. But with Whoopi Goldberg unavailable, the link to her was dropped, and probably for the best, although I confess I would have enjoyed seeing Guinan on Deep Space 9
. Actually, contrasting her
with Quark is yet another far better story the series could have done than this.
Either way, with or without a textual connection to Guinan, Martus's status as a “listener” means he's tacitly supposed to be empathic. This means he's another example of a theme the show has looked at a lot this season: The corruption of empathy and how it can be twisted for ill ends. The best example is naturally Lore and the Borg in “Descent”, who use emotions and emotional vulnerability as a weapon and the classic misreading of Friedrich Nietzsche as a means to bring about fascist ends. There's also the ever-present spectre of grimdark on the horizon, which is a temptation Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
experiences far more viscerally and profoundly than its sister show Star Trek: The Next Generation
(in spite of the best efforts of certain creative figures, who shall remain nameless). Grimdark is the antithesis of empathy, or perhaps it's better described as empathy's warped inverse: It's an attunement to one's own emotions and emotional state above all else, and an exaggeration of them to cosmic proportions. It's a form of solipsism, or at least willfully blinkered insensitivity.
So here we have Martus, a supposed “listener” who uses empathy as a ruse to con and manipulate people for his own material gain. There's a nut of an interesting idea, but again, the episode doesn't really take it anywhere interesting. It's not really an examination of grimdark one way or the other, and Lore is a far, far more terrifying example of empathy corrupted than Martus. Really, Martus just comes across as an ass instead of a serious threat or a symbolic adversarial force to be overcome. Which leaves me in a bind, because I can't read this episode as an oversignified semi-sentient self-critique any more than I can really read it as a piece of harmlessly enjoyable fluff.
Although speaking of fluff, there's one fun aspect to this episode worth looking further into: Miles and Julian's racquetball game. This episode goes a long way towards furthering the odd couple pairing of Chief O'Brien and Doctor Bashir, and is probably the highlight of the week on this side of the lot. The relationship itself is obviously cute and they make a good pair, with their early abrasiveness softening into an intergenerational friendship built around mutual respect and admiration. The racquetball court itself is really fun too: I always liked seeing how Star Trek: The Next Generation
and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
would translate things like sports to their settings, and seeing how the different characters enjoyed them. Although I will say, as much as I loved Chief O'Brien's court back in the day, while I was researching this essay I have to admit I found Captain Picard's setup in “Suddenly Human” to be a bit more visually striking. But perhaps, like so much else about this show, that was part of the point.
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I am reading Conversations with Miloševic – about the breakdown of Yugoslavia – and the complex struggles that followed. There are a series of maps, showing, in detail, the evolving conflict – in which millions suffered and died. No one expected this much violence to happen so quickly.
But this was not unusual – complex (often violent) events are in fact, the most common kind – in every domain imaginable.
When I went to Engineering School, in the Fifties, I took a class in Linear Analysis – that dealt with two variables at a time. No more could be handled, because the math became too complicated.
The digital computer, which was then just getting a start – could handle any number of variables, interconnected in any number of ways. It could model any situation in the world – but you ended up with two worlds, the real world you were modeling, and a virtual one, on a computer. This raised a question – how well did the model represent the world?
This is a huge problem that goes back to the introduction of human language – the invention that made us human. How well can language represent the world? Very well, and very poorly – at the same time. Words have to be accompanied by person-to-person body language, for satisfying communication to happen.
The same is true of the computer, that uses artificial languages. But its difficulty is worse than that – it can only work with numbers (digits). Everything has to be converted to a number, or a series of numbers (digitized) – then processed by the computer – and then converted back to whatever you started with.
For example, I tap on a key on my keyboard to generate a letter – this is changed into a number and my computer uses that, and all the other characters I enter, to construct its internal representation of a document – then it quickly changes this internal document back to a document on its monitor – that I can see. Two documents exist simultaneously – one inside the computer, and one outside it. When I am finished with it – it converts this into a file that I can send to other computers. This whole complicated process happens so quickly, it seems to happen instantly.
What I am describing is a new world entirely.
This is one of the reasons why so much conflict exists in today’s world. Most of the people in it were creatures of the Industrial World, and had adapted themselves to it. That world (of only fifty years ago) no longer exists – and they cannot adapt to the new one – that is centered around the Computer – that has no need for their skills. They are out of a job – and no worse thing could happen to them.
They are now followers of Trump – who promises to bring their world back to them.


The modern world has been plagued by the misnomer of buying. The correct term for the economic exchanges commonly occurring today is “leasing”. In short, buying does not involve attached strings.
To understand the original concept of buying, we have to look this type of exchange prior to the American invention of patents as expressed in the Constitution. In other words, we could look at the etymology of the word and examine its degradation over time to understand where we are at today. We can still understand the original meaning of the world because it has not been lost in any other sector of business: only that which involves the direct exchange of new products. If you wish to buy an old item from someone or buy stocks, you expect to acquire (not inherit) the full rights of that item from the individual. I would present garage sales as being an excellent example, though it appears that patent and copyright protection applies to these items regardless of the number of hands they are passed on. Nevertheless, the buyer expects to receive all of the previous owner’s rights to the item.
Business between corporations still maintains the correct definition of buying, but it entails the purchasing of all the associated patents and copyrights necessary for a full transfer of power over a product or idea. This transaction can cost thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars – a price ordinary Americans aren’t willing to pay much less have the means to do so. Hence, businesses will lease these products to the public but under the false pretense of “selling” the item to the individual.
The word “lease” itself, though a better description of the transaction between company and customer, is itself insufficient to properly describe the transaction. In this transaction, there is a transfer of a great number of rights from the company to the customer. For example, the customer gains the right to hold and/or use the item indefinitely without having to make any additional payments (except in cases such as vehicles where full payment has not been made in the exchange). Furthermore, the customer can (usually legally) damage or destroy the item without outside permission or having the legal obligation to compensate the company for the destruction of the item.
In short, buying and selling are concepts that pertain to the full exchange of the rights of one individual over a specific item to that of another.
The concepts of buying and selling exist only in the context of constructionism. Thus, this is suitable for tangible, physical items, but with respect to digital items, there exists great ambiguity while at the same time a general understanding in the populous. That is to say, the buying and selling of a physical object is easy to identify: an item(s) is exchanged for another item(s), usually currency. To put this in somewhat scientific-reductionist terms: one clump of atoms is being swapped with another clump. The shift in ownership is understandable because exact physical quantities are involved. This is not so with digital “items”, because in reality, digital “items” such as files do not technically exist beyond the specific arrangement of electrons in a computer. These electrons were not exchanged in the transaction; rather, they were simply relocated from a power source, which is, for all legal purposes, completely unassociated with the transaction. Furthermore, the arrangement of these electrons is completely meaningless and needs to be interpreted by the computer operating system and processor before the person can acquire the desired result. Thus, what we can say about the “purchase” of digital items is that the transaction results in a desirable arrangement of electrons on a device (e.g. computer). Technically speaking, providing such an arrangement is called a “service”, not a product. Services are neither copyrightable nor patentable. Hence digital “items” cannot be “bought” except in the form of CDs, DVDs, or some other tangible medium.


|Back to Group 21|
John Chandler (1784-1854) was born in Minchinhampton and baptized there on 6 January 1784, the third child of John and Ann Chandler. His early life seems much like that of his siblings. He married Sarah Williams on 23 October 1803 at Minchinhampton, and they had two children: William, baptized 22 July 1804, and Susannah, baptized on 16 March 1806. William married Charlotte Bellerd, lived at Littleworth in the parish of Amberley, and was a woollen cloth weaver.
John lost his first wife Sarah and remarried on 22 October 1811 at Stroud, Gloucestershire, to another Sarah – Sarah Millard, herself a widow. John and Sarah had a son, Richard, in Minchinhampton in 1814. Then the changes began.
At some time between 1814 and 1818, John and Sarah left the beautiful Gloucestershire countryside and moved 120 miles eastward to Southwark [pronounced Sutherk], lying just south of the River Thames as it flows through London. Hat making was a major industry in Southwark in the early 19th century. Heavy industry had moved into Southwark during the previous century. It was at Blackfriars Bridge that Boulton and Watt set up their infamous Albion Mills (possibly the ‘Satanic Mills’ described by local Lambeth resident and famous poet William Blake), the first steam-powered corn mill in Britain. It burned down in 1791 and was replaced by the great engineering work of John Rennie.* Southwark became a centre for iron-founding, wire-making, glass-making and other heavy industries. The rope works in nearby Bermondsey became one of the longest workshops in London. The whole river-front from Bankside to Greenwich [pronounced Grinitch] became a vast centre of ship building, ship breaking, anchor smithing, stave making, processing and storage.
*John Rennie was also responsible for the new London Bridge built in 1830-1831, which was sold some 130 years later to an American developer, dismantled block by block, and taken to an English quarry. There the face of the stones was cut off, reducing the size considerably. The stone facings were then shipped to America where they were used to clad a concrete mould of the original bridge which had been erected in Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Reconstruction began on September 23, 1968, with a ceremony including the Lord Mayor of London, who laid the cornerstone. The new bridge was dedicated in 1971.
Four children of people named John and Sarah Chandler were christened at Christ Church in Southwark: John on 10 May 1818, Sarah on 30 August 1818, James on 3 June 1821 and Henry on 7 September 1823. It is not known with certainty, but these could have been the children of our Gloucestershire couple.
John continued as a hatter until his death caused by bronchitis, probably a result of the very poor air quality, on 16 September 1854. He may have been preceded in death by Sarah 18 months earlier – a Sarah Chandler death was recorded in the Southwark registration district in the first quarter of 1853.
The first we hear of their son Richard as an adult is back in Gloucestershire at the time of his marriage. It is unclear at what age he left his parents in London and returned to the clean air of the county of his birth. Richard suffered and eventually died from chronic bronchitis, and it may have been that his constitution simply could not take the foul air of industrial London. He was a tailor when he married Joanna Merrett on 28 August 1837 in Woodchester, Gloucestershire – Joanna’s home town. In the 1851 census of the village of Chalford in the parish of Bisley, Richard is recorded as a tailor, Joanna a seamstress, and they had a son, John Stephen (“Jack”), born in Bisley in 1837. The 1856 Post Office Directory shows Richard as a tailor in the place of his birth, Minchinhampton. There is no evidence of other children.
As a young man, Jack fell out with his father and left home in his teens, probably to work as an apprentice tailor in London. He met the girl who was to become his wife in church. Mary Ann Surfleet was living at 6 Elleston Square in London and worked as a lady’s maid, far from her family home in Candlesby, Lincolnshire. It seems rather appropriate that a Candlesby girl should fall for a Chandler. She was born in 1835 and baptized on 28 February 1836, the eldest daughter of William Surfleet and his wife Ann formerly Farr. Her father William was a bailiff at the Rectory Farm for John Allington, rector of Candlesby. Mary Ann was one of 14 children, only four of whom reached adulthood. She married Jack on 13 May 1861 in St Michael’s Church in the parish of St. Peter Pimlico, in the county of Middlesex (i.e. north of the River Thames, now a part of London).
By early 1863 the Chandler family had moved to Alford in Lincolnshire, Mary Ann’s home county, where the rest of the Chandler children were born. Jack established a tailor’s shop in West Street, Alford, with the financial help of his father-in-law, William Surfleet, who made a codicil dated 16 March 1863 to his will stating:
.. whereas I lately became bound with my son in law John Stephen Chandler of Alford in the same county Tailor for the payment of 236 pounds approx. borrowed of various persons for the use and benefit of John Stephen Chandler. If the Trustees are called upon to pay all or part of this it is to be deducted from Mary Ann’s share.
By the time of the 1871 census, the “Tailor, Hatter and Woollen Draper” on West Street, Alford, was employing two men and two apprentices. That census shows the Chandler children as John W., Richard, Edgar, Emma M. and Claribel. Another son, Tom, was born three days after the census was taken.
A family reconciliation had obviously taken place, because Jack’s parents Richard and Joanna Chandler, both aged 56, had moved from Gloucestershire and are found in the 1871 census lodging in the South Street, Alford, home of widow Elizabeth Bradshaw. Between 1871 and 1881 Joanna Chandler died. By the time of the 1881 Census, Richard is shown as a widowed tailor aged 66, now lodging in the home of the Stockton family of Hamilton Place, Alford.
In total, Jack and Mary Ann Chandler had eight sons and three daughters, all of whom attended Daddy Ruston’s school in Alford at a cost of two pence per child per week.
Middle row, from left: Tom 1871-1953, Mary Ann (nee Surfleet) 1835-1915, Richard 1814-1887, John Stephen 1837-1891, Emma Maria 1868-1905
Front row, from left: Claribel 1869-1963, Fred Stephen 1876-1960 (on Mary Ann’s knee), Kate born 1872, Frank Napoleon 1874-1960, Edgar Thornton 1867-1936.
Henry James was born later that year.
Richard became a religious man in his later years. In a letter to his granddaughter Claribel on the occasion of her winning a prize in a Biblical Study competition, he laments the fact that he did not serve his God half so faithfully as he had served his King and tells her “. . . then again, youth is the time to serve the Lord, but alas I was dead to such a real and lasting truth, consequently my life has been one of turmoil and worry, resting on broken reeds. Oh what a folly worse than madness”.
It is our good fortune that the Chandler family was friendly with Edwin Nainby, the Alford photographer, who lived in the same street, resulting in the availability of a number of Chandler family photographs.
Jack Chandler was a very strict parent and his children were afraid of him, with the exception of Frank, who was the only one to rebel against his father’s strict Victorian discipline (see below.) All Jack had to do was look at the cane he kept on the wall above the fire, and the children would be quiet. He insisted that the girls all had to be home by 9.00 p.m. As a young woman, Marie went to a dance and, when she was escorted home by the local policeman afterwards, her father beat her for letting a man walk her home!
It is perhaps not too surprising that Jack’s hero was Napoleon. When Frank Chandler was born in 1874, Jack wanted to name him after his hero, but Mary Ann, who was usually quiet, insisted on the church steps that no son of hers would be known as Napoleon, hence the baby was christened Frank Napoleon.
John Stephen “Jack” Chandler suffered throughout his life with asthma and arthritis. He used a horse and trap to make deliveries to his customers. On 6 May 1891 his horse shied at a newspaper blowing in the wind, and Jack was thrown out of the trap, causing a terminal asthma attack. He died at the age of 53, leaving a quite substantial personal estate of more than five hundred pounds to his widow Mary Ann.
Seated front row, from left: Frank Napoleon Chandler 1874-1960, Mary Ann (Surfleet) Chandler 1835-1913, Jessie Claribel Chandler 1895-1976 seated on grandmother’s knee, Agnes (Turnbull) Chandler wife of Will Chandler, John Turnbull Chandler 1896-1917 seated on his mother’s knee, Claribel Chandler 1869-1963.
After Jack’s death, Mary Ann regularly visited her married children. Some of her letters to her daughter Claribel, written while visiting other children, have survived. They reveal great warmth and simple humanity. She died in 1913, leaving a substantial seven hundred pounds to be divided equally between all her surviving children and Agnes, the widow of her eldest son Will.
John Stephen “Jack” and Mary Ann (Surfleet) Chandler are both buried in Alford churchyard. Their children were:
- John William “Will” Chandler, 1862-1907, did not get on with his father. Became a school teacher in 1884. Married Agnes Turnbull in 1894. Lived in Cambridgeshire. Had one son and seven daughters: Jessie Claribel, John Turnbull, Queenie, Muriel, Pauline, Constance, Doris and Ena.
- Richard Chandler, 1863-1922, was a tailor. He and wife Martha lived in Thornton Heath, Surrey, and had one son, Timothy, and one daughter, Hilda.
- Charles Chandler, 1865-1867, born and died in Alford, Lincolnshire.
- Edgar Thornton Chandler, 1867-1936, was named after the place at which his father was engaged in an army exercise at the time of his birth. Took over the family tailoring business. In 1902 was a volunteer in the Third Battalion of the Lincolnshire Regiment. A plaque in Alford Town Hall shows him to have been Urban District Council Chairman 1927-1928. He and his wife Lily had one daughter and three sons: Edith Muriel, Edgar Duncan, Frank and John Stephen.
- Emma Maria “Marie” Chandler, 1868-1905, was a nursing sister in a refugee concentration camp near Kimberley in South Africa during the Boer War. A letter written home to her sister in 1900 has survived (see below), revealing a vivid picture of life in the refugee camp. She married George Randle, a British Army captain. Her obituary in the 17 March 1905 edition of the Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury reads:
RANDLE: at Jagersfontein, South Africa, Feb 17th of Malarial Fever, Emma Maria (Marie) the beloved wife of George Randle and daughter of the late J. S. Chandler of Alford.
- Claribel Chandler, 1869-1963, left home to train as a teacher in 1891 and was a headmistress before her marriage to headmaster Fred Waring. Had one son and two daughters: Marjorie, John “Jack” and Barbara. Lived to age 96.
|Three Chandler Sisters
Marie, Claribel and Kate,
- Tom Chandler, 1871-1853, was a printer, a male nurse, and, during the first world war, a sergeant in the Red Cross. Click here to read the story of Tom and his far-flung family.
- Kate “Kit” Chandler, 1872-1961, was very particular about appearances and would not go for walks with her brothers unless they were properly attired, including their top hats! She helped with the tailoring business before marrying Oliver Essame, a railway clerk on the Great Northern Railway. They had three sons and one daughter: Louie, Edgar (a wing commander in the Royal Air Force and teacher at Ripon Preparatory School), Gerald (a brigadier and head of the Coal Board Staff College) and Enid (principal of Queenswood Girls Public School in Hertfordshire). Kit was crippled by arthritis from middle age onwards.Frank Napoleon Chandler, 1874-1960, emigrated to Canada. Click here to read about the life of Frank Napoleon Chandler.
- Fred Stephen Chandler, 1876-1960, lived in Croydon, Surrey during tailoring apprenticeship, then got a job in Yorkshire, where he lodged with his future wife’s family. He married Mabel Lillian Pickering Ward in 1909. They had four sons: Fred, Eric, and twins Dennis Martin (died from injuries sustained when crushed by a horse while serving with the Royal Scots Greys in Egypt) and Alan Oliver. Fred worked as a tailor’s cutter for Wallgate in Beverley, Yorkshire, and bought the business when Wallgate retired. Mabel ran a dress shop and, during World War II, they also bought the café at Catfoss Airfield. Mabel was the matriarch of the family, a very strong-willed and domineering woman. In contrast, Fred was a quiet man with a gentle nature, who relished the countryside, his greenhouse and garden, and his daily walk in the country lanes with his dog Laddie.
- Henry James “Jim” Chandler, 1877-1938, married Florence Mary Walker in Surrey in 1905. They had a son William and a daughter Phyllis in England, before Jim and Florence emigrated to New Zealand in 1910 aboard the S.S. Tongariro which arrived in Wellington on Phyllis’ first birthday. They sailed from Wellington on the S.S. Monowai to Auckland, where they had another daughter Mary and remained for the rest of their lives.
Letter from Marie Chandler
to her sister Claribel and brother-in-law Fred Waring
14 March 1900
My Dearest Clarrie and Fred
Very many thanks for your letter, it came among my first batch & you can guess how jolly glad I was to receive letters after having been five weeks without any. We are in very isolation here with a vengeance. 11 English to 4000 Boers. No troops to guard us and very few luxuries of any kind. Our compound is quite in the centre of all the camps and look any way we will we cannot see a house. I am NOT fond of tent life. I am night sister for a while & it is no joke trying to sleep in a tent in a temperature of 98 degrees. We have double tents, they keep off some heat. The rains have commenced and I go about at night in Wellington boots that reach to my knees. And just now there is no moon so I flounder about most of the night among the tent ropes, they snare me on every side. My patients are mostly enteric, there is absolutely no convenience to nurse enteric & we are in the midst of an epidemic. I am quite certain all the staff will get it. The food is so awful & if I did not resort to bread & milk very frequently I should be starved. Bread & milk or bread & jam are about all that is at all good. There is no word to express what the tinned butter is like. Things are most awfully dear in Kimberley. A small bun is three pence. They say Kimberley has never righted itself since the siege and I want you to tell Mother & the others that if I do not write every week to someone among you that you may know Kimberley is being besieged again. We know for a fact that the Boers are making preparations. I suppose you know far more about the war than we do because things are suppressed & we get very ——- in the papers. The Boers have been very elated lately & we are sure something unusual is afoot. They sing all day long. Last week we had three deaths from enteric and three more are dying which is rather unfortunate in a way as the mothers and relations generaly think we are killing them because they do not get meat to eat when they have enteric. Last night I had a child die of enteric and had to get men out of the rebel camp to take her away to the mortuary. It was a weird sight. Procession thus: first a Dutch night-probationer carrying a candle, then three men carrying the child on a stretcher & I walking behind. Three tall men they were in soft wide-awake hats, & you can imagine me inviting them to have a cup of coffee. Some of the men are very tall strong men. They say we have nothing to fear if they do beseige Kimberley as they will only come and shake hands with the wives. I am not so sure & would not trust them as far as I could see. The would burn our tents as soon as look at us I think. They say the reason they are fighting so near to Kimberley is that Kitchener and someone else are driving them in. We hear today that Methuen is taken prisoner with 1500 men & that there are 5000 Boers together somewhere. But we hear so many tales that we don’t bother to believe any. Of course we hope that Kitchener IS near then Kimberley will not suffer. If we do come in for any excitement of the kind we shall be in an awful fix for firewood. We have only one fire in the compound & it is never anything but wood. I know for a fact that 140 wounded were brought into Kimberley hospital after the Vryburg affair last week. Yesterday all the mules were commandeered in Kimberley. I have a very nice man dying tonight from the rebel camp, he won’t do any more mischief though as he has certainly taken his ticket. His wife came and asked the Dispenser (who is also a prisoner-of-war) what we had been giving her husband – meaning we had poisoned him. The British are far too good to these people. The “tame” Boers as they are called have done a great deal of mischief just lately. These concentration camps are a mistake because the men know their wives and children are being looked well after while they are fighting. One of my probationers lost her father yesterday at St. Helena. Another woman told me that everything in her house had been burnt & two of her children died in a week and her husband was taken prisoner only about a month ago. She has been in the camp eight months. They tell us all kinds of very sad stories, but we do not believe anything like all we hear. I shall be very glad when I come off night duty, it is so frightfully lonely & gruesome all night long. If they only put on another English sister it would not be so bad. I am hoping they will, two more are coming out. The other day I found a lizard in my tent, sometimes they get into our beds. This was only a small one and looked like a frog with a long fine tail. It was green & yellow. I got him with forceps and put him in spirit. His name is “Cojef Maandter” so the Dispenser tells me. We get all kinds of animals in our tents. Huge earwigs, scorpions, beetles of every description & all kinds of horrible creepy things. I must now finish.
P.S. Someone came into my tent so I ended this rather abruptly. Today only one English letter came into the whole place, so we think the mails have been interfered with. Kitchener stayed at Kimberley last night & the night before & set everybody to work & all one side of us is being guarded now. The Cape Police too are in full force. They say the Boers are all around here just now.
Much love, Marie.
Boer War lasted from October 1899 – 31 May 1902
Methuen defeated, 1000 men lost, 11 December 1899
Seige of Kimberley, October 1899 – 15 February 1900
6 Baptism records extracted from the Christ Church, Southwark, London Parish Register under the controlled extraction process conducted by the LDS Church and recorded within the FamilySearch.com database.
10 Baptism no. 2820 on 27 September 1847 by Thomas Keble (Vicar) recorded on page 90 of Bisley Parish Register. This baptism, when “Jack” would have been aged 10, may mark the religious awakening of his father Richard, noted elsewhere.
13 Baptism records extracted from the Candlesby, Lincolnshire Parish Register under the controlled extraction process conducted by the LDS Church and recorded within the FamilySearch.com database, and death records from General Register Office death index.
18 Alford Manor House, which lies in the same street as Chandler’s Tailor Shop did, has a collection of Nainby’s glass plate negatives – see http://alfordmanorhouse.co.uk/exhibitions-at-alford-manor-house and scroll down to the item about Edwin Rechab Nainby.


The GED Testing Service consists of a battery of five tests designed to measure the intellectual and learning skills a candidate may have acquired since leaving school. It is generally recognized that many adults who did not complete a formal high school education may have acquired an educational maturity equivalent to that of a high school graduate through years of varied experience. The GED Testing Program, through a series of five comprehensive examinations, is designed to help determine that equivalency.
The five examinations are:
There are five sub-tests in the GED Tests which measure achievement in subject areas associated with a high school program of study. The five tests, and their relative content emphasis are:
The Minister of Advanced Education and Literacy may issue a high school equivalency certificate to Manitoba residents who have not completed high school, and who have been successful on the GED Tests, provided they meet the following eligibility requirements
There is no refund for persons who have not written the tests as scheduled. Applicants must resubmit their applications for the next test sitting with the required fee.
Approximately four (4) to six (6) weeks after completion of the tests, all candidates will receive an official report on each of the five tests written. Candidates who receive a minimum standard score of 450 on each of the five tests will receive a certificate.
The GED is a comparative test. It demonstrates how well the examinee has done compared to recent high school graduates. Test results are reported as “standard scores” ranging from a low of 200 to a high of 800 and as “percentile ranks” ranging from 1 to 99. A passing Standard Score for the GED Testing Service in Manitoba is 450. Candidates must attain a score of 450 or better on each of the five tests to be eligible to receive their high school equivalency.
Note: Only high school equivalency is issued.
Standard Scores are calculated by a mathematical formula to compare GED test results to those attained by recent high school graduates on similar tests. Standard Scores above 500 are typical of recent high school graduates.
The percentile rank shows the percentage of graduating high school seniors who earned a certain standard score. For example, a GED examinee whose standard score on one of the tests has a percentile rank of 55 has done as well as, or better than 55% of the high school graduates in that subject.
Candidates who fail to secure a high school equivalency standing may rewrite the tests which they have failed within the GED testing year (January to December). Candidates who are unsuccessful on this second attempt must wait until the following GED testing year.
An application form and an additional fee is required to cover the cost of rewriting any or all of the tests.
Additional transcripts of GED scores are available at a cost by contacting the GED Testing Office. Duplicate Transcript Application Form
Persons wishing additional information regarding the Manitoba GED Testing Service may contact the GED Administrator at the GED Testing Office.
GED Tests are written in centres across the province. For more information on locations and test dates, please contact the GED Testing Office.
Examens de francais: Veuillez appeler Madame Gail Cormier à l’Université de Saint-Boniface au 204 237-1818, poste 446, pour fixer un rendez-vous.
Testing may be arranged at other sites through special arrangements with the GED Testing Office for individuals with physical, emotional, or learning disabilities only.
Note: The GED tests are available in Braille, audiocassette, and large print.
All GED candidates requesting to take the GED Tests must provide valid identification when they appear at the test centre. Acceptable forms of identification include government-issued identification that includes date of birth, photograph, address and signature. Examples of acceptable identification include drivers’ licenses, passports, firearms licenses, liquor commission identification and military and other government-identification cards.
In addition, current postsecondary school identification that includes the candidate’s name, date of birth, photograph, address, and signature are acceptable. Examples of post-secondary institutions include but are not limited to community colleges, universities, vocational-technical (trade) schools, or private occupational schools.
Study material for GED test preparation is available from larger book stores.
Preparatory classes for GED are available through school divisions, colleges and other adult programs.
Applicants wishing to reschedule their test session must contact the GED Testing Office at least ten (10) days before the testing date to reschedule. If the applicant does not, then the applicant will have to re-register and pay a new application fee. Applicants must reschedule to write the tests within six months of the initial test date.
An applicant’s request for rescheduling due to circumstances that cannot be forecasted in advance, like medical or bereavement reasons, may be reviewed after the stated deadline. For requests such as these, the applicant will be required to provide appropriate documentation to support their rationale.
For further information, contact
Manitoba Advanced Education and Literacy
Adult Learning and Literacy
GED Testing Office
Room 362, 340-9th Street
Brandon, Manitoba, R7A 6C2
Telephone: 1-800-853-7402 (Toll free)
Fax: (204) 726-6339 or (204) 726-6338
This page was last updated December 6, 2013


The late lamented African Bluesman Ali Farka Touré is still celebrated as one of the pioneering figures of West African music. It was he who took the traditional music of Mali, the music of the Jeliya and the Kora, and applied it to the guitar, to create something which resembled the blues of America’s Mississippi delta. Touré’s music has been credited with bringing to light the spiritual and ancestral connection between the music of the West African hinterland and the music of the delta bluesmen, which traced its lineage to the songs brought over by African slaves on the Middle Passage. Touré’s Mali Blues reunified these two distinct branches of ‘African Music’, prompting Martin Scorsese to famously comment that Touré’s music contained the ’DNA of the Blues’.
Ali Farka Touré was also one of the first African musicians to gain a degree of worldwide fame and was a part of the forefront of the so-called ‘World Music’ movement, which came to prominence in the late 1970s and 80s. His popularity both within and beyond the borders of Mali transformed Western perceptions of African music and culture. Many artists were able to follow in his footsteps and gain critical exposure beyond West Africa, such as Habib Koité and Salif Keita, who have both gained a widespread following in the West. Touré’s cultural and social significance for the people of Mali is underlined in the documentary A Visit to Ali Farka Touré in which we see Touré engaging in social programs, as well as playing music with people from the various tribes and ethnic groups of Mali.
The country’s growing status as a cultural destination are reflected in the success of the Festival in the Desert, which is held there every January and is now in its eleventh year. Past performers at the festival have included such icons of West African music as Ali Farka Touré, Salif Keita and the Tuareg band Tinariwen. Despite having to change location in 2010, from the desert regions of Mali to a location closer to Timbuktu, the festival continues to grow in international prominence, and with it Malian music, as more artists come out from the shadow of Ali Farka Touré and develop their own versions of Malian music. As with Touré, whose music both embraced West African tradition and transcended it, artists such as Amadou & Mariam and Touré’s son Vieux Farka Touré, are reinventing West African music and bringing it to new audiences all over the world.


The class that I am currently taking at Cardinal Stritch is called Computer Systems: How they work. In this class we will discuss the history of the computer, the different components of computers, the role of an operating system, the various operating systems available, viruses, and what makes up an ideal computer.
The topics that we will discuss in this class apply to my life in various ways. Computers have become part of my daily life. I use them to socialize, research, collaborate, share, and organize. After learning more about computers and how they work, I will be able to make informed decisions about computers. I will be able to evaluate the various types of computers, components, and software that is available. I will be able to determine what computers offer the best option for my personal use.
This course will also help me protect my information and my computer. I will be able to learn how to prevent viruses and keep my computer secure. This will help ensure that I do not lose important personal information or affect the functionality of my computer.
This class should also help me increase the longevity of my computer. I will be able to keep my operating system running smoothly and I will be able to troubleshoot issues with the components inside my computer.
All of these topics will help protect my investment and make sure that I can maximize the use of my personal computer.


The Montessori Elementary child is presented with a number of lessons about plants. We have previously discussed the first 2 lessons of plants: 1. The Four Greek Elements and 2. What Nutrition Plants Need. These serve as an introduction to the idea of chemistry to the Elementary child. We’ve discussed the historical practice of leaving ground fallow and the modern practices of fertilization (with the example of cotton in the post Civil War south as the prime example). The third of these lessons is a discussion of Nitrogen and the Nitrogen Cycle. There are diagrams of each of the lessons that were created after Dr. Montessori did by a number of her followers. These diagrams lack the elegance for which Montessori works are known. Perhaps the most unsettling of the diagrams is the Nitrogen Cycle’s. So, Mrs. W and I worked out a hands-on work. We are open for suggestions.
- Chart 2 of “Plant nutrients”.
- Jar of air.
- Soybeans, peanuts or other legumes
- Chart 3 – nitrogen cycle in felt parts.
- 4 boxes with the parts.
- “Free Nitrogen”
- 10 tickets labled “N”
- 10 tickets labeled O
- 10 tickets labeled H
- “Nitrification box 1 – atmosphere”
- Cloud in grey felt
- Lightening with two branches
- “Nitrification box 2 – terrestrial”
- legume stalk and roots
- legume leaves
- nitrogen fixing bacteria
- poop x 2
- green leaves
- brown leaves
- bones for deer
- denitrification bacteria
- fungi – mycelia and mushroom
- “Free Nitrogen”
- Jar with soil.
Nitrogen Cycle Presentation:
Lay out the underlayment and place underground water table, tree, sun and clouds in their places. Open “Free Nitrogen” box.
Plants, like all organisms, require a certain number of chemical elements for growth.
The story of one of these, nitrogen, is an interesting one. Nitrogen is especially important because proteins are rich in it, and they carry out a lot of the work in the cells.
Take a deep breath. Slowly breath it out. Hold the glass of air up.
Even though 78% of the air we breathe is nitrogen, plants and animals can’t use the free nitrogen.
We breathe it back out.
Show Chart 2. Invite the children to recall the lesson and name the elements.
And out of the 12 or so elements that a plant must obtain from the soil, only nitrogen can’t be obtained directly. It must first be fixed – that is, combined with other elements usually hydrogen or oxygen. This happens in a two main ways. When nitrogen is fixed, it is called “Nitrification.”
Lay out the rest of the Free Nitrogen cards in the soil.
Open “Nitrification box 1 – atmosphere” box.
The first way nitrogen is “fixed” is in the atmosphere. The catch is that nitrogen will only bond with its favorite elements when there is high temperature and pressure. Where in the atmosphere will you have really high temperatures and lots of pressure?
In lightening bolts!
Lay out rain. Move an H2O into the stream of rain.
When the lightening bolts strike the nitrogen bonds with oxygen making Nitric oxide.
Move the second and third H2Os near the second branch of the lightening bolt and bring over a N, split it apart and allow the H2s out into the atmosphere. Join the NO2 together.
When the NO2’s fuse this is called nitrogen dioxide. The Nitric oxide falls to the ground with the rain. However, not all of the nitrogen dioxide falls directly to the ground. It bumps into some of the H2O’s. It then fuses and forms nitric acid.
Move the NO2s with waters and arrange them into nitric acid. Make sure all the nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide, and nitric acid move into the soil.
These three types of fixed nitrogen that are made in the atmosphere are may be used by plants. This is three ways Nitrification takes place in the atmosphere.
Open “Nitrification box 2 – terrestrial” box.
In temperate soils, another types of fixation takes place in the roots of some plants.
Ask the children to name some legumes. Share the soybeans or peanuts. While the children chew, lay out the legume plant.
As these plants grow, their root hairs send out certain chemicals that attract root bacterias. When the bacteria touches the root hairs two things might happen. 1. if it is not the right type of bacteria the root protects itself for it. But, if it is the correct type of bacteria, it is held there,
Lay out the bacteria in the soil and move them to the roots of the legume.
and a kind of tube grows from each bacteria into the cells of the tiny root hairs. These bacteria enter into the cells and reproduce causing a swelling called a “nodule” on the root.
This is not an invasion that will hurt the plant. The bacteria and the plant are working together. Do you know the word that is made from the Greek word sym meaning together and the word bios meaning life?
The plant provides energy in the form of ATP and the bacteria bring an enzyme that takes the fixed nitrogen and combines it with hydrogen and that makes ammonia!
The ammonia is quickly converted into NO2 and NO3. Plants use these as fuel for growth. It is incorporated into many amino acids when are used to make proteins.
Make the NO2 and NO3.
The Oxygen from the water is not wasted but used as part of the process and then released. Nitrogen is stored in the leaves, fruit, and roots of the legumes and remember that the fixed nitrogen that was made by the lightening can be used by other plants. This is quite a bit of nitrogen hanging out in plants. But man needs nitrogen, too. How do we get nitrogen to help us grow?
Say a person, or a horse, or a deer comes along and sees some tasty soybeans or pulls up a peanut plant and finds tasty peanuts, what do they do? Ahhhhh.
Lay down the deer with him “eating” the legume.
Yes they eat it. Now the fixed nitrogens are inside the deer. I wonder how they might come out?
One way is for the animal to excrete waste. The animal might be a tiny earthworm or a giant whale. It still extracts what it can from its food; it can’t take all of the nutrients and some pass into the feces to be excreted from the body.
Open the “Denitrification” box.
We now begin the process of “Denitrification” – of breaking apart the fixed nitrogen into single nitrogen atoms to be used again.
Can you think of another way that the nitrogen trapped in a living thing can be returned to its denitrified state?
What about the plants? How does the trapped nitrogen leave the plants?
They will get it and will say that the trees and plants die.
Yes they do die, but some trees live a very long time. How about their leaves? On most trees, they live only one year and then fall off.
Put the green leaves falling and the brown leaves on the ground near the deer.
Bring out the mycelia and the mushroom, bring out the bacteria, move the earthworms over.
Take the nitrogen and oxygen in the deer and break it apart and return it to the atmosphere.
Take the nitric acid in the tree and break it apart and return it to the air. Put water back into the clouds and generally reset the cycle.
This important job of denitrification takes death and turns it back into what brings life and growth. The cycle may begin again.
Touch the clouds and walk through the cycle again using the major terms.
Now that you have had this lesson you may do this work. You must be very careful with so many ways and times that nitrogen fixes, you must be observant and thoughtful to cause the correct nitrification and denitrification at the correct time in the cycle.
- Volcanoes, power plants, and cars also can fix Nitrogen.
- A byproduct of denitrification is N2O or nitrous oxide, “laughing gas” and is considered a greenhouse gas.
- The oceans have their own nitrogen cycle which involves blue-green algae and other bacterias without having a symbiotic relationship with plants.
- Fertilizers and the Haber Process is its own topic and worth research by an upper el student.


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Two stories today on beverages. First off, the Anheuser-Busch brewery has come up with a new line of beers named B-to-the-E, with B standing for beer and E for something "extra". The E is shown as the exponent of B which means we have another "expert", this time advertising types, using Algebra to make their point. What is going on here? Maybe if our high school math teachers had told us back in the day that we needed to learn algebra so we could understand depression and beer we might have paid more attention. In any event, this new beer will be flavored in order to appeal "to 20-something consumers craving something zippy in their highly social, fast-paced lifestyles." hahahahahaha "Slightly sweet but tart and coming in the aromas of blackberry, raspberry and cherry, B-to-the-E is to be marketed toward "active 21- to 27-year-old experimenters looking for new tastes and options." bwahahahahaha
Second beverage in the news today is tea. Scientists have discovered that instant tea contains high levels of flouride which can lead to bone pain. "Swallowing high levels of fluoride boosts bone density, but also makes bones more brittle. It can lead to skeletal fluorosis, which causes bone pain, calcified ligaments, bone spurs, fused vertebrae and difficulty in moving joints." This link between instant tea and bone pain was discovered by researchers looking into the medical history of a woman who made it a habit to drink one to two gallons of super strength tea a day. Well there you go, two gallons of anything a day should send up a red flag and I'm not even an expert...on health diagnosis or algebra.


Sacramento, California — A solar-energy company has dropped a proposal to build a 75-story solar tower near California's Joshua Tree National Park, employing a kind of solar technology that can cause birds to ignite in midair.
The California Energy Commission was slated to vote on BrightSource Energy's project this month, before the company withdrew its application.
The plant would have used "power tower" technology that trains concentrated solar power on steam boiler towers. State and federal officials and conservation groups say a similar BrightSource tower near the Nevada border proved unexpectedly deadly to birds that flew through the concentrated rays.
BrightSource and its partners decided they needed a project that would "better meet the needs of the market and energy consumers," Senior Vice President Joe Desmond said Wednesday.
The company remains committed to solar power-tower technology, as well as "sound and responsible environmental measures," Desmond said.
California law requires that state utilities get one-third of their energy from renewable sources, including solar, by 2020. Power towers lose energy more gradually than standard solar panels, making them potential assets to power grids, supporters say.
Some conservation groups opposed the proposed plant's site along a flyway for migratory birds. Others urged a moratorium on power-tower plants pending longer study of the threat to birds from the concentrated rays.


A few days before the celebration of Martin Luther King’s birthday, I looked for a book for my black child in a large chain bookstore. I could find nothing on our only celebration of an African-American or King.
What’s that you say? It’s no biggie if the bookstore doesn’t stock MLK-related books for kids, because they’ll learn about civil rights and slavery in history class?
It took many people to work in the cotton fields. Georgia was one of the states that used slaves to help grow cotton and other crops. Black people from Africa and the West Indies were brought to America to help do the work on large farms.


In early August, the Icelandic Space Agency (ISA) embarked on an expedition to Grímsvötn in Vatnajökull National Park with NASA to test the Mars Mission space suit (MS1).
Daniel Leeb, director of ISA, led a diverse team of various backgrounds and expertise to the most active volcanic region in Iceland with the prime directive to test the suit. The group gathered in a one-room, six-bed cabin, and cosied up for six days of intense research and development. Among them was designer Michael Lye, who helped to build the MS1 suit in collaboration with NASA at Rhode Island School of Design.
The suit is still being tested for use in space, and especially on Mars, which is why the team came to Iceland. The landscape here is apparently very similar to that of Mars. “If you really want to study the possibilities of long-term human habitation…in space, you must begin that journey by conducting field studies and tests on analogous terrestrial areas such as those found in Iceland,” Leeb said.
It looks like humanity is one small step closer to going to Mars. If teams like the one led by Leeb continue this way, we may hope for giant leaps towards the day. With the way Earth is going, that day can’t come soon enough. I wonder if Martians accept MasterCard.


The meteor that exploded over Russia on Friday had some witnesses thinking it was the end of the world. But meteors are a common site in the night skies over South Dakota.
The meteor that exploded over Russia's Ural Mountains had the force of a nuclear bomb. But the cosmic pyrotechnics over South Dakota are typically far less potent.
Brief streaks across the South Dakota prairie sky are the closest brush we usually have with meteors.
Also known as shooting stars, they aren't stars at all, mostly just tiny specks of space dust that burn up when they hit our atmosphere; light years in magnitude from the massive fireball that rocked Russia.
"I probably would have looked at it and said 'wow, I wish I had my camera!' And then afterwards, [it'd] be too late. But that was amazing," amateur astronomer Wes Garcia said.
Many cameras were rolling when the meteor struck, providing the world with images that looked like a Hollywood doomsday movie.
"I can't ever recall one that had that much of an impact to the surrounding area. If it were more remote, where there wasn't a city nearby, it probably would have gone unnoticed," Garcia said.
Here in South Dakota, we're much more used to seeing snow falling from the sky and not meteors. In fact, the odds of a meteor hitting your house are something like 182 trillion to one. You've got better odds of winning the lottery.
"We have accounts where a small meteorite, dime size or smaller, has gone through somebody's roof. But you look at the total history of that type of happening and it's rare," Garcia said.
But the meteor damage caused in Russia wasn't nickel and dime stuff; instead a powerful force of nature unleashed in a flash.
The earth dodged another celestial bullet on Friday when a 150 foot asteroid passed within a little more than 17,000 miles of us. Scientists say it was not connected to the Russian meteor since both space objects were traveling in opposite directions.


- Vegetables: broccoli
- Crop Production: organic fertilizers
- Production Systems: organic agriculture
The long-term goal of this project is to improve nitrogen fertilizer management on farms implementing biologically-intensive soil-building practices to grow diverse crops. Cover cropping and organic amendments contribute to the soil’s fertility beyond the year they were incorporated by building active organic matter. Through this participatory research we will be able to place dollar values on the importance of optimizing soil fertility. Growers will be able to more accurately estimate nitrogen mineralization from soil organic matter and adjust fertilizer applications up or down accordingly. Extensive outreach efforts will be used to directly reach over 200 growers in Washington and Oregon.
- Assist producers with fertilizer applications through pre-season soil tests that predict nitrogen mineralization.
- Evaluate the net economic return of increasing amounts of organic fertilizer applied before planting across geographically dispersed farms with differing soil quality parameters.
- Assist producers with in-season soil tests that allow adjustment to fertility during the growing season.
- Assist producers in developing nitrogen management plans to increase profitability while protecting water quality.


by Jendella Benson When I was fourteen I was suspended from school for two days for calling a teacher racist. In my defence: she was racist. In her classroom there were two tables sat side-by-side, and each one sat eight students. One table had six Asian girls, one black girl (me) and one white girl, […]
As a teacher, you know firsthand that students often respond to experiential and interactive learning methods, not to mention they often remember these lessons more vividly. Regurgitating information from a textbook might be today’s prevailing academic model, but you understand that students are more likely to absorb this information when they recognize the real-world applications.
Reading and writing are key to learning any subject and not just English. While reading and rereading help to grasp the topic, writing helps in remembering the concepts better. But before a student sits down to write a test, it is advisable to conduct self review that would test his or her recalling abilities. Continue reading “FlashCards – a fun way to recall and review!”
This post has spiralled slightly out of control. Initially it was just a couple of loosely connected ideas that I jotted down. Then I dug up an old half-written blog post. Then I went for a walk on yet another cold wet day and started to think more deeply about this and it turned into […]
Have you ever observed something and wondered why does it look that way or why does it do that? This is what scientists do on a continuous basis in their lives. They look at a phenomena and try to figure out the how, why, or what of it. Our beautiful state of Iowa offers a […]


When you live somewhere where the winter is bitterly cold, spring can often seem like an impossibly distant horizon. Photographer Nashalina Schrape visited Slovenia to document the colorful costumes of Kurentovanje, an ancient carnival that celebrates the coming of spring. Based on Pagan traditions, Kurentovanje still remains a much-needed reminder that winter won’t last forever.
Located in northeastern Slovenia, the town of Ptuj has been inhabited since the Stone Age. It is the oldest recorded town in the country, and it’s also the center of Kurentovanje. During the ten-day festival, which begins on Shrove Sunday, Kurents travel through town dressed in sheep skins, bells, and colorful ribbons. The noise of the parade is a means of frightening away winter; a symbolic farewell to cold weather.
Schrape, a Berlin-based photographer, had initially visited Slovenia to photograph some costumes. “I was invited back for Kurentovanje by one of the families who had been making the Kurent costume for generations,” she explains. “During the year, Marco Klinc and his family make custom furniture. But once a year, for about four weeks, they work overtime to make new costumes and repair older ones. His workshop was in many ways a Grand Central for the carnival, as they had many visitors and he knew many many people.”
Celebrations like Kurentovanje used to be more common across the northern hemisphere, especially in the pre-Christian era. “The pagan calendar only had two seasons, and many villages all over Europe celebrated the end of winter,” says Schrape. “Kurents are intended to be scary in order to frighten the winter away and prepare for a new season of renewal and the death of the old. The carnival welcomed fertility, newness and a strong harvest. Kurents and the other costumes would go from home to home, bringing blessings, entertainment, and a sense of community in return for homemade wine, other spirits, and sausage from the newly slaughtered pig.”
Despite its long history, the formally organized Kurentovanje festival only dates back to the 1950s. At that time, concerned over the disappearance of traditional customs in the region, Ptuj cultural historian Drago Hasl spearheaded an effort to establish Kurentovanje as the organized event it is today. Although the costumes of Kurentovanje remain traditionally inspired, the rules around them have evolved. Traditionally, only unmarried men were intended to wear the Kurent costume, but now anyone can be a Kurent.
See more of Nashalina Schrape’s photography at her website, built using Format.


Grenache, (also known as Grenache Noir, to distinguish it from its white counterpart Grenache Blanc) is the most widely planted grape in the southern Rhône Valley, and the second most widely planted varietal in the world. It is most often blended (with Syrah and Mourvèdre in France and Australia, and with Tempranillo in Rioja), but reaches its peak in the wines of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, where it comprises 70% of the appellation’s acreage. Château de Beaucastel uses between 35 and 50% Grenache in its Beaucastel red, and some producers (most notably Château Rayas) produce Châteauneuf-du-Pape wines that are virtually 100% Grenache.
Grenache appears to have originated in Spain, most likely in the northern province of Aragon, and ampelographers believe that Grenache was the foundation of Aragon’s excellent vin rouge du pays. From Aragon, it spread throughout the vineyards of Spain and the Mediterranean in conjunction with the reach of the kingdom of Aragon, which at times included Roussillon and Sardinia. By the early 18th century, the varietal had expanded into Languedoc and Provence.
The phylloxera epidemic of the late 19th century indirectly increased European plantings of Grenache. In Rioja, for example, vineyards were replanted not with the native varietals but with the hardy, easy to graft Grenache. A similar trend occurred in southern France, as the percentage of Grenache plantings after the phylloxera infestation increased significantly, replacing the previously abundant Mourvèdre.
Grenache was brought to California in the 1860s, where its erect carriage, vigor and resistance to drought made it a popular planting choice. It came to occupy second place in vineyard planting after Carignan and was an element in wine producers’ branded field blends. Unfortunately, this usage encouraged growers to select cuttings from the most productive vines, increasing grape production but reducing the overall quality of the vines. In recent years, Grenache plantings in California have declined, as the varietal is replaced by the more popular Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot; currently there are 9,600 acres planted in California.
However, while overall Grenache acreage has declined (largely low quality plantings in the Central Valley), the varietal has at the same time undergone something of a resurgence in popularity. Newly available high-quality clones, including those from Tablas Creek, have encouraged hundreds of new plantings in California, with the greatest number concentrated in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
Grenache at Tablas Creek
When we began Tablas Creek Vineyard in 1990, we were not completely satisfied with the quality of California Grenache vines. As a result, we imported our Grenache Noir cuttings (along with its close cousin, Grenache Blanc) from France, where Jacques Perrin at Château de Beaucastel had worked tirelessly to regenerate high quality Grenache vines. Still, the Perrins feel that vine age is essential in making top quality Grenache.
So, it should perhaps have been unsurprising to us that it took us longer to become happy with our Grenache than than with any of our other varietals. Our initial expectations were that we would produce wines that were one-third or more Grenache, and we planted the vineyard accordingly. However, the early harvests of Grenache showed little of the depth that we wanted, and had aggressive front-palate tannins that were in striking contrast to the smoothness of Mourvedre and Syrah. It has only been since the 2005 vintage that we have been really happy with the variety's performance, and only since 2006 that we've felt Grenache balanced enough to produce it as a varietal wine.We have increased the percentage of Grenache in our Esprit de Beaucastel each year since 2002: from just 10% in 2002 to 16%, 17%, 26%, 28% and finally 29% in the 2007.
Grenache in the Vineyard and Cellar
Grenache is a vigorous variety with upright shoots that lends itself to “gobelet” or “head pruning”; it is widely cultivated in this manner in France and in Spain. At Tablas Creek, our new Grenache plantings on Scruffy Hill are head pruned; elsewhere on the vineyard, the varietal is cultivated in double cordon fashion with six fruiting canes, each with two buds. The varietal’s vigor gives it the potential to be a heavy producer. Despite our shoot thinning, we are usually obliged to fruit-prune during the growing seasons to keep the bunch count to ten or twelve clusters per vine. This practice means that we harvest approximately three tons of fruit per acre of vines.
Grenache ripens in the middle of the ripening cycle, after Syrah but before Counoise and Mourvedre. At harvest, it is notable for its high acidity even at relatively high sugar levels. In a typical year, we would begin to harvest Grenache at the end of September and finish in mid-October.
In the cellar, we typically ferment Grenache in closed stainless steel fermenters, to counteract Grenache's tendency toward oxidation. We avoid small 60-gallon barrels for Grenache for the same reason, and prefer to age Grenache-based wines in 1200-gallon oak foudres, whose thicker oak staves permit less oxygen to penetrate the wine.
Flavors and Aromas
Grenache produces wines with high concentrations of fruit, tannin, and acids. Its flavors are most typically currant, cherry, and raisin, and its aromas are of black pepper, menthol, and licorice. Although many California Grenache clones produce simple, fruity wines which tend to be pale in color, our French clones produce brilliant ruby red wines which are heady in alcohol (usually 15% or higher), and intensely fruity and fat.
For our signature Esprit de Beaucastel, Grenache is typically our #2 varietal (behind Mourvèdre and slightly ahead of Syrah) and opens up those more closed, reductive varieties. The varietal can thrives in a lead role in a fruity, forward wine as in our Grenache-based Côtes de Tablas. We have also produced a varietal Grenache each year since 2006. In this wine, we typically moderate the sweetness of Grenache with 10% Syrah.


Three Kids Mine
Three Kids Mine; Las Vegas, Nevada
Three Kids Mine on the outskirts of Las Vegas, Nevada may be less worthy of mention for its past than for its post-use roles due in large part to its position on the increasingly-encroaching fringes of the urban center.
Built in 1916 and opened the following year, Three Kids Mine consists of a massive 300 foot deep open pit, along with two other nearby smaller pits from which high grade manganese ore was mined. Though today it sits not far from the boundary of the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, at the time of the mine’s construction, the Hoover Dam was still over a decade away from breaking ground, and the city of Las Vegas, located about 15 miles from the mine site, was only 11 years old with a population of about 2000 people. Initially, manganese ore from the mine was hauled down to the rail yards in Las Vegas by a 10-horse team pulling three heavy-duty freight wagons and a feed cart hitched to each other. Shortly after, a mill was constructed beside the main pit to process the ore onsite.
According to the mine’s one-time owners, the Manganese Ore Co., the mine was at one time the largest open pit deposit of manganese ore in the US, while the leaching process took place in the largest acid-proof thickeners ever constructed.
The mine saw three periods of major activity, each coinciding with significant military campaign eras: World War 1, World War 2, and the Korean and Cold Wars. Though by 1961, most of the rich ore had been depleted, and the government terminated the mine’s contract. Much of the mining operation was dismantled the following year. Sitting on BLM land, the area was used by the federal government for storage until 2003.
Following its closure, the earlier completion of the Hoover Dam and the formation of Lake Mead, along with the growth of Las Vegas as an urban and tourism center left the abandoned mine and its tailings in a no man’s land of BLM-controlled desert mountains.
Immediately west of the empty mine pit and concrete mill ruins is 1.8 million cubic tons of black sludge, the result of processed mine tailings mixed with diesel oil and soapy water and transported into a manmade reservoir. [This area is visible in Google Maps Satellite Images today, immediately across E. Lake Mead Parkway from Lake Las Vegas Parkway.] Those with knowledge of these tailings pools contend that even today, beneath the hardened topmost 3-or-so feet of dirt, there is pure liquid sludge 30-70 feet deep.
In 1987, the sci-fi film, Cherry 2000, starring Melanie Griffith, used the mine and pit for filming. Though the movie itself is forgettable, Three Kids Mine was amongst filming locations exclusively throughout southern Nevada like Goldfield and the Valley Of Fire used for filming.
A mix of pollution, multiple-entity ownership, and bureaucracy even less viscous than the sludge left behind has slowed any cleanup of the site. Though now the Lake Mead National Recreation Area is approaching 8 million visitors annually, making it the US’ sixth most visited national park site in 2017 and Las Vegas development has reached almost to the mine site itself with the Lake Las Vegas development located directly opposite the road.
Most recently, the City of Henderson purchased the land and announced plans for a large-scale development on what they have rechristened “Lakemoor Canyon”, though this is all pending a cleanup with cost estimates varying from $300 million to $1.2 billion.
White the pit itself remains a toxic hold that continues to slowly accumulate dumped loads of refuse, car tires, and a surprising number of discarded small boats thrown into it, the mill ruins grow increasingly colorful as graffiti writers continue to cover its available surfaces. The most well-known piece, which remains an attraction even for non-writers, is the Wheel Of Misfortune piece by politically-deviant crew, INDECLINE, whose 2012 mural covers most of the surface of one of the mill’s thickeners and can be seen by flights on path to Vegas’ McCarran International Airport.
In a city where face and image are rebuilt and recycled constantly and new home construction expands in all directions, threatening the area’s undeveloped mountains, fossils and petroglyph sites, and threatened animal species, the slow-moving wheels of bureaucracy and inconvenience of millions of tons of sludgy waste has left Three Kids Mine a shrinking island of darkness in the illuminated grid of the Southern Nevada desert. Someday soon, a home on the massive pit that once supplied metal for the war efforts and a waste receptacle for former boats could be yours, starting in the low $500,000’s…
(prints, digital images and licensing are available. more info is on our store page.)
or see our other blog posts here.


WASHINGTON — For more than 50 years the Army has turned current and former defense training sites into environmentally safe areas for Soldiers and their families, installation staff and the surrounding communities.
The work is done through the Army’s Environmental Restoration Program, also known as the cleanup program. Here they identify sites impacted by hazardous contaminants, pollutants and munitions from past activities and develop ways to return the land to a productive use.
“We take action to resolve threats to human health and the environment,” said Susan Elrod, G-9 environmental restoration branch chief. “We’re able to give sites back to installations to continue their mission.”
The cleanup program centers around installations with ongoing operations. It’s divided into the Installation Restoration Program and the Military Munitions Response Program.
The Installation Restoration Program, which has been around since 1975, investigates and cleans up contamination posing a risk to human health and the environment. Whereas the Military Munitions Response Program addresses threats to human health and the environment posed by unexploded ordnance and munitions constituents.
As of 2021, the cleanup program has met its remediation goal of 91% with roughly 1,200 sites where cleanup actions are ongoing.
Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Independence, Missouri, is one of those.
Disposal pits were discovered here using aerial photography in the 1980s. The area was then placed on the national priorities list due to the contamination in the groundwater and the acreage it covers.
Since that time, it has gone through several remedial investigations, as well as several treatment options with little success, until a recent pilot study discovered a way forward.
The team on site installed a system that removes harmful contaminants from the soil and groundwater using heat. Applying this new technology, the Army began the extraction process in December 2022.
“This project is the continuation of the Army’s efforts to work towards remedying the contaminants completely, as well as tackle the long-term treatment costs by reducing the timeframe for cleanup,” said Lt. Col. Christopher Denton, LCAAP commander. “Because of the amount of contamination that’s there, it takes an aggressive approach to remediate it, and that’s what the Army has in store.”
The four-step remediation process starts with removing the water, which is currently ongoing, shifts to thermal heating, then onto contamination extraction and finally cooling. The process will take around 180 days with a summer 2023 completion date.
If it’s successful, the process could help reduce the estimated remediation time from 760 years to less than 70 years.
“[Restoration] is important because we’re doing environmental stewardship,” said Sara Clark, LCAAP’s remedial project manager and environmental coordinator. “We’re trying to take care of the environment by using state-of-the-art technologies and getting rid of the contamination in the ground sooner rather than later.”
The Army will monitor the area for years to come, just as it does with other sites following remediation. Lake City is one of an estimated 113 sites that the Army hopes will finish remediation by the end of 2023.
Ribbon cutting ceremony marks start of contaminant extraction at Army ammunition plant


This glorious Hubble
Space Telescope image showcases spiral galaxy IC 342, also known as Caldwell 5.
Scientists have had
some difficulty observing it due to obstacles in the way, earning it its "hidden" nickname
Hubble can peer
through the debris, to an extent, as the telescope does have infrared capabilities
Infrared light is
less scattered by dust and allows a clearer view of the galaxy in behind the interstellar matter.
IC 342 is also
relatively close in galactic terms, only 11 million light-years from Earth.
It's about half the
diameter of our own Milky Way (50,000 light-years across), making it relatively large, too.


How Does the Central Bank Control the Money Supply ( and destruction)?
to be seen...
In 1998 the average cash reserve ratio across the entire United Kingdom banking system was 3.1%. ( Now = 0 )
Other countries have required reserve ratios (or RRRs) that are statutorily enforced
(sourced from Lecture 8, Slide 4: Central Banking and the Money Supply, by Dr. Pinar Yesin, University of Zurich, Switzerland (based on 2003 survey of CBC participants at the Study Center Gerzensee
|United Kingdom |
|New Zealand |
|United States |
|Sri Lanka |
|Hong Kong |
Note that the chart above gives the USA cash reserve ratio as 10% when the actual ratios stated in the text above the chart are more complex, significantly lower and with many cases of zero reserve. I have no idea how significant the exceptions to the stated percentages for other countries might be.
I notice on these Wikipedia pages that there is a lot of discussion and disagreement about what the details really are. However, the section of my movie being questioned ends with the statement:
"So…while the rules are complex the common sense reality is actually quite simple.
Banks can create as much money as we can borrow."
Central Banking and
the Money Supply
Dr. P³nar Ye»sin
December 16, 2005
University of Zurich
Avec mes meilleures salutations.
François de Siebenthal
14, ch. des Roches
CH 1010 Lausanne


Lesson Plan: Gender Stereotypes!
Happy women’s day! Continuing with this topic I have prepared a lesson for my intermediate course on men and women role stereotypes that I would like to share with you.
I have found a good lesson plan in English-4u, a webpage where you’ll find lesson plans based on news and hit songs, to introduce the topic. The title of the lesson is “Jobs About the House” and it is a reading activity based on some statistics by the UK Office for National Statistics. After doing the activities proposed there, we can discuss whether we live in a man’s world and who is expected to do all the household chores.
To finish off the lesson, we can work on an episode from friends (season 9, episode 6): “The one with the male nanny”. Here, we will be able to discuss stereotypes at work. Are there jobs for women and jobs for men?
Here you’ll find some activities you can do with your students while watching the video:
Make a list of things the men that appear in the video do, that are not generally associated with the male sex.
How’s Ross feeling when he talks to Sandy? Why?
What reason does Ross give for firing Sandy? Is it the REAL reason? How do you know?
Does Sandy need recommendations? Why?
What’s Ross problem? What happened to him when he was a kid?
Is Ross a stereotype of the “Macho Man”? Why?
Hope you find it useful. Looking forward to your comments…
Posted on March 8, 2008, in Lesson Plans, Resources for tesl/tefl and tagged household-chores, lesson_plans, listening, reading, sex_roles, society, statistics, stereotypes, video, women_day. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.


1.1.3 Movements of the clavicle and scapula
Now let's see how the clavicle and the scapula move, relative to the trunk. Upward movement of the scapula is called elevation; downward movement is called depression. Forward movement around the trunk is called protraction; the opposite movement is retraction. This movement is called upward rotation. The opposite movement is downward rotation. In real life these movements of the scapula are often combined.
The range of motion of the scapula provides fully one third of the total range of motion of the humerus, relative to the body, sometimes more. Without this movement of the scapula, we'd only be able to abduct our arm to here. That's as far as the shoulder joint goes, before bone hits bone. It's scapular movement that lets us get all the way to here.


One of the many responsibilities of a school teacher is
keeping the classroom and its materials organized, in order to provide their
students with a structured, distraction-less learning environment. Keeping the
classroom space organized will also help teachers set up their classes, monitor
student progress and maintain and regular schedule.
Classroom organization starts with the layout, including
school furniture, desks and chairs, as well as cabinets and storage space, and
ends all the way at the individual students’ drawers, lockers and backpacks.
Art teachers have an especially difficult task, with their
less traditional spaces, and various art supplies and materials. Charity
Preston with the Organized Classroom blog offers some great tips for art


Those are not the same kind of word. Your mistake is thinking that English spelling has something to do with its pronunciation, and this is in error. It’s all about the etymology. Consider also:
abscise, advertise, advise, affranchise, apprise, arise, chastise,
circumcise, comprise, compromise, despise, devise, enterprise, exercise,
expertise, franchise, frise, galliardise, incise, merchandise, revise,
sunrise, supercise, supervise, televise.
And contrast that set with this set:
analyse, autolyse, breathalyse, catalyse, chemolyse, dialyse, glycolyse,
haemolyse, heliochryse, histolyse, hydrolyse, lyse, metanalyse, paralyse,
photocatalyse, photolyse, plasmolyse, proteolyse, pryse, psychoanalyse.
It’s the etymology that counts, not the pronunciation. It turns out that the -ize ending of words comes, per the OED, from:
Cognate with French -ise-r, Italian -izare, Spanish -izar, < late Latin -izāre, -īzāre, < Greek -ίζειν, formative of verbs.
Whereas exercise has a wholly different provenance:
Middle English exercise, < Old French exercice = Provençal exercici, exercisi < Latin exercitium, < exercēre to keep at work, busy, employ, practise, train (compare exercise v.), < ex- (see ex- prefix1) + arcēre to shut up, restrain.
The note at -ize is quite long:
The Greek verbs were partly intrans., as βαρβαρίζειν to play the barbarian, act or speak as a barbarian, side with the barbarians, τυραννίζειν to side with the tyrants, partly transitive as καθαρίζειν to purify, clean, θήσαυρίζειν to treasure up. Those formed on national, sectarian, or personal names were primarily intransitive, as Ἀττικίζειν to Atticize in manners, to speak Attic, Φιλιππίζειν to act or speak for Philip, to philippize, Ἑλληνίζειν to ‘do’ the Greek, act as a Greek, speak Greek, Hellenize; also, to make Greek. A few words of this form connected with or used in early Christianity, were latinized already in the 3rd or 4th cent. by Christian writers: such were βαπτίζειν baptizāre, εὐαγγελίζειν euangelizāre, κατηχίζειν catechizāre, σκανδαλίζειν scandalizāre, ἀναθηματίζειν anathēmatizāre, χριστιανίζειν christiānizāre, ἰουδαίζειν iūdaizāre. Others continued to be formed both in ecclesiastical and philosophical use, e.g. canōnizāre, dæmonizāre, syllogizāre (Boethius Aristot. Anal.); and this became established as the normal form for the latinizing of Greek verbs, or the formation of verbs upon Greek analogies. In medieval Latin and the modern languages these have been formed also on Latin or modern national names, and the use has been extended to the formation of verbs from Latin adjectives or ns. This practice probably began first in French; in modern French the suffix has become -iser, alike in words from Greek, as baptiser, évangéliser, organiser, and those formed after them from Latin, as civiliser, cicatriser, humaniser.
Hence, some have used the spelling -ise in English, as in French, for all these words, and some prefer -ise in words formed in French or English from Latin elements, retaining -ize for those formed < Greek elements.
But the suffix itself, whatever the element to which it is added, is in its origin the Greek -ιζειν, Latin -izāre; and, as the pronunciation is also with z, there is no reason why in English the special French spelling should be followed, in opposition to that which is at once etymological and phonetic. In this Dictionary the termination is uniformly written -ize. (In the Greek -ιζ-, the i was short, so originally in Latin, but the double consonant z (= dz, ts) made the syllable long; when the z became a simple consonant, /-idz/ became īz, whence English /-aɪz/.)
This is to be contrasted with the -ise suffix from exercise, of which the OED says:
Suffix of ns., repr. Old French -ise, properly:—Latin -ītia, but also, in words of learned formation, put for Latin -icia, -itia, -icium, -itium, as in Latin justitia, judicium, servitium, Old French justise, juise, servise. Hence it became a living suffix, forming abstract nouns of quality, state, or function, as in couard-ise, friand-ise, gaillard-ise, marchand-ise. In the words from Latin, -ise was subsequently changed in French to -ice, as in justice, service, in which form the suffix mostly appears in English, as in justice, service, cowardice; but -ise is found in franchise, merchandise, the obsolete or archaic niggardise, quaintise, riotise, truandise, valiantise, warrantise, and in such barely-naturalized words as galliardise, gourmandise, paliardise; also, in exercise, French exercice, Latin exercitium. Native formations on the same type are inconvenientise, sluggardise.
So you see, the spelling is all about the etymology, not about the pronunciation.


While snowflakes may have different designs, they always have how many sides?
And the answer: six sides.
Every snowflake has six main sides or points. This is due to ice crystals joining to one another in the shape of a hexagon. According to the UK Office of Meteorology, this arrangement "allows water molecules – each with one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms – to form together in the most efficient way."
Every plate, branch, and needle that form the outline of a snowflake contribute to what's known as the emergent properties of that given snowflake. All of these details create complexity based on very simple rules – rules that go back to the basic laws of physics.
In the air, or in liquid, water molecules are zipping around and bouncing off of each other trillions of times per second. We have no way of knowing where these molecules are, or which way they're facing, at any given moment. As heat is removed, these molecules slow down until the hydrogen bonds between molecules settle down and into order. This is known as freezing. As freezing occurs to water vapor, it forms the unique structure of a snowflake.
The structure of a snowflake can be found in as few as six water molecules. Beginning as a tiny speck of dust or pollen, the snowflake catches water vapor out of the air and forms its most basic shape: a tiny hexagon called "diamond dust." Then, randomness takes over. More and more water molecules land on the flake until it forms the intricate snowflake shape we know and love. Factors such as temperature and humidity can affect the qualities of the flake, but its individual structure is randomly constructed by chance (and a touch of physics).
What do you think? Could a snowflake ever find its identical twin? Check out the video below to learn more.


Sometimes animals die… and it is a sad but natural thing. Lots of different “humane” reasons are often claimed when an animal needs to be euthanized and not everybody is expected to fully understand or approve the measure: granted!
But when a zoo located in one of the wealthiest countries in the world determines they need to kill a perfectly healthy young male giraffe, you can’t possibly be o.k. with it, can you?
The BBC reports Marius, a giraffe in the Copenhagen zoo was put down for genetic reasons:
The zoo says this was done because the genes of the giraffe, named Marius, were too similar to those of other giraffes in a breeding programme run by the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA).
Breeding closely related animals increases the chances that rare, harmful genes are expressed in offspring.
Two copies of a gene are inherited – one version from each parent. One of these copies might be harmful (deleterious), but if the other parent carries a non-harmful version of the gene, pairing them up might not result in any adverse consequences for offspring.
When parents are closely related, it increases the chances that two harmful copies of a gene will pair up.
A spokesman for EAZA stressed that, as an individual, Marius was not particularly inbred, nor was the giraffe suffering from any identifiable health problem. But the spokesman explained that Marius’ parents had produced other offspring, so there were already giraffes with similar genes in the organisation’s breeding programme. BBC.
After the giraffe was killed it was butchered dissected in front of zoo guests and then thrown to the lions… you know, because that’s just the right thing to do.
February 10th, 2013.


More than one-third of Americans cannot name a single branch of the United States government, according to a recent poll.
The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania released a poll on Wednesday that shows 35 percent of those polled could not name one branch of the U.S. government. This amount is almost equivalent to the 36 percent of Americans who could successfully name the legislative, executive and judicial branches.
Story Continued Below
In regard to how the three branches work, Americans seem to have little knowledge as well. Only 27 percent of those polled answered correctly that it takes two-thirds of the House and Senate members to vote in favor of overriding a veto. Twenty-one percent of Americans answered incorrectly when asked if a 5-4 decision from the Supreme Court means that the decision moves to congressional consideration.
While political parties are battling to see which will gain the majority in the House of Representative and the Senate, many Americans are unaware of who currently controls each. When asked, 38 percent of those polled answered correctly and identified the Republican Party as the House majority, while 17 percent said it was the Democratic party and a plurality, at 44 percent, did not know. In regard to the Senate, 38 percent correctly identified the Democrats as having control of the Senate, 20 percent said that Republicans held the Senate majority and most, 42 percent of those polled, did not know the answer.
“Although surveys reflect disapproval of the way Congress, the President and the Supreme Court are conducting their affairs, the Annenberg survey demonstrates that many know surprisingly little about these branches of government,” Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg, said in the release.
The poll was conducted from July 8 to July 14 among 1,416 adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.06 percent.


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While most people are familiar with the standard black and white grid, crossword puzzles actually come in a number of permutations. The American-style grid usually has no more than one-sixth of its squares blacked out, and most of the letters will "check" each other. This means that getting most of the clues in one direction (across or down), will automatically supply the words for the other direction. British and Australian puzzles have a lattice-style grid, with the black squares placed so that only about half the letters are checked. There are also barred crossword puzzles, which have bold lines separating the squares, rather than black ones.
Crossword puzzles appeared in the United States in 1913. They became so popular that newspapers began using them, and word enthusiasts began creating them in huge numbers. They jumped the pond in 1924, with their first appearance in the United Kingdom. Nowadays, they are available in most newspapers, in some magazines and in puzzle books all over the world.
The most familiar variation on the puzzle is the standard "quick" clue. These are simple clues with one-word answers. Acronym clues are also used, as well as abbreviation clues and indirect clues.
The cryptic crossword, in which the clues themselves are little puzzles, are most common in the UK. Some crossword puzzles are even written so that every answer is in a foreign language. There are also double-clue crosswords. These are puzzles designed so that the puzzle worker can either go by a list of simple clues, or turn the page and use the cryptic clues, thereby increasing the puzzle's difficulty, but enabling either beginners or experts to work the same puzzle.
Cipher crossword puzzles have numbers in the clues, and the puzzler must break the cipher code to read the clues and solve the puzzle. One diabolical twist on them is the UK variation called a diagramless puzzle. These puzzles involve getting all the clues answered, and then placing them on the puzzle grid so that the answers check each other properly.
A new puzzle similar to the crossword is the wildly popular Sudoku. This involves placing the digits 1 through 9 in a grid in such a way that every row, and every 3-by-3 square, contains each of the numbers, with no repetition. As long as humans like to play with words, crossword puzzles will, no doubt, have a place in the puzzler's favorites list.
Whenever we go on a trip, we always take a puzzle book along with us. If I work on a crossword puzzle, I always have to start out with those that are considered easy.
Even then, I am not very good at them. I usually find myself getting frustrated after a short time and looking at the back of the book for an answer that might help me.
Even though I enjoy the challenge of a good puzzle, I would rather work on Sudoku than struggle with a crossword puzzle.
One of the main reasons my grandma got the daily newspaper was so she could work on the crossword puzzle.
I think this is something where you definitely get better with time and a lot of practice. When I look at those puzzles, I may only know one, or possibly two, of the answers.
Everything else looks like a foreign language to me. Many years ago, they didn't have use of the internet to help them if they were stuck.
If my grandma didn't complete the puzzle in one day, she would have to wait until the next day to see what the answers were.
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