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Colin Brinsden, AAP Economics and Business Correspondent
(Australian Associated Press)
This week's national accounts are gearing up to show another solid economic growth result at the tail end of 2020, as new figures point to further employment gains in coming months.
Job advertising surged 7.2 per cent in February, following an upwardly revised 2.6 per cent increase in January.
It lifted the annual rate of the ANZ job ads series to 13.4 per cent, the highest level since 2018.
"The ongoing strength in ANZ job ads gives us confidence that we'll see solid net employment gains continue over February and March at least, and that the impact of the end of JobKeeper in March will be mitigated to some extent," ANZ senior economist Catherine Birch said.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is committed to ending the JobKeeper wage subsidy in March as planned, but has said other support measures are being considered for industries still in need, such as aviation.
However, the gradual winding back of the JobKeeper wage subsidy saw company profits drop by 6.6 per cent in the December quarter, but they were still 15.1 per cent up on the year.
While weaker than forecasts, the Australian Bureau of Statistics data also showed the company wage bill rose by a solid 1.4 per cent, while business inventories – stock on shelves and in warehouses – are expected to contribute to Wednesday's economic growth result in the national accounts.
At this stage, economists are forecasting that the economy grew by around 2.5 per cent in the December quarter, although they will finalise their expectations after Tuesday's international trade and government spending figures.
This builds on the huge 3.3 per cent rebound in the previous three months after collapsing seven per cent in the June quarter as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which marked the first recession since the early 1990s.
Even so, the Reserve Bank is widely expected to leave the cash rate and other key measures unchanged at a record low 0.1 per cent when its board meets on Tuesday.
Manufacturers are enjoying their strongest performance in three years, buoyed by the solid economic recovery from last year's recession.
The Australian Industry Group performance of manufacturing index grew a further 3.5 points in February to 58.8, its strongest expansion since March 2018.
Ai Group chief executive Innes Willox said manufacturers lifted production and employment in February as sales recovered a large share of the ground lost in 2020.
"Manufacturers are generally positive about the outlook for the next few months with new orders coming in at a greater pace as restrictions on activity and cross-border travel are hopefully wound back," he said.


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"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men and women do nothing" - Martin Luther King
I want to go on record as in support of the "minority report" submitted by William "Bill" Choslovsky, Esq. I am particularly concerned by the syllogism applied to the concept of "institution or institutional settings" as stated or inferred throughout the proposed rebalancing report. In reading the report a viewer can reasonably conclude the following:
All institutions or institutional settings are "bad" (the major premise), Organizations like Little City Foundation are institutions (the minor premise), therefore, Organizations like Little City are bad, (the conclusion).
In an earlier meeting with the rebalancing committee, I asked that consideration be given to defining terms such as "community" and "institutions" but my suggestion was summarily dismissed. The opinion expressed by various committee members (except for the Chair) was akin to the idea that we already know what it is or would know it when we see it so there was no need for definitions i.e., "community or institutions". While I disagreed with this premise I chose not to continue to push the issue in the interest of time. After reading the report I regret relenting on this important distinction.
The rebalancing report starts out with the following declaration: "Rebalancing Long-term Care in Illinois is a broad effort by the State to provide opportunity for persons with disabilities and seniors to choose to live in appropriate integrated settings in the community; moving out of institutional settings." Are organizations like Little City Foundation, Misericordia or Marklund the next targets of rebalancing? Is the goal of rebalancing a license to remove people from settings such as Little City Foundation, Misericordia, Marklund and similar campus-based programs and not make it a "choice" option for individuals and their families? The answer seems obvious to me now, and it is on this basis that I enter an objection.
Up to this point, my organization made a conscious but difficult decision to stay out of the fray. The issues being debated - closing of under-performing or under-funded state-operated developmental centers or the closing of large poorly operated ICF-DDs - was not actions that our constituency were particularly indifferent to. I recall that during my initial meeting with Bill Choslovsky he asked why Little City Foundation was silent on the issue and I explained how our residential service and program mix did not include ICF-DD offerings or other options previously under attack.
The recent exchange between Bill and others on the distribution list really disturbed me as the arm of attack has clearly moved into my organization's backyard. I have consulted with others in our organization, most importantly the individuals we faithfully serve and their families, and they want us to be their voice on this issue. In taking our position I am reminded of a famous statement attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) about the inactivity of German intellectuals following the Nazi rise to power and the systematic eradication of their chosen aims, group after group. As a refresher here is a rendition of the text:
"First they came for the socialists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me."
I realize that for some self-proclaimed "advocates" the organization I lead (Little City Foundation) is among their targets for abolition despite our being a preferred choice for so many people. I am concerned that if the true advocates of choice do not speak up and speak out there really will not be any choices except for those options that the arbiters of opinion feel are appropriate. At some point I hope that the voices of the families we serve and the individuals we support are heard and that more respect is given to their "CHOICE". I have grown tired of hearing these individuals and their families being marginalized and described as ill-informed, out of touch, uncaring, duped etc. for choosing to forego options outside of what they presently have, i.e., campus-based living.
For over 53 years, Little City Foundation has served as the supportive home for hundreds of children and adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Our array of residential living and family support options range from providing supports in private homes, CILA, SLA, and CLF. We have a continuum of options that are uniquely positioned and made available to afford individuals with choices for how and where to live based on the dynamic nature of their life cycle. We have never and will never hold an individual or family hostage to our program and we commit ourselves to helping people and their families find the best option for them (even if it includes leaving our organization). Call us what you want -institution or otherwise - but make sure that the definition used truly captures the essence of who and what we are, as described by the people who entrust us with their care.
I hope that the HSC Rebalancing Workgroup report, once amended, edited etc., gives more transparency and clarity particularly in its definition and descriptions of terms. I hope that the report clearly states a position on "institutions" or clarifies what it means by the use of this term. By doing so the many parents and families who entrust us with the care of their loved ones; the individuals who seek our help to achieve a meaningful and fulfilling life; the legion of donors and volunteers who believe in and invest in our mission; and the staff who each day dedicate their heart and soul to pursuit of mission will more clearly know who stands with them on the issues important to them - respect for and acceptance of their "choice".
In preparing my remarks I gave our parents and advocates a chance to review what I had written and asked if I appropriately and accurately conveyed their feelings. I want share a direct comment I received from the parent of a young man who resides in one of our campus-based homes, she writes: It sounds great to me-no edits to recommend. I will add that it appears to me that the so-called advocates are taking advantage of the closing of state ops and trying to sneak in their ultimate desire to close anything they think looks like an institution by cleverly manipulating the language. It is devious and despicable-and I resent anyone denigrating my choice without truly having knowledge of the choice I made or the reasons I made it!"
In support of this parent and other stakeholders I end with the following:
May those that love us,
love us. For those that don't love us,
May God turn their hearts.
And if he doesn't turn their hearts,
May he turn their ankles,
So we'll know them by their limping. - Irish toast
Respectfully submitted…
Illinois Department of Human ServicesJB Pritzker, Governor · Grace B. Hou, Secretary
IDHS Office Locator
IDHS Help Line
© 2023 Illinois Department of Human Services

subset: commoncrawl


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Wednesday, 30 January 2008
My Little Kangaroo
Worn babies also benefit from this, mentally, emotionally and physically. Mentally, they spend more time in a quiet alert state and receive more stimulation. Emotionally, they quickly develop a sense of security and trust, becoming more attached which, in turn, allows them to become independent earlier. Physically, newborns adapt better by being so close to their caregiver's heartbeat, breathing, and voice, and older babies develop a better sense of balance.
Ring sling
First up, our ring sling. This is great for quick trips - fast and easy to get on and off. Because it's a one-shoulder carrier, however, it's not great for long trips, especially for older/bigger babies.
This particular ring sling is a Didymos wrap, Lena print, turned into a ring sling by Sleeping Baby Productions.
Sleeping after a walk this summer
Front, side, front
Mei tai
Next, our mei tai. This two-shouldered carrier is great for people who find wraps too challenging. They can be worn easily on the front or back, and are generally faster to put on than a wrap. Definitely a husband-friendly carrier.
This particular mei tai is a Kozy brand, Windsor print.
Sound asleep
Wraps are my favourite. They are so versatile. They can be worn on your front, back or hip in a nearly infinite variety of ways. We have four wraps - a soft stretchy one that's great for cold weather and for newborns (a red Moby), a short one that's good for taking places to wrap there (an Ellaroo LaRae), a thin one that's great for warm weather (an Ellaroo Christiane), and our new (to us) German woven wrap that's nice and supportive for my growing boy (a Paul Didymos). Four wraps is not a necessity - one would do easily. I'd pick a long woven wrap if I have to pick just one. There is a learning curve to wraps, but perseverance and practice is so worth it in the end. When I can scoop up a crying baby, flip him onto my back, wrap him up and get back to cooking supper in no time at all, life is good. Wraps are our most commonly used carrier. I personally prefer them to mei tais because I find them to be cozier and softer.
My son, several months ago, in our Ellaroo brand, Christiane print.
More recently, same wrap.
Our new German woven wrap, Didymos brand, Paul print.
And back home, rosy-cheeked, after a walk in the cold.
Hanging out on mommy's back
A great place to learn more about babywearing is thebabywearer.com, particularly their forums.
3 comments:
great idea - me, i remember when i had my first born back in '79. I had a "snugli" brand front/back pack and my mom thought the baby would be so uncomfortable in it. But the joy of holding a child so close is amazing. We used it for all 3 of ours, my husband mostly carried them, even on a mountain hike (only about 1 mile up). anyway, looks good to me.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousFebruary 18, 2008 9:04 pm
Your son looks so cosy in those wraps! Wish I had known about them when I had my boysReplyDelete
- AnonymousMay 06, 2008 1:59 pm
I currently have a 3 month old and two carriers (ring sling and a european style wrap). I can't figure them out to save myself. I am so glad you posted this link. I just went, signed up and have posted my questions. Hoping to get help soon so we can be on our way to baby wearing happiness.ReplyDelete


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Hunting the Hidden Dimension
Mysteriously beautiful fractals are shaking up the world of mathematics and deepening our understanding of nature. Aired August 24, 2011 on PBS
- Posted 10.01.08
Watch Hunting the Hidden Dimension
Aired August 24, 2011 on PBSBuy the DVD
Program Description
You may not know it, but fractals, like the air you breathe, are all around you. Their irregular, repeating shapes are found in cloud formations and tree limbs, in stalks of broccoli and craggy mountain ranges, even in the rhythm of the human heart. In this film, NOVA takes viewers on a fascinating quest with a group of maverick mathematicians determined to decipher the rules that govern fractal geometry.
For centuries, fractal-like irregular shapes were considered beyond the boundaries of mathematical understanding. Now, mathematicians have finally begun mapping this uncharted territory. Their remarkable findings are deepening our understanding of nature and stimulating a new wave of scientific, medical, and artistic innovation stretching from the ecology of the rain forest to fashion design. The documentary highlights a host of filmmakers, fashion designers, physicians, and researchers who are using fractal geometry to innovate and inspire.
The producers wish to acknowledge the contributions to the film of Dr. Wolfgang Beyer, who created 12 of the images of the Mandelbrot set which we used in the film. We apologize for inadvertently omitting Dr. Beyer's credit from the film itself. Dr. Beyer's images, which were created with the software program Ultra Fractal 3, can be found at http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Wolfgangbeyer. For more information, visit www.wolfgangbeyer.de.
Hunting the Hidden Dimension
PBS Airdate: October 28, 2008
NARRATOR: You can find it in the rain forest, on the frontiers of medical research, in the movies, and it's all over the world of wireless communications. One of nature's biggest design secrets has finally been revealed.
GEOFFREY WEST (Santa Fe Institute): My god, of course. It's obvious.
NARRATOR: It's an odd-looking shape you may never have heard of, but it's everywhere around you: the jagged repeating form called a fractal.
JAMES BROWN (University of New Mexico): They're all over in biology. They're solutions that natural selection has come up with over and over and over again.
NARRATOR: Fractals are in our lungs, kidneys and blood vessels.
KEITH DEVLIN (Stanford University): Flowers, plants, weather systems, the rhythms of the heart, the very essences of life.
NARRATOR: But it took a maverick mathematician to figure out how they work.
BENOIT MANDELBROT (Yale University): I don't play with formulas, I play with pictures. And that is what I've been doing all my life.
NARRATOR: His was a bold challenge to centuries-old assumptions about the various forms that nature takes.
RALPH ABRAHAM (University of California, Santa Cruz): The blinders came off, and people could see forms that were always there but, formerly, were invisible.
NARRATOR: Making the invisible visible, finding order in disorder; what mysteries can it help us unravel? Coming up next, on NOVA: Hunting the Hidden Dimension.
Major funding for NOVA is provided by the following:
Well, it might surprise a lot of people that ExxonMobil would be interested in lithium ion battery technology applied to hybrid electric vehicles. Our new battery separator film is a true breakthrough that's going to enable the deployment of more hybrid vehicles, faster. This means a tremendous reduction in greenhouse gases, the equivalent of removing millions of cars from the road. I think this is the most important project that I've worked on in my career.
And David H. Koch. And...
Discover new knowledge: HHMI.
Major funding for Hunting the Hidden Dimension is provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, to portray the lives of men and women engaged in scientific and technological pursuit.
Major funding for NOVA is also provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and by PBS viewers like you. Thank you.
NARRATOR: In 1978, at Boeing Aircraft in Seattle, engineers were designing experimental aircraft.
LOREN CARPENTER (Pixar Animation Studios): Exotic things, with two wings or two tails or two fuselages, and just weird stuff because, "who knows, it might work."
NARRATOR: A young computer scientist named Loren Carpenter was helping them visualize what the planes might look like in flight.
LOREN CARPENTER: I would get the data from them and make pictures from various angles, but I wanted to be able to put a mountain behind it, because every Boeing publicity photo in existence has a mountain behind it. But there was no way to do mountains. Mountains had millions and millions of little triangles or polygons or whatever you want to call it, and we had enough trouble with a hundred. Especially in those days when our machines were slower than the ones you have in your watch.
NARRATOR: Carpenter didn't want to make just any mountains. He wanted to create a landscape the planes could fly through. But there was no way to do that with existing animation techniques. From the time movies began, animators had to draw each frame by hand—thousands of them—to make even a short cartoon.
THUMPER (Bambi/Filmclip): That's why they call me Thumper.
NARRATOR: But that was before Loren Carpenter stumbled across the work of a little-known mathematician named Benoit Mandelbrot.
LOREN CARPENTER: In 1978, I ran into this book in a bookstore: Fractals: Form, Chance and Dimension, by Benoit Mandelbrot, and it has to do with the fractal geometry of nature. So I bought the book and took it home and read it, cover to cover, every last little word, including the footnotes and references, twice.
NARRATOR: In his book, Mandelbrot said that many forms in nature can be described mathematically as fractals: a word he invented to define shapes that look jagged and broken. He said that you can create a fractal by taking a smooth-looking shape and breaking it into pieces, over and over again.
Carpenter decided he'd try doing that on his computer.
LOREN CARPENTER: Within three days, I was producing pictures of mountains on my computer at work.
The method is dead simple. You start with a landscape made out of very rough triangles, big ones. And then for each triangle, break it into, into four triangles. And then do that again, and then again and again and again.
NARRATOR: Endless repetition—what mathematicians call iteration—it's one of the keys to fractal geometry.
LOREN CARPENTER: The pictures were stunning. They were just totally stunning. No one has had ever seen anything like this. And I just opened a whole new door to a new world of making pictures. And it got the computer graphics community excited about fractals, because, suddenly, they were easy to do. And so people started doing them all over the place.
NARRATOR: Carpenter soon left Boeing to join Lucasfilm, where, instead of making mountains, he created a whole new planet, for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
It was the first ever completely computer-generated sequence in a feature film...
LEONARD NIMOY (As Mr. Spock, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan/Filmclip): Fascinating.
NARRATOR: ...made possible by the new mathematics of fractal geometry.
Benoit Mandelbrot, whose work had inspired that innovation, was someone who prided himself on standing outside the mainstream.
BENOIT MANDELBROT: I can see things that nobody else suspects, until I point out to them. "Oh, of course, of course." But they haven't seen it before.
NARRATOR: You can see it in the clouds, in the mountains, even inside the human body.
KEITH DEVLIN: The key to fractal geometry, and the thing that evaded anyone until, really, Mandelbrot sort of said, "This is the way to look at things, is that if you look on the surface, you see complexity, and it looks very non-mathematical." What Mandelbrot said was that..."think not of what you see, but what it took to produce what you see."
NARRATOR: It takes endless repetition, and that gives rise to one of the defining characteristics of a fractal: what mathematicians call self-similarity.
BENOIT MANDELBROT: The main idea is always—as you zoom in and zoom out—the object looks the same.
KEITH DEVLIN: If you look at something at this scale, and then you pick a small piece of it and you zoom in, it looks very much the same.
NARRATOR: The whole of the fractal looks just like a part, which looks just like the next smaller part. The similarity of the pattern just keeps on going.
One of the most familiar examples of self-similarity is a tree.
BRIAN ENQUIST (University of Arizona): If we look at each of the nodes, the branching nodes of this tree, what you'll actually see is that the pattern of branching is very similar throughout the tree. As we go from the base of the tree to higher up, you'll see we have mother branches then branching then into daughter branches.
If we take this one branch and node and then go up to a higher branch or node, what we'll actually find is, again, that the pattern of branching is similar. Again, this pattern of branching is repeated throughout the tree, all the way, ultimately, out to the tips where the leaves are.
NARRATOR: You see self-similarity in everything from a stalk of broccoli, to the surface of the moon, to the arteries that transport blood through our bodies. But Mandelbrot's fascination with these irregular-looking shapes put him squarely at odds with centuries of mathematical tradition.
BENOIT MANDELBROT: In the whole of science, the whole of mathematics, smoothness was everything. What I did was to open up roughness for investigation.
KEITH DEVLIN: We used mathematics to build the pyramids, to construct the Parthenon. We used mathematics to study the regular motion of the planets and so forth. We became used to the fact that certain patterns were amenable to mathematics: the architectural ones—largely the patterns of human-made structures where we had straight lines and circles—and the perfect geometric shapes. The basic assumption that underlies classical mathematics is that everything is extremely regular. I mean, you reduce everything to straight lines...
RALPH ABRAHAM: ...circles, triangles...
KEITH DEVLIN: ...flat surfaces...
RALPH ABRAHAM: ...pyramids, tetrahedrons, icosahedrons, dodecahedrons.
LOREN CARPENTER: Smooth edges.
KEITH DEVLIN: Classical mathematics is really only well-suited to study the world that we've created, the things we've built using that classical mathematics. The patterns in nature, the things that were already there before we came onto the planet—the trees, the plants, the clouds, the weather systems—those were outside of mathematics.
NARRATOR: ...until the 1970s, when Benoit Mandelbrot introduced his new geometry.
KEITH DEVLIN: Mandelbrot came along and said, "Hey, guys, all you need to do is look at these patterns of nature in the right way, and you can apply mathematics. There is an order beneath the seeming chaos. You can write down formulas that describe clouds and flowers and plants. It's just that they're different kinds of formulas, and they give you a different kind of geometry."
RICHARD TAYLOR (University of Oregon): The big question is, why did it take 'til the 1970s before somebody wrote a book called The Fractal Geometry of Nature. If they're all around us, why didn't we see them before? The answer seems to be, well, people were seeing them before. People clearly recognized this repeating quality in nature.
NARRATOR: People like the great 19th century Japanese artist, Katsushika Hokusai.
BENOIT MANDELBROT: If you look well enough, you see a shadow of a cloud over Mount Fuji. The cloud is billows upon billows upon billows.
RICHARD TAYLOR: Hokusai, "The Great Wave," you know, on top of the great wave there's smaller waves.
BENOIT MANDELBROT: After my book mentioned that Hokusai was fractal, I got inundated with people saying, "Now we understand Hokusai. Hokusai was drawing fractals."
RICHARD TAYLOR: Everybody thinks that mathematicians are very different from artists. I've come to realize that art is actually really close to mathematics, and that they're just using different language. And so for Mandelbrot it's not about equations. It's about, "How do we explain this visual phenomenon?"
NARRATOR: Mandelbrot's fascination with the visual side of math began when he was a student.
BENOIT MANDELBROT: It is only in January, '44, that, suddenly, I fell in love with mathematics, and not mathematics in general, with geometry in its most concrete, sensual form—that part of geometry in which mathematics and the eye meet. The professor was talking about algebra. But I began to see, in my mind, geometric pictures which fitted this algebra. And once you see these pictures, the answers become obvious. So I discovered something which I had no clue before, that I knew how to transform, in my mind, instantly, the formulas into pictures.
NARRATOR: As a young man, Mandelbrot developed a strong sense of self-reliance, shaped in large part by his experience as a Jew, living under Nazi occupation in France. For four years, he managed to evade the constant threat of arrest and deportation.
BENOIT MANDELBROT: There is nothing more hardening, in a certain sense, than surviving a war, even, not a soldier, but as a hunted civilian. I knew how to act, and I didn't trust people's wisdom very much.
NARRATOR: After the war, Mandelbrot got his Ph.D. He tried teaching at a French university, but he didn't seem to fit in.
BENOIT MANDELBROT: They say, well, I'm very gifted but very misled, and I do things the wrong way. I was very much a fish out of water. So I abandoned this job in France and took a gamble to go to IBM.
NARRATOR: It was 1958. The giant American corporation was pioneering a technology that would soon revolutionize the way we all live: the computer.
NARRATOR: IBM was looking for creative thinkers, non-conformists, even rebels; people like Benoit Mandelbrot.
BENOIT MANDELBROT: In fact, they had cornered the market for a certain type of oddball. We never had the slightest feeling of being the establishment.
NARRATOR: Mandelbrot's colleagues told the young mathematician about a problem of great concern to the company. IBM engineers were transmitting computer data over phone lines, but sometimes the information was not getting through.
BENOIT MANDELBROT: They realized that every so often the lines became extremely noisy, errors occurred in large numbers. It was indeed an extremely messy situation.
NARRATOR: Mandelbrot graphed the noise data, and what he saw surprised him. Regardless of the timescale, the graph looked similar: one day, one hour, one second, it didn't matter. It looked about the same.
BENOIT MANDELBROT: It turned out to be self-similar with a vengeance.
NARRATOR: Mandelbrot was amazed. The strange pattern reminded him of something that had intrigued him as a young man: a mathematical mystery that dated back nearly a hundred years, the mystery of the "monsters."
KEITH DEVLIN: The story really begins in the late 19th century. Mathematicians had written down a formal description of what a curve must be. But within that description, there were these other things, things that satisfied the formal definition of what a curve is but were so weird that you could never draw them, or you couldn't even imagine drawing them. They were just regarded as "monsters" or "things beyond the realm."
RALPH ABRAHAM: They're not lines, they're nothing like lines; they're not circles. They were like really, really weird.
NARRATOR: The German mathematician Georg Cantor created the first of the monsters in 1883.
RON EGLASH (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute): He just took a straight line and he said, "I'm going to break this line into thirds, and the middle third I'm going to erase. So you're left with two lines at each end. And now I'm going to take those two lines, take out the middle third, and we'll do it again." So he does that over and over again.
KEITH DEVLIN: Most people would think, "Well, if I've thrown everything away, eventually there's nothing left." Not the case; there's not just one point left, there's not just two points left. There's infinitely many points left.
NARRATOR: As you zoom in on the Cantor set, the pattern stays the same, much like the noise patterns that Mandelbrot had seen at IBM.
Another strange shape was put forward by the Swedish mathematician Helge von Koch.
KEITH DEVLIN: Koch said was, "Well, you start with an equilateral triangle, one of the classical Euclidean geometric figures, and on each side..."
LOREN CARPENTER: "...I take a piece and I substitute two pieces that are now longer than the original piece. And for each of those pieces, I substitute two pieces that are each longer than the original piece..."
KEITH DEVLIN: "...over and over again."
RON EGLASH: You get the same shape, but now each line has that little triangular bump on it.
LOREN CARPENTER: And I break it again. And I break it again. And I break it again. And each time I break it, the line gets longer.
RON EGLASH: Every iteration, every cycle, he's adding on another little triangle.
KEITH DEVLIN: Imagine iterating that process of adding little bits, infinitely, many times. What you end up with is something that's infinitely long.
NARRATOR: The Koch curve was a paradox. To the eye, the curve appears to be perfectly finite. But mathematically, it is infinite, which means it cannot be measured.
RON EGLASH: At the time, they called it a pathological curve, because it made no sense, according to the way people were thinking about measurement and Euclidean geometry and so on.
NARRATOR: But the Koch curve turned out to be crucial to a nagging measurement problem: the length of a coastline.
In the 1940s, British scientist Lewis Richardson had observed that there can be great variation between different measurements of a coastline.
LOREN CARPENTER: It depends on how long your yardstick is and how much patience you have. If you measure the coastline of Britain with a one-mile yardstick, you'd get so many yardsticks, which gives you so many miles. If you measure it with a one-foot yardstick, it turns out that it's longer. And every time you use a shorter yardstick, you get a longer number.
KEITH DEVLIN: Because you can always find finer indentations.
NARRATOR: Mandelbrot saw that the finer and finer indentations in the Koch curve were precisely what was needed to model coastlines.
KEITH DEVLIN: He wrote a very famous article in Science magazine called "How Long is the Coastline of Britain?"
NARRATOR: A coastline, in geometric terms, said Mandelbrot, is a fractal. And though he knew he couldn't measure its length, he suspected he could measure something else: its roughness. To do that required rethinking one of the most basic concepts in math: dimension.
JENNIFER OUELLETTE (Science Writer): What we would think of as normal geometry, one dimension is the straight line, two dimensions is, say, the box that has surface area.
NARRATOR: And three dimensions is a cube. But could something have a dimension somewhere in between, say, two and three? Mandelbrot said, "Yes. Fractals do. And the rougher they are, the higher their fractal dimension."
KEITH DEVLIN: There are all of these technical terms, like fractal dimension and self-similarity, but those are the nuts and bolts of the mathematics itself. What that fractal geometry does is give us a way of looking at—in a way that's extremely precise—the world in which we live, in particular, the living world.
NARRATOR: Mandelbrot's fresh ways of thinking were made possible by his enthusiastic embrace of new technology. Computers made it easy for Mandelbrot to do iteration, the endlessly repeating cycles of calculation that were demanded by the mathematical monsters.
BENOIT MANDELBROT: The computer was totally essential; otherwise, it would have taken a very big, long effort.
NARRATOR: Mandelbrot decided to zero in on yet another of the monsters, a problem introduced during World War I by a young French mathematician named Gaston Julia.
KEITH DEVLIN: Gaston Julia, he was actually looking at what happens when you take a simple equation and you iterate it through a feedback loop. That means you take a number, you plug it into the formula, you get a number out. You take that number, go back to the beginning, and you feed it into the same formula, get another number out. And you keep iterating that over and over again.
And the question is, what happens when you iterate it lots of times.
NARRATOR: The series of numbers you get is called a set, the Julia set. But working by hand, you could never really know what the complete set looked like.
RALPH ABRAHAM: There were attempts to draw it, doing a bunch of arithmetic by hand and putting a point on graph paper.
KEITH DEVLIN: You would have to feed it back hundreds, thousands, millions of times. The development of that new kind of mathematics had to wait until fast computers were invented.
NARRATOR: At IBM, Mandelbrot did something Julia could never do: use a computer to run the equations millions of times. He then turned the numbers from his Julia sets into points on a graph.
BENOIT MANDELBROT: My first step was to just draw mindlessly, a large number of Julia sets. Not one picture, hundreds of pictures.
NARRATOR: Those images led Mandelbrot to a breakthrough. In 1980, he created an equation of his own, one that combined all of the Julia sets into a single image.
When Mandelbrot iterated his equation he got his own set of numbers. Graphed on a computer, it was a kind of roadmap of all the Julia sets and quickly became famous as the emblem of fractal geometry: the Mandelbrot set.
JENNIFER OUELLETTE: They intersect at certain areas, and it's got like a, you know...
LOREN CARPENTER: And they have little curlicues built into them.
DANA CARTWRIGHT (Designer Software LLC): ...black beetle-like thing...
RICHARD TAYLOR: ...crawling across the floor.
ARY GOLDBERGER (Harvard Medical School): Seahorses.
RALPH ABRAHAM: Dragons.
RICHARD TAYLOR: Something similar to my hair, actually.
NARRATOR: With this mysterious image, Mandelbrot was issuing a bold challenge to longstanding ideas about the limits of mathematics.
RALPH ABRAHAM: The blinders came off and people could see forms that were always there, but, formerly, were invisible.
KEITH DEVLIN: The Mandelbrot set was a great example of what you could do in fractal geometry, just as the archetypical example of classical geometry is the circle.
RALPH ABRAHAM: When you zoom in, you see them coming up again, so you see self-similarity. You see, by zooming in, you zoom, zoom, zoom, you're zooming in, and you're zooming in, and "pop!" Suddenly it seems like you're exactly where you were before, but you're not. It's just that way down there it has the same kind of structure as way up here. And the sameness can be grokked.
NARRATOR: Mandelbrot's mesmerizing images launched a fad in the world of popular culture.
BENOIT MANDELBROT: Suddenly, this thing caught like a bush fire. Everybody wanted to have it.
KEITH DEVLIN: I thought, "This is something big going on." This was a cultural event of great proportions.
NARRATOR: In the late 1970s, Jhane Barnes had just launched a business designing men's clothing.
JHANE BARNES (Jhane Barnes, Inc.): When I started my business, in '76, I was doing fabrics the old-fashioned way, just on graph paper, weaving them on a little handloom.
NARRATOR: But then she discovered fractals and realized that the simple rules that made them could be used to create intricate clothing designs.
JHANE BARNES: I thought, "This is amazing." So, that very simple concept, I said, "Oh, I can make designs with that." But in the '80s, I really didn't know how to design a fractal because there wasn't software.
NARRATOR: So Barnes got help from two people who knew a lot about math and computers: Bill Jones and Dana Cartwright.
JHANE BARNES: I had Dana and Bill writing my software for me. They said, "Oh, your work is very mathematical." And I was like, "It is? That's my weakest subject in school."
DANA CARTWRIGHT: We had a physicist and a mathematician and a textile designer.
JHANE BARNES: We had so much to learn from each other.
DANA CARTWRIGHT: I did not know what a warp and a weft is. You know, Jhane, her ability with numbers is fairly restricted, if I can put that politely.
JHANE BARNES: There was a way we were going to communicate; we were going to get together, somehow. And it really did happen pretty quickly.
The general fashion press thought, "Jhane's a little nuts." They started calling me the fashion nerd, you know? But that was okay. That was okay with me, because I was learning a lot. This was fun, and very, very inspirational. I'm getting things that wouldn't be possible by hand. You know, sometimes when, when I think about things in my head, and I say, you know, "I just saw light coming through that screen door, and look at the moireing effects that are happening on the ground."
Can I go draw that? No way. But I can describe that to my mathematician. He sends me back the generator, all ready for me to try, and I sit down at the computer and say, "Well, let's see what it's doing." And I have parameters that I can control. And I keep pushing, and I go, "Wow, this is not what I expected at all, at all." But it's cool.
MOVIE VOICE (Star Wars/Film Clip): Use the force, Luke.
NARRATOR: The same kinds of fractal design principles have completely transformed the magic of special effects.
WILLI GEIGER (Industrial Light & Magic): This is a key moment from Star Wars: Episode III, where our two heroes have run out onto the end of this giant mechanical arm, and the lava splashes down onto the arm. My starting point, here, is to actually take the three-dimensional model and take, essentially, a jet and, and just shoot lava up into the air.
This looks kind of boring. It's doing roughly the right thing, but the motion has no kind of visual interest to it. Let's look at what happens, here, when I add the fractal swirl to it. Where this becomes fractal is we take that same swirl pattern, we shrink it down, and reapply it. We take that, we shrink it down again, we reapply it. We shrink it down again, we reapply it. And from here on, it's just a case of layering up more and more and more.
I've used the same technique to create these additional lava streams. I then do it again, here, to get some...just red-hot embers. Then we take all of those layers, and we add them up, and we get the final composite image.
My hero lava in the foreground, the extra lava in the background, the embers, sparks, steam, smoke.
NARRATOR: Designers and artists, the world over, have embraced the visual potential of fractals. But when the Mandelbrot set was first published, mathematicians, for the most part, reacted with scorn.
RALPH ABRAHAM: In The Mathematical Intelligencer, which is a gossip sheet for professional mathematicians, there were article after article saying he wasn't a mathematician; he was a bad mathematician; "It's not mathematics;" "Fractal geometry is worthless."
BENOIT MANDELBROT: The eye had been banished out of science. The eye had been excommunicated.
RALPH ABRAHAM: His colleagues, especially the really good ones, pure mathematicians that he respected, they turned against him.
KEITH DEVLIN: Because, see now, you, you get used to the world that you've created and that you live in. And mathematicians had become very used to this world of smooth curves that they could do things with.
RALPH ABRAHAM: They were clinging to the old paradigm, when Mandelbrot and a few people were way out there, bringing in the new paradigm.
And he used to call me up on the telephone, late at night, because he was bothered. And we'd talk about it. Mandelbrot was saying, "This is a branch of geometry, just like Euclid." Well, that offended them. They said, "No, this is an artifact of your stupid computing machine."
BENOIT MANDELBROT: I know very well that there is this line that fractals are pretty pictures, but are pretty useless. Well, it's a pretty jingle, but it's completely ridiculous.
NARRATOR: Mandelbrot replied to his critics with his new book, The Fractal Geometry of Nature. It was filled with examples of how his ideas could be useful to science.
Mandelbrot argued that, with fractals, he could precisely measure natural shapes and make calculations that could be applied to all kinds of formations, from the drainage patterns of rivers to the movements of clouds.
KEITH DEVLIN: So this domain of growing, living systems, which I, along with most other mathematicians, had always regarded as pretty well off-limits for mathematics, and certainly off-limits for geometry, suddenly was center stage. It was Mandelbrot's book that convinced us that this wasn't just artwork; this was new science in the making. This was a completely new way of looking at the world in which we live that allowed us, not just to look at it, not just to measure it, but to do mathematics and, thereby, understand it in a deeper way than we had before.
NATHAN COHEN (Fractal Antenna Systems, Inc.): As someone who's been working with fractals for 20 years, I'm not going to tell you fractals are cool, I'm going to tell you fractals are useful. And that's what's important to me.
NARRATOR: In the 1990s, a Boston radio astronomer named Nathan Cohen used fractal mathematics to make a technological breakthrough in electronic communication.
Cohen had a hobby: he was a ham radio operator. But his landlord had a rule against rigging antennas on the building.
NATHAN COHEN: I was at an astronomy conference in Hungary, and Dr. Mandelbrot was giving a talk about the large-scale structure of the universe, and reporting how using fractals is a very good way of understanding that kind of structure, which really wowed the entire group of astronomers.
He showed several different fractals that I, in my own mind, looked at and said, "Oh, wouldn't it be funny if you made an antenna out of that shape. I wonder what it would do."
NARRATOR: One of the first designs he tried was inspired by one of the 19th century "monsters," the snowflake of Helge von Koch.
NATHAN COHEN: I thought back to the lecture and said, "Well, I've got a piece of wire, what happens if I bend it?" After I bent the wire, I hooked it up to the cable and my ham radio, and I was quite surprised to see that it worked the first time out of the box. It worked very well. And I discovered that—much of a surprise to me—that I could actually make the antenna much smaller, using the fractal design. So it was, frankly, an interesting way to beat a bad rap with the landlord.
NARRATOR: Cohen's experiments soon led him to another discovery. Using a fractal design not only made antennas smaller, but enabled them to receive a much wider range of frequencies.
NATHAN COHEN: Using fractals, experimentally, I came up with a very-wide-band antenna, and then I worked backwards and said, "Why is it working this way? What is it about nature that requires you to use the fractal to get there?"
The result of that work was a mathematical theorem that showed if you want to get something that works as an antenna over a very wide range of frequencies, you need to have self-similarity. It has to be fractal in its shape to make it work. And that was an exact solution. It wasn't like, "Oh, here's a way of doing it and there's a lot of other ways of doing it." It turned out, mathematically, we were able to demonstrate that was the only technique we could use to get there.
NARRATOR: Cohen made his discovery at a time when cell phone companies were facing a problem. They were offering new features to their customers, like Bluetooth, walkie-talkie and Wi-Fi, but each of them ran on a separate frequency.
NATHAN COHEN: You need to be able to use all those different frequencies and have access to them, without 10 stubby antennas sticking out at the same time. The alternative option is you can let your cell phone look like a porcupine, but most people don't want to carry around a porcupine.
NARRATOR: Today, fractal antennas are used in tens of millions of cell phones and other wireless communication devices all over the world.
NATHAN COHEN: We're going to see over the next 10 to 15 to 20 years that you're going to have to use fractals because it's the only way to get cheaper costs and smaller size for all the complex telecommunication needs we're having.
BENOIT MANDELBROT: Once you, you realize that a shrewd engineer would use fractals in many, many contexts, you better understand why nature, which is shrewder, uses them in its ways.
JAMES BROWN: They're all over in biology. They're solutions that natural selection has come up with over and over and over again.
NARRATOR: One powerful example: the rhythms of the heart. Something that Boston cardiologist Ary Goldberger has been studying his entire professional life.
ARY GOLDBERGER: The notion of, sort of, the human body as a machine goes back through the tradition of Newton and the machine-like universe. So somehow we're machines, we're mechanisms; the heartbeat is this timekeeper. Galileo was reported to have used his pulse to time the swinging of a pendular motion. So that all fit in with the idea that the normal heartbeat is like a metronome.
NARRATOR: But when Goldberger and his colleagues analyzed data from thousands of people, they found the old theory was wrong.
MADALENA DAMASIO COSTA (Harvard Medical School): This is where I show the heartbeat time series of a healthy subject. And, as you can see, the heartbeat is not constant over time. It fluctuates, and it fluctuates a lot. For example, in this case, it fluctuates between 60 beats per minute and 120 beats per minute.
NARRATOR: The patterns looked familiar to Goldberger, who happened to have read Benoit Mandelbrot's book.
ARY GOLDBERGER: When you actually plotted out the intervals between heartbeats, what you saw was very close to the rough edges of the mountain ranges that were in Mandelbrot's book. You blow them up, expand them, you actually see that there are more of these wrinkles upon wrinkles. The healthy heartbeat, it turned out, had this fractal architecture.
People said, "This isn't cardiology. Do cardiology, if you want to get funded." But it turns out it is cardiology.
NARRATOR: Goldberger found that the healthy heartbeat has a distinctive fractal pattern, a signature that, one day, may help cardiologists spot heart problems sooner.
At the University of Oregon, Richard Taylor is using fractals to reveal the secrets of another part of the body: the eye.
RICHARD TAYLOR: What we want to do is see, "What is that eye doing, that allows it to absorb so much visual information?" And so that's what led us into the eye trajectories. Under the monitor is a little infrared camera, which will actually monitor where the eye is looking. And it actually records that data, and so what we get out is a trajectory of where the eye has been looking. And so the computer will get out this graph, and it will look...you know...have all of these various little structures in it. And it's that pattern that we zoom in...we tell the computer to zoom in on and see the fractal dimension.
NARRATOR: The tests show that the eye does not always look at things in an orderly or smooth way. If we could understand more about how the eye takes in information, we could do a better job of designing the things that we really need to see.
RICHARD TAYLOR: A traffic light: you're looking at the traffic light, you've got traffic, you've got pedestrians; your eye is looking all over the place, trying to assess all of this information.
People design aircraft cockpits, rows of dials and things like that. If your eye is darting around based on a fractal geometry, though, maybe that's not the best way. Maybe you don't want these things in a simple row. We're trying to work out the natural way that the eye wants to absorb the information. Is it going to be similar to a lot of these other subconscious processes? Body motion: when you're balancing, what are you actually doing there? It's something subconscious and it works. And you're stringing together big sways and small sways and smaller sways. Could those all be connected together to actually be doing a fractal pattern there? More and more physiological processes have been found to be fractal.
NARRATOR: Not everyone in science is convinced of fractal geometry's potential for delivering new knowledge. Skeptics argue that it's done little to advance mathematical theory. But in Toronto, biophysicist Peter Burns and his colleagues see fractals as a practical tool, a way to develop mathematical models that might help in diagnosing cancer earlier.
PETER BURNS (University of Toronto): Detecting very small tumors is one of the big challenges in medical imaging.
NARRATOR: Burns knew that one early sign of cancer is particularly difficult to see: a network of tiny blood vessels that forms with the tumor. Conventional imaging techniques, like ultrasound, aren't powerful enough to show them.
PETER BURNS: We need to be able to see structures which are just a few tenths-of-a-millionths of a meter across. When it comes to a living patient, we don't have the tools to be able to see these tiny blood vessels.
NARRATOR: But ultrasound does provide a very good picture of the overall movement of blood. Is there any way, Burns wondered, that images of blood-flow could reveal the hidden structure of the blood vessels?
To find out, Burns and his colleagues used fractal geometry to make a mathematical model.
PETER BURNS: If you have a mathematical way of analyzing a structure, you can make a model. What fractals do is they give you some simple rules by which you can create models, and by changing some of the parameters of the model, we can change how the structure looks.
NARRATOR: The model showed the flow of blood in a kidney; first through normal blood vessels and then through vessels feeding a cancerous tumor. Burns discovered that the two kinds of networks had very different fractal dimensions.
PETER BURNS: Instead of being neatly bifurcating, looking like a, a nice elm tree, the tumor vasculature is chaotic and tangled and disorganized, looking more like a mistletoe bush.
NARRATOR: And the flow of blood through those tangled vessels looked very different than in a normal network, a difference doctors might one day be able to detect with ultrasound.
PETER BURNS: We always thought that we have to make medical images sharper and sharper, ever more precise, ever more microscopic in their resolution, to find out the information about the structure that's there. What's exciting about this is it's giving us microscopic information without us actually having to look through a microscope. We think that this fractal approach may be helpful in distinguishing benign from malignant lesions in a way that hasn't been possible up to now.
NARRATOR: It may take years before fractals can help doctors predict cancer, but they are already offering clues to one of biology's more tantalizing mysteries: why big animals use energy more efficiently than little ones.
That's a question that fascinates biologists James Brown and Brian Enquist and physicist Geoffrey West.
GEOFFREY WEST: There is an extraordinary economy of scale as you increase in size.
NARRATOR: An elephant, for example, is 200,000 times heavier than a mouse, but uses only about ten thousand times more energy in the form of calories it consumes.
GEOFFREY WEST: The bigger you are, you actually need less energy per gram of tissue to stay alive. That is an amazing fact.
NARRATOR: And even more amazing is the fact that this relationship between the mass and energy use of any living thing is governed by a strict mathematical formula.
JAMES BROWN: So far as we know, that law is universal, or almost universal, across all of life. So it operates from the tiniest bacteria to whales and sequoia trees.
NARRATOR: But even though this law had been discovered back in the 1930s, no one had been able to explain it.
JAMES BROWN: We had this idea that it probably had something to do with how resources are distributed within the bodies of organisms as they varied in size.
GEOFFREY WEST: We took this big leap and said all of life in some way is sustained by these underlying networks that are transporting oxygen resources, metabolites that are feeding cells, circulatory systems and respiratory systems and renal systems and neural systems. It was obvious that fractals were staring us in the face.
NARRATOR: If all these biological networks are fractal, it means they obey some simple mathematical rules, which can lead to new insights into how they work.
JAMES BROWN: If you think about it for a minute, it would be incredibly inefficient to have a set of blueprints for every single stage of increasing size. But if you have a fractal code, a code that says when to branch as you get bigger and bigger, then a very simple genetic code can produce what looks like a complicated organism.
BRIAN ENQUIST: Evolution by natural selection has hit upon a design that appears to give the most bang for the buck.
NARRATOR: In 1997, West, Brown and Enquist announced their controversial theory that fractals hold the key to the mysterious relationship between mass and energy use in animals. Now, they are putting their theory to a bold new test, an experiment to help determine if the fractal structure of a single tree can predict how an entire rainforest works.
Enquist has traveled to Costa Rica, to Guanacaste Province, in the northwestern part of the country. The government has set aside more than 300,000 acres in Guanacaste as a conservation area. This rainforest, like others around the world, plays a vital role in regulating the Earth's climate, by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
BRIAN ENQUIST: If you look at the xforest, it, basically, breathes. And if we understand the total amount of carbon dioxide that's coming into these trees within this forest, we can then better understand how this forest then, ultimately, regulates the total amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.
NARRATOR: With carbon dioxide levels around the world rising, how much CO2 can rainforests like this one absorb, and how important is their role in protecting us from further global warming?
Enquist and a team of U.S. scientists think that fractal geometry may help answer these questions.
BRIAN ENQUIST: ...baseline. Let's try to get the height of the tree measured.
NARRATOR: They are going to start by doing just about the last thing you'd think a scientist would do here: cut down a balsa tree. It's dying anyway, and they have the permission of the authorities.
BRIAN ENQUIST: So, Christina, as soon as you know the height of that tree, we can actually figure out the approximate angle that we need to take it down on.
NARRATOR: Hooking a guide line on a high branch helps insure the tree will land where they want it to.
GROUP: Yay!
BRIAN ENQUIST: Very good, very nice.
Jose, perfecto!
NARRATOR: Enquist and his colleagues then measure the width and length of the branches to quantify the tree's fractal structure.
BRIAN ENQUIST: Eight.
CATHY: Ten point zero six.
BRIAN ENQUIST: No, that's eight. Six point three
MALE: Point zero three.
MALE: Six, zero.
CATHY: Eight.
MALE: Seven on the nose.
NARRATOR: They also measure how much carbon a single leaf contains, which should allow them to figure out what the whole tree can absorb.
CHRISTINA LAMANNA (Santa Fe Institute): So, if we know the amount of carbon dioxide that one leaf is able to take in, then, hopefully, using the fractal branching rule, we can know how much carbon dioxide the entire tree is taking in.
NARRATOR: Their next step is to move from the tree to the whole forest.
BRIAN ENQUIST: All right, this is good.
BRAD BOYLE: Thirteen point two, three point three.
BRIAN ENQUIST: We're going to census this forest. We're going to be measuring the diameter at the base of the trees, ranging all the way from the largest trees down to the smallest trees. And in that way we can then sample the distribution of sizes within the forest.
BRAD BOYLE: It's 61.8 centimeters.
NARRATOR: Even though the forest may appear random and chaotic, the team believes it actually has a structure, one that, amazingly, is almost identical to the fractal structure of the tree they have just cut down.
JAMES BROWN: The beautiful thing is that the distribution of the sizes of individual trees in the forest appears to exactly match the distribution of the sizes of individual branches within a single tree.
NARRATOR: If they're correct, studying a single tree will make it easier to predict how much carbon dioxide an entire forest can absorb.
When they finish here, they take their measurements back to base camp, where they'll see if their ideas hold up.
BRIAN ENQUIST: So is this the, this is the tree plot, right?
DREW KERKHOFF: Yeah. The cool thing is that, if you look at the tree, you see the same pattern amongst the branches as we see amongst the trunks in the forest.
NARRATOR: Just as they predicted, the relative number of big and small trees closely matches the relative number of big and small branches.
BRIAN ENQUIST: It's actually phenomenal, that it is parallel. The slope of that line for the tree appears to be the same for the forest, as well.
DREW KERKHOFF: So I guess it was worth cutting up the tree.
BRIAN ENQUIST: It was definitely worth cutting up the tree.
NARRATOR: So far, the measurements from the field appear to support the scientists' theory that a single tree can help scientists assess how much this rainforest is helping to slow down global warming.
BRIAN ENQUIST: By analyzing the fractal patterns within the forest, that then enables us to do something that we haven't really been able to do before: have, then, a mathematical basis to then predict how the forest as a whole takes in carbon dioxide. And ultimately, that's important for understanding what may happen with global climate change.
NARRATOR: For generations, scientists believed that the wildness of nature could not be defined by mathematics. But fractal geometry is leading to a whole new understanding, revealing an underlying order governed by simple mathematical rules.
GEOFFREY WEST: What I thought of in my hikes through forests, that, you know, it's just a bunch of trees of different sizes, big ones here, small ones there, looking like it's sort of some arbitrary chaotic mess, actually has an extraordinary structure.
NARRATOR: A structure that can be mapped out and measured using fractal geometry.
BRIAN ENQUIST: What's absolutely amazing is that you can translate what you see in the natural world in the language of mathematics. And I can't think of anything more beautiful than that.
RALPH ABRAHAM: Math is our one and only strategy for understanding the complexity of nature. Now, fractal geometry has given us a much larger vocabulary. And with larger vocabulary we can read more of the book of nature.
On NOVA's Hidden Dimension Web site, explore the Mandelbrot set, see a gallery of fractal images and much more. Find it on PBS.org.
To order this NOVA program, for $24.95 plus shipping and handling, call WGBH Boston video at 1-800-255-9424.
NOVA is a production of WGBH Boston.
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Hunting the Hidden Dimension
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- Image credit: (yellow Mandelbrot set) Courtesy Niche Software
- Ralph Abraham
- University of California, Santa Cruz www.math.ucsc.edu/Faculty/abraham.html
- Jhane Barnes
- Jhane Barnes, Inc. www.jhanebarnes.com/
- James Brown
- University of New Mexico
- Peter Burns
- University of Toronto medbio.utoronto.ca/faculty/burns.html
- Loren Carpenter
- Pixar Animation Studios theoscarsite.com/whoswho7/carpenter_l.htm
- Dana Cartwright
- Designer Software LLC www.weavemaker.com/1/about/about.php
- Nathan Cohen
- Fractal Antenna Systems, Inc. www.fractenna.com/nca_cohen_bio.html
- Madalena Damasio Costa
- Harvard Medical School reylab.bidmc.harvard.edu/people/madalena/index.html
- Keith Devlin
- Stanford University www.stanford.edu/~kdevlin/
- Ron Eglash
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institure www.rpi.edu/~eglash/eglash.htm
- Brian Enquist
- University of Arizona eeb37.biosci.arizona.edu/~brian/enquist_lab_folks.html
- Ary Goldberger
- Harvard Medical School reylab.bidmc.harvard.edu/people/Ary.shtml
- Christina Lamanna
- University of Arizona physics.uwyo.edu/~clamanna/
- Benoit Mandelbrot
- Yale University www.math.yale.edu/mandelbrot/
- Jennifer Ouellette
- Science Writer www.jenniferouellette-writes.com/Biography2.html
- Dan Piponi
- Industrial Light and Magic homepage.mac.com/sigfpe/
- Richard Taylor
- University of Oregon www.uoregon.edu/~msiuo/taylor/art/info.html
- Geoffrey West
- Santa Fe Institute www.santafe.edu/profiles/?pid=64
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Life of Pi is one of the biggest movies from 2012. Now it has finally been released to multiple formats. Thanks to 20th Century Fox and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, the Phil's Picks blog has three copies of the movie to give away on Blu-ray/DVD/Vudu combo pack.
Next Monday – Wednesday, I'll be giving away one copy each day on the Phil's Picks Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/philspicks. But I'm not just going to do any drawing. Those of you who have already "Liked" my FB page have to recruit more people to "Like" it in order to win. It will start Monday, March 18th. Here's how it'll go down. The first person to get just five (5) people to "Like" my page each day will win that day's copy of "Life of Pi" on Blu-ray/DVD/Vudu. The people that you get to "Like" my page have to post to my timeline noting that you got them to "Like" my page. That way I can count each person's recruits under your name. Make sense? Let me know if it doesn't and I'll try to explain it in simpler terms. I'll announce the winner of each copy each afternoon at 4pm. Again, that's the first person Monday – Wednesday to get 5 people to "Like" my page. And it doesn't start until Monday. So that means that you need to get out there and spread the word about the Phil's Picks FB page if you really want to win! I'm going to run the contest for these copies of "Hitchcock" the same way the following week
And if you're not one of the people to enter, you can pick up your copy in store or online now. It can be ordered online at http://www.foxconnect.com.
To keep up with all the latest sports and entertainment news and the latest giveaways, go online to http://www.facebook.com/philspicks and "Like" it. Fans can always keep up with the latest sports and entertainment news and reviews, as well as giveaways at the Phil's Picks blog at https://philspicks.wordpress.com.


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Home » Mobile Computers » DataLogic Falcon X3+ » 945250053
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DataLogic Falcon X3+ 945250053USD 2545.0 https://schema.org/InStock POSGuys.com Mobile Computers > Discontinued > DataLogic Falcon X3+ Price: $2,545.00 *
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What's in the Box: 945250053 Falcon X3+ Mobile Computer, Black with Pistol Grip Form Factor, Windows CE 6.0, 29-Key Numeric Keypad, Auto-Ranging Laser Scanner (XLR), Bluetooth, 802.11a/b/g/n RadiosMore Information: DataLogic Falcon X3+ Part Number: This is a listing for individual item 945250053 Falcon X3+ 945250053 DataLogicDataLogic
Part Specifications:
- Form Factor: Pistol Grip
- Keypad: 29-Key Numeric
- Operating System: Windows CE 6.0 Pro
- Scan Engine: Auto-Ranging Laser (XLR)
- Camera: N/A
Falcon X3/X4 Charging/Communications Dock, Includes Spare Battery Charging Slot, Power Supply, Line Cord, USB Cable, RS-232, Serial Interfaces
Falcon X3/X4 4-Slot Ethernet Dock, Includes Power Supply, Requires Line Cord (Part # 95ACC1113)
Falcon X3 4-Slot Battery Charging Dock, Includes Power Supply, Requires Line Cord (Part # 95ACC1113)
Falcon X3 4-Slot Charging Dock, Supports 4 Devices and 4 Spare Batteries, Includes Power Supply, Requires Line Cord (Part # 95ACC1113)
RS-232 Serial Cable, Connects Dock to PC
Falcon X3/X4 Battery, 3.7V 5200 mAh (Batteries must be shipped via ground shipping)
Handylink USB Interface Cable, Female USB End, For use with Printers or other Peripherals, 15-Centimeter


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Grilled chicken gets a certain curtain call
Picture a man on his deck with a brand new kettle-style charcoal grill trying to get the domed top to go down over a chicken sitting on a can. I'm sure you can imagine how that scene plays out. I had a front-row seat.
Picture a man on his deck with a brand new kettle-style charcoal grill trying to get the domed top to go down over a chicken sitting on a can. I'm sure you can imagine how that scene plays out. I had a front-row seat.
If you're one who enjoys a little drama at your backyard picnics, you might like the idea of balancing a whole chicken on a beer can as it roasts in a hot grill. The method of cooking a chicken over a can of liquid to infuse moisture and flavor into the meat has been around for years. When the chicken stays propped up on the grill and the grill top actually fits tightly over the standing chicken, the results can be very good.
But if you just want to eat the most succulent and flavorful grilled chicken of your life, without the can or the drama, Outdoor Grill-Roasted Chicken is here for you.
There are a couple of things I do to create an amazing grill-roasted chicken.
First, a rub made of garlic, herbs and spices blended with olive oil is rubbed not just on the skin of the chicken, but also under the skin. Flavors on the skin have a hard time getting through to the meat itself, but massage those seasonings into the flesh beneath the skin and the meat soaks up the flavors as it cooks.
Trying to position a chicken on a 12-ounce aluminum can in a fashion that will keep it standing up straight on the grill can be frustrating and tricky. A shallow pan of liquid placed directly under the grilling bird is an alternate method for producing a roasted-on-the-grill chicken that oozes with juiciness when poked with a fork.
Of course, the chicken you choose to roast also will be a determining factor on the flavor of your finished product. When possible, I like to use locally grown chickens. At this time of year, you can often find local chickens sold in a frozen state at your farmers market. When chickens have spent some peaceful time in fresh air and sunshine at an area farm, eating grass, weeds and insects, they naturally taste better and offer more nutritional benefits.
The meat of naturally raised chickens offers an abundance of omega-3 oils. Omega-3 is one of the two essential fatty acids (EFAs) that cannot be produced by the body, but are required for good health. An omega-3 fatty acid called alpha linolenic acid is found in green leafy vegetables and grasses. An omega-6 fatty acid called linoleic acid is found in grains, such as soybeans and corn. While both of these EFAs are essential for our health, the American diet has become overloaded with omega-6 because the meat we eat is raised almost exclusively on grains. When we eat chickens that have foraged for some of their food outside in the fresh air, we help bring our entire diet back into balance.
Be sure to ask your local farmer how the chickens were raised and how and where they were processed to satisfy your expectations for high standards of the health and safety of your food.
When you do not have access to local, naturally raised chickens, look for chickens in the grocery store that are free of synthetic hormones, antibiotics or growth stimulants.
Outdoor Grill-Roasted Chicken will delight the entire family. Any meat that is left over can be used in a variety of ways. Save the carcass to make rich chicken broth that you can freeze until you're ready to make some soup on a cool fall day.
A grill, a chicken and some seasonings will create an Outdoor Grill-Roasted Chicken that will bring theatrical ooohhs and aaahhs from your diners. That's all the drama I need.
Outdoor Grill-Roasted Chicken
1 whole frying chicken, 4 to 4 1/4 pounds
3 garlic cloves
2 teaspoons coarse salt
1 tablespoon fresh thyme or lemon thyme leaves
1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns
2 dried bay leaves
1/8 teaspoon dried red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon sweet Hungarian paprika
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, quartered
1 short rib of celery with leaves
1 small carrot, sliced thick
1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 cup water
1 lemon, thinly sliced
4 sprigs fresh thyme
Remove giblets and neck from chicken. Reserve for another use. Rinse chicken thoroughly under cold water. Pat dry with paper towels. Set aside while mixing rub.
Place garlic cloves, salt and thyme leaves in a mini-food processor or blender. Whirl until mixture is pureed.
Grind peppercorns and bay leaves in an electric coffee grinder or use a heavy pestle to smash them in a mortar. Add ground peppercorns and bay leaves to the pureed garlic mixture along with the red pepper flakes and paprika. Process to combine. Add olive oil and blend.
Gently lift skin of chicken breasts and massage some of the olive oil rub into the flesh. Use the remaining mixture to season the cavity and all of the skin.
Place onion, celery, carrot, a sprig of thyme and one or two lemon slices inside the cavity. Slide a couple of lemon slices under the skin of each breast along with a sprig of thyme.
Tie ends of legs together with string.
Fill an 8-inch aluminum pan with lemon juice and water. Add a sprig of thyme and a lemon slice.
Place pan of water and lemon juice on the floor of the grill in the area that is prepared for indirect cooking. Preheat grill, either gas or charcoal. When grill is hot, place prepared chicken right on the grill rack over the pan. Grill, covered with grill lid, until breast meat reaches 170 degrees. This should take about 1 1/2 hours. Remove chicken from grill and allow to rest on cutting board for 10 minutes before carving. Generously serves 4.
Tips from the cook
--One teaspoon of dried thyme leaves can be used if you do not have fresh thyme in your garden.
--I have an inexpensive electric coffee grinder that I use only for grinding spices and flax seeds.
--Lemon juice can be replaced with wine or beer in the water under the roasting chicken.
--Grinding your own peppercorns imparts the deepest flavor, but as an alternative to the whole peppercorns, use 1 teaspoon ground black pepper (and just crush the bay leaves).


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Joplin schools still struggling to regroup
Joplin R-8 Schools are scrambling to regroup after Sunday's tornado destroyed three school buildings, including the high school, and seriously damaged three more. It also is working on plans to begin the fall semester on the scheduled date of Aug. 17.
Damage to the buildings is estimated to be between $80 million and $100 million, Superintendent C.J. Huff said at a Wednesday afternoon press conference at Joplin North Middle School. He said the district has full insurance to rebuild the structures and replace in-school supplies, such as textbooks and computers, and believes the district will be able to afford the $5,000 deductible.
The district also is working diligently to contact each of the 3,400 students who live in the impact zone.
"The district is a large part of the Joplin family, and we are continuing our efforts to contact the students," Huff said. "We need students to call in so we can account for everyone, even if they're not affected."
Huff said all students at Irving Elementary School, which was destroyed, had been located.
The district also was trying to contact staff members who had not yet checked in. At the conference, Huff said the district was still looking for three teachers, but a later email sent by district representatives said all faculty had finally been accounted for.
Per district policy, Huff would not confirm whether any students or faculty had been killed, but he did not rule out the possibility that some staff members may have been in the buildings late.
"We have some very dedicated staff," he said.
Regional school representatives also gathered with Huff at the podium to show their support, and Huff said he was awed."
"The outpouring of support has been humbling, to say the least," he said, choked with emotion. "This is a great place to live and we'd like to get back to that."
Among the supporters was USD 250 Superintendent Destry Brown. Brown said there were no currently plans to take on students, but that the district would offer resources and moral support.
"We've offered anything they need," Brown said. "We'll do anything we can to be supportive."
Brown said the district has a similar response plan to that of the Joplin Schools, but that the situation is new to all of the schools.
"Until you really get into it, it's a learning process," Brown said. "It all changes when the sirens go off. There will be a lot of things to be learned as the Joplin district goes through this."


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Story highlights
NEW: Obama says Washington politics shouldn't slow America's progress
President Obama calls for government-private sector partnerships for infrastructure
His proposals provide details to an idea from his State of the Union address
NEW: Engineering group cites deficient bridges and other infrastructure needs
President Barack Obama called Friday for Congress to fund proposals to expand public-private programs to build and repair modern ports, pipelines, schools and other infrastructure.
At a campaign-style event in Miami, Obama said strengthening the nation's infrastructure should be a non-partisan issue because it helps American business and creates jobs for the construction industry.
"We can't afford Washington politics to stand in the way of America's progress," Obama said, adding that "ultimately, Congress has to fund these projects."
Obama's proposals followed up on his call in this year's State of the Union address for such public-private partnerships to strengthen infrastructure development.
A White House aide told reporters traveling with Obama on Air Force One that the proposals outlined Friday would cost $21 billion, but added that they would not add to the federal deficit.
"Their impact on the economy will be substantially greater because they will be leveraged two to one, three to one, four to one, up to seven to one depending upon the particular program," said Alan Krueger, the chairman of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers.
He added that "they will not increase the deficit by a dime because they are paid for in our budget."
Obama's budget for next year is due in coming weeks.
Obama has unsuccessfully sought congressional approval throughout his presidency for a more aggressive national investment in road, rail, bridge and energy infrastructure construction to create jobs and spur economic growth.
While some states have embraced private-public partnerships, Congress has been less receptive, partly because Republicans want to offset any new spending with cuts elsewhere.
Lawmakers from both parties are also wary of losing more control over decisions on the scope and pace of infrastructure development, a key area of federal spending that they can direct to their states and districts.
Proponents of public-private partnerships argue that the nation's aging infrastructure needs repair broadly and modernization. But shrinking federal, state and local budgets as well as less revenue overall from other traditional financing sources, like fuel taxes, have undercut efforts to keep pace with demand.
The American Society of Civil Engineers said in a 2013 assessment that the United States had a "significant backlog of overdue maintenance" across infrastructure systems and a "pressing need for modernization."
For instance, the group estimates it will cost $21 billion to bring critical, aging dams up to speed.
It also says one in nine of the nation's bridges are rated as structurally deficient and spending on overall maintenance and construction is roughly $8 billion short of what's necessary to keep them in good shape.
More than 40 percent of America's major urban highways remain congested, costing the economy an estimated $101 billion in wasted time and fuel annually, the engineering group said.
Private equity, corporations and other investors have lined up billions to spend on projects that offer a financial return over time or other benefits, such as tax breaks. However, the lack of federal policy or new funding commitments for such arrangements has slowed that approach.
Obama favors a new bond-financing program similar to a now-expired one that was created for states and municipalities to stimulate infrastructure construction.
He also called for creation of a federally run infrastructure bank aimed at attracting outside investment, an idea he has floated previously that Congress has yet to embrace.
A White House document on the plan said the proposed $10 billion infrastructure bank would raise as much as $200 billion in leveraged private investment.
Citing a Miami tunnel project endorsed by both the city's chamber of commerce and labor unions, he said such agreement showed that politicians also should be able to sign on.


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Paul Jannace: Oklahoma City Thunder searching for answers
Everything in life is a learning experience.
Unfortunately for the Oklahoma City Thunder, they need to grow up fast and learn on the job right now.
LeBron James and the Miami Heat entered the NBA FInals with the reputation for fourth-quarter failures, but it's been the youthful Thunder who have stumbled down the stretch.
The Thunder have shown a lot of maturity for young players already, but they have retreated back to some bad habits at the worst time.
Intensity has been high during the 2012 NBA Finals, and in those cases every possession is critical and the smallest mistakes make the biggest difference.
Take James Harden's missed lay-up in the fourth quarter on Tuesday night that would have given the Thunder an 81-80 lead. Oklahoma City had blown a big early lead and fell behind by double-digits before surging back again and now Harden had nothing but the basket in front of him.
Harden must have heard footsteps from the defenders trailing the play and missed the go-ahead chip shot. A few dribbles later and the Heat were up six.
Russell Westbrook carried the Thunder for much of Game 4 and finished with 43 points, but an ill-advised foul in the final seconds helped Miami ice the game.
Harden continued a miserable series by going 2-for-10, including that crucial miss late and Kevin Durant shot only 9-for-19 in Game 4 after tremendous fourth-quarter performances earlier in the series.
The Thunder also have been careless with the ball down the stretch of these games and bailing the Heat out in the final seconds. Oklahoma City has had a chance to win all four of these games against the Heat, but closing the deal has been a problem.
The youth of the Thunder is what makes them great — and the biggest reason why they're in the NBA Finals — but it also could be their biggest weakness. Mistakes are magnified on the biggest stage and the Thunder can no longer afford them with their backs against the wall.
Durant, Westbrook, and Harden have thrived in such situations before, rallying from 2-0 down against the Spurs in the Western Conference Finals, but these are three straight elimination games — if they get that far — where the pressure increases each time.
Sure, there will be immense pressure on James, Dwyane Wade and the Heat to close out the Thunder in Game 5 so as not to return to the hornet's nest of an area in Oklahoma City.
One could even argue the pressure is more on the Heat because of James' quest for his first title and the "Big 3" joining forces for not one, not two, not three, not four .... championships.
However, Wade has won a title already and James is playing in the NBA Finals for the third time. This is not new territory to them.
Durant and Westbrook and the rest of the Thunder are here for the first time — perhaps sooner than anyone expected considering the battle-tested Lakers and Spurs they had to get past in the West — and the young guns need to play like wily veterans now.
No team has ever rallied from 3-1 down in the NBA Finals to win, but the way the Oklahoma City Thunder can shoot, this is the type of team that can do it if they get on a roll.
James passed the buck too often in the 2011 NBA Finals and he watched the Dallas Mavericks celebrate. He has not played tentative this time around and looks to shut a lot of critics up once and for all.
The Thunder need to match that intensity and play aggressive — yet controlled — in the final minutes if they want to keep their season alive.
The NBA lucked out after an ugly lockout and an abbreviated 66-game regular season and the loss of a superstar (Derrick Rose) early in the postseason to get an intriguing finals matchup.
A case could easily be made that Miami and Oklahoma City are unquestionably the best two teams in the league with the three best players in the league on the floor.
No matter what, a superstar will win his first title and a coronation as the game's preeminent player will take place.
It also could be the start of a long, classic rivalry between two future Hall of Famers duking it out each year for their place on top of the NBA mountain. All NBA fans should take a second right now to dream about many Thunder and Heat battles over the next decade.
This is hopefully the first of many chapters in an epic novel of basketball greatness.
The only question left is whether it will be LeBron's long-awaited coronation as a true king or will Durant and Westbrook carry the Thunder to an unprecedented comeback?
Follow Paul Jannace on Twitter at @pjscribe.


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Offline Gmail has been updated to version 0.2 and you can now specify a maximum size for the downloaded attachments. If you don't need to access attachments when you're offline, you can disable the download of attachments.
A user of the Gmail Group has a workaround for those who don't have the new version. "It seems to me that for existing users it'll appear only when you disable and then again enable Gmail offline. And you won't have to download your emails again; you can always choose them not to be removed while disabling Gmail offline."
{ Thanks, Steve. }
February 12, 2009
Options for Caching Attachments in Gmail Offline
Posted by Alex Chitu at 2/12/2009 03:47:00 AM
Labels: Gmail, Google Gears
9 comments:
Disabled and enabled back again, but nothing changed. Looks like Gmail team has not yet rolled out the feature to everyone. No mention at Gmail official blog.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousFebruary 12, 2009 at 5:27 AM
If you haven't downloaded attachments, are they available in flaky mode?ReplyDelete
- AnonymousFebruary 12, 2009 at 10:19 PM
also tried disable and enable but nothing happenesReplyDelete
- AnonymousFebruary 12, 2009 at 10:22 PM
If I chose maximum attachment size will ALREADY stored attachments above that size be removed from the computer?ReplyDelete
- AnonymousFebruary 13, 2009 at 8:31 PM
I can confirm it's not rolled out on my account here in New ZealandReplyDelete
Not rolled out in the UK either.ReplyDelete
- AnonymousFebruary 25, 2009 at 4:59 AM
This is now rolled out in my US account. Finally!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousFebruary 26, 2009 at 12:42 AM
Apparently, I could not synchronize my emails unless I switched from a custom theme to the default one...ReplyDelete
where is this now?ReplyDelete
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)


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LOWELL — An intern in the Middlesex Sheriff's Office is facing charges he tried to sell marijuana while parked outside a Tewksbury convenience store.
Emmanuel K. Flaris, 31, of 150 Westview Road, Lowell, pleaded not guilty In Lowell District Court on Friday to charges of distribution of a class D drug (marijuana), possession to distribute a class D drug (marijuana) and possession of a class B drug (suboxone). His next court date is May 20 for a pretrial conference.
Defense attorney Brenden McMahon told The Sun, "My client denies the charges and intends to pursue his legal rights."
McMahon confirmed that Flaris, who just passed his Bar exam, is a temporary employee in the sheriff's office. He said he was unsure of his Flaris' position.
Police found said they found a Middlesex Sheriff's identification card with Flaris' name and photo inside his car. There were also numerous pages of sensitive department documents that were seized and logged into evidence, according to court documents. The sheriff's office was contacted.
A spokesman for Middlesex Sheriff Peter Koutoujian said Flaris has been terminated. Flaris worked in the the department's administrative offices and was not involved in law enforcement did not have contact with inmates, the spokesman said.
According to court documents, Tewksbury police detectives were in the area of a convenience store at 133 Andover St. doing surveillance for drug activity about 7 p.m. when they saw a white Lincoln sedan park next to a black Honda Accord.
Police said the driver of the Honda, Ryan Scotti, got out of his car, stood beside the Lincoln for about 10 seconds speaking to Flaris inside the Lincoln, then got into the Lincoln's passenger seat. Five minutes later Scotti exited the Lincoln.
Police allege that Scotti admitted he bought about 8 grams or $100 worth of marijuana from Flaris. Scotti allegedly told police he routinely buys marijuana from Flaris, according to court documents. It is unclear if Scotti was charged.
Police said a large plastic bag with a small amount of marijuana was on the passenger seat with cash next to the bag, court documents state.
Detectives asked Flaris for his license and registration, which he said he didn't have on him.
Flaris told police that he and Scotti were about to smoke a marijuana cigarette, court documents state.
In searching Flaris' Lincoln sedan, police found 36 grams of marijuana in a bag in the back seat, documents state.
In a sunglass holder was a pack of Marlboro cigarettes with two suboxone film strips that are used to discretely help with the symptoms of opiod withdrawal or can be used abused.
Police also found two prescription pills bottles, both of which had the proper prescriptions.
Follow Lisa Redmond on Tout and Twitter@lredmond13_lisa.


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While I don't often go to the movies anymore now that I have young kids, a previous post (and its comments) about theater behavior got me thinking about the many, many movies I attended in my younger years and a situation that arose often that aggravated me.
Being a "follow the rules" person, I knew, even as a teen, that if I was seeing a very popular movie on a weekend night I needed to arrive extra early to make sure I could procure seats together with my friends. Often I would arrive 30 minutes before showtime and pick the "perfect" spot with my movie mates before the theater filled up. Inevitably, a group of 2 or 3 people would walk in at the end of the previews and see a nearly-full theater. The problem arose when they'd notice 3 empty seats in my row (not together as groups would keep a seat between them as "buffers"), and ask everyone in the row to move over so they could slide in on the end. Because I hate confrontation I'd always comply and end up behind a very tall person or in a suspiciously stained/broken seat, and end up straining my neck to see around them for the movie or hearing my chair squeak with every shift of body weight.
What should be the etiquette when something like this happens? Technically there are 3 open seats and 3 people who need them. To deny their request would seem really rude and petty. But at the same time why should I, who arrived significantly early to obtain a "good" seat, have to be inconvenienced for their lack of proper planning and arriving 30 seconds before (or sometimes right after) the start of a movie? 0115-15
Note to readers, I needed to reread the second paragraph a few times before I realized the writer is describing a situation where a theater row has several unclaimed seats that are scattered in the row as opposed to being clustered together. The late arrivals are requesting people move towards the middle of the row to consolidate all the empty seats into a few on the end of the row.
The answer is simple. Repeat after me, "I'm sorry but I cannot accommodate that request. You are free to use this empty seat though." It has always been my understanding that if you arrive late to the theater, you take whatever seats you can find even if that means your party is split among several rows. One of the benefits of arriving early is that you do not have to resort to that but can choose to seat yourselves as a group.
Thankfully, American theaters are finally selling tickets for specific seats so this may be less of a problem.


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Brown prods Markey on residency
Republican Sen. Scott Brown took an early swipe at potential challenger Rep. Ed Markey in a Boston radio interview on Wednesday, questioning the Massachusetts Democrat's residency ahead of a likely special election to replace Sen. John Kerry.
Asked when Brown will announce his candidacy, he said: "I'll tell you what, they're making it awfully tempting. You got Ed Markey — does he still live there?" said Brown, who has not decided whether to enter the race.
In the News Talk 96.9 interview, Brown said, "You got to check the travel records. I've come back and forth every weekend almost for three years, and I see most of the delegation. I've never seen Ed on the airplane, ever."
Markey, the favorite for the Democratic nomination, has support from Kerry and Vicki Kennedy, wife to the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, whose seat Scott held for nearly three years before losing to Sen.-elect Elizabeth Warren in November.
Markey campaign spokeswoman Giselle Barry slammed the Republican senator for the attack.
"Scott Brown has not yet announced that he is running for Senate, but he is already launching false, personal attacks from the sidelines," Barry said in a statement. "Ed Markey lives in Malden, and has lived there his entire life. He and his wife own their home in Malden. He is proud to come from and represent the values of the people of Malden. This campaign should be about what matters most to the people of Massachusetts: jobs, education, health care and the environment."


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Trophy Basket
Looking for a unique and practical item for your home?
This trophy basket might be it!
It was created by a village in Botswana that provides fair trade and living support for local community members. The products are made out of leaves from a Makalani Palm trees that are torn into long thread-like lengths and then naturally dyed. The natural dyes are gathered through a variety of plants, which are then processed by pounding in a mortar and pestle and then soak overnight in hot water. The final steps are then to boil the dyes and add the palm leaf strands in each color. Once dried, the weaving process begins, which can be done in a few different ways, but all are equally impressive, especially with the patterns and designs you find. The item can be used for simply a decoration or storage or whatever your heart desires!
Width: 8" Height: 8"
Artist: Member of the Botswana community


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by numberFire / @numberFire
numberFire is a sports analytics platform that uses algorithmic modeling to better understand sports—and they've developed the numberFire Efficiency Rating Derivative (NERD) to better evaluate every team in the NBA using offensive and defensive efficiency numbers. The nerdier, the better, according to these guys. The NERD rating for teams shows complete production on both sides of the ball. The team ranking is on a scale from 0-100, with 50 as the League average. This ranking is predictive of the team's ultimate winning percentage. For example, in the 2010-11 season, the Bulls ended with a 75.1 NERD rating—and a 75.6 win percentage. To calculate the NERD rankings we use the Four Factors, which are the factors most predictive in winning games: shooting, turnovers, rebounding, and fouls.
The NERD power rankings are powered by numberFire, a sports analytics platform that uses algorithmic modeling to better understand sports. Follow Nik Bonaddio at @numberfire, Keith Goldner at @drivebyfootball, and Zach Warren at @ZachWWarren. Check out numberFire on Facebook.