text:
[sidebar] Over the years, I have grown frustrated with restaurant menus that simply don't offer much that I consider healthy and appealing. So when I met restaurateur Sam Fox in 2007, I told him I'd love to see a new concept: a restaurant that would offer delicious food that's also good for you.
Sam was less than enthusiastic, because most "health food" restaurants served food that was boring, weird, or both. So I had him over for dinner. I made curried cauliflower soup, a vegetarian Caesar salad, salmon cakes, and a frozen dessert with cashew milk. After dinner, he seemed a little more open to the concept. We hired Michael Stebner, a classically trained French chef. And in 2008 we opened our first True Food Kitchen, in Phoenix.
More from Prevention: 5 Shady Secrets About Your Food
More From Prevention
Michael says the walk-in cooler tells the whole story. We have these vast shelves of veggies and tiny ones for meat and dairy. When he shows it to professional chefs, their jaws drop, because it looks backward to them. We may put 9 ounces of veggies and 5 ounces of animal protein on your plate. Other restaurants would do the reverse. Yet we almost immediately noticed something very rare: people eating there three, four, or five nights a week. Why? The food meets scientific criteria for health—and it tastes great.
[header = Immunity Soup]
Modern research shows that astragalus root, a Chinese herb long used to ward off colds and flu, has powerful immune-enhancing properties. The sliced, dried root is available online and in herb stores. It is nontoxic and adds a pleasant, sweet taste when simmered in soups. Shiitake mushrooms also boost immunity and have an antiviral effect. Garlic is an antibiotic; ginger, a natural anti-inflammatory agent.
1 1/2 tsp extra virgin olive oil
2 lg onions, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, smashed
1 Tbsp minced fresh ginger
4 oz shiitake mushrooms, stemmed and thinly sliced (about 2 c)
2 lg carrots, julienned
2 1/2 pieces astragalus root (about 15" total)
8 c Mushroom Stock (see recipe below)
2 Tbsp reduced-sodium tamari or low-sodium soy sauce
2 c broccoli florets
1/2 c julienned scallions
HEAT oil in large pot over medium heat. Add onions, garlic, and ginger and cook until soft and translucent, about 7 minutes. Add mushrooms, carrots, astragalus root, stock, and 2 cups water. Bring to a low boil. Reduce heat and simmer 45 minutes.
ADD tamari and adjust the seasoning with salt if needed. Add broccoli and cook until tender, about 2 minutes.
REMOVE astragalus root pieces. Ladle soup into serving bowls and garnish with scallions before serving. (Makes 12 cups.)
NUTRITION (per serving) 75 cal, 4 g pro, 13 g carb, 3 g fiber, 1.5 g fat, 0 g sat fat, 987 mg sodium
Easy Flavor Booster: Mushroom Stock
Stock used in restaurants is usually made with chicken, but we serve so many vegetarian dishes that we needed something different for our sauces and soups. Shiitake mushrooms impart a savory essence; you'll never miss the meat. Keep in the fridge for a week or in the freezer for a month.
Chop 2 ribs celery and 1 medium onion and put in large pot with 2 oz dried shiitake mushrooms and 2 1/2 quarts water.
Bring to a simmer over medium-high heat.
Reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes.
Turn off heat, cover, and let stock steep 20 minutes.
Add 1/2 cup low-sodium soy sauce.
Pour stock through fine-mesh strainer, discard solids, and let cool.
(Makes 2 quarts.)
[header = Fettuccine with Kale Pesto]
Unlike pesto made with basil, this delicious kale version doesn't lose its bright-green color. It also has more micronutrients and protective phytonutrients.
4 c stemmed chopped kale (about 1 bunch)
1/2 c grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
6 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/4 c pine nuts
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 tsp red-pepper flakes
1 lb fettuccine or pappardelle
1 c grated Parmigiano-Reggiano + more for serving
MAKE pesto: Bring large pot of water to a boil. Fill large bowl with ice cubes and cold water. Plunge kale into boiling water and cook 3 minutes. Using tongs, transfer kale to ice bath. (The cold water allows the kale to keep its bright-green color.) After 3 minutes, drain kale in colander, then squeeze it firmly to press out excess water.
PUT kale, remaining pesto ingredients, and 1 tsp salt in food processor and puree until smooth. (Makes 1 cup.) Transfer to a container, cover, and refrigerate until ready to use. (Keeps up to 3 days.)
PREPARE pasta: Bring large pot of salted water to a boil. Add fettuccine and cook until al dente, per package directions. Just before the pasta is done, remove 2 tbsp of the pasta cooking water and add it to the pesto. Add cheese and mix well.
DRAIN pasta and toss with pesto. Serve with extra cheese, if desired.
NUTRITION (per serving) 549 cal, 20 g pro, 63 g carb, 4 g fiber, 25 g fat, 6 g sat fat, 717 mg sodium
What's In a Grain?
Whole grain is perhaps the most misused term in nutrition. Ask the average person to name a whole grain food and you'll likely get the response "whole wheat bread." That's why I've tried to popularize the term true whole grain to refer to foods that are made of grains that are whole and intact or, at most, broken into a few large pieces—not ground. When grains are ground into flour, regardless of whether some of the bran and germ are included, that starch becomes a fine powder that offers no resistance to enzymatic conversion to glucose. That's why the glycemic index (GI) of most whole wheat bread, except for thick, dense bread, is not much different from that of white bread. It's vital to eat grains in their intact forms, such as brown rice, wild rice, and barley. As a lover of pasta, I was pleased to learn that it also has a lower GI, especially cooked al dente.
[header = Southwestern Bison Meatball Soup]
Using ground bison (preferably grass-fed) and turkey instead of beef or pork lowers the fat content and amps up the flavor of these meatballs, which are also tasty with pasta or in a sandwich.
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 carrot, chopped
1 lg onion, chopped
1 sm zucchini, cubed
1 c cubed jicama
3 Tbsp tomato paste
9 c chicken stock
3/4 c quinoa
1 can (28 oz) San Marzano tomatoes, pureed
1 Tbsp chili powder
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp grated orange zest
8 oz ground bison
4 oz ground turkey
3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 sm onion, minced
3 cloves garlic, smashed
2 tsp tomato paste
1/8 tsp red-pepper flakes
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp dried whole oregano leaves
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp grated orange zest
2 dashes of hot pepper sauce
1 lg egg, beaten
1/4 fresh whole wheat bread crumbs
1 tsp chopped fresh oregano
PREPARE soup: Heat oil in large pot over medium heat. Add carrot and cook 2 minutes. Add onion and cook 2 minutes. Add zucchini and jicama. Cook 2 minutes. Stir in tomato paste and cook, stirring, 2 minutes. Add next 6 ingredients and 1 1/2 tsp salt. Simmer 20 minutes.
STIR in orange zest. Season to taste. Simmer 5 minutes. Keep warm or cool quickly and refrigerate. (Makes about 16 cups.)
HEAT oven to 400°F. Line baking sheet with silicone baking mat or foil.
MAKE meatballs: Combine bison and turkey in stainless steel bowl. Heat 1 Tbsp of the oil in small skillet over medium heat. Add onion and garlic. Cook 1 minute. Stir in tomato paste, 1/4 tsp salt, and a pinch of black pepper. Cook 2 minutes. Remove pan from heat and let cool.
ADD cooled vegetables and next 9 ingredients to bowl with ground meat. Season with 1/4 tsp each salt and black pepper. Mix well with hands. Shape into about 32 walnut-size meatballs.
HEAT remaining 2 Tbsp oil in large skillet over medium-high heat. Add meatballs in batches and brown on all sides, 5 minutes. Bake on prepared sheet until cooked through, turning once, about 15 minutes.
LADLE soup into serving bowls and add about 4 meatballs to each. Garnish with shaved Manchego cheese and chopped cilantro, if desired.
NUTRITION (per serving) 314 cal, 20 g pro, 24 g carb, 5 g fiber, 16 g fat, 3.5 g sat fat, 883 mg sodium
Eating For Optimal Health: The Anti-Inflammatory Diet
We all know inflammation when we see it on our own bodies. You can't miss the redness, swelling, pain, and heat at the site of an injury or infection. Inflammation is how the body heals itself—the way it gets more immune activity to areas that need it.
But inflammation can also do damage. If it doesn't end when it should or targets healthy tissue, persistent, low-level, imperceptible inflammation can raise the risks of heart attack, stroke, cancer, and Alzheimer's disease. Preventing and containing inflammation is the best long-term strategy for optimum health. And dietary choices are the most important way to accomplish that goal. Processed foods (especially refined soybean oil, sugar, and flour) increase inflammation. By contrast, an anti-inflammatory diet emphasizes whole foods with protective properties. The natural pigments that color vegetables and fruits; the antioxidants in olive oil, tea, and chocolate; the novel compounds in ginger, turmeric, and other spices; and the special fats in oily fish all guard our tissues and organs from harmful inflammation. It's the way I eat and the way I recommend everyone eat.
From the book True Food by Andrew Weil, MD, and Sam Fox with Michael Stebner. Copyright © 2012 by Andrew Weil, MD. Reprinted by permission of Little, brown and Co., a division of Hachette book Group, New York. All rights reserved.
More from Dr. Weil: How to Be Happier for Life
Dr Weil is the founder and director of the Andrew Weil Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona and a member of Prevention's Medical Advisory Board.


text:
Even beaten, childhood cancers can shape future
Beating childhood cancer is cause for celebration. But the victory can carry a price.
The toxic chemicals of chemotherapy, the high concentrations of radiation and the energy that cancer saps from young bodies all take their toll. And sometimes, experts say, those effects don't show up until years later.
That means it's crucial to have after-care into adulthood and screenings for problems that survivors might not realize are related to their long-gone cancer.
For a long time, doctors and researchers concentrated on prolonging lives, said Dr. Laura Martin, medical director of the Frederick B. Ruymann, M.D., Survivorship Clinic at Nationwide Children's Hospital. But survivor rates for childhood cancer have reached nearly 80 percent.
"Now we ask, 'How can we limit the side effects that we know these survivors can have?'?" Martin said. "We know we are helping people live longer, so we must look at what else could be going on, what else could be happening, that still lingers as a result of what they've been through."
A recent study published in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, suggests that some of those effects might keep some survivors from good jobs or prevent them from working at all.
Using new data from the Childhood Cancer Survivor Study — an ongoing multidecade effort of the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Tennessee — researcher Anne Kirchhoff studied nearly 6,000 childhood-cancer survivors who were older than 24 to see how their physical health, mental health and critical-thinking skills affect their work life.
Past studies had found that survivors who had trouble with things such as memory, organization and staying on task — all things that can be a side effect of, particularly, head and neck radiation — were at a much-higher risk of being unemployed or underemployed.
But Kirchhoff, an investigator at the University of Utah's Huntsman Cancer Institute, found that if survivors' overall physical health is poor, they have an eightfold greater risk of having trouble finding or keeping work than healthy survivors.
"Before this, we thought cognitive skills would drive the unemployment," Kirchhoff said. "What surprised us was that the person's physical health was just as much a concern."
Specialized late-effect clinics, including the one at Children's, focus partly on what happens to a person's physical health as a result of childhood treatments. The radiation and chemotherapy can, among other things, weaken bones, damage nerves, harm organs or lead to other cancers later in life.
It can be difficult, however, to persuade childhood-cancer survivors to continue with follow-ups as adults.
"The patient reaches that landmark of being done with treatment and having beaten the disease," Kirchhoff said. "Even a once-a-year visit can be difficult because they so badly want that part of their life to be over."
That isn't so with Annie Yugovich, a 36-year-old mother of two. She was 8 when doctors diagnosed her Hodgkin's disease. She underwent six weeks of pelvic radiation. When she was a teenager, doctors thought the cancer had returned (it hadn't), and she endured two courses of chemotherapy.
When it comes to late effects, the Upper Arlington resident considers herself lucky. She and her husband own YDesign, a product-design and -development firm, and her overall health is good. Still, she never misses her annual appointments at the survivors clinic.
According to Children's Hospital, the relapse rate for childhood cancers is 25 to 30 percent. As many as 10 percent of childhood-cancer patients have a second type of cancer diagnosed later in life.
"It took me a very long time into adulthood to realize that they weren't looking for a recurrence of my Hodgkin's," Yugovich said. "They are looking for secondary effects of my treatment, things I might not even realize are happening.
"What happened to me as a child has made me realize that other things that people blow off about their health, I can't."
The take-away from this latest study is that attitudes such as Yugovich's will help survivors improve the quality of their lives, Martin said.
The survivors clinic at Children's sees about 400 patients annually. The visits involve doctors, nurse practitioners, psychologists, social workers, dentists and endocrinologists. Screenings are a large part of the care, Martin said.
Survivors who have had trouble getting or keeping a job might not even realize that whatever is hindering them might be a lingering effect of their cancer treatment. The screenings can pinpoint the problem, and the experts then can step in and find solutions. It often can be something simple.
"Maybe your bones ache, and that makes sitting more difficult," Kirchhoff said. "Well, your treatment could have led to the bone or joint issues, and the problem might be solved by adjustments to your work space.
"It really is a matter of comprehensive care and figuring things out."
Childhood cancers
• Leukemias and cancers of the brain and central nervous system account for more than half of childhood cancers.
• In 2007, approximately 10,400 children younger than 15 were diagnosed with childhood cancer in the United States.
• The childhood-cancer survivor rate is about 79 percent.
• There are about 350,000 childhood-cancer survivors nationwide.
• On average, the rate of cancer diagnoses is one to two per 10,000 children.
• Childhood-cancer survivors in poor physical health have an eightfold higher risk of unemployment as cancer survivors in good health.
Sources: American Association of Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute

subset: commoncrawl


text:
As more people turn to e-readers, which are particularly handy for travel, a variety of screen guards and cases have hit the market, as have accessories such as clip-on lights and decorative decals. We looked at a variety of them this month.
Protect the screen
Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook use electronic paper technology developed by E Ink that reduces glare, so that the text looks more like a printed book. Apple's iPad will feature a touch-screen LCD display that is better for other iPad functions like gaming and video, but could have a higher level of glare. So when buying screen protectors, look at anti-glare protection and scratch resistance, depending on the kind of screen you have.
I've always liked Boxwave's ClearTouch screen protectors, and now the company is offering screen guards for all major brands of e-book readers on its Web site for between $10 and $30. You may be able to find cheaper screen guards on sites like Amazon, with prices ranging from under $1 to around $10. But not all screen protectors are good, so make sure you read product reviews.
Protect the device
If an e-book reader breaks, you could lose all of the content that is stored on it. So, a protective case of some sort is highly recommended.
M-Edge has plastered New York City subways with ads skillfully describing what its e-book accessories can do. One such ad depicts Amazon's Kindle submerged in water with a plastic hard cover to protect it. The product, called the Guardian Case, has a watertight seal that protects the Kindle up to 1 meter deep underwater. The case covers the Kindle and comes with sealed-off navigation buttons and a keyboard, which allows users to read e-books underwater without losing functionality. The price wasn't available and the product will become available in spring 2010, the company says on its Web site.
The M-Edge store also has a number of other cases made from materials such as leather and neoprene that provide different levels of protection for devices like the iPad, Nook and Sony's eReader. Boxwave also provides cases for the Kindle, while cases for Nook can be found on its accessories Web site.
One essential add-on, especially if you are reading an e-book before going to sleep, is a light that can be clipped on to the reader. Barnes & Noble will soon offer the yet-unpriced Lyra Light for Nook. Boxwave is offering a $9.95 clip-on light for Kindle. For the multiple types of Sony eReader, M-Edge offers the $24.95 e-Luminator2 Booklight, which clips on to the back with the light popping out of the top.
GelaSkins provides close to 100 pieces of artwork for the Kindle and Nook on its Web site for $19.95 each. The artwork comes as decals that attach to the back and front, which gives the devices a unique feel and a level of scratch resistance. Art is drawn from venerable artists such as Vincent van Gogh and Japanese artist Katsushika Hosukai.
iPad accessories
The iPad is more than just an e-book reader—it is a gaming device, video player and Internet device, so it has other accessories that enable the advanced functionality. Apple plans to ship an attachable keyboard so users can type long documents, and it will come with a dock so that the iPad can function as a monitor. The company will also offer accessories including a case, camera connection kit and USB power adapter. Pricing information wasn't immediately available, but further information about these accessories can be found on Apple's Web site.


text:
The Lambda Calculus for Absolute Dummies (like myself)
If there is one highly underrated concept in philosophy today, it is computation. Why is it so important? Because computationalism is the new mechanism. For millennia, philosophers have struggled when they wanted to express or doubt that the universe can be explained in a mechanical way, because it is so difficult to explain what a machine is, and what it is not. The term computation does just this: it defines exactly what machines can do, and what not. If the universe/the mind/the brain/bunnies/God is explicable in a mechanical way, then it is a computer, and vice versa.
Unfortunately, most people outside of programming and computer science don't know exactly what computation means. Many may have heard of Turing Machines, but these things tend to do more harm than good, because they leave strong intuitions of moving wheels and tapes, instead of what it really does: embodying the nature of computation.
The Lambda Calculus does exactly the same thing, but without wheels to cloud your vision. It might look frighteningly mathematical from a distance (it has a greek letter in it, after all!), so nobody outside of academic computer science tends to look at it, but it is unbelievably easy to understand. And if you understood it, you might end up with a much better intuition of computation.
The Lambda Calculus has been invented at roughly the same time as the Turing Machine (mid-1930ies), by Alonzo Church. Don't be intimidated by the word "calculus"! It does not have any complicated formulae or operations. All it ever does is taking a line of letters (or symbols), and performing a little cut and paste operation on it. As you will see, the Lambda Calculus can compute everything that can be computed, just with a very simple cut and paste.
A line of symbols is called an expression. It might look like this:
(λx.xy) (ab)
We only have the following symbols:
- Single letters (like
a, b, c, d…), which are called variables. An expression can be a single letter, or several letters in a row. More generally, we can write any two or more expressions together to get another expression.
- Parentheses:
( ). Parentheses can be used to indicate that some part of an expression belongs together (just as the braces around this part of the sentence make it belong together). Where we don't have parentheses, we look at expressions simply from left to right.
- The greek letter
λ(pronounced, of course: Lambda), and the dot:
λand the dot, we can write functions. A function starts always with the
λand a variable, followed by a dot, and then comes an expression. The
λdoes not have any complicated meaning: it just says that a function starts here. The
.part of a function is called its head, and the remainder (the expression) is called the body.
Q: What is the value or meaning of a variable?
A: None. Variables do not stand for anything. They are just empty names. Even the name is unimportant. The only thing that matters is: when two variables have the same name, they are the same. You can rename variables all you want, without changing the expression.
Q: What does a function calculate?
A: Nothing, really. It is just a kind of expression, with a head and a body. It just stands there. The only thing we can do with it is to resolve it.
Q: Why "
A: An accident, perhaps. Initially, Alonzo Church just drew a little roof to mark the head variable, like this:
(ŷ xy) ab. In the typed manuscript, he put the roof in front of the head, so it became
(⋀y.xy) ab. The typesetter turned it into
(λy.xy) ab, which is visually close enough.
Slightly more formally, we can say: All variables are lambda terms (a valid expression in the lambda calculus). If
x and
y are lambda terms, then
(x y) is a lambda term, and
(λx.y) is a lambda term. From these three rules, we can construct all valid expressions. If we also agree to read all lambda expressions from left to right, we can omit a few of the parenthesis:
(λy.xy) ab is the simplified version of
(((λy.(x y)) a) b).
Cut & Paste
Functions can be resolved if they are followed by another expression. The resolution works by taking the variable mentioned in the head, and replacing all of its occurrences within the body with the expression after the function. We cut the expression after the function, and paste it into the body, in every place indicated by the head. Having done that, we throw the head away, because it has served its purpose: telling us which variable to replace.
The resolution of functions is the only thing we can ever do in the Lambda Calculus. Once we have gotten rid of all the lambdas, or if there are no more expressions after the remaining functions, we cannot replace anything any more. We can go home now.
Q: Can functions contain other functions?
A: Absolutely. Functions are expressions, and expressions can contain other expressions, so functions can be parts of the bodies of other functions, or be part of the replacing expression. In fact, we have expressions like
λx.λy.xzyso often that we like to abbreviate them as
λxy.xzy. This means that we will try to replace the first variable in the head (
x) with the first expression after the body (
xzy), the second variable (
y) with the next one after that, and so on.
The variables mentioned in the head (the one tagged for replacement) are called bound variables. Unmentioned variables are free variables. Because functions can be part of other functions, a variable may be both bound and free in the same expression.
Q: I find this a little bit confusing.
A: Think of it like this: Imagine you are editing a very minimalist gossip newspaper. Everything the newspaper writes about, ever, are names (we don't have articles, verbs, pronouns–just names). People don't want to be recognized in your paper, and you anonymize them by replacing all names with arbitrary pseudonyms. So, the names do not mean anything, but if two names in the same text are the same, they refer to the same person.
All text in the newspaper is arranged in text blocks. A text block is ultimately made up of nothing but names, and it may have a headline, but does not have to. Headlines are printed in bold face, and consist of a single name. All occurrences of that name within the text belonging to the headline are famous, that is, they refer to that headline person. All names that are not headline material are ordinary. Text blocks may contain other text blocks, including their headings (which work like sub-headings, or sub-sub-headings and so on). Thus, a name may be ordinary in one sub-text, but in another, it may be made famous by the headline of that sub-text.
This is exactly like the Lambda Calculus: names are variables, text blocks are expressions, and headlines are function heads, only instead of being printed in bold, they are surrounded by a
λ and a dot, so we know where they begin and end.
The resolution operation is a simple find/replace operation. We find all occurrences of the bound name in a headlined text block, and replace each of them with the following text block. (However, note that replacing names by whole paragraphs etc. rarely makes sense for real newspapers.)
By the way: we might run into a little problem if the replacing text contains names that are also mentioned in the original text that we merge it into. All names are anonymized pseudonyms, but we could have used the same pseudonym for different people in different texts. If we combine these texts now, we must make sure that different people are referred to by different pseudonyms, so perhaps we have to rename some of them.
Alternatively, we might insist that no two text blocks use the same names. (In other words: either use different variables in unrelated expressions, or make sure you do not forget to rename them during the replace operation as necessary.)
Q: What happens if a variable is bound in the head of a function, but does not occur in the body?
A: The variable is bound, of course. But during replacement, the replacing expression will simply disappear, as there are no places where it could be inserted. That is ok, really: it simplifies our result, so what is not to like?
With all the technicalities out of the way (yay! that was easy, wasn't it?), lets see what nice tricks we can do with the Lambda Calculus. You might argue that computation should be able to do things with numbers, so let us build some. Mathematicians often like to start with natural numbers, and then go from there, by defining all sorts of operations that give us other the other number types.
The easiest way of defining all natural numbers at once works by first defining the first one (which is zero), and a successor operation. By using the successor operation on any natural number, we get another, bigger natural number, and so we can derive them all by counting forward.
Let us express zero as:
0 :⇔ λ sz.z
(Remember: this is shorthand for
λs.λz.z, and it means exactly the same thing as
λab.b, or
λqx.x.) This expression has an interesting property: when resolved, it will throw away the first expression after it, and keep the second one intact. The bound variable
s will be replaced by nothing (it does not occur in the body), and the variable
z by itself.
Similary, we can use:
1 = λ sz.s(z)
2 = λ sz.s(s(z))
3 = λ sz.s(s(s(z)))
4 = λ sz.s(s(s(s(z))))
In other words, our number notation works by nesting the expression
) around our
z as often as the number says (which also means: if we resolve the number n, it will replicate the following expression n times). We can also say: we apply
s n times to
A nice successor function is
S :⇔ λ abc.b(abc)
Let us calculate the successor of 0 with it:
S0 = (λ abc.b(abc)) (λ sz.z)
= λ bc.b((λ sz.z) bc)
= λ bc.b((λ z.z) c)
= λ bc.b(c)
This last expression cannot be simplified any further (no more expressions follow the function body), and, surprise!–
λ bc.b(c) = λ sz.s(z) = 1
In other words, the successor function, when applied to our notation of
0, will yield the notation for
1. Can we do it again?
S1 = (λ abc.b(abc)) (λ sz.s(z))
= λ bc.b((λ sz.s(z)) bc)
= λ bc.b((λ z.b(z)) c)
= λ bc.b(b(c))
and lo! and behold:
λ bc.b(b(c)) = λ sz.s(s(z)) = 2
As we see, our successor function does exactly what it is supposed to do: starting from
0, it can produce any natural number. It does this by bracing one more
) part around the body of any natural number supplied to it. Ah, the magical powers of cut and paste!
Q: This is a very strange way of writing numbers…
A: Actually, from the point of view of mathematics, this is not stranger than using the characters 1, 2, 3… and so on, or Roman literals (I, II, III, IV, V…), or Chinese ones (一, 二, 三, 四, 五, …), or binary notation (1, 10, 11, 100, 101…). There is no true way of writing numbers, there are only conventions. Natural numbers do not care about how we spell them.
Adding numbers can be understood as automating the successor function. If we want to add
5 to the number
3, this can be interpreted as using the successor function five times on
3. (Or the other way around, because 3+5 = 5+3.)
Fortunately, our way of writing numbers has this automation already built in. As we have pointed out above, evaluating a number n means that we replicate the expression after it n times. If the expression after it is the successor function, it will be spelled out n times, and if we resolve it, then the successor function will be applied n times to the number expression after it.
3+5 = 3S5 = (λ sz.s(s(s(z)))) (λ abc.b(abc)) (λ xy.x(x(x(x(x(y))))))
If you feel playful, you may try and see that it resolves properly to 8:
λ xy.x(x(x(x(x(x(x(x(y)))))))).
A similarly clever function yields multiplication:
MULTIPLY :⇔ λ abc.a(bc)
This function takes two arguments, for instance like this:
2 x 3 = MULTIPLY 2 3 :⇔ (λ abc.a(bc)) (λ sz.s(s(z))) (λ xy.x(x(x(y))))
= λ c.(λ sz.s(s(z)))((λ xy.x(x(x(y))))c)
= λ cz.((λ xy.x(x(x(y))))c)(((λ xy.x(x(x(y))))c)(z))
= λ cz.(λ y.c(c(c(y)))) (c(c(c(z))))
= λ cz.c(c(c(c(c(c(z)))))) = 6
Why does this work? If we look closely, we see that our multiplication function takes its two arguments (
2 and
3) and arranges them like this:
MULTIPLY 2 3 = (λ abc.a(bc)) 2 3 = λ c.2(3c)
Resolving this gives us
λ cz.(3c)(3c(z)). This is equivalent to applying the second
c three times to the
z: c(c(c(z))), and applying the first
c three times to that result:
c(c(c( c(c(c(z))) ))). Together with the function head
λ cz, it conveniently results in
6 (i.e., six times the application of the first argument to the second).
The best way to get rid of any remaining bewilderment will be if you take a piece of paper and a pen and try a few multiplications yourself. You will find that you quickly get the hang of it.
Counting Backwards
So far, we have only be going from smaller numbers to larger ones. For subtraction, we might want to have a predecessor operation, too, so we can count backwards. How can we build one
According to our earlier definition, any number is the successor of another one, with the exception of 0, which we just spell out (as
λ sz.z). We can use this definition and describe a predecessor as the number that will give us the originally given number by applying the successor operation.
In common Mathematicalese, we could say:
y = P(x) ⇔ x = S(y) – that is,
y is the predecessor of
x if and only if
x is the successor of
y. Unfortunately, this is only a specification, and not a computation. A specification tells us what conditions the predecessor function must fulfill, but not necessarily how this function works. The Lambda Calculus only does computation, that is, we must tell it exactly and in perfect detail how we can get from
x to
One possible way of doing that works by starting with 0, and applying the successor function
x times:
x S 0 = x (λ abc.b(abc)) (λ sz.z)
The resulting expression will be the numeric value of
x. If we could find a way to remember the state of the expression at the
x–1st succession (one before the last application of
)), we would have the expression for
x's predecessor.
Let us do this by using a pair of numbers. Instead of
x, let us use
(y, y-1). Then define a successor function that derives
(y+1, y) from the pair. We start with setting
y at 0, and repeat the application of the successor function
x times, after which the pair will have the value
(x, x-1). Now select the second half of the pair, and we are done. Here we go: Let us write a pair
(a, b) as
λp.pab. The smallest possible pair is
λp.p00, spelled out as
λp.p (λ sz.z) (λuv.v). We can form the successor pair by grabbing the first member, a, and creating a new pair
(a+1, a) from it. The first member of a pair
λp.pab is given by applying it to to
(λp.p a b) (λxy.x)
= (λxy.x) a b
= (λy.a) b
= a
(As we see,
λxy.x preserves the first expression after it, but erases the second. Likewise, the other member of the pair will be selected by
λxy.y.) The new pair
(a+1, a) can be obtained from a by using the successor function
S = λ abc.b(abc) on
a, and stuffing
S a and
a into a new pair.
NEXT-PAIR pair :⇔ (λ pair z.z S (pair λxy.x) pair λxy.x) = (a+1, a)
(Don't be confused by my use of
λ pair. This simply means that the pair
(a, a-1) is going to be inserted in the body of the Lambda function.)
Let us now apply this function n times to the starting pair
(0, 0), and select the second half of the pair, which will be our final result. You may have noticed that I just cheated a little:
(0, 0) is not totally the same as
(0, –1), so it is not a sparkling example of a pair
(a, a-1). However, we have no negative numbers to work with yet, and for our helper function
NEXT-PAIR, it does not make any difference, because it ignores the second half of the pair anyway. Repeated application of
NEXT-PAIR on
(0, 0) will give us
(1, 0),
(2, 1),
(3, 2),
(4, 3) and so on.
P n :⇔ (λn.n NEXT-PAIR(0, 0)) λxy.y
Using the predecessor function
P, we can indeed count backwards within the natural numbers. Note that once we reach 0, we will stay at 0, which is probably a good thing. I will leave the definition of negative numbers, division, powers and imaginary numbers as an exercise to the reader. (Well, in seriousness: we could easily fill many pages with the recreation of the standard inventory of set and number theory, but won't add very much to our basic understanding.)
Q: I can see how we can do subtraction: by applying the predecessor operation multiple times. But every time, we have to go back to 0 and produce all intermediate numbers with the successor operation, just to do a single predecessor operation. Isn't this very inefficient?
A: Who cares! The Lambda Calculus only claims to effectively compute everything that can be computed–but it does not promise to do it efficiently. (Also, it is a mathematical idea, so it can run at infinite speed in some ephemeral mathematical universe.)
The Lambda Calculus is not restricted to calculating numbers. It can just as easily compute logical expressions. Remember the two little pair picker functions? We can use these as the definitions of true and false:
TRUE :⇔ λ xy.x
FALSE :⇔ λ xy.y
Boolean Logic uses a few operators, like
OR and
NOT to determine the value of logical expressions. We can pull this off with the Lambda Calculus, too. For instance, we can negate a
TRUE into a
FALSE, and a
FALSE into a
TRUE with
NOT :⇔ λ a.a (λ bc.c) (λ de.d)
How does it work? If we write something like
NOT TRUE (spelled out as
(λ a.a (λ bc.c) (λ de.d)) λ xy.x), the initial
λ a.a will pull the
TRUE in front of the expression
(λ bc.c) (λ de.d) =
FALSE TRUE. Remember that
TRUE is the same function we used to pick the first member of a pair, so
TRUE FALSE TRUE is the same as: pick the first one of the pair
Here are
AND and
OR; if you like, find out why they work:
AND :⇔ λ ab.ab (λ xy.y)
OR :⇔ λ ab.a (λ xy.x) b
We cannot just compute logical values from other logical values. The following function tells us if a given value is equal to 0. If it is, we get
TRUE, and
FALSE otherwise. Such a test is very useful when writing programs.
IS-ZERO :⇔ λ a.a FALSE NOT FALSE
If we apply
IS-ZERO to any value n, we get
IS-ZERO n = n FALSE NOT FALSE
This will apply the function
FALSE n times to the function
NOT, and the result to the remaining
FALSE. The each time, the first
λ xy.y) erases the expression directly after it. Eventually (after n times) it gets to
NOT FALSE, erases the
NOT and returns the
FALSE. Thus, the result of
IS-ZERO n is always
FALSE. (If you find this confusing, try an example.)
The only exception is when n = 0. If we apply 0 to
FALSE NOT FALSE, it will erase the first expression, and only
TRUE remains:
= (λ sz.z) FALSE NOT FALSE
Now that we know if a number is 0, we can find out if one number is greater than or equal to (≥) another:
GREATER-OR-EQUAL n m :⇔ λ n m. IS-ZERO(n P m)
In other words, we perform n times the predecessor function on m. If n is exactly the same number as m, the result will be 0, and if n is greater than m, the result will still be 0. Only if m is greater than n, the result will be non-zero.
Using ≥, we can also determine equality: n = m, if n ≥ m and m ≥ n. We can express this directly now:
EQUAL n m :⇔ λ n m. AND (GREATER-OR-EQUAL(n m) GREATER-OR-EQUAL(m n))
= λ n m. AND (IS-ZERO(n P m) IS-ZERO(m P n))
As you see, the Lambda Calculus is a (minimalist) programming language. As it must be, since every possible computer program can ultimately be mapped into a Lambda function. In fact, the venerable and powerful programming language Lisp has been built directly on the idea of the Lambda calculus, mainly by tweaking the syntax in useful ways, formalizing the creation of function macros and adding a few practical data types.
Our little introduction is loosely based on Raúl Rojas' excellent Tutorial Introduction to the Lambda Calculus, which also covers recursion and is overall slightly more technical, since it addresses students of Computer Science. Also, using your new-found understanding, you might now go and battle your way through more advanced introductions, such as the one given on Wikipedia.
Everything that is computable
The Lambda Calculus cannot do all of mathematics, because many mathematical problems have no solution, and many mathematical formulas cannot be computed (which is not the same thing). So, which one is more powerful, a Turing Machine or the Lambda Calculus? As it turns out, it is always possible to map the inscriptions of the tape of a Turing Machine into an a Lambda expression (that also includes information on the state and position of the read/write head), and construct a Lambda function that changes this expression with exactly the same result as the corresponding Turing Machine.
Conversely, it is possible to map any Lambda expression onto a tape, and construct a Turing Machine that performs all the necessary find/replace operations on it. Thus, it can be proven that Lambda Calculus and Turing Machine have exactly the same power. In the same way, it can be shown that every other computer we can (or could) construct has the same power, too. This includes personal computers, super-computers, quantum computers and even iPhones. The only differences are in practically realized memory sizes, and the number of steps necessary to reach a result. The insight that all computers have fundamentally the same power is called the "Church Turing Thesis".
The Lambda Calculus can also be used to compute neural networks with arbitrary accuracy, by expressing the strengths of the connections between individual neurons, and the activation values of the neurons as numbers, and by calculating the spreading of activation through the network in very small time steps. Technically, every realizable system that manipulates information is computable, and every computable system that can express the Lambda Calculus (or something else that can express the Lambda Calculus) is a computer.


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One morning in November 2011, trucks were roaring down the Pan-American Highway, carrying loads of ore from mines in the Atacama Desert to the port town of Caldera, Chile. The trucks screamed past a young goateed American paleontologist named Nicholas Pyenson, who was standing at the side of the road, gazing at a 250-meter-long strip of sandstone that construction workers had cleared in preparation for building new lanes.
Pyenson, the curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian Institution, spends much of his time searching for fossils of whales. For over a year his Chilean colleague Mario Suárez had been nagging him to come to see whale fossils that had been exposed as construction workers widened the highway. Pyenson envisioned a few skull fragments wedged in a road cut—a very low priority. After completing his work at another fossil site in Chile, Pyenson finally agreed to go see the remains. And standing by the highway, he realized why Suárez had been so insistent. The road crew had uncovered not just a few whale bones but an entire whale graveyard. At least 40 prehistoric whales, some 30 feet long, were spread out before him. It would turn out to be the densest collection of fossil whales discovered anywhere in the world.
Whales may be some of the most remarkable animals in the history of life—they evolved, after all, from deerlike mammals on land and became top predators of the sea. But their fossils can be a nightmare for paleontologists. "I wouldn't wish a whale fossil on anyone," Pyenson says. "Especially not 40."
Finding out what killed these creatures would require a huge amount of time and resources. A team of paleontologists would need to document each fossil while it was still in the ground in order to gather clues to the environment in which the whales had died. But there simply was no time to undertake an on-site study of their placement because the graveyard had been found in the middle of a construction project. Pyenson got to the site, within the town limits of Caldera, with the clock already ticking. There was only a month left in the federally mandated time allotted to researchers seeking to mine fossils and relics from the construction site.
More From Popular Mechanics
Pyenson found a solution to his quandary—one that offers a glimpse into the future of paleontology. He flew home to Washington, D.C., and returned to Chile two weeks later with Vincent Rossi and Adam Metallo, the two young men who run the Smithsonian's 3D-digitization project. Instead of digging tools and plaster, the pair took laser scanners and cameras to the site.
The laser cowboys, as Pyenson dubbed them during the Caldera work, set up a tent over the fossils and worked for six days straight, 20 hours a day, to capture billions of pixels of data. Back at the Smithsonian, Pyenson and his colleagues used the data to re-create the site on their computers, exploring the virtual graveyard to figure out how the animals died.
And they're able to share this knowledge in a new way—by printing high-quality replicas of the fossils. In a few months the Smithsonian is slated to unveil a 30-foot-long skeleton of one of the Caldera whales in the National Museum of Natural History. "It's the largest 3D print of its kind in the world," Pyenson says.
The display is a public reminder of how the ongoing revolution in digitization is changing disciplines in and out of science. The ability to preserve detailed schematic information has always been important—think of sketches and blueprints—but modern scanning technology can capture exact details for later fabrication and analysis. Today, using scanning technology, engineers in different parts of the world can collaborate in real time on ever-changing vehicle designs, customers can create parts on demand from supplier schematics, and surgeons can make detailed pre-op models of individual patients.
For the Smithsonian, laser scans provide a means to share the institution's immense collection with the public. In 2013 the laser cowboys launched an ambitious campaign to catalog high-resolution scans of items throughout the Smithsonian's museums—including some of Pyenson's whale fossils—and make them navigable online. "You just say, it's all free," Pyenson says. "Here's the digital avatar. Researchers, 10-year-old kids, artists—have at it."
A crew of specialists use laser technology to investigate a rare fossil find in Chile. (Photograph by Smithsonian Institution)
Scanning and 3D printing in paleontology build on 350 years of visualization tradition. In the 1660s anatomist Nicolas Steno astonished Europe's natural philosophers by publishing images of triangular rocks known as tongue stones, which he depicted next to the teeth of sharks. Anyone looking at the engravings could see that the tongue stones were the mineralized remains of long-dead sharks.
Later generations of paleontologists took advantage of every advance in visual technology to display their fossils in better ways—from copper-plate engravings to color photographs. But these two-dimensional views of fossils left out more than they left in. To study a species, paleontologists had to travel from museum to museum to examine fossils in person.
In the late 1990s Tim Rowe, a paleontologist at the University of Texas, pioneered a new way to see fossils—with the help of X-rays. Rowe began to put fossils in CT scanners, which could capture their 3D structures. Rowe's scanners could snoop inside as well, mapping brain cases, sinuses, and other hidden anatomical features.
More than 150 paleontologists have shipped fossils to Rowe for scanning, and he's supplied them with pictures of hundreds of slices of the material, which can be converted into 3D animations. Rowe also puts the data on his DigiMorph website, where anyone can download it. Paleontologists can analyze scans for their research or print out replicas of fossils so that they can have the satisfaction of turning the bones over in their hands.
Once paleontologists create 3D scans of fossils, they can use them to reconstruct an animal's life history. Larry Witmer and his colleagues at Ohio University, for example, use scans to get a better idea of how dinosaurs moved. Recently they investigated the huge predator Allosaurus to understand how it ate its prey.
Witmer and his team started their study by scanning a 5-foot-long Allosaurus skull and the neck bones from a 150-million-year-old fossil. They then identified the crests and knobs on the bones where muscles and tendons were once attached. Based on studies of living dinosaur relatives, such as alligators and birds, they could estimate the size and shape of those pieces of soft tissue. And with engineering software they could then calculate the forces Allosaurus was able to generate, and how it moved.
The scientists used this information to create an animation of Allosaurus moving its head in different directions. They found that the animal had an anatomy profoundly different from that of other predatory dinosaurs. A large muscle that ran from its neck to its head allowed it to generate tremendous upward force. Tyrannosaurus rex, by contrast, generated side-to-side forces, indicating that it shook its head while gripping its prey.
In Witmer's animation, Allosaurus moves in a very different way. It looks more like a falcon digging into its prey. To feed, a falcon contracts the same type of neck muscle, yanking up its beak to rip a bite of flesh. Given that Allosaurus and other ground-running dinosaurs were related to birds—and even had feathers—the similarity probably isn't coincidental. But it's still surreal to imagine a 25-foot-long, ground-running dinosaur tugging, falcon-like, at its victim's body.
Our own evolution is also becoming clearer, thanks to 3D visualization. It's rare for scientists to find an intact fossil of an ancient relative of ours. Instead, human ancestors often leave behind mineralized bones that have shattered into dozens or hundreds of fragments. Early generations of paleontologists spent years piecing together these hominid jigsaw puzzles by hand. Now they can scan the fragments and manipulate them in the virtual space of a computer. By applying complex geometric equations to the shapes, scientists can build more accurate reconstructions of the original bones, helping them tackle all sorts of questions about human evolution, from how our ancestors stood on two legs to how they split apart from Neanderthals.
While a single fossil can tell paleontologists a lot, no animal lived on its own. Paleontologists can look at how fossils formed to get clues to the web of life that supported them millions of years ago. And when Pyenson examined the scan of the Caldera whale site, he learned just how powerful 3D visualization is for resurrecting entire ecosystems.
Inside the long, low tent that Pyenson and his colleagues pitched over the fossils, Rossi and Metallo set up their equipment, taking photographs across the entire site with a Canon 5D. Then, using a handheld laser, they maneuvered around individual fossils. Both of these approaches created vast clouds of data points, which Rossi and Metallo stored on computers.
Back at the Smithsonian the team began reconstructing the site from their data. First, they processed high-resolution topographical scans of the individual fossils. By patching these together with photographs, they created a comprehensive 3D representation of the site. In places, they zoomed in on details smaller than a millimeter.
The data revealed remains of an abundance of other big animals, such as aquatic sloths, swordfish, and seals. "Here's a scientific question: How did all these things get here?" Pyenson asks.
Pyenson called in laser image experts to produce scans of Calder's whale fossils. (Photograph by Smithsonian Institution)
The more Pyenson studied the fossils, the more they seemed like victims of a massacre—making Pyenson himself a kind of paleontological version of a forensic criminologist. The data from the site allowed him to explore the crime scene. "If we didn't do what we did, we would have just gotten the bag of bones from the murder case," Pyenson says. "Having the CSI-type 3D preservation can tell you so much more."
Pyenson and his colleagues started to gather clues. They observed that the skeletons had fossilized intact, meaning that they hadn't been ripped apart by predators. Among the fossils were three whales of the same species huddled together, possibly a family that had died at once. Pyenson also noticed that the fossils formed four separate layers arranged on top of each other in a stack 30 feet high. That meant a lot of big animals had died in the same place, again and again, over a span of about 14,000 years between 6 million and 9 million years ago. The final clue was not among the fossils but sprinkled on top of them. Pyenson and his colleagues observed that the fossils were coated with a mat of algae. "The number of explanations for that is vanishingly small," Pyenson says. "It comes down to red tides."
From time to time, the conditions in the ocean line up such that the populations of some species of algae explode. The algae produce toxins that can cause deadly seizures in fish and marine mammals. There are almost no reports of whales dying in red tides, but the few that do exist paint a picture that looks a lot like the 3D digitization of the Caldera site. Red tides also tend to strike the same places again and again, which could account for the layers of fossils. "The explanation works because it shows how many large individuals can be killed in the same way," Pyenson says.
Before 3D digitization, it would have been impossible for Pyenson to come to this conclusion so quickly after first laying eyes on the Caldera site. Bones from a site can be preserved in temporary plaster jackets—and at Caldera, some were—but it could be decades before they are prepared for analysis. In the meantime, using scans, there is still much more for scientists to explore. For example, the whale replica that is to be mounted on the wall of the Smithsonian may be a new species. "There are going to be future dissertations on these whales," Pyenson says.
That's a profound change from the way paleontology has been done up till now. A graduate student who wanted to write a dissertation on the Caldera whales would have had to travel to look at the skeletons. Pyenson has now offered future generations of scientists a way to examine bones online. And if they need to hold a bone in their hands to understand the anatomy of a species, they can print out a nearly perfect copy.
But for scientists to gain that access, the Smithsonian will need to make the data available through portals that allow for easy navigation. "It changes the game for museums," Pyenson says. "I think we need to archive digital data."
Rossi and Metallo, the laser cowboys, are transforming the Smithsonian's collection into 3D avatars. They've created a browser plug-in that allows anyone with an Internet connection to zoom in on a Smithsonian object—fossil or otherwise—down to submillimeter scale.
The technology promises to be a boon to many fields of study. Art experts will be able to inspect the Smithsonian's ancient sculptures, while historians will be able to read inscriptions on artifacts. And as part of a pilot project, Rossi and Metallo used lasers to scan a fragile toothed whale skull Pyenson has been studying, as well as the woolly mammoth skeleton on display in the National Museum of Natural History.
While Pyenson can see great things ahead for paleontology, what gets him most excited is using 3D visualization to take the Smithsonian to the public in a more intimate way—to "make the walls transparent," as he puts it. He can't predict what will happen when the fossils get into the public's hands—to explore, to print out, to experience. "That's the unforeseen consequence," Pyenson says. "And that's going to be awesome."


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Signifcance of COX-2, VEGF expression and microvessel density for antiangiogenic treatment of glioblastoma multiforme
Bedeutung der COX-II und VEGF-Expression sowie der Mikrogefäßdichte für einen antiangiogenen Therapieansatz bei Patienten mit Glioblastoma multiforme
Search Medline for
|April 23, 2004
Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is the prototype of an angio-genic tumour. To evaluate the effects of an antiangiogenic treatment by a metronomic scheduling of Temozolomide (TMZ) and the COX-2 inhibitor Rofecoxib, expression of COX-2, VEGF and micro-vessel densitiy was evaluated and correlated with the therapeutic outcome.
Patients with GBM (n=13) were operated followed by radiotherapy and a continuous low dose therapy of 10 mg/m2 TMZ and 25 mg Rofecoxib/day. Tumour tissue was examined immunohistochemically for COX-2, VEGF and CD34 by monoclonal antibodies. Microvessel densitiy (MVD) was determined by morphometry. Mean follow-up was 14.4 ± 5.8 months. Therapy response was monitored by MR imaging and neurological examination.
The mean time to progression of 10.6 ± 4.3 months in the response group was significantly higher compared to 3.8 ± 1.3 months in the non-responder group. The mean MVD was significantly higher in the responder group than in the non-responder group (5.43 ± 2.2% vs. 3.0 ± 1.5%). Tumours with a MVD <3.5% showed an earlier progress than tumours with a MVD >3.5%. Expression of COX-2 was higher in tumours with a high MVD than in tumours with a low MVD. Also, COX-2 showed a significantly stronger expression in responders than in non-responders. VEGF also exhibited a stronger expression in tumours with a high MVD.
Adjuvant metronomic chemotherapy with TMZ and Rofecoxib shows a promising effect in highly vascularized glioblastomas. Expression of COX-2, VEGF and MVD seem to be important factors in predicting a successful antiangiogenic adjuvant treatment.


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That's right, it's my week!
I basically grew up at the beach in country South Australia and I've always loved following footprints in the wet ripples at low tide.
When I look at this image I'm transported back there – the smell of the ocean, the birds calling, the waves crashing, the children splashing. Then I think of the fish and chips, the sunscreen, the joy.
When someone says to me, what is your happy place I'm there. Sitting on the sand, the sun on my face, the warm sand between my toes, free.
And so, my inspiration led to this square, which you can download the instructions for here.
I call it Footprints in the Sand; I hope you enjoy it.
I've kept it pretty light hearted throughout this CAL so far, and I haven't really touched on how much this project has impacted my life.
Last year, after months of pain and the overwhelming feeling that I was going to die, I was diagnosed with burnout. I was exhausted, sick and miserable, but hadn't realised until my GP told me that all my intense physical symptoms were caused by stress.
Needless to say, I collapsed. Just fell in a heap and couldn't deal with anything. It was all I could do to carry out basic functions, and the only solace I could find was in crochet. I spent days, weeks really, hiding from the world crocheting.
And then Wink died.
Her death hit me harder than I ever could have imagined. She was one of my crochet heroes and my friend. The weeks and months that followed were very difficult for me; trying to recover, terrified of the slippery slope. It took a long time, but as we emerged from winter, I could feel the light warming my face and my heart again. Being given the opportunity to contribute to this tribute is truly an honour and I'm so proud to be able to participate.
To help you make this square this week I have a few tips that will ensure you enjoy the design.
Below is a short photo tutorial of the Seagull Stitch itself, and Esther from It's All in a Nutshell has created a fantastic video in English, Dutch and for left-handers like me.
When creating the Seagull Stitch, do make sure you pull your loops all the way up to be level with the working row, otherwise your square will shrink in height.
If you do find that your gauge is off height-wise, no problem, just add or remove two rows to add or take away a footprint.
I used a 4mm hook for this square, and if I compare this to the other squares that I've made so far (still on week three), I've used either a 4 or a 5mm hook. So, you can probably use the same hook you used on Esther's square in week one.
This is also a bit of a "rest week." After the challenging designs of the last few weeks, this one will give you a bit of a break so you can just sit, count and crochet.
I hope you have fun, I'll be popping in and out of the Facebook groups over the next week to see how you are all going and to answer questions. For the Dutch language group, click here and for the global, English speaking group go here.
To help you with your gauge and tension, visit the Tips and Tricks document at the CAL home page, plus a great video, again by Esther here.
As always, do make sure you share your squares on social media so we can all see and comment on them. Use hashtag #scheepjesCAL2016 or#lastdanceonthebeach all over the internet and I'll be sure to find them on Insta or Twitter or Facebook. Don't forget to tag me – @miss__neriss.
Good luck, and enjoy!


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Ninety-three per cent of the country's internet population use WhatsApp, according to the TechCrunch website, with many young and poor Brazilians taking advantage of its free text message and internet telephone service.
Within hours of the suspension being coming into force, the hashtag #Nessas48HorasEuVou (#Inthese48hoursIwill) began trending on Twitter, with Brazilians joking about all the things they would do during the suspension."
Source: BBC News, 17th December 2015


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Access: DavidChaseTaylor.com
David Chase Taylor is an American journalist, researcher, teacher, peace activist and the editor and chief of Truther.org.
Ripped from the news headlines, David Chase Taylor's legal fight for political asylum in Switzerland is possibly the most daring and compelling case ever assembled. Involving the Super Bowl, nuclear terrorism and the Obama administration, Taylor's case is unique, shocking and definitely one of a kind.
The Nuclear Bible
On February 1, 2011, Julian Assange of Wikileaks revealed to the world via leaked classified diplomatic documents that Al-Qaida was on the brink of using a nuclear bomb and that the West was on the verge of a "Nuclear 9/11". What the diplomatic documents failed to mention was actual target, date and location of the impending nuclear terror attack.
Published 4 days prior on January 28, 2011, David Chase Taylor's free ebook, entitled The Nuclear Bible, specifically named Super Bowl XLV on February 6, 2011, in Dallas, Texas, as the target, date and location of the impending nuclear terror attack. The Nuclear Bible, which took Taylor over a year to research and write, exposed the nuclear terror plot using over 1,000 mainsteam and alternative news articles.
After publishing The Nuclear Bible, Taylor conducted multiple radio interviews and phoned numerous intelligence and law enforcement agencies throughout America to personally ensure that no acts of terror were conducted on his fellow American citizens. Overwhelming direct and circumstantial evidence has now surfaced in the aftermath of the failed Super Bowl XLV nuclear terror plot which unequivocally shows that Taylor's actions did indeed stop, or at least postpone, a state-sponsored nuclear terror attack upon America.
The Focus of Intelligence Services
Based on the sudden interest in David Chase Taylor by U.S. intelligence services immediately after the release of The Nuclear Bible, Taylor, anticipating retaliation and fearing for his life, applied for political asylum in Switzerland on March 8, 2011.
Evidence that foreign intelligence services were interested in Taylor first emerged in the form of a February 1, 2011, phone conversation between David Chase Taylor and Officer Olivier Ruembeli of the Swiss Federal Criminal Police. During the phone conversation, Taylor was informed by Officer Ruembeli that an immediate meeting in Bern, Switzerland, was wanted based on the demands of U.S. intelligence services.
This demand was later reiterated in a February 3, 2011, email whereby Officer Ruembeli informed Taylor that "U.S. intelligence services" have "demands that we [Switzerland] act."Despite repeated verbal and written attempts by Taylor to inform Officer Ruembeli that he was not interested in meeting with anybody, Officer Ruembeli continued to contact Taylor in hopes of gaining a meeting to satisfy the intelligence demands.
Most recently, U.S. Army intelligence officer James Wesley Rawles lashed out at Taylor stating, "Taylor's request for asylum in Switzerland has apparently been ignored because it is groundless and unsubstantiated. His visa status in Switzerland is tenuous, at best." Cleary, U.S. and NATO intelligence agents hoping that Taylor is not issued political asylum in Switzerland so they can eventually have their way with him.
Citizen or Refugee?
Since first applying for political asylum in Switzerland on March 8, 2011, David Chase Taylor has been repeatedly denied legal expediency and answers in respect to his political asylum case. The main legal question pending in Taylor's case today is whether or not Taylor will be treated as a refugee or as a citizen.
Currently, Taylor is being told that there is no legal differentiation between a journalist who is both an EU and American citizen residing in Switzerland with a valid Swiss "B" residence permit, and that of a refugee from a 3rd world country who has entered Switzerland illegally.
Should Taylor subject himself to the refugee asylum process, which totally disregards his E.U., U.S., and Swiss "B" residence permit [Valid until 2015], his current status as a legal resident of Switzerland will ultimately be jeopardized. Essentially, the Swiss government is asking Taylor to give up ALL of his legal rights in order to initiate the asylum process.
I. Upon surrendering his U.S. and German passport, as is required in the asylum application process under Swiss asylum/refugee law [Asylum Act 142.31], Taylor's current Swiss "B" residence permit [Valid until 2015] would automatically be invalidated based on the fact that he no longer has in his possession the German passport which the Swiss "B" residence permit is based on.
II. According to Swiss asylum/refugee law [Asylum Act 142.31],upon submitting an application for political asylum, Taylor would subsequently be issued a Swiss "N" residence permit and his current Swiss "B" residence permit [Valid until 2015] would become void.
III. Should Taylor's application for political asylum be denied, as is always possible, at best he would have to reapply for a new Swiss "B" residence permit and there is no guarantee he would receive another. At worst, he could be immediately deported out of Switzerland as is clearly stated in Swiss refugee/asylum law [Asylum Act 142.31].
The Legal Question
Clearly, Taylor's life is in real danger. He obviously cannot risk subjecting himself to inapplicable refugee laws, the Swiss "N" residence permit and the chance of not receiving another Swiss "B" residence permit. Anything that would put Taylor at risk of potential deportation from Switzerland is a bold step in the wrong direction.
Therefore, legal clarification is needed in Taylor's case as to whether he is in fact bound by the refugee/asylum law. The following question been repeatedly posed to Taylor's case handler, Ms. Nelly Davoli, as well as an attorney Mr. Jans Lietz at the Migration Office of the Canton of Zürich:
Is Taylor's case for political asylum governed under Swiss refugee/asylum law [Asylum Act 142.31], and if not, what legal statute(s) is Taylor's for case for political asylum governed under?
To date, both Davoli and Lietz have failed to address the legal question posed by Taylor. Is Taylor being denied his right to political asylum under E.U. and U.S. citizen? And if not, why is a country as legally sound as Switzerland enforcing blanket laws in which EU and American citizens are subjugated to the same legal policies and procedures as refugees from 3rd world countries?
As of April 3, 2012, all emails and letters sent in respect to this most basic legal questions have failed to be answered by Migration Office of the Canton of Zürich and their legal department.
Switzerland's Reputation at Stake
For centuries, people who have been persecuted for political reasons have sought asylum in Switzerland. The reason for this lies not only in Switzerland's geographical position but in their unique state of political neutrality. According to Switzerland's asylum policy: "Any person who is threatened or persecuted in their home country in accordance with criteria recognised under international law will be granted asylum in Switzerland".
Given the history of Switzerland and their stated asylum policy, one would think that the obvious interest in David Chase Taylor by intelligence services along with the mounting evidence in respect to The Nuclear Bible and Super Bowl XLV would suffice in his case for political asylum, especially considering the torture, assassination, illegal rendition and secret prisons that U.S. and NATO are affiliated with.
If David Chase Taylor is ever forced to leave Switzerland there is little doubt that:
1. Taylor may be TORTURED in retaliation for his journalistic endeavors
2. Taylor may be SET-UP, CONVICTED, & IMPRISONED for crimes not committed
3. Taylor may be EXTRADITED to a secret prison
4. Taylor may be ASSASSINATED in order to silence his case
5. Taylor may be KIDNAPPED (Illegal Rendition)
Right now, the government of Switzerland has an opportunity to help the world's most endangered journalist. There is no question why David Chase Taylor is in need of political asylum, only why he is currently being denied due process under Swiss law. How Switzerland ultimately ends up handling the case of Taylor will have historical implications and will likely dictate the fate of political asylum on an international level.
Access: DavidChaseTaylor.com


text:
- Click here for an updated story: IDs Released For Two Killed, Four Injured In Plane Crash Into House Near Area Airport
New details have emerged after two people were killed and four others injured when a twin-engine plane with three people aboard crashed into a two-story home near a public-access airport in the area, igniting a fire in the house.
First reports of the incident in Dutchess County came at about 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 17.
The plane, identified by the FAA as a Cessna 303, departed from Orange County Airport and stopped to refuel at Sky Acres, located in the Town of Union Vale.
It was leaving Sky Acres en route to Republic Airport, located in East Farmingdale in Nassau County, when it crashed into a house on South Smith Road, about a mile south of the airport, just east of the Taconic State Parkway.
Earlier reports had said the plane had departed from Republic Airport.
The plane experienced some sort of engine trouble before it struck the side of the house, according to authorities. The crash is being investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board.
One of three men in the plane, the pilot, was killed, state police said. The two passengers suffered non-life threatening injuries, according to police.
A person in the house where a father and two daughters were reportedly at home at the time of the crash died from injuries. Another person in the home, one of the daughters, managed to escape and was uninjured.
Hundreds of emergency responders rushed to the scene, with fire trucks, ambulances and state and local police vehicles throughout the area, and numerous road closures in the area Saturday afternoon and evening.
"We pray for all those involved in the plane crash," Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro said in a statement.
Molinaro said Dutchess County Department of Emergency Response, the Union Vale Fire Department, along with multiple other agencies remain on the scene and "we are grateful to all of our local first responders here at the site and those providing support."
"Many of these men and women expected to be in Red Hook celebrating the annual tradition of the Dutchess County Volunteer Firemen's Association County Convention Parade," Molinaro said. "Instead, they once again answer the call of duty. We pray for their safety as they respond to this critical event."
This continues to be a developing story. Check back to Daily Voice for updates.
Click here to follow Daily Voice Mount Pleasant and receive free news updates.


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Elizabeth and I teamed up again to work on our audio pieces for Comm Lab this week. Although we did record audio from the streets of NY together for last week's assignment, we decided not to use any of it and instead decided to choose a pressing socio-political theme of the current economic "crisis." I took photos and recorded audio from an anti-bailout protest on Wall Street last month. We were particularly attracted to some snippets from a speech given by the charismatic looking gentleman pictured above. We also used samples of other protesters chanting slogans, and put everything over a beat that I composed. In some amazing coincidence, almost all of our samples fit over the beats at 109 BPM. Only one sample of chanting protesters had to be slightly stretched in Audacity to fit the tempo.
The danceable audio anger that resulted from our musical collaborations reminds me a little bit of the Muppets doing N.W.A. And for further musical explorations relating to pigs, I suggest NIN's Piggy and March of the Pigs.
Elizabeth describes more of our process in her blog:
We used several applications to make the piece. We cut up the audio in Fission, a commercial software for simple cutting. It is really usable. The beats were composed in iDrum…. We used Audacity to change the length of some of the audio pieces so that they all had the same beat. Then we assembled the song in Garage Band.


text:
WELLS, Maine — The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is participating in a groundbreaking study of shorebird migration patterns, using cutting-edge technology to track the birds and record their data.
The technology includes lightweight radio transmitters, known as nano tags, attached to shorebirds. The tags transmit signals picked up by a network of radio towers that span the Northeast coast of the United States and into Canada. Two of the towers are in the Rachel Carson Wildlife Refuge in Wells.
Kate O'Brien, a USFWS wildlife biologist, is leading the project in Wells. She said the technology is what makes this project different.
"Less than 5 percent of [traditionally] banded birds are ever [re]caught," O'Brien said. "That's why nano tagging is good. In terms of cost, they're not that expensive. The science is moving so quickly. It's fascinating what people can learn about birds."
In addition to documenting migration patterns, the project collects information about the captured birds' health status. This offers an indication of the condition of the birds' habitat, a key consideration given ongoing coastal development, particularly in southern Maine.
The tags, produced by the Lotek company, are extremely lightweight and can transmit on a single frequency. Each transmission tower has three antennas, each pointing in a different direction to determine the bird's location based on the strength of the signal received.
O'Brien said each of the 30 birds she plans to tag this summer can be individually identified when their tags send out signals near one of the towers.
"They run the same frequency but each uses a different burst rate," she said. "It's like an individual pulse. We record the pulse rate and send in the data."
Data goes to a central repository managed by Dr. Philip Taylor at Acadia University in Nova Scotia. Taylor is a pioneer in the use of this technology, particularly radio towers used to gather transmitted data.
O'Brien said the Wells activity is the latest part of a larger project to study migration patterns of semipalmated sandpipers. That project, which began in 2013, is co-directed by Dr. Rebecca Holberton of UMaine and Lindsay Tudor, shorebird biologist for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. The project initially focused on Down East Maine and expanded into southern Maine this year.
"We got a grant for tracking sandpipers," said Holberton, who added the project grew from a similar one that tracked inland birds, like songbirds. "We put transmitters on them last year. There was no way to track [shorebird] movements in the region. We connected the need to track shorebirds with the technology developed to track other birds. This cascaded from doing land-based bird studies into understanding shore bird movements."
Holberton noted Dr. Taylor's role in the overall project. "The tower system is part of a huge network," she said. "Taylor is good at restructuring technology and using it for smaller birds at a much lower cost. The Canadians had already been using the technology on shore birds there."
Taylor's data repository is central to the process, Holberton explained.
"We turn on each tag [we use], record it and send the recording to [Taylor's lab]," she said "They create a library of signature burst rates. Any tower anywhere will recognize that burst rate. The information gets sent to Taylor and redistributed to the particular project it belongs to."
This project is one of several studying other bird and bat species being conducted by a broad collaboration of public and private organizations in the United States and Canada. One of those organizations is the Biodiversity Research Institute in Gorham. BRI's Kevin Regan described his group's role in the Maine project.
"Our team from Biodiversity Research Institute is to capture semipalmated sandpipers using specially designed nets," Regan said. "Once captured, we fit the birds with an individually numbered metal leg band issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service bird banding laboratory, color bands that indicate the state and capture site, a small green leg flag with a unique alpha numeric code, and a small radio transmitter used by the refuge biologist to track the movement of the bird."
O'Brien's team has tagged 19 birds so far, with plans to tag 11 more. "We'll probably go out in September, when the juveniles have had a chance to grow," she said.
The project is just the beginning, Holberton said. "Last year was the first time for shorebird tracking in Maine," she said. "This is the first year in Wells. It's the first year with more than one site in Maine. We want to continue and expand to more sites in Maine and more species."


text: Every week I create a cartoon making fun of something involving politics, world affairs, or something moderately related to something else. In general, they are meant to make the world more bearable by showing that it is a silly place and that there is always something to laugh about. Unfortunately, they are usually serious things, so you will only laugh until you realize it has to do with something like who your next president will be. Anyway, enjoy.


text:
No one said anything, but Sull could tell they were all a little jealous when he lost his arms and legs. The arms went first, the left one during a bath and the right one a few days later, while he was being fed. Then both legs went at once, which was rare, and Sull was proud of it. He was sitting in a marketing meeting with Glenda and Farook when suddenly his legs quivered and then turned into a slightly viscous liquid that ran out of his trousers like toothpaste from a tube. The liquid ran down the drain under the table with a soft slurping sound.
Renny thought of Sull's smug face while he was doing his pull-ups and squats and planks. Sull's smug face when they wheeled him into the office the next morning in a new suit that bundled up his hips and torso like wrapping paper, just his little bald head peeping out at the top. "Think how much I'll be able to get done," Sull had said, winking through his little gold-rimmed glasses, "without having to worry about grabbing things and walking places, or what to do with my hands while I talk."
The whole business—not just Sull but the whole business—bothered Renny so much he was seeing a therapist. The therapist was just a head connected to an arm by a thin strip of tissue (the head asked questions, the arm took notes), but he had a good rank on the ValueIndex. "What is it about . . . efficiency that bothers you so much?" he'd asked during their first session.
"That's their word, not mine. Some of it I think it comes from my mother. She was a history teacher." The therapist let the corners of his mouth twitch down, slightly. Renny paused for a moment and cleared his throat. "A history teacher, an athlete, a musician . . . I could go on. That's not the point though. The point is I grew up with a certain awareness of history, and how people used to live. You know there used to be a quality called being well-rounded. It was a compliment for someone who knew how to do many different things, not just one thing."
"Many different things," said the therapist, "but not very well."
And of course, what do you know, when Renny went up against Sull for the next promotion, it was Sull who won out. "Don't take it so hard," said Jesse at Sull's promotion party, "you never stood a chance." She leaned closer. She had a bony face and tiny, attractive eyes. "I've been thinking," she whispered, "about giving up math."
"Math?" murmured Renny, not really listening. He was staring at the dimly lit ceiling of the bar.
"Not all of it, I've just stopped doing my higher function review sessions every day. It's exhausting, you finish work and then you have to go do quadratic equations. If I skip them I have more energy, and plus they keep increasing the tax on biomatter, so the less I cost the company . . . I haven't done my reviews in more than a month now, and my contribution-to-cost ratio is going up."
Renny's eyes had come down from the ceiling and focused on her. "How does it feel?" he asked.
Jesse shrugged and sipped on her drink. "You notice it more than you think you will. I mean, I don't do complex math problems here in marketing, but for example, the other day I had to do an analysis on how often we wanted to run the green cherry banner ad on the Valex. I could feel myself reaching for something that wasn't there. You know, like when you haven't noticed you've reached the top of the stairs." A sudden gout of clear liquid flowed down from her left nostril and onto the collar of her shirt. "Damn," she said softly.
"Is that how it drains?" asked Renny.
The next day he came to work early, went into his office, and locked the door. He was Senior Manager, Mid-Atlantic Marketing, for Cherry Bomb International, distributor of fine cherries. Cherries of all colors, flavors, textures, and nutritive values. A giant poster of their all-time bestseller, the Silver Ghost, had been tacked to the rear wall, next to a small window that looked out on nothing. Renny kept the lights off and opened a drawer. He put his hand in and groped around until he found his feeling board. He ran his fingers over it and it woke up. The flat surface became elaborately ridged. "Three circles interlocking enclosed by a square," said Renny.
"Co-rrect," groaned the feeling board's ancient vocal circuits. Renny would have bought a new one, but he couldn't afford it. The best models couldn't be had for any price: You had to have connections. After he was done with the feeling board he turned on the lights and spent a half-hour reading a quarterly journal of analytic philosophy, then another half-hour reading in German. He looked up when he heard a knock on the door.
A slender young man with all of his parts was standing on the other side of the office's glass wall. The man waved tentatively and Renny shoved his book under a stack of papers, as if it was one of those dirty magazines showing giant penises sticking themselves into giant vaginas. Renny got up and opened the door a crack. "Can I help you?"
"I'm Platt. I work one floor up, in Strategy. Look, I know this might sound strange, but I'm an admirer of yours. I also come to work early, and sometimes when I'm down here getting a coffee—your machine makes better coffee than ours—I see you doing your exercises. You really put a lot of effort into it."
Renny nodded slowly. "Thank you, I guess. I'm not trying to show off here or anything, just taking care of business. I didn't notice anyone else here."
Platt gave a funny smile that was too wide. He was wearing a diamond choker that lit up when he smiled. "There are a few of us who come early. I think it's pretty common, you know, for people who want to stay in shape."
Renny didn't answer. He'd spent a lot of time thinking how stupid the majority of people were, and on the few occasions he met someone who agreed with him it made him feel uneasy. "Well, thanks for saying hello," he said, and began to back away into his office.
"One thing I wanted to mention," said Platt, leaning forward.
"We have a kind of club, for people who work in the building and who want to stay whole. Called the Dawn Brigade. We meet every middle-week-day, right around, you know, dawn, on the roof. It'd be great if you could come by."
Renny said something polite and closed the office door. He didn't go that week, or the week after. When he told his therapist the man said, "It could be a good decision not to go, Renny. Sometimes, being around people who share our obsessions only makes those obsessions stronger, and harder to control."
Renny thought of Sull's smug face while he ran laps around his apartment, and while he copied drawings out of an old art book, and while he looked at his rank on the Valex and saw it was down another ten places.
At dawn the roof was cold and windswept. Renny saw a group of young people huddled by the side of a giant AC unit and walked over to them. Only Platt was like Renny, still with all his parts. The rest all had the usual little things missing here and there: a finger, an eye, or something else below the skin or in the skull. Renny was surprised to see Jesse there too. "I was panicking at how big an effect losing my advanced math was having," she told him, "so I tried to go back to doing my reviews, but I couldn't. You know how some people say that if you lose something you can get it back sometimes, but it didn't work for me, at least. There's just an empty hole in my head where that stuff used to be." She laughed as if she was gathering herself together. "Now my new resolution is to keep as much as myself as I can for as long as I can."
Platt called the meeting to order and introduced Renny. "To start us off today, I was thinking—as someone who's been doing this a lot longer than any of us, maybe you could share some tips."
Renny stared at them. "Well," he began, "one thing I do is, I always keep a little metal disk in my pocket—you can get something like this at a hardware store—and when I have a few minutes to spare I do tricks with it using my hands and fingers, like this, see?" He showed them. "And every night before I go to bed I make sure to memorize a string of a hundred random numbers. Then I test myself in the morning."
"What do you do," said a short man with dyed teeth, "about the soft skills, like empathy?"
Renny nodded. "Those are hard. Novels can be good, or going to bars and making yourself listen to strangers—you know, imagine yourself living their lives, and that kind of thing."
After the meeting, Jesse came up to him and asked if she could run with him sometimes. Her own apartment was too small to run in, and she didn't want to try to do it outside and get a charge for inefficient activity. Soon she was coming over every evening after work. Renny also began to see more of Platt. Now, most mornings, the younger man would stop by his office, bringing a mug of coffee for Renny and chatting for a few minutes before heading back upstairs. Renny didn't enjoy these visits, but he felt his ground for objecting was so weak that he couldn't bring himself to avoid them.
"If I'm not putting too fine a point on it," he told the therapist, "he thinks he's better than me. He thinks I'm a nice guy and all, and he admires me for keeping in shape. But to him, if I had any balls I'd be out on the front lines, protesting the Biomatter Act or something. Firebombing clinics. Hell if I know."
The therapist tapped on his desk with his pen, which meant he wanted you to think he was thinking. "So for this man Platt," he said finally, "there can be no separation between the personal and the political?" The head smiled. "Maybe what you find distasteful is just your old nemesis, efficiency, presenting itself to you in another form. After all, if you think you have found the correct way to live, which is more efficient, from the perspective of utility: perfecting yourself or perfecting society?"
When Renny got home Jesse was waiting for him, and they ran their small laps together, barefoot to keep the neighbors from complaining. Afterwards Renny did his strength routine while Jesse sat at his desk and checked the Valex. Sometimes it worried him that she liked to rest after running, instead of working out with him. He didn't want her to lose the strength in her core muscles, like the young people you sometimes saw creeping down the street, curled up like worms over their walkers. When he thought about her like that he felt tender. "Who's got the first rank in marketing?" he asked, holding a plank.
"It's still that Korean guy, Jee-sun Choi. Lately all my tagged categories are pretty static. Quela Allred is still best in personal charm, Drexel Phrase is still best in strength, Marne Smith is still best in engineering."
Renny let his plank go and lay down on the floor, catching his breath. A drone drifted in the window, sniffed for biomatter to collect, and drifted back out. "It would be interesting," said Renny finally, "if there was one big rank, in everything. Just, where does everyone rank in every category, averaged together."
Jesse gave him a measuring look. "I don't think I'd like that," she said. "It's enough of a pisser knowing how bad you are at one particular thing."
A week later they would have slept together, but Jesse had lost the ability in her twenties, she told him. Renny tried to do what he imagined a gentle, sensitive person would do. Later he said, "I want to take you to meet my mother."
That first-day-not-working they walked uptown to a small private clinic. This was where a good portion of Renny's salary went. A doctor who was two giant hands and a head with a swollen cranium guided them down the hall to a wooden door with a small window set into it. Through the window they could see a cozy, sunlit room; a small bed stood against the wall and a head was lying there, attached to a feeding bag. It had no mouth and only slits for a nose, and no ears. Small swirls of salt-and-pepper hair swept out from under a snug pink bonnet, and beneath them were two thin eyebrows and two large, blue eyes. A pair of mechanical hands was holding a book up for the eyes to see. As Renny and Jesse watched, the eyes blinked once, and with a loud whir the hands deftly flipped the page.
Shortly afterwards Renny had his last conversation with Platt. Platt's visits had been getting less frequent, but he still stopped by Renny's office in the morning once a week or so. "Did you see the top news story on the Valex?" he asked.
"No," said Renny, "tell me about it."
Platt leaned against the wall. "A massive exposé on misappropriation of the biomatter," he said. "Three members of the RulingBody were caught on tape with clones of themselves."
Renny shrugged. "Maybe they'll get recycled, but then whoever replaces them will be just as corrupt, and nothing will change."
Platt sighed and flopped into a chair. "If everyone has that attitude, then nothing can really change," he said. "They tell us that for maximum efficiency all biomatter must go where it's needed most. So what's so efficient about duplicating some leech on the RulingBody?" He looked around. "How long have you been in this office?" he asked.
"About five, six years."
Platt nodded. "Five or six years without a promotion. How many times have they passed you over?"
"A few."
Platt ran a hand through his hair. "See, that's the problem. I bet the guys who got promoted over you were all missing something."
Renny nodded, thinking of Sull, fat and wormy like a grub.
"The problem is, the only people who get ahead now are the people missing arms and mouths, people who can't see color, or taste anything anymore. That's who our heroes are these days."
Later, lying in bed next to Jesse, trying to feel her stomach muscles for soft spots without her noticing, Renny told her about how upset Platt had seemed. She turned toward him. "Do you know about his family?"
"What about them?"
"They're rich, is all. Everything that's so hard for us, he has help with. He's got private tutors to make sure he reads books in foreign languages. He even has a machine that runs electricity through his muscles while he sleeps, to keep them fit. He's an interesting guy, but I think he's got a complex."
He closed his eyes. "I've been thinking a lot about how he takes all of these issues so personally. Maybe I used to be that way, and I just got ground down. Do you think I'm avoiding some kind of duty?"
She shook her head. "No."
A few days later Renny came back from lunch to find police tape blocking the entrance to the office. He went to a café, and saw footage from the office security camera playing on the Valex. It was a breaking news story, the first ranking news story of the hour. A group of workers were shown, standing near each other, probably gossiping. Text underneath them read: "Cherry Bomb International Internal Footage." At the edge of the screen a man appeared moving quickly, awkwardly holding his jacket shut. He stumbled, caught his balance, and just as the other workers were turning toward him, he threw something: a large plastic bundle. It struck a woman in the chest and burst, splashing thick fluid all over her and the surrounding workers. Text flashed: "Man attacks co-workers with raw biomatter." In the footage a man was lying in the center of a pool of fluid, trying to stand up as it sensed him and seeped into him. Tendons stood out on his neck. From the stump where his left arm used to be a new arm was growing, flapping and writhing. Platt was standing over the man, screaming at him. A voice spoke over the footage "Shown here is the man police have identified as the perpetrator, Frederick Platt. Witnesses report that that he was yelling 'Why are you struggling? Why are you screaming? Don't you want to be whole?'" The footage cut to a reporter.
Renny left the café without drinking his coffee. The police picked him up at his apartment that night.
They brought Jesse in the next day. At first she was left alone in her cell, if you could call it a cell. It was more a like a well-furnished studio apartment, with a comfortable bed, a bookshelf, and a small breakfast table. There was no clock to keep track of time, so she had no idea how long she had been waiting when two men, dressed in powder blue policing jumpsuits, let themselves in. Each was carrying a folding chair, and they opened them and sat down without speaking. Each had a face with only a single feature. The first had enormous drooping ears that looked like runnels of candle wax going down the sides of his head. The other had giant bulging eyes. She told them exactly what she knew and how she knew it. There was no point in holding back—either she was innocent or she was guilty, depending on how they wanted to frame it. The man with the bulging eyes asked the questions, and the man with the drooping ears took notes. After each question Ears would pass his notes to Eyes, who would read them and nod before asking the next item on the list.
Then there was another long period of solitude. Jesse began to feel anxious. It was hard to stay active in the small comfortable room. It might have been easier in a spartan cell.
The next person who visited her looked just as whole as Renny. He was slender and elegant, with a head of closed-cropped black hair and a crooked, flattened nose that whistled when he breathed in. Jesse had never seen anyone with a deformity before, and she couldn't help staring, taking in the way the small changes to the lines of his nose affected the expression and feel of his face.
"Have you heard what your boyfriend is up to?" the man asked.
"You mean Renny? No," said Jesse. "I don't get any news in here."
The man pulled a rolled up screen out of his pocket and flattened it out on the table. It was showing the Valex news rankings. Number four was Renny. He was on strike. "Oh no," whispered Jesse. The video showed Renny sitting in complete stillness at the center of a cell that looked like hers. He must have been sitting like that for days, because parts of his hands and legs were missing. Jesse shook her head. "He's so stupid."
The man shrugged. "I don't agree. Most action is waste. Just like all that running you two were doing. Yes, I read your statement. Do you know that running like that you burn off enough calories to feed a young child for a day? And for what? Just vanity. At least with no action, most of the biomatter eventually gets recycled."
She went and sat on the soft bed. "You look pretty fucking fit," she said.
The man began bouncing on the balls of his feet and shadowboxing. "I have to be," he said, "in case I need to fight bad guys."
He came back later. This time Renny was the first ranked news story, and she could see fluid running off of him like sweat on a hot day. Big parts of him weren't falling off at once. He was just shrinking. He was collapsing into himself like rotten ice. Jesse looked at his eyes and tried to judge how much of his brain was left. Did he even know why he was doing what he was doing anymore? But the will remained. "Why don't you release him? Release us?" Jesse asked the man.
"We were going to release both of you. Then he started this nonsense. We don't think you knew anything about what Platt was going to do. You're just someone with wrong-headed beliefs."
"Can't you at least stop them from filming him?"
The man made a pained expression. "Look at this jail cell," he said. "If we are a security state, and I'm not saying we're not, we're definitely one on the down slope."
Jesse held back from crying. When the man left she did her push-ups, squats, and planks. She made a model of the room in her head and practiced rotating it. She didn't have willpower like Renny. But she was strong, too. He could only think in extremes. That was also a kind of brokenness.
Finally the time came for her to be let go. The man came back and led her through a twisting series of hallways. "I guess this means Renny is finished," she said.
The man nodded and smiled. "He's sent his matter back to help someone who can make better use of it."
When they reached the door leading outside Jesse stopped and looked him up and down. "Don't you worry that you're holding yourself back, looking like that? Aren't you worried about your next promotion?"
The man smiled. "No," he said, "the rules work differently past a certain point." Then he guided her through the door, which locked behind her with a dry click.
Outside it was cold and crisp. Jesse found herself standing on the sidewalk of an empty city street. The only other figure was a well-dressed man, walking slowly toward her. His hand clasped a gold-headed cane. When he passed her a single eye looked up at her wetly from the junction of his arm and his leg.
© 2013 by Benjamin Roy Lambert.
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