text:
Harnad, S. (1994) Levels of Functional Equivalence in Reverse Bioengineering: The Darwinian Turing Test for Artificial Life. Artificial Life 1(3): (in press)
Both Artificial Life and Artificial Mind are branches of what Dennett has called "reverse engineering": Ordinary engineering attempts to build systems to meet certain functional specifications, reverse bioengineering attempts to understand how systems that have already been built by the Blind Watchmaker work. Computational modelling (virtual life) can capture the formal principles of life, perhaps predict and explain it completely, but it can no more be alive than a virtual forest fire can be hot. In itself, a computational model is just an ungrounded symbol system; no matter how closely it matches the properties of what is being modelled, it matches them only formally, with the mediation of an interpretation. Synthetic life is not open to this objection, but it is still an open question how close a functional equivalence is needed in order to capture life. Close enough to fool the Blind Watchmaker is probably close enough, but would that require molecular indistinguishability, and if so, do we really need to go that far?
Computationalism, evolution, functionalism, reverse engineering, robotics, symbol grounding, synthetic life, virtual life, Turing test.
In Harnad (1993a) I argued that there was a fundamental difference between virtual and synthetic life, and that whereas there is no reason to doubt that a synthetic system could really be alive, there IS reason to doubt that a virtual one could be. For the purposes of this inaugural issue of "Artificial Life" , I will first recapitulate the argument against virtual life (so as to elicit future discussion in these pages) and then I will consider some obstacles to synthetic life.
First: What is it to be "really alive"? I'm certainly not going to be able to answer this question here, but I can suggest one thing it's not : It's not a matter of satisfying a definition, at least not at this time, for such a definition would have to be preceded by a true theory of life, which we do not yet have. It's also not a matter of arbitrary stipulation, because some things, like plants and animals, are indeed alive, and others, like stones and carbon atoms, are not. Nor, by the same token, is everything alive, or nothing alive (unless the future theory of life turns out to reveal that there is nothing unique to the things we call living that distinguishes them from the things we call nonliving). On the other hand, the intuition we have that there is something it is like to be alive -- the animism that I suggested was lurking in vitalism (Harnad 1993a) -- may be wrong. And it would be a good thing too, if it turned out to be wrong, for otherwise the problem of life would inherit the mind/body problem (Nagel 1974, 1986). More about this shortly.
Here's a quick heuristic criterion for what's really alive (though it certainly doesn't represent a necessary or sufficient condition): Chances are that whatever could slip by the Blind Watchmaker across evolutionary generations undetected is alive (Harnad 1993c). What I mean is that whatever living creatures are, they are what has successfully passed through the dynamic Darwinian filter that has shaped the biosphere. So if there are candidates that can commingle among the living indistinguishably (to evolution, if not to some other clever but artificial gadget we might use to single out imposters), then it would be rather arbitrary to deny they were alive. Or rather, lacking a theory of life, we'd be hard-put to say what it was that they weren't, if they were indeed not alive, though adaptively indistinguishable from things that were alive.
This already suggests that life must have something to do with functional properties: the functional properties we call adaptive, even though we don't yet know what those are. We don't know, but the Blind Watchmaker presumably knows; or rather, whatever it is that He cannot Know can't be essential to life. Let me be more concrete: If there were an autonomous, synthetic species (or a synthetic subset of a natural species) whose individuals were either man-made or machine-made -- which pretty well exhausts the options for "synthetic" vs. "natural," I should think -- yet could eat and be eaten by natural species, and could survive and reproduce amongst them, then someone might have a basis for saying that these synthetic creatures were not natural, but not for saying that they were not alive, surely.
We might have the intuition that those ecologically indistinguishable synthetic creatures differed from living ones in some essential way, but without a theory of life we could not say what that difference might be. Indeed, if it turned out that all natural life was without exception based on left-handed proteins and that these synthetic creatures were made of right-handed proteins (which in reality would block any viable prey/predator relation, but let's set that aside for now as if it were possible), even that would fail to provide a basis for denying that they were alive. So invariant correlates of natural life do not rule out synthetic life.
The animism lurking in our intuitions about life does suggest something else that might be missing in these synthetic creatures, namely, a mind, someone at home in there, actually being alive (Harnad 1982b). At best, however, this would make them mindless Zombies, but not lifeless ones -- unless of course mind and life do swing together, in which case we would fall back into the mind/body problem, or, more specifically, its other incarnation, the "other minds" problem (Harnad 1991). For the Blind Watchmaker is no more a mind-reader than we are; hence neither He nor we could ever know whether or not a creature was a Zombie (since the Zombie is functionally indistinguishable from its mindful counterpart). So if life and mind swing together, the question of what life is is empirically undecidable, and a synthetic candidate fares no better or worse than a functionally equivalent natural one.
All this has been about synthetic life, however, and synthetic life of a highly life-like order: capable of interacting adaptively with the biosphere. What about virtual life? Virtual life, let's not mince words, is computational life, and computation is the manipulation of formal symbols based on rules that operate on the shapes of those symbols. Not just any manipulations, to be sure; the ones of interest are the ones that can be systematically interpreted: as numerical calculations, as logical deductions, as chess moves, answers to questions, solutions to problems. What is critical to computation is that even though the symbols are systematically interpretable as meaning something (numbers, propositions, chess positions), their shape is arbitrary with respect to their meaning, and it is only on these arbitrary shapes that the rules operate. Hence computation is purely syntactic; what is manipulated is symbolic code. The code is interpretable by us as meaning something, but that meaning is not "in" the symbol system any more than the meaning of the words in a book is in the book. The meaning is in the heads of the interpreters and users of the symbol system.
This is not to minimize the significance and power of formal symbol manipulation, for that power is in fact the power of computation as it has been formalized by the fathers of modern computational theory (Turing, Goedel, Church, von Neumann; see Boolos & Jeffrey 1980). According to the Church-Turing Thesis, computation, in the sense of formal symbol manipulation, captures what it is that a mathematician means intuitively by a mechanical procedure. So far, every formalization of this notion has turned out to be equivalent. A natural generalization of the Church-Turing Thesis to the physical world is that every physically realizable system is formally equivalent to a symbol system (at least in the case of discrete physical systems, and to as close an approximation as one wishes in the case of continuous physical systems).
What all this means is that formal symbol manipulation is no mean matter. It covers a vast territory, both mathematical and physical. The only point at which it runs into some difficulty is when it is proposed as a candidate for what is going on in the mind of the interpreter or the user of the symbol system. It is when we thus suppose that cognition itself is computation that we run into a problem of infinite regress that I have dubbed "the symbol grounding problem" (Harnad 1990a). For whatever it might be that is really going on in my head when I think, my thoughts certainly don't mean what they mean merely because they are interpretable as so meaning by you or anyone else. Unlike the words in a static book or even the code dynamically implemented in a computer, my thoughts mean what they mean autonomously, independently of any external interpretation that can be or is made of them. The meanings in a pure symbol system, in contrast, are ungrounded, as are the meanings of the symbols in a Chinese/Chinese dictionary, symbols that, be they ever so systematically interpretable, are useless to someone who does not already know Chinese, for all one can do with such a dictionary is to pass systematically from one arbitrary, meaningless symbol to another: Systematically interpretable to a Chinese speaker, but intrinsically meaningless in itself, the symbol system neither contains nor leads to what it is interpretable as meaning. The meaning must be projected onto it from without.
The arbitrariness of the shapes of the symbols -- the shape of the code -- and the fact that computational algorithms, the rules for manipulating these meaningless symbols, can be described completely independently of their physical implementation, was exploited by the philosopher John Searle (1980) in his celebrated "Chinese Room Argument" against the hypothesis that cognition is just computation:
Computation is implementation-independent; the details of its physical realization are irrelevant. Every implementation of the same formal symbol system is performing the same computation and hence must have every purely computational property that the symbol system has. Searle accordingly pointed out that the hypothesis that cognition is just computation can only be sustained at the cost of being prepared to believe that a computer program that can pass the Turing Test (Turing 1964) in Chinese -- i.e. correspond for a lifetime as a pen-pal indistinguishably from a real pen pal -- would understand Chinese even though Searle, implementing exactly the same program, would not. The source of the illusion on which Searle had put his finger was the systematic interpretability of the symbol system itself: Given that the symbols can bear the weight of a systematic interpretation, it is very hard for us to resist the seductiveness of the interpretation itself, once it is projected onto the system. More specifically, once we see that the symbols are interpretable as meaningful messages from a pen pal, it is hard to see one's way out of the hermeneutic hall of mirrors this creates, in which the interpretation keeps sustaining and confirming itself over and over: We keep seeing the reflected light of the interpretation that we ourselves have projected onto the system (Harnad 1990b, c).
Searle simply reminded us that in reality all we have in this case is a systematically interpretable set of symbols. We would not mistake a computer simulation of, say, a forest-fire -- i.e., a virtual forest fire: a set of symbols and symbol manipulations that were systematically interpretable as trees, burning -- for a real forest fire because, among other things, the symbol system would lack one of the essential properties of a real forest fire: heat. Even a full-blown virtual-world simulation of a forest-fire, one that used transducers to simulate the sight, heat, sound and smell of a forest fire would not be called a forest fire (once the true source of the stimulation was made known to us), because "computer-generated forest-fire stimuli to human senses" on the one hand and "forest fires" on the other are clearly not the same thing. In the case of the "virtual pen pal," in contrast, there was nothing to curb the fantasies awakened by the systematic interpretability, so we were prepared to believe that there was really someone home in the (implemented) symbol system, understanding us. It required Searle, as yet another physical implementation of the same symbol system, to point out that this too was all done with mirrors, and that there was no one in there understanding Chinese in either case.
Between the purely symbolic forest fire and the one supplemented by "virtual-world" transducers traducing our senses, however, are important differences that are pertinent to the difference between the virtual and the synthetic (Harnad 1989). The hypothesis that Searle attacked, stated in full, would be: cognition is only computation, i.e. just implementation-independent symbol manipulation. Transduction, of course, is not just implementation-independent symbol manipulation. In this case, however, when the transduction is being driven by a symbol system and used only to fool our senses, the objection is the same: A real forest fire is clearly not the same as either (1) a pure symbol system systematically interpretable as if it were a forest fire (a virtual forest fire), or (2) a symbol system driving transducers in such a way as to give the sensory impression of a forest fire (a virtual-world forest fire). A real forest fire is something that happens to real trees, in the real woods. Although a real forest fire may be contained, so as not to incinerate the whole earth, there is in a real sense no barrier between it and the rest of the real world. There is something essentially interactive ("nonadiabatic") about it, "situated" as it is, in the real world of which it is a part. A real forest fire is not, in short, an ungrounded symbol system, whereas that is precisely what a virtual forest fire is.
Now any implementation of a virtual forest fire -- whether a purely symbolic one, consisting of interpretable code alone, or a hybrid "virtual-worlds" implementation, consisting of a symbol system plus sensorimotor transducers that generate the illusion of a forest fire to the human senses -- is of course also a part of the real world, but it is immediately obvious that it is the wrong part. To put it in the terms that were already used earlier in this paper, the purely symbolic virtual forest fire may be equivalent to a real forest fire to our intellects, when mediated by the interpretation occurring in our brains, and the hybrid sensory simulation may be equivalent to our senses, when mediated by the perception occurring in our brains, but in the world (the only world there is), neither of these virtual forest fires is functionally equivalent to a real forest fire. Indeed, virtual forest fires are truly "adiabatic": they are incapable of spreading to the world, indeed of affecting the world in any way qua fire (as opposed to food for thought or sop for the senses).
I write all this out long-hand, but of course there is no "Artificial Fire" Movement, some of whose adherents are arguing that virtual forest fires are really burning. It is simply obvious that real forest fires and virtual ones are radically different kinds of things, and that the kind of thing a virtual forest fire is in reality, setting aside interpretations, whether symbolic or sensory, is a symbol system that is capable of having a certain effect on a human mind. A real forest fire too can have an effect on a human mind (perhaps even the same effect), but that's not all a real forest fire is, nor is that its essential property, which has nothing to do with minds.
What about synthetic forest fires? Well, synthetic trees -- the functional equivalents of trees, man-made or machine-made, possibly out of a different kind of stuff -- might be possible, as discussed earlier in the case of synthetic creatures. Synthetic fire is harder to conceive: some other kind of combustive process perhaps? I don't know enough physics to be able to say whether this makes sense, but it's clearly a question about physics that we're asking: whether there is a physical process that is functionally equivalent to ordinary fire. I suspect not, but if there is, and it can be engineered by people and machines, let's call that synthetic fire. I see no reason for denying that, if it were indeed functionally indistinguishable from fire, such synthetic fire would be a form of real fire. The critical property would be its functional equivalence to fire in the real world.
So that would be a synthetic forest fire, functionally equivalent to a real one in the world. In the case of the virtual forest fire, another form of equivalence is the one usually invoked, and it too is sometimes called "functional," but more often it is referred to, more accurately, as computational, formal, or Turing equivalence (Boolos & Jeffrey). This is really an instance of the physical version of the Church-Turing Thesis mentioned earlier: Every physical system can be simulated by -- i.e., is formally equivalent to -- a symbol system. The relationship is not merely illusory, however, for the computer simulation, formally capturing, as it does, the functional principles of the real system that it is computationally equivalent to, can help us understand the latter's physical as well as its functional properties. Indeed, in principle, a virtual system could teach us everything we need to know in order to build a synthetic system in the world or to understand the causal properties of a natural system. What we must not forget, however, is that the virtual system is not the real system, synthetic or natural, and in particular -- as in the case of the virtual forest fire as well as the virtual pen pal -- it lacks the essential properties of the real system (in the one case, burning, and in the other, understanding).
The virtual system is, in other words, a kind of "oracle" (as I dubbed it in Harnad 1993a), being systematically interpretable as if it were the real thing because it is computationally equivalent to the real thing. Hence the functional properties of the real thing should have symbolic counterparts in the simulation, and they should be predictable and even implementable (as a synthetic system) on the basis of a translation of the formal model into the physical structures and processes it is simulating (Harnad 1982a). The only mistake is to think that the virtual system is an instance of the real thing, rather than what it really is, namely, a symbol system that is systematically interpretable as if it were the real thing.
Chris Langton was making an unwitting appeal to the hermeneutic hall of mirrors a few years ago at a robotics meeting in Flanders (Harnad 1993e) when he invited me to suppose that, in principle, all the initial conditions of the biosphere at the time of the "primal soup" could be encoded, along with the requisite evolutionary algorithms, so that, in real or virtual time, the system could then evolve life exactly as it had evolved on earth: unicellular organisms, multicellular organisms, invertebrates, mammals, primates, humans, and then eventually even Chris and me, having that very conversation (and perhaps even fast-forwardable to decades later, when one of us would have convinced the other of the reality or unreality of virtual life, as the case may be). If I could accept that all of this was possible in principle (as I did and do), so that not one property of real life failed to be systematically mirrored in this grand virtual system, how could I, Chris asked, continue to insist that it wasn't really alive? For whatever I claimed the crucial difference might be, on the basis of which I would affirm that one was alive and the other not, could not the virtual version capture that difference too? Isn't that what Turing Indistinguishability and computational equivalence guarantee?
The answer is that the virtual system could not capture the critical (indeed the essential) difference between real and virtual life, which is that the virtual system is and always will be just a dynamical implementation of an implementation-independent symbol system that is systematically interpretable as if it were alive. Like a highly realistic, indeed oracular book, but a book nonetheless, it consists only of symbols that are systematically construable (by us) as meaning a lot of true and accurate things, but without those meanings actually being in the symbol system: They are merely projected onto it by us, and that projected interpretation is then sustained by the accuracy with which the system has captured formally the physical properties it is modelling. This is not true of the real biosphere, which really is what I can systematically interpret it as being, entirely independent of me or my interpretation.
What makes it so unnecessary to point out this essential distinction in the case of a virtual forest fire, which no one would claim was really burning, yet so necessary in the case of virtual life, to which some people want to attribute more than meets the eye, again arises from something that Artificial Life has in common with Artificial Mind: The essential property each is concerned with (being alive and having a mind, resectively) is unobservable in both cases, either to the human senses or to measuring instruments. So this leaves our fantasy unconstrained when it infers that a virtual system that is systematically interpretable as if it were living (or thinking) really is living (or thinking). This temptation does not arise with virtual forest fires or virtual solar systems because it is observable that they are not really burning or moving (Harnad 1993d)
There clearly is an unobservable essence to having a mind (one whose presence each of us is aware of in his own case, but in no other, in knowing at first hand that one is not a Zombie), but is there a corresponding unobservable essence to being alive? I think not. There is no elan vital, and whatever intuition we have that there is one is probably parasitic on intuitions about having a mind. So what we are projecting onto virtual life -- what we are really saying when we say that virtual creatures are really alive -- is probably the same thing we are projecting onto virtual mind when we believe there's really someone home in there, thinking, understanding, meaning, etc. And when we're wrong about it, we are probably wrong for the same reason in both cases, namely, that we have gotten trapped in the hermeneutic circle in interpreting an ungrounded symbol system (Hayes et al. 1992).
Can there be a grounded symbol system? The answer will bring us back to the topic of synthetic life, about which I had promised to say more. And here again there will be a suggestive convergence and a possible divergence between the study of artificial life and the study of artificial mind: One way out of the hermeneutic circle in mind-modelling is to move from symbolic modelling to hybrid analog/symbolic modelling (Harnad et al. 1991, 1994), and from the pen-pal version of the Turing Test (TT or T2) (Turing 1964; Harnad 1992b) to the robotic version (the Total Turing Test, T3). To remove the external interpreter from the loop, the robot's internal symbols and symbol manipulations must be grounded directly in the robot's autonomous capacity to discriminate, categorize, manipulate, and describe the objects, features, events and states of affairs in the world that those symbols are interpretable as being about (Harnad 1987, 1992a, 1993b). T2 called for a system that was indistinguishable from us in its symbolic (i.e. linguistic capacities). T3 calls for this too, but it further requires indistinguishability in all of our robotic capacities: in other words, total indistinguishability in external (i.e. behavioral) function (I will consider indistinguishability in both external and internal [i.e. neural] function, T4, shortly).
A T3 system is grounded, because the connection between its internal symbols and what they are about is direct and unmediated by external interpretation. The grounding, however, is purchased at the price of no longer being a pure symbol system. A robotic mind would hence be a synthetic mind rather than a virtual one. There is of course still the possibility that the robot is a Zombie, and there are still ways to tighten the degrees of freedom still further: T4 would call for internal indistinguishability, right down to the last neuron and neurotransmitter. These could be synthetic neurons, of course, but they would have to be functionally indistinguishable from real ones.
My own guess is that if ungrounded T2 systems are underdetermined and hence open to overinterpretation, T4 systems are overdetermined and hence include physical and functional properties that may be irrelevant to cognition. I think T3 is just the right empirical filter for mind-modeling, because not only is it the one we use with one another, in our day-to-day solutions to the other-minds problem (we are neither mind-readers nor brain experts), but it is the same filter that shaped us phylogenetically: The Blind Watchmaker is no mind-reader either, and harks only to differences in adaptive function. So the likelihood that a T3 robot is a Zombie is about equal to the likelihood that we might ourselves have been Zombies.
Or is it? Let us not forget the "robotic" functions of sustenance, survival and reproduction. Are these not parts of our T3 capacity? Certainly a failure of any of them would be detectable to the Blind Watchmaker. A species that could not derive the energy needed to sustain itself or that failed to reproduce and maintain continuity across generations could not pass successfully through the Darwinian filter. And to be able to do that might turn out to call for for nothing less than molecular continuity with the rest of the biosphere (cf. Morowitz 1992) -- in which case T4 alone would narrow the degrees of freedom sufficiently to let through only life/mind. And synthetic life of that order of functional indistinguishability from real life would have to have a such a high degree of verisimilitude as to make its vitality virtually as certain as that of genetically engineered life.
Yet I am still betting on T3: The life-modeller's equivalent to the mind-modeller's T3 equivalence (lifelong robotic indistinguishability) is transgenerational ecological indistinguishability, and it is not yet clear that this would require molecular indistinguishability (T4). Certainly our models falls so far short of T3 right now that it seems safe to aim at the external equivalence without worrying unduly about the internal -- or at least to trust the exigencies of achieving external equivalence to pick out which internal functions might be pertinent, rather than to assume a priori that they all are.
That, at least, appears to be a reasonable first pass, methodologically speaking, as dictated by applying Occam's Razor to these two particular branches of inverse applied science: reverse cognitive engineering and reverse bioengineering, respectively. Ordinary forward engineering applies the laws of nature and the principles of engineering to the design and building of brand new systems with certain specified functional capacities that we find useful: bridges, furnaces, airplanes. Reverse engineering (Dennett, in press) must discover the functional principles of systems that have already been designed and built by nature -- plants, animals, people -- by attempting to design and build systems with equivalent functional capacities. Now in the case of natural living systems and natural thinking systems "life" (whatever that is) and "mind" (we all know what that is) seem to have "piggy-backed" on those functional capacities; it accordingly seems safe to assume they will also piggy-back on their synthetic counterparts (Harnad 1994).
The only point of uncertainty is whether external functional equivalence (T3) is a tight enough constraint to fix the degree of internal functional equivalence that ensures that life and mind will piggy-back on it, or whether internal functional equivalence (T4) must be captured right down to the last molecule. I'm betting on T3, in part because it is more readily attainable, and in part because even if it is not equivalence enough, we can never hope to be any the wiser.
Boolos, G. S. & R. C. Jeffrey (1980) Computability and Logic. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press).
Dennett, D.C. (in press) Cognitive Science as Reverse Engineering: Several Meanings of "Top Down" and "Bottom Up." In: Prawitz, D., Skyrms, B. & Westerstahl, D. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 9th International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. North Holland.
Harnad, S. (1982a) Neoconstructivism: A unifying theme for the cognitive sciences. In: Language, Mind and Brain. (T. Simon & R. Scholes, eds., Hillsdale NJ: Erlbaum), 1 - 11.
Harnad, S. (1982b) Consciousness: An afterthought. Cognition and Brain Theory 5: 29 - 47.
Harnad, S. (ed.) (1987) Categorical Perception: The Groundwork of Cognition. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Harnad, S. (1989) Minds, Machines and Searle. Journal of Theoretical and Experimental Artificial Intelligence 1: 5-25.
Harnad, S. (1990a) The Symbol Grounding Problem. Physica D 42: 335-346.
Harnad, S. (1990b) Against Computational Hermeneutics. (Invited commentary on Eric Dietrich's Computationalism) Social Epistemology 4: 167-172.
Harnad, S. (1990c) Lost in the hermeneutic hall of mirrors. Invited Commentary on: Michael Dyer: Minds, Machines, Searle and Harnad. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 2: 321 - 327.
Harnad, S. (1991) Other bodies, Other minds: A machine incarnation of an old philosophical problem. Minds and Machines 1: 43-54.
Harnad, S. (1992a) Connecting Object to Symbol in Modeling Cognition. In: A. Clarke and R. Lutz (Eds) Connectionism in Context. Springer Verlag.
Harnad, S. (1992b) The Turing Test Is Not A Trick: Turing Indistinguishability Is A Scientific Criterion. SIGART Bulletin 3(4) (October) 9 - 10.
Harnad, S. (1993a) Artificial Life: Synthetic Versus Virtual. Artificial Life III. Proceedings, Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity. Volume XVI.
Harnad, S. (1993b) Grounding Symbols in the Analog World with Neural Nets. Think 2(1) 12 - 78 (Special issue on "Connectionism versus Symbolism," D.M.W. Powers & P.A. Flach, eds.).
Harnad, S. (1993c) Turing Indistinguishability and the Blind Watchmaker. Presented at Conference on "Evolution and the Human Sciences" London School of Economics Centre for the Philosophy of the Natural and Social Sciences 24 - 26 June 1993.
Harnad S. (1993d) Discussion (passim) In: Bock, G. & Marsh, J. (Eds.) Experimental and Theoretical Studies of Consciousness. CIBA Foundation Symposium 174. Chichester: Wiley
Harnad, S. (1993e) Grounding Symbolic Capacity in Robotic Capacity. In: Steels, L. and R. Brooks (eds.) The "Artificial Life" Route to "Artificial Intelligence": Building Situated Embodied Agents. New Haven: Lawrence Erlbaum
Harnad, S, (1994) Does the Mind Piggy-Back on Robotic and Symbolic Capacity? To appear in: H. Morowitz (ed.) The Mind, the Brain, and Complex Adaptive Systems.
Harnad, S., Hanson, S.J. & Lubin, J. (1991) Categorical Perception and the Evolution of Supervised Learning in Neural Nets. In: Working Papers of the AAAI Spring Symposium on Machine Learning of Natural Language and Ontology (DW Powers & L Reeker, Eds.) pp. 65-74. Presented at Symposium on Symbol Grounding: Problems and Practice, Stanford University, March 1991.
Harnad, S. Hanson, S.J. & Lubin, J. (1994) Learned Categorical Perception in Neural Nets: Implications for Symbol Grounding. In: V. Honavar & L. Uhr (eds) Symbol Processing and Connectionist Network Models in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Modelling: Steps Toward Principled Integration. (in press)
Hayes, P., Harnad, S., Perlis, D. & Block, N. (1992) Virtual Symposium on Virtual Mind. Minds and Machines 2: 217-238.
Nagel, T. (1974) What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review 83: 435 - 451.
Morowitz, H. (1992) Beginning of Cellular Life. Yale University Press.
Nagel, T. (1986) The View From Nowhere. New York: Oxford University Press.
Searle, J. R. (1980) Minds, brains and programs. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3: 417-424.
Turing, A. M. (1964) Computing machinery and intelligence. In: Minds and machines. A. Anderson (ed.), Engelwood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall.


text:
A glitch in the operating system of my computer has cut me from the Web for two days, which was challenging in many ways, but also giving me some interesting insights. I was not away from the Web for two consecutive days, since my last meditation retreat, 8 months ago. I an average day, I am jacked in and exchange messages, working documents, news and views with friends and colleagues, for 12 to 14 hours. The Web became an extension of my mind, and I became a neural node in its.
The challenges of coping with the "withdrawal symptoms" of the last two days brought me also the opportunity to look into deeper questions, for which I rarely have time, in the business of daily action. One of them is this:
What is the most valuable and unique contribution that I can make to our Emerging Planetary Reality? What is my place in the ecosystem of life-enhancing memes and services pointing to the possibility of a better world?
Is it creating more performing tools and methods for collaborative learning, work, and the self-organizing shared intelligence of communities? That's how I've been seeing the nature of what I need to bring to my company's stakeholders, for many years. But now, the emergence of the "social software" and "social networking" movements, and the many very talented people in and around them, make me think that the mightiest productive force of our times humankind's collective intellect is already taking care of equipping itself with the right tools.
But will those tools and methods be sufficient to meet the Engelbartian challenge of increasing "complexity multiplied by urgency?" I don't think so.
Our collective intellect is embodied in the choices that pioneers, innovators, and even late adapters and laggards, are making about their life and work, day after day. I will keep dancing with it, and bring the touch of my experience and perspective to to collaborative learning, community blogging, vircomm design, and the other domains of my work, but I sense a much a bigger need that has to be addressed.
It's coming from the fact that none of today's knowledge and communication tools are optimized for augmenting the intelligence of its users, individual and collective. Intelligence augmentation comes as a side effect and it could be much more effective and faster if it was the very focus of design and facilitation.
– It will take intelligence to elicit, stage, and guide the emergence of new knowledge.
– It will take collective wisdom to guide us from our current level of collective intelligence (CI 1.0) to CI 2.0.
"Wisdom has to do with not only intuiting the long view, understanding systems in the context of their larger whole, but also acting in resonance with what is known as true and lasting. Only wisdom can guide effective decisions on how we invest our attention, both individual and organizational, in the conditions of galloping 'complexity multiplied by urgency'
How will that wisdom come into being? What can we do to midwife it?
Exploring and embodying together these questions is the highest adventure I can think of for the rest of my life's work. (One of their merits is that that take away the artificial separation between work and life.) The "collective wisdom" perspective has to be part of any systemic effort to augment CI.
I would love to hear from anybody to whom these questions matter, who can appreciate the potential of liberating technologies supporting the development of collective wisdom, and vice versa. This is an invitation to a collaborative inquiry. Where should we begin?

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Maxthon v126.96.36.199
Maxthon v184.108.40.206 is released.Maxthon is a powerful web browser with a highly customizable interface. It can open multiple web pages within one browser window, and uses little system resources. Maxthon has a greatly integrated & customizable interface which supports Skins (Default, Turbo Qute, Mozilla_2, Safari, TCPort, X_Phoenity), Plug-Ins (AI Roboform, FlashSave, ViewSource, EnableRightClick, Up a Directory, Weather), IE Extensions, & specific toolbars (example: GOOGLE Toolbar). It also incorporates 2 POPUP blockers (Auto POPUP blocker & a POPUP blocker list filter) and a Content Filter. Maxthon is based on the Internet Explorer engine (your most likely current web browser) which means that what works in IE, works the same in Maxthon but with many additional efficient features like:
- Tabbed Browsing Interface
- Mouse Gestures
- Super Drag&Drop
- Privacy Protection
- AD Hunter
- Google Bar Support
- External Utility Bar
- Skinning
- Plugins
- Compatibility & Low on Resources
- More...(There are even more features that Maxthon can provide you, such as, Page Zooming, Simple Collector, Web Services, Password protecting Tabs, URL Aliases and many others. All of them working efficiently while you surf the Internet with Maxthon)
Download: Maxthon v220.127.116.11
0 Comments: Subscribe This Comments(Atom)


text:
This file is currently missing and not available to download
Do you have this file? We encourage you to re-upload this file for the benefit of the community.
Do you need this file? Please submit a support ticket so that we can prioritize restoring this file for you.
The ff9disc1_13.zip file you have requested: Final Fantasy IX / Media / Inside The Forest - 8.47MB is not available. Perhaps try browsing all files for the game Final Fantasy IX and upload any files you want to share or are missing.
We are calling on our community to help submit files that were previously hosted on GameFront / FileFront but are now missing.
If you have this file, please upload it using the form below (please ensure the filename and filesize match) and we shall do the rest.
In the forest after the huge crash many bodys lie.
There are no comments yet. Be the first!


text:
By Sandra Barrera
email@example.com @SandraBarrera18 on Twitter
The best time to secure your home is not after that heavy bookcase falls on you. If you haven't done so already, take a trip down to the hardware store and pick up some quake-zone necessities. We're talking easy and affordable fixes for those areas of the home experts have flagged hazardous. Don't put it off too long. When it comes to earthquakes, procrastination could hurt you or somebody you love. For more tips, go to www.earthquakecountry.org
Install safety latches on cabinet doors: This will prevent glassware and dishes from crashing to the floor, creating a potential for cuts. Secure those major appliances to the wall with special straps or L-brackets. Also, check that your stove and washer/dryer are fitted with flexible, not rigid, gas connections to prevent leaks that could result in fire.
Anchor decorative items: That old typewriter you display as a decoration on the dining room console could turn into a deadly projectile given a strong shake. Experts suggest anchoring all such items on shelves or tabletops with museum putty, wax or gel, which are removable and won't damage surfaces. Keep heavy objects on lower shelves or the floor.
Keep those pictures on the walls: Hang that plein air painting with a closed screw-eye and cable or a product like Quakehold!'s The A-Maze-Ing Picture Hook. The heavy-duty bracket traps the backing wire, keeping up to 100-pound mirrors from jumping off the wall during a quake — a good reason never to hang unsecured pictures over beds or sofas.
Secure all bookshelves: Bookcases filled with decades-worth of books, picture frames and tchotches should be secured to the wall with L-brackets or flexible furniture straps. During a quake, tall, top-heavy furniture can topple over. It's also a good idea to keep passageways clear of large furniture.
Strap in the water heater: Make sure your water heater is laterally braced to the wall with wrap-around straps bolted onto the studs or masonry. If it isn't, it can topple over and rupture the gas line resulting in a fire.


text:
- Home
- Massachusetts
- Dorchester
Condos for rent in Dorchester, MA
AT&T Fiber (SM) Internet
Dorchester Condo Features
Condos Near Dorchester
Nearby Cities
Nearby Colleges
- Roxbury Community College, MA
- Wentworth Institute of Technology, MA
- Massachusetts College of Art and Design, MA
- Massachusetts College of Pharmacy & Health Sciences, MA
- Northeastern University, MA
- Simmons College, MA
- New England Conservatory, MA
- Emmanuel College, MA
- Boston Conservatory, MA
- Wheelock College, MA
- Berklee College of Music, MA
- New England School of Photography, MA
- Boston Architectural College, MA
- Boston University, MA
- Olin Center for International Study, MA
- New England College of Optometry, MA
- Gibbs College, MA
- Bay State College, MA
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MA
- Fisher College, MA
© 2023 Rent Group Inc. All rights reserved. All photos, videos, text and other content are the property of Rent Group Inc. APARTMENT GUIDE and the APARTMENT GUIDE Trade Dress are registered trademarks of Rent Group Inc. or its affiliates.
Apple, the Apple logo, iPad, and iPhone are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. App Store is a service mark of Apple Inc.
Information is copyrighted and school data provided by GreatSchools.org. Information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed. Schools listed above are based on distance from the selected location and are just a sampling of the schools in the area. To find a particular school district, and how it relates to a specific apartment, please contact the apartment manager.
Download the ApartmentGuide.com app for Android and iOS
If you are using a screen reader, or are having difficulty reading this website, please email email@example.com.


text:
The folks over at NerdKits got a shiny new Smithy 1220xl lathe/ mill. They found, however that adjusting the Z axis wasn't as accurate as they desired. They decided to resolve this by installing a digital caliper and an LCD interface to display the adjustments. The writeup is quite detailed and the results seem to work great.
Lathe Modification
21 thoughts on "Lathe Modification"
Be sure to check the accuracy of a digital caliper with a good test standard before using it, especially if it is a cheap one like this. One of the machinists I learned from called calipers (vernier, digital, whatever) 'guessing sticks'. Personally I've found my cheap ass dial caliper from princess auto works pretty well to within .005″ or so but if I need to be more precise I pull out a micrometer. A quickie solution to this problem (you get it a lot with old equipment where the dials are no longer reliable) is to use a simple dial indicator, and that should let you get accuracy within .001″.
That's great. But that not a lathe. :-(
who is the first person that's gonna shout "not a hack"?
not a hack
Smithy 1220XL lathe / mill combo machine
Maybe I should lay off the crack…
around 6:30 he explains why you should use a pullup resistor on a switch. but he forgets the biggest reason!
during the switching (/wout pullup) the voltage is undefined when neither of the terminals is connected. the microcontroller will choose one of the 2 at random which may have undesired results.
That digital caliper can be purchased from harbor freight on the cheap in a few different lengths (4, 6, 8, 12). I had no idea it had data lines that were so easy to access, this is great!
Hi @urlax — thanks for the feedback!
You're right that without a pull-up resistor, the microcontroller pin is momentarily left "floating". However, the input pin capacitance will essentially maintain the previous state. Although, if there is significant switching noise radiated from a nearby circuit (perhaps a nearby unterminated digital line with fast edges), it might capacitively couple onto that floating pin and cause it to change state. This is much more likely to happen when there's no pull-up (purely floating), but at some extremes of high nearby switching noise and a high enough resistance value to the pull-up resistor, it might be possible to have that coupling happen even in the pull-up case.
But most importantly, with a pull-up resistor or not, there's always a transition through the middle, and you need to deal with the inherent "junk" during the transition, period. Debouncing the switch, or alternatively having a UI that simply doesn't care if there are multiple button presses (like we have here — zeroing it a couple times within a few milliseconds doesn't make a darn difference), will be necessary with or without a pull-up resistor. With a pull-up resistor + SPST switch, the "junk" comes from the physical movement of the switch contacts, and with a SPDT switch without a pull-up resistor, there may be some extra "junk" (noise capacitively coupled onto a floating pin) within the "junk" of the physical switch contact transition — does that make sense?
I would say that a pull-up resistor might also be useful in a case where a switch could physically become disconnected and you establish a default state — imagine a "fire zee missiles" button, where if the switch somehow gets disconnected, it'd be best if the input pin were kept in a particular "DON'T fire zee missiles" state. :-)
In the end, we all agree that a pull-up resistor is the best solution for a number of reasons.
Hope that helps!
(FYI, I'm the guy in the video.)
a breadboard to the wall !
could someone teach this poor boy how to make a pcb
Sah-weet! I just picked up one of these machines (for free) and I've been noticing the same problem. Awesome work!
wow, another great video.. can't wait to see what new parts they'll be turning out.
I'm embarrassed to say I've always used external pull-ups. You set the internal ones with DDRB..?
DealExtreme has the 6in/150mm digital caliper for $15 shipped, I own one from there and it has the same exact battery and signal covers/layout.
Ok, so you spent all that time to get the accuracy of the z axis down to the thousandth's, then in your video demonstration you take it to a whopping .100″? I think you stuck the 1 in the wrong place:) Nice solution to the problem.
@Matt: to enable the internal pullup, you configure the port pin as an input via DDRx and then set the corresponding output (PORTx) bit. ie:
DDRA = 0x00;
PORTA = 0x01;
@Mark: 0.100″ requires the same accuracy as 0.001″
Hmm it's not a production machine. It is for fun. Mini lathe/ mill machines do not turn/mill out serious quantities of parts. @ Josh good point but again What do you expect from such a cheap and small machine. It has no ball screws to my knowledge,this means, backlash of course and lower tolerance expectations. Not CNC. No high volume obviously. A vast improvement on a small machine however. +/-.005″ on the Z of a manual mill is far from good but better than 0.042″ graduations fo sho.
You are correct, I guess I shouldn't ignore those zeros huh?
Next revision: add motors and use the calipers as a feedback loop to automate the damn thing? ;)
@eric: great idea. Sadly the update rate is likely not enough for a full CNC, but might be fine for manual machining.
one discussion: http://dev.forums.reprap.org/read.php?14,17905
Hint: to avoid corrupted data, don't just send the clock and data signals from the caliper to the dro (that's Digital Read Out electronics) single-ended; generate their inverse signals (clock-bar and data-bar), have a couple of extra wires to send those too, then re-combine them at the receiving end using the inverting and non-inverting inputs of an op-amp (or whatever – line-driver and line-receiver chips do that automatically). That way you get several times the noise immunity.
I once had to do that while making a converter for a metric linear scale to use it on an inch machine. The data was garbage until I switched to having my PIC receive both A and A-bar, B and B-bar. Then there were no glitch problems evermore.
The failure mode: An external electrical noise source couples in to both the Clock and Data signals. If it's a positive-going noise pulse, it will have no effect on a 1, but will briefly make a 0 look like a 1. Conversely, if it's negative-going, it can temporarily make a 1 look like a 0.
Now if you've got both the A and A-bar version of the signal to look at, only one of them can be corrupted, and that's not enough to make the output change state. Viola: noise immunity.
Hope that helps someone.
Wow! You really covered this topic well. Are there other resources that I should check out?
Leave a Reply
Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)


text:
Real estate listings site Estately has named Houston and Austin as two of the most Big Lebowski-friendly cities in the country.
The site looked at some important factors like the number of bowling alleys in each city, the track record of events and parties honoring the Coen brothers flick, the number of people who carry the Lebowski name or the same name as a character from the film, and of course the perceived "laid-back vibe" of each city. Basically, they were looking for cities that would be conducive to the Jeff Lebowski's lifestyle "where he could live out his days in a smoky marijuana haze, sipping White Russians and bowling with friends," according to Estately.
I totally understand Austin being on this list. Half the hipsters there look like Lebowski and sit on their rugs at home listening to cassette tapes.
Houston has over 20 bowling alleys according to the site. I've never really considered Houston to be laid back, but we do like to drink a lot, which helps. As for whether or not Mr. Lebowski could live in haze of weed smoke, I know someone he could probably hang out with, but he would eventually end up on the wrong side of the law. We do love our Creedence, Bob Dylan, and Townes Van Zandt here as well, all of which were a part of the Lebowski soundtrack. The only place you'll hear the Eagles in Houston is actually on The Eagle.
Judging by the attitudes of our drivers, we have plenty of nihilists around these parts too, who won't use a turn signal for "nusseen." There are six listings for Jesus Quintana in the phone book, says Estately.
Lebowski wouldn't have a hard time dealing with our climate either, being from Venice Beach. He could wear shorts year-round, hoodie optional. I could see him living in a small apartment in Eastwood, occasionally strolling to Moon Tower for a hot dog and a beer.
And if you are wondering about how Walter Sobchak would get along, we do have plenty of Vietnam War vets here and a great VA hospital. There are also plenty of gun ranges for him to visit instead of flashing his piece on the lanes.


text:
Animals Behave Like People Sometimes
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Animal behavior is getting more and more attention as researchers discover that our animal friends exhibit emotional responses seemingly similar to ours. It's hard to "prove" animals experience complex emotions or thoughts (in fact, you never prove anything in science… you can only disprove things), but mounting evidence seems to suggest that many animals have reactions that we might predict based on our own psychological knowledge. Here are just a few interesting studies on animals acting like us somehow.
Do animals worry like we do? Elephants have been observed to suffer symptoms similar to PTSD after traumatic experiences. Traumatized chimpanzees also appear to have mood and anxiety disorders, and various pet owners have reported anecdotal evidence of domestic animals with separation anxiety and other fears. [url]
Dog owners probably don't think scientists needed to perform an experiment to determine if dogs feel jealousy, but now there's published evidence for this canine emotion. Not all of the dogs in the study showed signs of jealousy, but a majority did. Anyone want to try this experiment with cats? [url]
There's actually a "mouse grimace scale" that measures several features such as ear and whisker positions and eye squinting to estimate a distress level for a lab mouse. Researchers have discovered that lab mice react differently to pain, depending on whether men or women are present during a grimace measurement. When men are around, mice seem to suppress their distress. (But it should be noted that it's not just men causing this effect. Items of fabric that have the residual scent of men or male animals also produce similar results.)


text:
Energy companies, government fire back at recent New York Times piece suggesting shale natural gas boom may be vastly overstated.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney)� -- Big energy company executives and government researchers are firing back at a recent New York Times story suggesting the recent boom in natural gas production from shale rock is unsustainable and perhaps fraudulent.
"You really have to wonder why the New York Times is campaigning against cleaner-burning, domestically produced natural gas," ExxonMobil Vice President Ken Cohen wrote in a blogpost Monday. "If the writer had bothered to call us, we would have told him that ExxonMobil's investment approach is disciplined and based on a long-term view of global market conditions."
Exxon (XOM, Fortune 500), through its $41 billion purchase of XTO Energy last year, is now North America's largest shale gas producer.
A spokeswoman for the Times noted that Exxon was barely mentioned in the story, and that the article contained several quotes from others in the industry defending natural gas production rates.
The multi-part story, run in the Times Sunday and Monday, cited numerous, anonymous emails from government staffers, industry consultants and energy company executives questioning whether natural gas production from shale rock is really living up to the hype or is instead just another bubble.
The emails, which the Times posted online with the names redacted, say the wells may be running dry much faster than anticipated and could actually lose money.
The story suggests that the industry may be aware of this, and could be concealing it to boost their stock price. Emails quoted in the piece refer to the shale gas companies as "Ponzi schemes" and say they are having an "Enron moment."
The story further accuses the government's Energy Information Administration of relying too heavily on industry data to make its projections. Many of the emails the paper cites are from EIA staffers.
Monday night EIA struck back, issuing a rare statement, saying the agency's views on shale gas were "different in significant respects from those outlined in the June 27 article."
EIA posted the letter it sent to the Times in response to questions from the paper online, noting that shale gas production has risen from 4% of all U.S. gas production to 23% in just 5 years.
"It is clear the data shows that shale gas has become a significant source of domestic natural gas supply," Michael Schaal, EIA's director of petroleum, natural gas and biofuels analysis, wrote in the letter.
A letter from the chief executive of Chesapeake Energy (CHK, Fortune 500), another big shale gas company, took a similar tone.
"It is absurd to conclude that shale gas wells are underperforming while America is awash in natural gas," said CEO Aubrey McClendon. "The Times story was obviously motivated by an anti-natural gas agenda."
The letter goes on to say that the company's production numbers and estimates are verified by various third-party organizations, and any recent production declines are more the result of low natural gas prices.
Shale gas production has taken off in the last few years as new technology has allowed the industry to unlock vast quantities of the domestic fuel. Some say the country now has 100 years worth of natural gas.
When used to generate electricity, natural gas burns about twice as cleanly as coal.
The boom has caused a surge in investment, both in the towns where it's located and in the stock price of the companies that produce it.
But it's not without controversy. To produce the gas, the shale rock needs to be cracked by a process called hydraulic fracturing. Known as "fracking" for short, it involves injecting vast amounts of water, sand and some chemicals deep into the ground.
There have been spills of this fracking fluid before it's injected into wells which have contaminated local streams. There are also concerns about the disposal of the fluid and other tainted water that comes up with the gas, as well as fears that the natural gas itself may be seeping into drinking water wells as a result of the drilling process.
Many are calling for tighter regulations on the industry, and the Environmental Protection Agency is studying the procedure.
This idea that a combination of tighter regulations and questionable production numbers is making shale gas unprofitable may not be as absurd as the industry says it is.
One hedge fund manager in New York City recently told CNNMoney he is betting against shale gas companies for this very reason.
|What we want Apple to unveil at WWDC
|Millennials squeezed out of buying a home
|7 traits the rich have in common
|Big Data knows you're sick, tired and depressed
|Your car is a giant computer - and it can be hacked
|Overnight Avg Rate
|Last Week
|30 yr fixed
|15 yr fixed
|30 yr refi
|15 yr refi
Today's featured rates:
|Latest Report
|Next Update
|Home prices
|Aug 28
|Consumer confidence
|Aug 28
|Aug 29
|Manufacturing (ISM)
|Sept 4
|Sept 7
|Inflation (CPI)
|Sept 14
|Retail sales
|Sept 14


text:
|I am a second seat police officer of a special intelligence unit, one of the prestigious institutions in this country. It has been two months since I have been assigned to this creepy mission. To be honest, this is the hardest mission I have ever handled. Chasing a mysterious guy who murdered 27 villagers, and the number is still rising. The most difficult thing is he has never left any breadcrumbs.
I am a repairman. Just like any other repairman, I can fix anything. Machinery, vehicles, appliances, and even including your heart. 😀
Yeah, I heard it too, about those killings. I really do not understand, how could that someone be so ruthless. What is the point of slaying people? Ah, I do not care, I am enjoying my life now. I would not be afraid if the killer came here. I would just say, "Hello Mr. Killer, is there something that need to be fixed?".
|As usual, I leave my house after the sunset. My mission should be done in secret. So I decided to work at night, when nearly everyone fall asleep. After all, the head of this village has been agreed to this term. I hope this would be a win-win solution. For me and the rest of the villagers who have been provoked by fears.
|Some said if you want to die peacefully, you have just to be grateful for everything. The bright sunshine, the lovely bedroom, the fresh morning air, and even the existence of yourself. So, come on, enjoy your days out. Live your life with no regrets. Like I do, every day, with my workshop tools.
|19:03 – 04:55
|07:03 – 16:55
I interrogate some villagers to get some details. Hopefully, I might had a chance to get a jackpot. For your information, this village has only 340 inhabitants. So it should be easy for me to trace the suspect, one by one.
Actually, there is a rumour that has been spread out to the whole village. The killer himself is a nice person, a friendly type who always giving a smile to everyone he meets. But they said, he has been cursed with dark powers. So that everyone who touched directly by his hands will obviously die within hours.
Such a silly story isn't it? But I do not want to be defeated by his popularity. So I create a method. I call it a cause and effect method. If his hands were so powerful, I just get everyone's hands covered with locked metal gloves. Of course, I can not do it to everyone at the same time. I need to find the killer carefully, right?
By the way, this gloves can only be unlocked by one certain key, my special key. I applied the rule to the one who had been interrogated. They have to go to my house for the next 36 hours to get those gloves unlocked. If there is not a murder case appeared within that period, it can be ascertained that the person is the killer.
Thank God, my workshop has never be bored. There is always someone who needs my help. A broken digital camera, that is my specialties. Air conditioning that does not work well, I am the right man for fixing it. Do you have a perforated backpack? I could give you a 100% guarantee that your backpack will be like a new one. And even so, I do love being an impromptu dentist in this small village. Not for treating people's teeth. But to fix their braces.
From all those services, there is one thing that became my attention. This item is very unique. Almost every day, there's always someone who needs my help to cast it loose. They used to call it as metal gloves. What kind of freak who put this weird stuff into innocent people's hands. I really do not believe it.
From what I heard, there is a detective who doing that. I do not know his motives. I have never met him in person. But, I am sorry Mr. Detective, I had to let you down. I will always break your glove's lock into pieces. The only purpose I have now is satisfying my customers. If you are not willing to accept my challenge, you have to show me another crazier challenge. Ha ha ha… kidding!!
By the way, I have been thinking, doing interaction with mechanical tools is quite interesting for me. But how about touching the living creatures. I see some interesting cell movement in there. It must be complex I believe. No no no… It is not what you are thinking. I am not the killer. I just want to have a pet. 😀
|04:56 – 05:32
|16:56 – 17:32
|Every time I arrived at my house, I always find the broken gloves under my desk. And then, not long after, I receive a news that there was a murder, same motives just like before. It seems he knows me very well. He sent the gloves here right after he killed somebody. I really do not have any idea what kind of game that he wants to play.
|Recently, I feel some constant odd from my customers, especially who wears those gloves. It seems they are trying to tell me something. But I never understand what they said. I just realize that all of them are looked pale. I do not know what's going on. Is this has a correlation to the murders? I have no idea.
|05:33 – 06:00
|17:33 – 18:00
|Doing my dead-end daily activities just makes me frustrated. I hope the killer could be found immediately before more and more villagers become victim. Suddenly, I missed my days out activity. But again, I need to rest for now.
|What time is it? Ah, I need a break for a moment. The time goes so fast. My vision becomes blurred by nightfall. I have to clean up my tools before the other problems appeared. I wonder, how's Mr. Detective doing?
This post is a submission for BEC's English Friday, 6th topic: Alter Ego. If you want to know more, please join us! 😀


text: Here is available our newly showed up Thai massage college student to analyze having a well-known master in Thailand. To his surprise and dismay, the teacher keeps on smoking one cigarette once the other while he is instructing. He will go to another popular healer/teacher and learn which he fails to cigarette smoke, but his… Continue reading Thai Massage Therapist


text:
Singles - Photos
Photos of Ducati singles. I am posting the most "inspirational" ones I come across in the hope that they inspire restorations. One of the toughest things when restoring these little Ducati's, after sourcing parts of course is getting accurate info on what was "correct". There is nothing wrong with "building 'em your way" but the loving process of researching and restoring them back to the way they came is a tribute to the life work of the original men and women who made them, so this gallery is dedicated to friends both here and gone - Rino Caracci, Georgio Nepoti and Franco FarneRead More
15 / 24


text:
Palestinian civil society calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel
Palestinian Civil Society
Calls for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel
Until it Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights
9 July 2005
One year after the historic Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which found Israel's Wall built on occupied Palestinian territory to be illegal, Israel continues its construction of the colonial Wall with total disregard to the Court's decision. Thirty-eight years into Israel's occupation of the Palestinian West Bank (including East Jerusalem), Gaza Strip and the Syrian Golan Heights, Israel continues to expand Jewish colonies. It has unilaterally annexed occupied East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and is now de facto annexing large parts of the West Bank by means of the Wall. Israel is also preparing—in the shadow of its planned redeployment from the Gaza Strip—to build and expand colonies in the West Bank. Fifty-seven years after the state of Israel was built mainly on land ethnically cleansed of its Palestinian owners, a majority of Palestinians are refugees, most of whom are stateless. Moreover, Israel's entrenched system of racial discrimination against its own Arab-Palestinian citizens remains intact.
In light of Israel's persistent violations of international law, and
Given that, since 1948, hundreds of UN resolutions have condemned Israel's colonial and discriminatory policies as illegal and called for immediate, adequate and effective remedies, and
Given that all forms of international intervention and peace-making have until now failed to convince or force Israel to comply with humanitarian law, to respect fundamental human rights and to end its occupation and oppression of the people of Palestine, and
In view of the fact that people of conscience in the international community have historically shouldered the moral responsibility to fight injustice, as exemplified in the struggle to abolish apartheid in South Africa through diverse forms of boycott, divestment and sanctions;
Inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid and in the spirit of international solidarity, moral consistency and resistance to injustice and oppression,
We, representatives of Palestinian civil society, call upon international civil society organizations and people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era. We appeal to you to pressure your respective states to impose embargoes and sanctions against Israel. We also invite conscientious Israelis to support this Call, for the sake of justice and genuine peace.
These non-violent punitive measures should be maintained until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with the precepts of international law by:
1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;
2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
Endorsed by:
The Palestinian political parties, unions, associations, coalitions and organizations below represent the three integral parts of the people of Palestine: Palestinian refugees, Palestinians under occupation and Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Unions, Associations, Campaigns
1. Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine
(coordinating body for the major political parties in the Occupied Palestinian Territory)
2. Palestinian Independent Commission for Citizen's Rights (PICCR)
3. Union of Arab Community Based Associations (ITTIJAH), Haifa
4. Forum of Palestinian NGOs in Lebanon
5. Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU)
6. General Union of Palestinian Women (GUPW)
7. General Union of Palestinian Teachers (GUPT)
8. Federation of Unions of Palestinian Universities' Professors and Employees
9. Consortium of Professional Associations
10. Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees (UPMRC)
11. Health Work Committees – West Bank
12. Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC)
13. Union of Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC)
14. Union of Health Work Committees – Gaza (UHWC)
15. Union of Palestinian Farmers
16. Occupied Palestine and Syrian Golan Heights Advocacy Initiative (OPGAI)
17. General Union of Disabled Palestinians
18. Palestinian Federation of Women's Action Committees (PFWAC)
19. Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)
20. Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign
21. Union of Teachers of Private Schools
22. Union of Women's Work Committees, Tulkarem (UWWC)
23. Dentists' Association – Jerusalem Center
24. Palestinian Engineers Association
25. Lawyers' Association
26. Network for the Eradication of Illiteracy and Adult Education, Ramallah
27. Coordinating Committee of Rehabilitation Centers – West Bank
28. Coalition of Lebanese Civil Society Organizations (150 organizations)
29. Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR), Network of Student-based Canadian University Associations
Refugee Rights Associations/Organizations
1. Al-Ard Committees for the Defense of the Right of Return, Syria
2. Al-Awda Charitable Society, Beit Jala
3. Al Awda - Palestine Right-to-Return Coalition, U.S.A
4. Al-Awda Toronto
5. Aidun Group – Lebanon
6. Aidun Group – Syria
7. Alrowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Center, Aida refugee camp
8. Association for the Defense of the Rights of the Internally Displaced (ADRID), Nazareth
9. BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, Bethlehem
10. Committee for Definite Return, Syria
11. Committee for the Defense of Palestinian Refugee Rights, Nablus
12. Consortium of the Displaced Inhabitants of Destroyed Palestinian Villages and Towns
13. Filastinuna – Commission for the Defense of the Right of Return, Syria
14. Handala Center, 'Azza (Beit Jibreen) refugee camp, Bethlehem
15. High Committee for the Defense of the Right of Return, Jordan
(including personal endorsement of 71 members of parliament, political parties and unions in Jordan)
16. High National Committee for the Defense of the Right of Return , Ramallah
17. International Right of Return Congress (RORC)
18. Jermana Youth Forum for the Defense of the Right of Return, Syria
19. Laji Center, Aida camp, Bethlehem
20. Local Committee for Rehabilitation, Qalandia refugee camp, Jerusalem
21. Local Committee for Rehabilitation of the Disabled, Deheishe refugee camp, Bethlehem
22. Palestinian National Committee for the Defense of the Right of Return, Syria
23. Palestinian Return Association, Syria
24. Palestinian Return Forum, Syria
25. Palestine Right-of-Return Coalition (Palestine, Arab host countries, Europe, North America)
26. Palestine Right-of-Return Confederation-Europe (Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden)
27. Palestinian Youth Forum for the Right of Return, Syria
28. PLO Popular Committees – West Bank refugee camps
29. PLO Popular Committees – Gaza Strip refugee camps
30. Popular Committee – al-'Azza (Beit Jibreen) refugee camp, Bethlehem
31. Popular Committee – Deheishe refugee camp, Bethlehem
32. Shaml - Palestinian Diaspora and Refugee Center, Ramallah
33. Union of Women's Activity Centers – West Bank Refugee Camps
34. Union of Youth Activity Centers – Palestine Refugee Camps, West Bank and Gaza
35. Women's Activity Center – Deheishe refugee camp, Bethlehem
36. Yafa Cultural Center, Balata refugee camp, Nablus
1. Abna' al-Balad Society, Nablus
2. Addameer Center for Human Rights, Gaza
3. Addameer Prisoners' Support and Human Rights Association, Ramallah
4. Alanqa' Cultural Association, Hebron
5. Al-Awda Palestinian Folklore Society, Hebron
6. Al-Doha Children's Cultural Center, Bethlehem
7. Al-Huda Islamic Center, Bethlehem
8. Al-Jeel al-Jadid Society, Haifa
9. Al-Karameh Cultural Society, Um al-Fahm
10. Al-Maghazi Cultural Center, Gaza
11. Al-Marsad Al-Arabi, occupied Syrian Golan Heights
12. Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights, Gaza
13. Al-Nahda Cultural Forum, Hebron
14. Al-Taghrid Society for Culture and Arts, Gaza
15. Alternative Tourism Group, Beit Sahour (ATG)
16. Al-Wafa' Charitable Society, Gaza
17. Applied Research Institute Jerusalem (ARIJ)
18. Arab Association for Human Rights, Nazareth (HRA)
19. Arab Center for Agricultural Development (ACAD)
20. Arab Center for Agricultural Development-Gaza
21. Arab Education Institute (AEI) – Pax Christie Bethlehem
22. Arab Orthodox Charitable Society – Beit Sahour
23. Arab Orthodox Charity – Beit Jala
24. Arab Orthodox Club – Beit Jala
25. Arab Orthodox Club – Beit Sahour
26. Arab Students' Collective, University of Toronto
27. Arab Thought Forum, Jerusalem (AFT)
28. Association for Cultural Exchange Hebron - France
29. Association Najdeh, Lebanon
30. Authority for Environmental Quality, Jenin
31. Bader Society for Development and Reconstruction, Gaza
32. Canadian Palestine Foundation of Quebec, Montreal
33. Center for the Defense of Freedoms, Ramallah
34. Center for Science and Culture, Gaza
35. Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Ramallah- Al-Bireh District
36. Child Development and Entertainment Center, Tulkarem
37. Committee for Popular Participation, Tulkarem
38. Defense for Children International-Palestine Section, Ramallah (DCI/PS)
39. El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe
40. Ensan Center for Democracy and Human Rights, Bethlehem
41. Environmental Education Center, Bethlehem
42. FARAH – Palestinian Center for Children, Syria
43. Ghassan Kanafani Society for Development, Gaza
44. Ghassan Kanafani Forum, Syria
45. Gaza Community Mental Health Program, Gaza (GCMHP)
46. Golan for Development, occupied Syrian Golan Heights
47. Halhoul Cultural Forum, Hebron
48. Himayeh Society for Human Rights, Um al-Fahm
49. Holy Land Trust – Bethlehem
50. Home of Saint Nicholas for Old Ages – Beit Jala
51. Human Rights Protection Center, Lebanon
52. In'ash al-Usrah Society, Ramallah
53. International Center of Bethlehem (Dar An-Nadweh)
54. Islah Charitable Society-Bethlehem
55. Jafra Youth Center, Syria
56. Jander Center, al-Azza (Beit Jibreen) refugee camp, Bethlehem
57. Jerusalem Center for Women, Jerusalem (JCW)
58. Jerusalem Legal Aid and Human Rights Center (JLAC)
59. Khalil Al Sakakini Cultural Center, Ramallah
60. Land Research Center, Jerusalem (LRC)
61. Liberated Prisoners' Society, Palestine
62. Local Committee for Social Development, Nablus
63. Local Committee for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled, Nablus
64. MA'AN TV Network, Bethlehem
65. Medical Aid for Palestine, Canada
66. MIFTAH-Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy, Ramallah
67. Muwatin-The Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy
68. National Forum of Martyr's Families, Palestine
69. Near East Council of Churches Committee for Refugee Work – Gaza Area
70. Network of Christian Organizations – Bethlehem (NCOB)
71. Palestinian Council for Justice and Peace, Jerusalem
72. Palestinian Counseling Center, Jerusalem (PCC)
73. Palestinian Democratic Youth Union, Lebanon
74. Palestinian Farmers' Society, Gaza
75. Palestinian Hydrology Group for Water and Environment Resources Development-Gaza
76. Palestinian Prisoners' Society-West Bank
77. Palestinian Society for Consumer Protection, Gaza
78. Palestinian University Students' Forum for Peace and Democracy, Hebron
79. Palestinian Women's Struggle Committees
80. Palestinian Working Women Society for Development (PWWSD)
81. Popular Art Centre, Al-Bireh
82. Prisoner's Friends Association – Ansar Al-Sajeen, Majd al-Krum
83. Public Aid Association, Gaza
84. Ramallah Center for Human Rights Studies
85. Saint Afram Association – Bethlehem
86. Saint Vincent De Paule – Beit Jala
87. Senior Citizen Society – Beit Jala
88. Social Development Center, Nablus
89. Society for Self-Development, Hebron
90. Society for Social Work, Tulkarem
91. Society for Voluntary Work and Culture, Um al-Fahm
92. Society of Friends of Prisoners and Detainees, Um al-Fahm
93. Sumoud-Political Prisoners Solidarity Group, Toronto
94. Tamer Institute for Community Education, Ramallah
95. TCC – Teacher's Creativity Center, Ramallah
96. Wi'am Center, Bethlehem
97. Women's Affairs Technical Committee, Ramallah and Gaza (WATC)
98. Women's Studies Center, Jerusalem (WSC)
99. Women's Center for Legal Aid and Counseling, Jerusalem (WCLAC)
100. Yafa for Education and Culture, Nablus
101. Yazour Charitable Society, Nablus
102. YMCA-East Jerusalem
103. Youth Cooperation Forum, Hebron
104. YWCA-Palestine
105. Zakat Committee-al-Khader, Bethlehem
106. Zakat Committee-Deheishe camp, Bethlehem
External linksEdit
This work is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license, which allows free use, distribution, and creation of derivatives, so long as the license is unchanged and clearly noted, and the original author is attributed.


text:
Drywall Pros of Santa Rosa
Welcome to Santa Rosa drywall. The best drywall company in the Santa Rosa area! Call today for a professional, licensed local drywall contractor with years of experience in Bathroom remodeling, Kitchen remodeling and new Drywall installation.
Santa Rosa Drywall provides a full-service drywall company in Sonoma County. We provide superior quality drywall services for all Santa Rosa residents and businesses. Over the 32 years that we have been serving our neighbors and friends, we have maintained a high quality standard in all of our projects.
Business Name:
Drywall Pros of Santa Rosa
2430 Gads Hill St.Santa Rosa California 95401United States
(707) 229-1116
About Santa Rosa
Santa Rosa (Spanish for "Saint Rose") is a city and the county seat of Sonoma County, in the North Bay region of the Bay Area in California. Its estimated 2019 population was 178,127. It is the largest city in California's Wine Country and Redwood Coast. It is the fifth most populous city in the Bay Area after San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, and Fremont; and the 25th most populous city in California. == History == === Early history === Before the arrival of Europeans, what became known as the Santa Rosa Plain was occupied by a strong and populous tribe of Pomo natives known as the Bitakomtara.
Neighborhoods in Santa Rosa, California
Annadel Internal Medicine, Belding Woods, Bennett Valley, Chabot Terrace, City of Santa Rosa, Coffey Park, Colgan Creek Park, Coronado, Doyle Community Park, Dutch Flohr Park, Earle Street & South A Street Neighborhood, East Petaluma, El Sobrante Hills, Finley Community Park, Fountaingrove
Things to do in Santa Rosa, California
Our Newest Profiles


text:
Thomas Scheibitz: A Panoramic VIEW of Basic Events: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is very pleased to present A Panoramic VIEW of Basic Events, an exhibition of new paintings, sculptures, drawing/collages, and prints by Thomas Scheibitz. For his seventh solo show with the gallery, Scheibitz continues to draw from classical painting and architecture, the contemporary urban landscape, and the influence of popular culture. Filtering these sources through his own lens, he creates evocative and powerful pieces that blur the line between abstraction and figuration.
In a palette of murky grays, smoky purples, and pale blues, paired with sharp primaries, and vivid neons, the new paintings and sculptures in A Panoramic VIEW of Basic Events are full of recognizable components—the numeral "1," a backwards comma, a peering eye—interwoven with the artist's own invented geometric assemblages. Culled from his archive of ephemera, which includes newspaper clippings, snapshots, magazine ads, plates from art books and historical texts, as well as other cultural artifacts, Scheibitz's imagery is pared down to its barest formal properties, then recombined, layered, and expanded upon. For the first time, in this exhibition Scheibitz shows the viewer how he works with his cache of source material to build compositions: pairing seemingly incongruous found images in collages, he then adds drawings that riff on their formal properties, and hint at how all these components might be synthesized into a painting or sculpture. These "worksheets," and in fact the installation as a whole, serve as an investigation of composition across disparate media, as the artist shows us how each element of his practice relates to the others. Breaking down his formal vocabulary into its constituent parts, in A Panoramic VIEW of Basic Events, Scheibitz lets us into his creative cosmos, showing the viewer the connections within a constellation of works.
Organizational systems—maps, graphs, and charts—have long been of interest to Scheibitz, and have served as the starting point for many of his most iconic pieces. In this new body of work, instead of using the map as a formal point of departure, from which to create an abstract composition, Scheibitz creates a map of his own process-- an overview that demonstrates how each piece fits into a cohesive whole. While existing autonomously, each image can also be connected to the other works in the show. The collaged drawings are displayed on a table made by the artist that resembles both an independent sculpture and a pedestal, and each of these collages reference one of the sixteen small paintings installed on the walls of the main space. In some of the collages the finished painting even appears as an element, complicating the notion that the works on paper are studies for the paintings—rather each is its own related but independent final product.
Installed in the back room, and seemingly a composite of the smaller works in the front gallery, the main work in the exhibition, from which the show takes its title, unfurls across the wall. Here Scheibitz explores how imagery can be recombined; compositional elements that might have existed autonomously as small paintings become details within a larger work. The endless reconfiguration of imagery is the basis of the series of prints installed in the gallery's entryway as well. Titled for A.G.C.T., the four nucleic base acids that make up human DNA, these pieces similarly represent the foundations of Scheibitz's practice. In lush color, the prints depict combinations of objects and images from Scheibitz's archive precisely arranged in unexpected combinations and juxtapositions. These prints also refer to the concept of "Schlagbild" or pictorial slogans—images that convey as much meaning as a headline, or a block of text. While each individual image is important, their arrangement is equally crucial, and in his careful composition of these pieces, Scheibitz references Aby Warburg—a professor who in the early 20th century created a non-heirarchical approach to image classfication. Like Warburg, Scheibitz employs his own methods of visual organization, to create works that are at once readable and enigmatic.
Based in Berlin, Scheibitz has upcoming solo exhibitions at MMK, Museum für Modern Kunst, Frankfurt Am Main, Frankfurt, Germany and at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus Ohio. Notable recent exhibitions include Thomas Scheibitz: Lineage ONE / Stilleben & Statistics, Jarla Partilager, Berlin, 2011-2012 (solo); Thomas Scheibitz: Il flume e le sue fonti/ The River and its Source, Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy, 2011 (solo); Surveyor: An exhibition of human exploration, observation, and construction of the landscape, organized by Curator Heather Pesanti, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, 2011 (group); If Not in This Period Of Time - Contemporary German Painting 1998-2010, Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Brazil, 2010-2011 (group); A moving plan B- chapter ONE, Selected by Thomas Scheibitz, The Drawing Room, London, 2010 (group); Der ungefegte Raum, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck, Austria, 2010 (solo); among others.
All installation images above: Photo by Jean Vong


text:
Without a framework for making decisions, you may find yourself questioning the plan you have in place to fund your lifestyle and goals.
At Northern Trust, we provide our clients a solid foundation for making decisions with confidence. Armed with clarity and understanding around how their money is working for them, our clients are able to flex when life throws them a curveball – and to bring in the right expertise and firepower, at the right time. They don't leave their goals to chance – and they achieve a better outcome.
Email us to speak with an advisor about your goals.
Investment Products and Services are:
Investment products and services are offered through Northern Trust Securities, Inc., member FINRA and SIPC and a wholly owned subsidiary of Northern Trust Corporation. Any attached research reports containing the Northern Trust Logo or trademark were prepared solely by employees of Northern Trust Investments, Inc., an affiliate of Northern Trust Securities, Inc.
Read our Business Continuity Notice


text:
WL Research Community - user contributed research based on documents published by WikiLeaks
Identifying Hacking Targets of CIA
The list below is a collection of companies, products, tools, and terms that are mentioned in the Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed publication to date. We are trying to determine which are CIA hacking targets and need help reviewing the documents associated with each company/product to determine if it is vulnerable to CIA hacking.
If you are interested in helping, please pick a row and review documents associated with the company/product. Then please update the table with your findings on if the company/product was targeted. If there are any additional details you want to note, feel free to create a wiki page for the company/product.
While we tried to extract companies and products mentioned in the documents as best as possible, this list is incomplete. If there are any companies or products you have seen in the Vault 7: CIA Hacking Tools Revealed documents that are not in this table, please add them. Additionally, some of the items in the table may not actually be companies or products and should be flagged accordingly.
Not Checked
|No researched conducted yet
|Product is targeted by CIA
Not Targeted
|Dertermined product is not targeted
|Further research is still needed
Not Applicable
|Item is not a product, company, or tool that could be targeted
Companies, Products, Terms, and Tools
The items in this list will be updated as they are researched further.