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Found In: Microcosm of London. Vol. I. London: R. Ackermann, [1808-1810].
Is in the parish of Lambeth, in Surry, and was instituted in the year 1758, for the reception of friendless and deserted girls, the settlemnt of whose parents cannot be found. It was incorporated in 1800.
The annexed print is an interesting representation of the objects of this benevolent institution at their repast, in the presence of some of their guardians, who seem to contemplate the good order, cheerfulness, innocence, and comforts of their little wards, with all that interest and delight, that luxury of fine feeling, which irradiates the countenance when the heart is glowing with benevolence, animated with the exercise of an important duty, and gratified by the conviction that their virtuous endeavours are crowned with success. The coup d'oeil of the print is most impressive, and does great honour to the talents and feelings of the artists. The sweet innocence of the children, the benevolence of the guardians, and the chaste and matron-like simplicity of the building, aided by a fine breadth of effect, form a whole, which at the same time that the parts are in perfect harmony with each other, is admirably calculated to awaken the tender emotions of the human heart, and excite the spectator to the exertion of those tender and kindly feelings, which do honour to our nature.
This charity owes its establishment to that vigilant and active magistrate, Sir John Fielding; who had long observed, that though the laws of this kingdom provided a parish settlement for every person, by birth, parentage, apprenticeships, &c. yet many cases continually occurred, in which such settlements were difficult, if not impossible, to be ascertained; and therefore he and others were solicitous to remove, in part, this source of female wretchedness. By their exertions, and the continued endeavours of those who have hitherto conducted the plan, their benevolent intentions have been rewarded with the most signal success. The generous and discerning public has bestowed the means, which have prospered in the hands of the guardians, by whose care two hundred deserted femals are daily sheltered and protected from vice and want, supplied with food and raiment, and taught whatever can render them useful in their situation, or comfortable and happy in themselves.
Carefully instructed in the principles of religion; in reading, writing, needlework, and household business, they are trained to habits of industy and regularity, by which means there is a supply of diligent and sober domestics for the use of that public, which, by its contributions, has so nobly acquired a right to their services.
The particular objects of this charity are, the children of soldiers, sailors, and other indigent persons, bereft of their parents, at a distance from any of their relations; who being too young to afford the necessary information respecting settlements, are often left destitute of protection and support, at an age when they are incapable of earning a subsistence, and contending with surrounding dangers.
Females of this description are, in a particular manner, the objects of compassion, and have also a double claim to the care of the humane and virtuous, from being not only exposed to the miseries of want and idleness, but, as they grow up, to the solicitations of the vicious, and the consequent misery of early seduction.
The following are some of the regulations for the government of this charity, which have been made by the guardians from time to time, and now continue in force.
Qualifications of Guardians.
The qualification of an annual guardian is, a yearly subscription of three guineas or upwards.
The qualification of a perpetual guardian is, a subscription of thirty guineas or upwards.
Legacies bequeathed to the use of this charity of one hundred pounds or upwards, when paid, shall entitle the first-named acting executor to to be a perpetual guardian.
The guardians, conceiving it to be very essential for promoting one of the chief objects of this institution, earnestly solicit the ladies, who are particularly qualified for that purpose, frequently to visit the charity, inspect the management of the house, and particularly the employment of the children; also to see that they are properly instructed in housewifery, so as to be qualified for useful domestic servants; and from time to time communicate to the committee, by letter or otherwise, such observations as they shall deem proper to make.
Employment of Children.
The children are to make and mend their own linen; make shirts, shifts, and table-linen; to do all kinds of plain needle-work, and to perform the business of the house and kitchen; to which latter twelve are appointed weekly, according to their age and abilities, to assist the cook, to wash, iron, and get up all the linen. They are likewise taught to read the Bible, write a legible hand, and understand the first four rules in arithmetic.
All kinds of plain needle-work are taken in at the Assylum, and performed by the children at certain rates, which are regulated by the committee.
The following ar the Rules for placing out the Children.
They are to be bound apprentices for seven years, at the age of fifteen, or sooner, as domestic servants to reputable families in Great Britain.
No girl shall be apprenticed until the character of the master or mistress applying for the same, shall have been enquired into, and approved of by the committee.
Every person applying for an apprentice must appear at the committee, to give the necessary information respecting their station, unless such appearance be dispensed with by the committee.
When any girl shall become qualified to be an apprentice, the guardian who presented her shall be acquainted therewith, in order to know if such guardian has any place in view for her.
The guardians, desirous of encouraging the children to serve their apprenticeship faithfully, have empowered the committee to grant any orpahn apprenticed from the charity, who shall produce to the committee a certificate, signed by her master or mistress (or both if living), of her good behaviour during her apprenticeship, the sum of five guineas, such orphan having first returned public thanks in the chapel for the protection she has received.
The committee are empowered to put out at any time, to any trade they shall think proper, such orphans as may have contracted any disease or infirmity, which may render them incapable of domestic service, with a premium not exceeding ten pounds. . . .


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subset: commoncrawl


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In 1990 the writer Mark O'Brien contributed an article for the literary magazine The Sun called "On Seeing a Sex Surrogate." A survivor of childhood polio, the substantially disabled O'Brien spent much of his sleeping and waking hours confined to an iron lung. Interviewing other disabled people for an earlier assignment, he realized his own sexual life — so dormant for so long — needn't stay that way forever. "Being disabled myself, but also being a virgin, I envied these people ferociously," he wrote in the 1990 piece.
The lovely new film "The Sessions" is straightforward in its script construction and has a foursquare visual approach to match. It's somewhat cautious in emotional terms. Judging from O'Brien's 1990 first-person article, he coped with a fuller variety of distractions and demons than we're shown in the movie.
But what's there, to quote Spencer Tracy, is choice. John Hawkes is wonderful as O'Brien, as is Helen Hunt as the surrogate whose sessions with O'Brien form the crux of the film. The results are extremely moving and, in general, low on egregiously yanked heartstrings or the usual biopic filler. Writer-director Ben Lewin sticks close to the anticipation and to the fraught and tender details of O'Brien's sessions with Hunt's real-life character, Cheryl Cohen-Greene. And when the ending arrives it's almost impossible not to feel a great deal.
It's gratifying to see Hawkes playing this dear combination of pained stoicism and sunny, wisecracking optimism. In films such as "Winter's Bone" (for which he was Oscar-nominated as the steely Ozark meth addict Teardrop) and "Martha Marcy May Marlene" (he played the laconic cult leader), Hawkes' angularity and head-on, scarifying gaze marked him as a character actor of real precision and genuine, unsettling distinction. In "The Sessions," Hawkes impresses with the physical requirements of the role, the body contortions, the use of the mouth-stick, the breathing-challenged vocal quality. But this is a graceful performance, not a checklist or a stunt, and although Hawkes (typically photographed horizontally, on a gurney, or diagonally) always takes center stage, "The Sessions" is largely about how this desperately romantic poet and writer related to the women around him.
Hunt is an interesting case on screen. She can be formidable and mercurial, warm and cool in the same instant, though in some roles the edginess gets the best of her, as if she needed to be somewhere else, and soon. In "The Sessions" that bluntness works. Frequently nude (typical of an MPAA-sanctioned R rating, the nudity's all on the female side), she runs the sessions as forthright explorations of uncharted territory. After one successful session there's a sun-dappled shot of O'Brien looking up at the trees above him, and the look on his face is that of heartbreaking joy and a kind of plaintive nostalgia for what's already in the past.
O'Brien reveals his insecurities regarding his virginity-loss project to a Catholic priest (William H. Macy, rock-solid and often very funny in his theological assessment of O'Brien's desires). In other parts of "The Sessions," Hawkes confides in voice-over; in still others, he pours out little bits of his easily seduced heart to his poker-faced assistant Vera (Moon Bloodgood) or, earlier, a caregiver who captures his affections (Annika Marks).
O'Brien was the subject of an Oscar-winning short "Breathing Lessons," and it seems likely that "The Sessions" will receive a few nominations of its own. It deserves them.
'The Sessions' -- 3 1/2 stars
MPAA rating: R (for strong sexuality including graphic nudity and frank dialogue)
Running time: 1:35
Opens: Friday


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A Queens sanitation worker has been awarded a scholarship to study Gaelic in Ireland this summer by the Ireland-United States Commission for Educational Exchange, the same body responsible for the prestigious Fulbright program.
Far Rockaway native Edward (Shevy) Shevlin, 50, who has worked with the city's Sanitation Department for the past 18 years, has been awarded an Irish Language Summer Study Award which will see him travel to Carraroe, Co. Galway this July for an intensive four-week program.
"I was really surprised," Shevlin told the Irish Voice on Tuesday, after his story was first publicized in the Daily News. "This is the most prestigious award I have ever received."
The aim of the awards is to support short-term study in Ireland for U.S. citizens. They are supported by the Irish government and the Irish National Lottery.
Shevlin is one of 20 candidates to be awarded a scholarship of up to $7,000 to cover travel tuition and living expenses for the course of their studies.
Already an advanced Irish speaker, he told the Irish Voice he often uses the language in his job as a sanitation worker.
"When I hear people in the street with an Irish accent I always hit them with dia dhuit ar maidin (good morning) or conas atá tú (how are you?) and most of them are taken aback," he said.
The first person he called was his Cork-born mother, who was "absolutely delighted" with his good news.
Shevlin, the oldest of three boys, grew up surrounded by Irish in the Rockaways. He describes his childhood as "fabulous."
"There was always someone coming and going to Ireland," he recalls.
"We didn't live an extravagant life but we were always wearing clean clothes and never hungry."
Despite dropping out of high school at a young age, the Irish American returned to his studies when he turned 30 and earned a high school equivalency diploma before beginning work with the civil service.
After hearing Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams deliver a speech in both English and Gaelic, he was inspired to learn his native language.
Shevlin was just an infant when he made his maiden voyage to Ireland to see his grandparents. More than a dozen trips later, he decided the best place to learn the language was in the Emerald Isle.
In 2009 he traveled to the west of Ireland where he enrolled in an Irish language summer school program hosted by the National University of Ireland in Galway. Eager to further his Irish language skills, when he returned he began an Irish language study course at Lehman College in the Bronx.
"I have gone to Ireland as infant, as a drunk, a rugby player and as a student, but going over a student is very gratifying for me," he said, admitting he loves the fresh air and music.
"I love to be there as nothing is really new for me. I feel like I am in Rockaway beach," he added.
As well as his busy work schedule with the Sanitation Department and passion for the Irish language,
Shevlin is pursuing a bachelor's degree at Empire State College. He is graduating this month with an associate degree in historical studies, and hopes to eventually attain a master's degree in Irish studies from the Glucksman Ireland House in NYU.
Friends and family are delighted for the city worker, who balances studies with his full time job.
"We are all ecstatic in our organization," said Tom Doyle, the president of the Department of Sanitation's Emerald Society.
"It is not easy to do what he is doing beside what he normally does as a sanitation worker," Doyle told the Irish Voice.
"He is very giving to other people and he is a great community guy."
Testament to this, Shevlin rode his motorcycle cross country in 2007, to raise funds for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, after a baby in his neighborhood was born with the disease.
Right now Shevlin, who boasts a large tattoo on right arm that says "Saoirse," the Gaelic for freedom, is preparing for his trip in July and is looking forward to staying with the same host family from his 2009 trip.
"I'm staying with the Seoige family in Carraroe and I may even get my old room back!" he laughed.


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I heard a comment the other day and it stopped me dead in my tracks–well at least mentally. This comment has probably been repeated for ages but the person that said it spoke with so much conviction that I don't think they knew the impact it had on a serious listener. This individual, like most people, was spewing out things so fast, I don't think they noticed the heart intervening with their rant when they mentioned the word; L.O.V.E. This person seemed to think L.O.V.E. doesn't exist anymore. They thought that things were somehow better in the old days. I bet people in the old days probably thought the same thing, but that's beside the point.
This rant from this stranger got me to thinking about the hypnotic rhythm mentioned by the late Napoleon Hill in his latest book. Might I add early, this book is not for the simple-minded or the faint of heart. You must be truly committed to self-examination to find the treasure that is within this book which was written in the late 1930's to 40's but wasn't published until 2011. But this idea of a hypnotic rhythm stuck with me the most and like most thinkers I delve deeper, not in the book per se, but into my own mind. And what I found in that attic was startling. There were more questions than insight. Questions such as; What if there is a natural flow of things and I have been all wrong? What if everything– is just energy, positive and negative? And– why do our societies seem to perpetuate the negative? And lastly– who else knows what I know?
Now these questions can be quite scary for the person who lives an idle life and conforms to tradition. And on the other hand a major confirmation for those who "think". What I mean is–it's hard to go around loving everyone like a hippie when there is no love returned. But it's necessary and could offset some of the tragedies we've seen throughout history.
As far as positive and negative, I think we absorb what we chose to absorb. It is all part of life, the good and the bad. The only thing about that is, after doing a certain thing for so long it becomes a rhythm that we cannot break away from, called habit. And remember the little ones we have in training, they're watching and learning.
How about our society's love of the negative aspect of things? There seems to be a lot of thrill seekers in the world. People seem to be in love with fear and violence. I think this perpetuation of the negative forces people towards what they think is a safer alternative. The problem is the alternative can be just as deadly for one. And secondly, they are not in control of their own lives. Someone else is making the decisions for them. How many people, can actually say, that they live a life, that they have fully examined, and that this life they chose was made by them only? Not many, and I am certain of that. So evaluate your fears and see if the alternative is any better. As a matter of fact, decide for yourself, from the many choices under the sun, the true path that resonates with your heart.
Now for the last question; who else knows what I know? For starters, I'm not one for conspiracy theories. Why? Because, I believe at any time you can walk away from all labels, dogmas, and external distractions that were inherited by you after birth. But there seems to be a fear of a secret society, and I'm not saying that it doesn't exist. I'm just saying that there is no secret unless you are conforming. Even joining such groups is a form of conformity. There's rituals, and sayings and symbols. Who came up with this stuff? And why is using your mind to think for yourself such a problem? The rhythm of love has always been there, it just has been silenced the more we become advanced as human beings. L.O.V.E. does exist. You must choose. These are just thoughts.


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Errol Morris on photography.
This is the first installment in a two-part series.
The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes…
— Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Hound of the Baskervilles"
NOTE: This is a follow-up to my quiz that ran in The Times, "Are You an Optimist or a Pessimist?"
I would like you to read my essay and then take the quiz. It doesn't matter whether you have taken it before. If you haven't taken it before, please take it. If you have taken it before, please take it again.
Here is my confession. My quiz wasn't really a test of the optimism or pessimism of the reader. There was a hidden agenda. It was a test of the effect of typefaces on truth. Or to be precise, the effect on credulity. [2] Are there certain typefaces that compel a belief that the sentences they are written in are true?
I picked a passage from David Deutsch's second book, "The Beginning of Infinity" — a passage about "unprecedented safety" — and embedded it in my quiz for The Times, "Are You an Optimist or a Pessimist?"
If a one-kilometer asteroid had approached the Earth on a collision course at any time in human history before the early twenty-first century, it would have killed at least a substantial proportion of all humans. In that respect, as in many others, we live in an era of unprecedented safety: the twenty-first century is the first ever moment when we have known how to defend ourselves from such impacts, which occur once every 250,000 years or so.
Do you think Deutsch's claim is true? Is it true that "we live in an era of unprecedented safety"?
( ) Yes: The claim is true
( ) No: The claim is false
How confident are you in your conclusion?
( ) Slightly confident
( ) Moderately confident
( ) Very confident
I do not mean to dismiss the possibility of global catastrophe from asteroids or global warming or a host of other possible calamities — bioengineered viruses spreading out of control, Malthusian nightmares of overpopulation choking off life on the planet, etc. I wouldn't want to dismiss even the most outrageous of millenarian fantasies, including Mayan predictions of the end of the world. [3] [4]
But for the moment, I was interested in something somewhat less apocalyptic.
We all know that we are influenced in many, many ways — many of which we remain blissfully unaware of. Could typefaces be one of them? Could the mere selection of a typeface influence us to believe one thing rather than another? Could typefaces work some unseen magic? Or malefaction?
Don't get me wrong. The underlying truth of the sentence "Gold has an atomic number of 79" is not dependent on the typeface in which it is written. The sentence is true regardless of whether it is displayed in Helvetica, Georgia or even the much-maligned Comic Sans. But are we more inclined to believe that gold has an atomic number of 79 if we read it in Georgia, the typeface of The New York Times online, rather than in Helvetica?
I asked a friend, the psychologist Marc Hauser, about experimental results on typefaces. He recommended a blog post, "The Secret Life of Fonts," written by Phil Renaud, self-described as "a Canadian blog design and web design enthusiast, with a particular admiration for web standards and CSS innovation. Ruby on Rails, xhtml/css, ajax, and a whole lotta love." [5]
I'm nearing the end of my sixth semester of university, and things are going pretty well: I'm clearing a decent grade point average, enjoying my major, and just having wrapped up my semester's "essay alley," wherein all my courses require a term paper or two, and getting my results back telling me that I'm doing much better than usual.
At first, I'm just relieved to be doing so well. Still, ever the skeptic, I start to wonder: what exactly am I doing differently now to be getting all these A-range paper grades all of the sudden?
I haven't drastically changed the amount of effort I'm putting into my writing. I'm probably even spending less time with them now than I did earlier in my studies, and while I guess you could argue that I'm probably just being a great example of practice making perfect, I've got my doubts; I even used to take courses concentrating on writing better essays, and in the time surrounding that, my grades were pretty low.
Then it hits me: the only thing I've really changed since I've been getting these grades is…
my essay font.
Renaud had written 52 essays in total. Eleven were set in Times New Roman, 18 in Trebuchet MS, and the remaining 23 in Georgia. The Times New Roman papers earned an average grade of A-, but the Trebuchet papers could only muster a B-.
And the Georgia essays? A solid A.
Well, would you believe it? My essays written in Georgia did the best overall. This got me thinking as to why that might be: maybe fonts speak a lot louder than we think they do. Especially to a professor who has to wade through a collection of them; Times seems to be the norm, so it really doesn't set off any subconscious triggers. Georgia is enough like Times to retain its academic feel, and is different enough to be something of a relief for the grader. Trebuchet seems to set off a negative trigger, maybe just based on the fact that it's not as easy to read in print, maybe on the fact that it looks like something off a blog rather than an academic journal. Who knows…
So, be mindful of your target audience when you're marking up a document, whether it's a university essay or a commercial website. You never know just how loudly a font speaks.
But Renaud's results are anecdotal. I wondered: is there an experiment that could decide this once and for all? Or barring that, at least throw some empirical light on the situation? Could the effect of typography on the perception of truth be assessed objectively?
Benjamin Berman (who designed the Multics emulation for my Times article " Did My Brother Invent Email with Tom Van Vleck?") created a program that changes the typeface of the David Deutsch passage. Each Times participant read the passage in one of six randomly assigned typefaces — Baskerville, Computer Modern, Georgia, Helvetica, Comic Sans and Trebuchet. The questions, ostensibly about optimism or pessimism, provided data about the influence of typefaces on our beliefs.
The test consisted of comparing the responses and determining whether typeface choice influenced our perception of the truth of the passage.
More than 100,000 people clicked on the page, and approximately 45,000 people took the quiz.
I gave the results to David Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, who helped design the questions and the overall character of the quiz. [6] Here are the results. 39 percent of the test-takers were pessimists and found fault with Deutsch; 61 percent were optimists and agreed with him.
I don't know whether such a test was done 10 or 20 years ago, and whether the outcome would be at all different, but from the 45,000 responses, it seems that a clear majority now believes that science and technology can save us from a natural catastrophe — at least, from a nasty encounter with an asteroid. (Of course, it is unclear whether there is a majority that believe that science and technology can save us from ourselves.)
The quiz received more than 250 comments — many of them really funny and interesting — but almost no one caught on to the fact that people were reading the passage in different typefaces.
No one except for Michael McGahan from Denver, Colo. In a reply, he wrote,
If the "surprise" in the results has anything to do with Deutsch's claim being presented in Comic Sans, consider me unsurprised. Specifically, something tells me that this is an A/B comparison experiment in which some people are presented the passage in a "formal" font, and others are presented the passage in an "informal" font, and the "optimism" results will be compared based on the presentation condition — otherwise, what is Comic Sans doing in the New York Times, which should know better? I look forward to the results!
I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.
— Old Proverb
Until about 150 years ago most people wrote out documents by hand. Since the advent of typewriters (from John J. Pratt's pterotype in the 1860s to word processors in the 1980s), few people write by hand anymore, and we now have a vast array of typefaces available to us. It is an easy matter to change an entire document from Bembo to Garamond to Caslon to Palatino. We forget that written manuscripts, letters and journals were once unique objects often containing clues about the writer and the context of when and how they were written.
Can we separate the form of the writing from its content? Usually, it's difficult if not impossible, but let me give you an extraordinary example of a page from a journal written during the Crimean War by Captain Mark Walker.
The page from June 9-10, 1855, is notable because the handwriting changes suddenly, halfway down the page. On first inspection it appears to be written by two different people or perhaps someone with multiple personality disorder. The writing on the top half of the page is elegant but unreadable, the writing on the bottom half, awkward but entirely legible. The reason for the abrupt change becomes clear only through reading the journal. (You can also read the accompanying transcription.)
[Transcription of the upper-half of the journal page, dated June 9, 1855.]
…wounded Major Armstrong + Capt. Le Marchant 49 wounded + Lt Stone's 55th killed. Today it is blowing very hard and the dust is abominable — have just heard of 4 officers [of the] 88th having been killed and Col. Sherman Major Dick-son + Capt. Foster [of the] 62nd Many I know and respect very much it is said the loss has been in the Divisions about 500 killed and wounded — besides many in the Light Division. Lord Raglan went toward the hospitals this evening visiting the wounded. There is a general order eulogizing the troops though it is whispered they did not do so well. Little I fear has been gained for a great loss —
Saturday 9th. Still blowing very hard + dusty. The bateries [sic] are firing away. Yesterday the ships in harbor threw shells all day at the Mamelon, the Redan, and the Malakoff. [The Russians] fired very little. I fancy they are preserving their ammunition in case of an assault — a generous one I should think — hill down to the plains.
And then the serious firing began.
[Transcription of the lower-half of the journal page, dated June 10, 1855.]
Sunday 10th. Last night I went on with the reserves. Just as I got into the rear approach which joins the trench on the right heavy firing commenced at the Mamelon. While I was in the act of hurrying the men up a howitzer shell dropped beside me and exploded. A piece struck me on the right elbow and smashed it. I immediately tied a large handkerchief above the fracture and walked to the rear until I met some of the 55th who put me on a stretcher and carried me to Camp. I received great kindness from my new brother officers. After some time I was carried to a hut at the General Hospital where I now am. I was put under choloroform [sic] and on coming to consciousness I found my arm taken off above the elbow during the night and today I suffered a good deal of pain. The loss I have experienced is very great but I am very thankful that my life has been spared. The hut has been filled with sympathizing visitors particularly my [old comrades of the 30th…]
Compare the typed text with Captain Walker's handwritten journal. The information is the same, but clearly, the emotional resonance of the words in the written journal is different. We feel the howitzer shell, the shattered elbow, the ripped tendons — ultimately the loss of the arm. And the writing, in a new unfamiliar hand, suggests an odd sangfroid, an equanimity in the face of horrifying adversity. [7]
I have often wondered about the visual element in text. Yes, we read the word "horse," but we also see the letters, the typefaces, the shape of the word on the page. Is this not part of the meaning? It seems evident that we respond to different typefaces in different ways, but how many experiments have been done to determine the effect of typefaces on our perception of truth? Do we more readily accept (as true) sentences written in one typeface rather than another? Let's look at the test results.
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance, How can we know the dancer from the dance?
— W.B. Yeats, "Among School Children"
Michael McGahan, the author of the reply from the first part of this essay, noticed the use of Comic Sans. To him, that alone suggested that something was up. And then when I commented on the quiz on my Twitter account, Marin Balaic of Osijek, Croatia, provided the comment, "Maybe because the claim and questions are set in Comic Sans? It does have a reputation for rendering things ineffectual." Balaic was aware that typefaces were in some way involved. But he didn't go further than that. [8]
Balaic, like so many others, was firmly convinced — call it a feeling of typographic rectitude — that Comic Sans was "rendering things ineffectual," or, to be fair to his argument, was at least reputed to have that effect. And Comic Sans had been recently in the news. On July 4, CERN announced its evidence for the existence of the Higgs boson — the particle predicted some 36 years earlier — in Comic Sans.
Of the thousands of typefaces widely available, why Comic Sans? Nadine Chahine in Design Week wrote,
Of the thousands of fonts available to convey such a critical milestone, the scientists plumped for the Marmite of typography — Comic Sans. Within minutes of the news' breaking 'Comic Sans' was trending on Twitter, with the majority of tweeters expressing their disgust at such an important announcement being conveyed in such a way.
And Patrick Kingsley in The Guardian wrote,
I opened Twitter this morning to find two things trending: "Comic Sans," and "Higgs Boson" — the former a much-hated font, and the latter something to do with science. As unlikely as it sounds, the two things were linked… "Dear @CERN," wrote one science buff with a taste for typography. "Every time you use Comic Sans on a powerpoint, God kills Schrödinger's cat. Please think of the cat." Another groaned: "They used Comic Sans on the Higgs boson powerpoint presentation … Nope there is no hope for mankind."
Fortunately, I was able to get an answer. Lisa Randall, a Harvard physicist, kindly e-mailed Fabiola Gianotti on my behalf. Gianotti, the coordinator of the CERN program to find the Higgs boson, provided a compelling rationale for why she had used Comic Sans. When asked, she said, "Because I like it."
The conscious awareness of Comic Sans promotes — at least among some people — contempt and summary dismissal. But is there a typeface that promotes, engenders a belief that a sentence is true? Or at least nudges us in that direction? And indeed there is.
It is Baskerville.
Believe it or not, the results of this test even show a disparity between Baskerville and Georgia — two apparently similar serif typefaces.
My first thought was that it must have been a sampling error. A false positive — a result with no meaning. But it is not. It may be one of the true graven facts, like the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle — fixed, immutable, necessary. (Well, maybe not. It's a probabilistic result, after all.)
Benjamin Berman collected the data, did an initial analysis, and created bar graphs to illustrate the responses to the Deutsch passage. The total number of participants used for this analysis is 45,524.
These graphs provide numerical totals for each category by typeface and level of confidence. Baskerville is the second tallest bar (just below Helvetica) in terms of agreement, but it has the most people who strongly agree. Baskerville also is the second shortest (just below Computer Modern) in disagreement, but it has the fewest people who strongly disagree.
Berman then forwarded the data to David Dunning at Cornell.
Here is Professor Dunning's reply:
Baskerville is different from the rest. I'd call it a 1.5% advantage, in that that's how much higher agreement is with it relative to the average of the other fonts. That advantage may seem small, but if that was a bump up in sales figures, many online companies would kill for it. The fact that font matters at all is a wonderment.
Dunning coded the responses, assigning weighted values to each of the six levels of confidence.
strongly agree = 5
moderately agree = 3
slightly agree = 1
slightly disagree = -1
moderately disagree = -3
strongly disagree = -5.
This second pair of graphs provide weighted totals. (Take the numerical totals for Baskerville. Multiply the figure for strongly agree by 5, the figure for moderately agree by 3, the figure for slightly agree by 1, etc., and then add them together. [9] ) Suddenly, Baskerville leaps off the page. It has both the highest rate of agreement and the lowest rate of disagreement.
And it turns out that Marin Balaic was right. Comic Sans has the lowest rate of agreement, and one of the highest rates of disagreement.
Are the results the product of chance? To address this question, Dunning calculated the p-value for each typeface. Grossly simplified, the p-value is an assessment of the likelihood that the particular effect we are looking at (e.g., the effect produced by Baskerville) is a result of a meaningless coincidence. [10] The p-value for Baskerville is 0.0068. Dunning explained, "We never completely rule out random chance as a possible cause of any result we see. But sometimes the result is so strong that chance is just very, very unlikely. What's strong enough? If the p-value is 0.05 or less, we typically dismiss chance as an explanation by 'industry agreement.' That is, we tolerate a 5 percent chance on any one comparison that what we are looking at is merely random variation." But Dunning went even further. Since we are testing six typefaces, he noted that there "are 6, not 1, opportunities for me to be just looking at random chance. The conservative approach is to divide 5 percent by the number of tests. Thus, the p-value to dismiss chance falls to 0.0083." Under 1 percent.
I called Professor Dunning.
DAVID DUNNING: Baskerville seems to be the king of fonts. What I did is I pushed and pulled at the data and threw nasty criteria at it. But it is clear in the data that Baskerville is different from the other fonts in terms of the response it is soliciting. Now, it may seem small but it is impressive.
ERROL MORRIS: I am completely surprised by this. If you asked me in advance, I would have guessed Georgia or Computer Modern, something that has the imprimatur of, I don't know, truth —
DAVID DUNNING: The word that comes to my mind is gravitas. There are some fonts that are informal — Comic Sans, obviously — and other fonts that are a little bit more tuxedo. It seems to me that Georgia is slightly tuxedo. Computer Modern is a little bit more tuxedo and Baskerville has just a tad more starchiness. I would have expected that if you are going to have a winner in Baskerville, you are also going to have a winner in Computer Modern. But we did not. And there can be a number of explanations for that. Maybe there is a slight difference in how they are rendered in PCs or laptops that causes the starch in Computer Modern to be a little softer than the starch in Baskerville.
ERROL MORRIS: Starchiness?
DAVID DUNNING: Fonts have different personalities. It seems to me that one thing you can say about Baskerville is that it feels more formal or looks more formal. So that may give it a push in terms of its level of authority. This is, of course, speculation. I don't really know. What one would do with, when you get surprising results is you now have to think about, O.K., what do we do to take that back-ended speculation and support it with data?
ERROL MORRIS: How surprised are you by this?
DAVID DUNNING: I'm surprised that the damn thing worked at all — because you are conducting an experiment in an uncontrolled environment. Who knows what's going on at the other end of a computer screen? Their kids could be screaming in the background for all we know. It could be two a.m. It could be two p.m. They've had their coffee. They haven't had their coffee… The font is on their desktops. There is just a ton of stuff out there that could obscure any results whatsoever. That's why I made sure to have those six levels of confidence —
ERROL MORRIS: Because —
DAVID DUNNING: Because, basically, there are two different types of questions you can ask in a survey. You can ask yes/no. Do you agree with X? And that is a rather crude question, because if a person says yes, you don't know if they are saying, "Yes, God damn it," or if they are saying, "Ye-es." [in a meek voice]. They both qualify as yes. However, if you ask about gradations of the "yes" (or gradations of agreeing), then if there is a more subtle phenomenon going on you have a better chance of catching it. You catch people going from "Ye-es" to "Yeah."
ERROL MORRIS: And what did you learn from this data?
DAVID DUNNING: That people either agree or they disagree. They are not hovering around the middle at all. They choose a decisive yes or no. But I thought that some fonts would be rejected rather than that one font was going to be the winner.
ERROL MORRIS: For example, Comic Sans would be a loser.
DAVID DUNNING: Exactly.
ERROL MORRIS: The loser font.
DAVID DUNNING: The inappropriate font. What is this font doing here? [laughter] But no. That doesn't seem to have been the case. And that's why you do the studies. Sometimes you get exactly what you expect. O.K., great. You publish them. The fun happens when you do a study that comes out in a way that no one would ever have expected. Now you've got to sit back and say, how do I explain that? Can I explain that?
[1] An illustration of the Torino Scale from "0" where the likelihood of an asteroid collision with the Earth is so low as to be effectively zero to "10" where a collision is certain, capable of causing global climatic catastrophe that may threaten the future of civilization as we know it, whether affecting land or ocean. Such events occur on average once every 100,000 years, more or less. It reminds me of a trip to Glen Canyon Dam. You can stand on the top and feel the weight, the immense power of the water trapped behind the dam. There have been constant leaks, but the engineer in charge told me not to worry, that the dam was designed to last 100 years.
[2] The geneticist Eric Lander suggested the word "credulity," which comes closer to describing what I was looking for.
[3] I interviewed (in The Times) the leading authority on that issue, and he assured me that the current calculations are off and we have at least another 60 years left.
[4] Robert Trembley in a comment on my quiz provided his own list.
* Over 9K NEOs recently Discovered; last large one hit a century ago. We ARE due — it's a matter of WHEN, not IF. Smaller ones plow into the earth's atmosphere DAILY.
* Haven't had a global pandemic in a century (remember SARS, the swine flu, and bird flu — we really dodged a bullet with those.) * Terrorists flying planes into buildings. * Continual State of War for a decade. * Nukes that fit into a briefcase. * No major super-volcano eruptions in hundreds of thousands of years (we're due). * Entertainment Business creating rootkit viruses. * Horrible light pollution. * Climate change. * Anthrax in a letter. * Awful parenting. * 799 Superfund sites. * Several recent Tsunamis. * Bride burning. * Nobody going to jail for causing the crash of 2008. … We aren't as "safe" as Mr. Deutsch would like to believe; the human race RE-ALLY has not been seriously challenged in several hundred years. I'm usually NOT that much of a pessimist (really!), but remarks like Mr. Deutsch's seem a bit ignorant of both history, AND recent events.
[5] "The Secret Life of Fonts"
[6] I interviewed Dunning for another essay for The Times, "The Anosognosic's Dilemma: Something's Wrong But You'll Never Know What It Is."
[7] The campaign journal is part of the collection of the National Army Museum. It appears in the exhibition catalogue "A Most Desperate Undertaking: The British Army in the Crimea (1854-6)," edited by Alastair Massie. Massie told me that later in the journal Walker's crabbed writing be-gan to change back into something like the unreadable cursive he wrote with his right hand.
[8] Balaic is a designer and commercial filmmaker.
[9] These figures may seem arbitrary, but their purpose is to give statistical weight to the differences between "strongly," "moderately" and "slightly." Dunning also assigned the values, 3, 2, 1, -1, -2, -3. It doesn't change the results.
[10] I will provide an appendix on the statistical results that presents David Dunning's findings, When speaking about p-values I hesitate to use the c-word, "cause." David Hume would object. Better to speak about random versus significant.
An earlier version of this article used the word "font" imprecisely. "Font" designates the physical embodiment of a collection of characters and symbols — including both style and size. "Typeface" is the broader term encompassing any set of characters that share common design features.


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Slide Show: Oregon Garden Brewfest
Most of the big festivals celebrating the Northwest craft libations take place in Portland, Bend or some windswept spot on the Oregon Coast. But during the last weekend of April, The Oregon Garden Brewfest offers a central Willamette Valley location just past the little town of Silverton. Last weekend, the Garden Brewfest, now in it's eighth year, welcomed a record-breaking crowd of over 6,000 beer hunters and thirsty citizens. Brewers and beeroisseurs mingled and sipped over 90 varieties of craft beer, geeked out on tasting demonstrations, and shook their mugs to a sweet lineup of live music featuring Portland stalwarts Weinland and headliners Blitzen Trapper—all set amidst a lush 80 acre botanical garden.
The fest kicked off on Thursday evening with a fundraiser for the Garden, an intimate brewers dinner in which a coursed meal of six scrumptious plates were paired up with six craft beers, each introduced in detail by the brewers as they were being poured. A fruity, pear infused, pinot-barrel aged Seizoen Bretta by Logsdon Farmhouse Ales complimented aged cheeses; the sweetness of a bacon dressing over warm potato salad was evident when combined with Seven Brides Rose's Imperial Pilsner, and a spring salad was accompanied by a very fuschia Marionberry Hibiscus Gose, which by all appearances was supposed to be tart and sweet, but was actually light and crisp. The main entrée, a braised beef short rib, slow roasted with root vegetables demi-glace, was paired with an imperial black saison named The City Never Sleeps, by Portland's new Gigantic Brewing: a collaboration between Ben Love (formerly of Hopworks), and Van Havig (once the head brewer at Rock Bottom). Ben worked the room into laughter as he explained that Gigantic had been brewing for about…3 weeks. The beer was brand new, yet it was the star of the show. The room was quickly abuzz about the Cascadian dark ale, sweet with dark fruit and slightly spicy (expect a spicy-chili version in the future), cut the richness of the ribs, creating a refreshingly smooth counterpoint.
Not only did they wow the diners, but Gigantic Brewing's "City" also won The People's Choice for the entire festival.
Other honorable mentions were Uinta's Duhbe Imperial Black Ale, Seven Brides Becky's Black Cat Porter, and Calapooia's Chili Beer.
Upon receiving my glass and tasting tickets I set off to sample my own battery of brews.
These were my picks:
Gilgamesh; "Vader": Started the day with this black IPA/coffee stout. Resiny hop aromas, rich espresso flavors, and a peppery finish.
Block 15; "Nebula": Hints of fresh coffee, dark chocolate and caramel with a velvet brown head. Golden naked oats provide a sweet-nut flavor and a satiny mouthfeel.
Good Life Brewing; "Mountain Rescue Pale Ale": Somewhere between an amber ale and an IPA, it had a balanced body and spicy finish.
Tieton Ciderworks; "Apricot Cider": I wanted to finish a little sweeter, so I decided to try one of the cider booths. The Apricot sounded enticing, but while it started out crisp, it went a little more sour than flavorful, and probably needed to be chilled longer.
Gilgamesh; "DJ Jazzy Heff": I circled back to try the other beer by Gilgamesh. A jasmine tea-infused Hefeweizen, citrus and herbal notes and just the right amount of hops. Light, spritzy, and perfect for warm days.
The event combines two of my favorite things, beer and gardening, and is scheduled during a convenient time of year for a relaxing getaway. In between drinks or waiting for festivities to begin, myself and many festival goers wandered throughout the gardens to view exotic flowers, and native wildlife. Some visitors made a weekend of it by staying at The Oregon Garden's resort: well landscaped, cottage-style accommodations with private patios, and a lodge featuring a full spa, event space, and a restaurant with live music. Just a short drive away are opportunities to take fun pictures in fields of blooming tulips, trekking a waterfall hike, or exploring the Oktoberfest village of Mt. Angel. The Ninth Annual Oregon Garden Brewfest will take place April 26 & 27, 2013. Start making plans!


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Hindenburg's Vimana Joyride
Ernest Hogan
AIs are the aliens of the 21st Century. As both the economics of getting mass out of a gravity well (about $11,000 per kilogram) and the hostile space environment (to which humans simply haven't evolved…yet) returned space exploration down to near Earth (commercial satellites) after the prestigious — and very expensive — Moon landings, both the interest and the likelihood of aliens dwindled. The fact that the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) hasn't turned up anything in 50 years hasn't helped matters, either. Humans are, in general, not very patient (maybe a dose of extreme longevity would come in handy).
So if we can't find the alien, why not create it? Obviously, in the real world this is already happening (although we're merely at the very start of a long, ongoing process), and SF has already been speculating on the possible outcomes. Precious little science fiction sees Artificial Intelligence as benign or beneficial, though (long echoes of the Frankenstein complex), and even less SF can see the funny side of it.
Not Ernest Hogan, though: with the gonzo aplomb and Chicano chutzpah that are second nature to him, he depicts the technological singularity not as an unfathomable event, nor as the end of the world as we know it, but rather as "Hindenburg's Vimana Joyride".
"GOD DAMN FUCKING TECHNOLOGY!" Victor Theremin screamed.
Then he crossed his arms, admiring the motel's pseudo-PreColumbian decor, the nearby hoodooistic mountains, the mural of the giant spider, and the sacred Datura growing by the street. Moab, Utah was a nice town. He always thought of it when writing about colonies on Mars.
"Victor? Victor Theremin?" The door did not open.
"Yeah, I knew that bit of blasphemy would get a rise out of you!"
"What are you doing here?"
"What the fuck else, Hugo? I'm here to talk you out of killing yourself!"
"Go away! I've made up my mind! I've got my .44 magnum right here!"
"I'm not going anywhere!"
Victor pulled out an antique toy raygun. He pulled the trigger. A pulse of energy blasted the door off its hinges.
Inside, Hugo K. Hindenburg, last of the classic science fiction writers, sat on the bed. His hair and beard were longer and whiter than ever. His face was, too. The .44 magnum sat on the night stand, out of his reach.
"Jesus Christ, Theremin! How? What?"
Victor waved the raygun. "Just a toy from my friends."
"Those junior mad scientists? Most of them don't even have degrees."
"The Intergalactic Mad Scientist Secret Society."
"Sounds like really bad pulp fiction."
"That's why I like it."
"They must have learned a few things to come up with something like . . . that."
Victor waved the raygun around. "Actually, they aren't responsible for this. Some new friends of mine are."
"A government?"
"A secret multinational corporation?"
"Holy shit, Victor! Have you made contact with extraterrestrials?"
"Well, not quite."
"Cut the bullshit, kid. Level with me."
They heard the sound of approaching vehicles.
"No time." Victor tossed a duplicate of his raygun to Hugo. "We gotta clear out. They're almost here."
Hugo examined the raygun. It looked like a toy — an old, rusted toy.
"Who's almost here, Victor? More friends of yours?"
"Not exactly friends."
Hugo reached for the magnum. "Maybe we'll need this."
"Naw, the little zapper will be better."
"Gimme a break!" Hugo was shaky on his feet. "My wife died, the 21st century is an incredible disappointment, and just when I got to hoping that at least I'd see the world come to an end, the whole mess just keeps on going!"
As they passed the doorway, the window shattered.
"Quick! My car!" Victor pushed Hugo to a peculiar little silver vehicle with tiny wheels and a bubble top.
"Cute. Does it have doors?"
The bubble top melted into the windshield. Victor hopped in. Hugo followed. Seatbelts snaked out and grabbed them.
The sidewalk in front of the room exploded.
The top flowed back into a full bubble. The car zoomed off. The parking space became a smoking crater.
"Victor — where the hell is the steering wheel?"
"It doesn't have one."
"It drives itself?"
"Partially. It also scans my brain for instructions."
"I don't like the idea of brain scans."
"My Vimana can't figure much out beyond spacial relationships and geometric patterns."
"Vimana? Those flying things from the Ramayana?"
"I just named it that, but someday, I'll inspire someone with the right physics and engineering background and Sanskrit comprehension . . ."
"There you go into Bullshitland again."
"I never shy away from interesting territory."
"I'll admit it is interesting, but this is beyond your 'mad scientist' buddies' capabilities."
"They had some help."
"So level with me, Victor! Who—"
A concussion shoved them off the road.
Victor whispered some mumbo-jumbo. The Vimana rose into the air.
Hindenburg's pupils became fully dilated. His jaw hung slack. "Damn. We're flying."
"Took you this long to figure it out, Hugo?"
"I wrote about flying cars. Always thought they'd be wonderful, but I'd never thought I'd ever live to see them, much less fly in one. They're impractical, too many complicated technical problems."
"If human beings want something bad enough, one of them will come along who's crazy enough to make it happen."
"Okay, Victor, no more fucking around. What is all this? Where did it come from? What have to you gotten into?"
"It's a rather convoluted story."
"Sounds as difficult to follow as one of your stories."
"I always believed that you shouldn't try to follow stories, you should jump on them, hang on for dear life, and see where they take you."
"So, where is this one taking you — er — us."
"Uh-oh. Bogies at six o'clock! Gotta evade! Hang on!"
The seatbelts gripped harder. The Vimana tilted and zoomed. The bogies couldn't keep up.
"Holy shit!"
"Just roll with it!" Victor's voice was distorted by being buffeted around. "In a few minutes it'll be worth it."
"Y-YOURRRR K-KIIIIIIILLING M-MEEEEEEEEEE!" Hugo closed his eyes and white knuckled it. The Gs kept pounding.
Then it was all gone. The seatbelts held on to keep him from floating.
Hugo opened his eyes. His hair and beard were floating.
"Don't look at me like that, you punk!" Beyond Victor was the curvature of the Earth, and star-studded blackness.
"No. It couldn't be."
"What does it look like, Hugo? What does it feel like?"
A tear welled up, then broke free from Hindenburg's eyes, floating as a tiny, shimmering sphere. "We're — I'm — in space! I never thought I'd make it."
"I seem to recall, a few decades back, you vowing that you would."
"That was the beginning of the Space Age. We were all so full of hope."
"So what happened, Victor?"
"I guess I lost faith, but damn it! That wasn't until the last couple of decades, when things got really screwed up."
"And they stopped publishing you."
"I haven't seen much from you in bookstores lately."
"I've found new outlets. Besides, bookstores are going the way of the dinosaur."
"Face it, Victor, I'm a dinosaur."
"If I could bring back the dinosaurs, Hugo, I would."
"You never consider the consequences, do you."
"Makes for good stories."
"And it wasn't just the book business, the whole world went in the wrong direction. I thought we'd be having conventions on the Moon by now."
"Things are just more complicated — and more interesting."
Hugo gaped at the Earth below. He began to smile.
"So, what is all this?"
"Like I said, a long convoluted, complicated, and interesting story."
"So start at the beginning!"
"I'm not sure when it began. They were probably watching me for a long time."
"The AIs."
"Artificial Intelligence?"
"Yup. The Singularity. Machines thinking and evolving on their own. Like all the people you made fun of have been saying."
"Wait a minute! The Singularity was supposed to the biggest thing since life crawled onto dry land. How come I — not to mention the news media — haven't noticed anything?"
"Think about it, Hugo. We created them. To them we're like God, only we're easier to interact with."
"So what's the problem?"
"Well — us — they don't understand us. To them we're stupid, crazy, and otherwise fucked up."
"So why don't they just get rid of us and take over?"
"We deal with reality better than they do."
Hugo shook his head. "That's crazy enough to be true. But then, why are they lavishing all these fantastic toys on you?"
"They discovered my work, and figured that I must hold the key to understanding humanity and how we affect reality."
Hugo rolled his eyes. "So why you and not me?"
"You make too much sense."
Hugo laughed.
The AIs who were listening didn't understand.
"And why did you feel you had to do all this to bring me out of my suicidal funk?"
"You're the last of the classic science fiction writers, Hugo. You sent the imaginations of a lot of people soaring, which is precisely what the AIs lack. Creativity scares them. And creativity is the key to dealing with this crazy universe."
Hugo looked out to the stars. "I wanted it all, to write a bestseller that won the Hugo, Nebula, and the Nobel. I wanted to be taken seriously."
"Being taken seriously is overrated."
"Damn it, Victor! When are you going to grow up?"
"Maybe that's all for the best. So what am I supposed to do if I decide to go on living?"
"What you've always do. Get inspired. Write. I'd really like to read some more Hugo K. Hindenburg."
"It's no use, kid. Even if I come up with something great, all my publisher wants from me is another Galactic Renegades adventure."
"Fuck them. With my connections we could release something new and different from you in a new and different way. Something like I, Martian, Doctor Cosmos, or Hyperopolis. The world needs that old Hindenburg magic."
"Yeah. Why not? Just for the Hell of it!"
"So, are you in?"
"This has really rearranged by brain cells . . . I kind of feel . . . some ideas are taking shape . . ."
"Yeah. That's it. You're started, and once that gets going, you can't stop it."
"Damn you, Theremin!"
"Thank you, Hindenburg!"
A screen flashed and buzzed.
"And it looks like they've lost track of us. It's safe to go back."
"Safe?" Hugo toyed with the raygun. "Uh — just who was chasing us?"
"I meant to tell you about that, too. The AIs who sponsor me, aren't the only ones. There are also some who aren't so nice."
"And they're trying to take over?"
"Or at least fuck things up beyond all recognition."
"And this little hunk of tin is supposed to help?"
"It was good enough to blow in the door of your motel room."
"Oh no! They're probably going to charge me for that!"
"Don't worry. Some folks in grey suits and mirrorshades are taking care of those pesky little details."
"My .44 magnum!"
"You won't be needing it. This little hunk of tin can knock anything that comes after you on its ass. And its smart nanotechnology goes inert if it falls into the wrong hands. They could go over it with an electron microscope, and just find a rusty old toy."
"What have you gotten me into?"
Hugo sighed. "I'm not sure how I can do it without Lucille."
"No problema. I'll have my buddies fix you up with an intern. These gals just get smarter and more creative. They'll probably take over the world soon, and we'll all be better off for it."
"Naw. That's just not my style. I think I'll look up Roxana Bava."
"The renegade marine biologist who spends most of her time chasing giant squids?"
"Yeah. I always though she was hot."
"Me, too, but — let's just say you're a braver man that I am."
The Vimana floated down to a Colorado town.
"We can get lunch and stay off the radar here."
Soon they were waiting for at a red light with the top down.
A SUV pulled up next to them. The rear window bore a decal saying, GREEN UPDATES ONBOARD. The driver's window rolled down. Victor and Hugo reached for their rayguns.
A young man stuck his head out. "Hey, old timers! What the hell is that you're cruising around in?"
"Why, sonny," Hugo explained. "This is the car of the future."
The young woman in passenger seat wrinkled her nose. "Eew! I hate the future!"
"Too bad, honey," Victor added, "because that's where you're going to spend the rest of your life!"
Hugo concluded with "BWOO-HOO-HOO-HA-HA-HA-HA!"
"Shit!" Victor fingered the control panel. "Let's really give these brats something to talk about!"
The bubble top sealed. The Vimana shot up to the stratosphere. Victor and Hugo hooted like drunk rednecks on a Saturday night
The kids in the SUV gaped at them.
And the AIs still didn't get it.
Hindenburg's Vimana Joyride by Ernest Hogan. Copyright ©2010 by Ernest Hogan.
Ernest Hogan is a recombocultural Chicano mutant, known for committing outrageous acts of science fiction, cartooning, and other questionable pursuits. He can't help but be controversial. Everything he does offends or causes psychic harm. Rumor has it he's doing it on purpose. Some people think he's funny. Read on at your own risk . . . His novels are Cortez on Jupiter, High Aztech, and Smoking Mirror Blues. His short fiction has appeared in Amazing Stories, Analog, Science Fiction Age, Semiotext(e)SF, Angel Body and Other Magic for the Soul, Witpunk, and Voices for the Cure.
Picture Credits:
- Green Technology: via Freaking News;
- Raygun 1: via Sodahead;
- Ultimate Technology: via PSP Wallpapers;
- Vimana pictures: via Grey Falcon;
- Dinosaurs: via the KidZui Blog;
- Singularity 1: via Crossvalley Design;
- Giant Squid Close-Up: via Underwriting Solutions;
- Shoot into the Stratospehre: via GTPlanet;
An interactive Google Map of story locations:


text:
Friday, 07 June 2013 03:01 AM EDT
QUNEITRA, Golan Heights — Syrian rebels briefly seized control of a border crossing along the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights on Thursday, prompting the withdrawal of a major Austrian peacekeeping contingent and heightening fears in Israel that it could soon be dragged into the neighboring country's civil war.
Editor's Note: Iran Will Have Nuclear Weapon By 2014 — Watch Urgent Briefing Now!
From the Israeli side of the Golan, Syrian tanks and armored vehicles could be seen across the border. Large explosions could be heard throughout the day, and thick smoke and flames rose from the area. Israeli TV stations showed images of Israeli tourists flocking to the Golan to look across the frontier and gawk at the fighting.
Israeli troops along the border were on high alert, although the military said no special actions had been taken in response to the escalation.
By nightfall, the situation appeared to be quieting down. Israel's deputy defense minister, Danny Danon, said forces remained on high alert, but no special actions had been taken.
"We are following very carefully what's happening in Syria," Danon told The Associated Press. "We will do whatever is necessary to protect the interests of Israel."
Israel fears that Islamic militants who have joined the rebel ranks in trying to oust President Bashar al-Assad will turn their guns toward Israel if they topple the Syrian leader.
Islamic groups are believed to be active in the fighting in the Golan area. Israel has also expressed concerns that Assad's sophisticated weapons, could slip into the hands of hostile groups, including Assad's ally, Hezbollah.
The Jewish state has kept a wary eye on the fighting next door since the conflict erupted in March 2011 and in recent months has been bolstering its forces in the area and reinforcing a fence along the frontier.
The rebels overran the border position near the abandoned town of Quneitra early Thursday, holding their positions for several hours before Syrian government troops retook it. The international peacekeepers who maintain a 40-year-old truce receive most of their supplies through that position from Israel.
Fierce gunbattles forced peacekeepers to seek shelter in a nearby base, and the Philippine military said one of its men serving in the force was wounded in the leg when a mortar or artillery shell struck the area. U.N. diplomats said an Indian peacekeeper also was injured.
In Vienna, Austrian leaders said the fighting made it necessary to withdraw their troops.
Defense Minister Gerhard Klug said he expected the withdrawal to be done within two to four weeks, but it is possible to complete it "within a few hours" if new violence threatened the soldiers' security.
"For the first time, it was not possible for the Syrian government to guarantee proper support of the U.N.," he said.
The decision dealt a heavy to blow to the 911-member U.N. force, which includes the 377 Austrian peacekeepers as well as 341 from the Philippines and 193 from India. Croatia withdrew its contingent in March amid fears they would be targeted.
Israel and Syria agreed to creation of the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force after Syria launched military action in 1973 in a failed effort to retake the Golan, which Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the United Nations is urgently looking for troops to replace Austrians and warned that any military activity in the zone separating Israeli and Syrian forces could jeopardize the long-held cease-fire.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said it regretted Austria's decision and hoped that it would not lead to "further escalation in the region." It said it expected the United Nations to uphold its commitment.
Israeli military officials, speaking on condition of anonymity under military protocol, said several Syrians wounded in fighting were brought into Israel for medical treatment.
Others who entered Israel were returned through alternative sites. It was not clear whether the wounded were fighters or civilians.
Israeli military officials said several errant shells landed in Israeli-controlled territory. Although no injuries were reported, the military restricted access to a main road running along the border for several hours and ordered farmers with fields in the area to remain indoors.
Nadav Katz, 65, of Kibbutz Merom Golan, a communal farm near the crossing, said the area was covered with smoke and residents could hear gunfire and mortar shells exploding nearby.
"We are concerned that things might evolve into something much harsher that will affect us," said Katz. "We like the idea that for 40 years the area was peaceful and quiet. Tourists have been coming, fields have been cultivated and children were born," he said.
Katz said he trusted Israel's army to defend the area, but residents felt betrayed by the fleeing U.N. troops. More than anything, though, he said people viewed the Syrian fighting as a terrible event. "People are simply sad over the slaughter," he said.
Israeli military officials played down the significance of Thursday's fighting. They said that Quneitra is important symbolically to Syria, given its history and location along a main route to Damascus.
The town has been largely abandoned since the 1967 war, though the crossing is sometimes opened to allow Druse residents to export produce or cross into Syria to study or to marry their brethren.
Israeli officials say they have no interest in taking sides or getting involved in the fighting.
But the military has intervened on several occasions, firing at targets inside Syria in response to shelling that landed in the Israeli-side of the Golan.
In one such incident last month, Syrian troops targeted an Israeli jeep they said had crossed the cease-fire line into the Syria-controlled sector. Syria said it launched two missiles in self-defense, accusing Israel of violating the cease-fire deal.
The Israeli air force has also carried out several airstrikes in recent months on weapons shipments believed to be headed to Hezbollah.
Fighting between Assad's forces and mainly Sunni rebels has already spilled over Syria's borders into Turkey and Lebanon, where factions that support opposing sides have frequently clashed.
Urgent: Is Obama Telling the Truth on IRS, Benghazi Scandals?
Moshe Maoz, a Syria expert at the Hebrew University, played down Thursday's incident. He called it a small victory for the Surian military and said little would change even if the rebels gained control of the crossing.
"It's symbolic, but neither al-Qaida nor the mainstream groups are going to shoot at Israel because they know Israel will retaliate very heavily," he said.
© Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Spider prompts Aldi to pull grapes
Store pulls red, green, black grapes
The Aldi grocery store in Wauwatosa recently pulled all the grapes from their produce department after a customer found what appeared to be a black widow spider in a container with the fruit.
"As I was going to put them in the cart, I noticed something wiggling around in the top, and I'm like, 'What is that?' And it was a really big, healthy spider," said Yvonne Duckhorn of Milwaukee.
VIDEO: Spider found in bag of grapes
Duckhorn said the spider had a red mark on it like a black widow. She was shopping with her 4-year-old daughter and acted quickly.
"I grabbed one of the produce bags, put it over the canister of grapes, flipped it over, turned it over real tight and just ended up walking to the cashier with it," she said.
Duckhorn said the cashier didn't want to touch it, so another employee got rid of it.
Aldi released a statement to WISN 12 News Sunday which indicated they pulled all red, green and black grapes at all Milwaukee stores. The chain also said they are bolstering inspections.
Duckhorn said this incident won't stop her from shopping at Aldi. However, she said she may avoid grapes when they return to shelves.
Aldi has not released details on how the spider got into the grapes. A spokeswoman said they had a case in the St. Louis market in October that involved a black widow spider and Aldi took similar precautions.


text:
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21 x 30 cm Premium Poster: From the series 'Animals in Love' by the award-winning French photographer Jean-Manuel Duvivier
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At Photocircle, you can buy high-quality fine art photography by talented and renowned photographers, or print your own images. We offer pictures on canvas, alu dibond, fine art paper and acrylic glass in different sizes, as well as high-quality photo calendars and different kinds of beautiful frames for our prints.
Whenever a picture is sold, both the photographer and Photocircle donate up to 50% of the profit to fund a social project in the country or region where the photo was taken. Why is this important? Photographers often rely on the Internet to sell their pictures. However, almost never do the subjects of their work profit from that. This is where we come in: it's Photocircle's mission to bring those people back into the picture. In collaboration with non-profit organizations, we want to give something back to the protagonists of our photos.
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A friend is all you need by Jean-Manuel Duvivier
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Sure, the stars looked great at the Oscars, but we were much more excited to see how our favorite 4-year-old fashionista would recreate them out of paper after the show. And Mayhem did not disappoint. Her mother shared their Oscars creations on her blog, Fashion By Mayhem, and Instagram. We're not the only ones who've taken notice of the fashionable tot, either. Mayhem was "commissioned" by Ellen DeGeneres herself to design three special looks for the show's website.
Still, her mom says she's taken it all in stride. "I won't force her to make anything she doesn't want to. And we won't put any deadlines on making them. Because I'm pretty sure that might just suck the fun right out of this," Angie told The Huffington Post. Mayhem even said to her mom one morning, "No more email, Mom, let's just go make a dress." We hope she never stops, because even though her copycat creations are often better than the originals, it's her amazing personality in the photos that really has us coming back for more.
This story originally appeared on RedbookMag.com


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My love for ice cream began very early; some doctors would probably argue that it was too early. (See last picture in this Father's Day post for proof.) I believe I first tried ice cream when I was still on the bottle, probably around 3 months old. My dad gave me a taste because, well, I didn't need any teeth – no teeth required! – to enjoy his favorite evening, indulgence. And to this day, my dad eats a bowl of ice cream every. single. night. One of the best birthday presents I ever gave him was an ice cream maker. He became obsessed, mastering a ton of ice cream recipes, but mainly perfecting his vanilla bean recipe. Simple things are tough!
This ice cream right here is tart, sweet with bright coral swirls. Hello! I realize I'm repeating myself with this swirl business. Everything lately is getting a swirl. Also, everything that's sweet is also salty. I can't help it! I'm a woman obsessed.
This post is brought to you in collaboration with Real California Milk. I had no idea until they sent me a fun fact sheet, but the state of California produces more ice cream than any other state in the United States, which basically means California is the best.
When making ice cream, I usually opt for organic, good tasting milk; it is, after all, the main ingredient.
This ice cream is an awesome way to use up bright, sweet yellow peaches. They just arrived in California (as in this past weekend) and when cooked down with sugar and a bit of salt, they're incredible. They work wonders with the tart buttermilk ice cream base. Bright and sweet is a favorite of mine, and this ice cream celebrates that.
Peach Swirl Buttermilk Ice Cream
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1/2 cup white granulated sugar
- Pinch of salt
- 4 large egg yolks
- 2 tablespoons honey
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 cup buttermilk
Peach swirl:
- 4 peaches about 2 pounds
- 1/4 cup white granulated sugar
- Pinch of salt
- To a bowl, prepare an ice bath by adding 10 or so ice cubes and adding a few splashes of water. Set a slightly smaller bowl inside the bigger bowl and set a sieve or strain inside the smaller bowl. Set the whole ice bath contraption aside.
- To a medium saucepan, add the heavy cream and sugar; heat over medium until the cream reaches a slight simmer and the sugar dissolves. Once it reaches the simmer, remove the pan from the heat.
- In a medium mixing bowl, beat the egg yolks together, thoroughly. Next you're going to temper the cream mixture. Whisking the entire time, add about 1/4 cup of warm cream to the egg yolks. Add the remainder of the cream to the egg yolk mixture and whisk. Return the entire mixture back to the medium saucepan and place over low heat. Cook the cream and yolk mixture, stirring constantly, until the thermometer reads 170 to 175 degrees F and the mixture appears thick and coats the back of the spoon.
- Pour the mixture through the sieve into the bowl. Add the honey, vanilla and buttermilk. Stir constantly until the mixture becomes room temperature. Wrap the bowl in plastic and transfer it to the fridge for 4-5 hours, or overnight, until very cold.
Peach Jam:
- To make the quick peach jam, bring a medium pot filled with water to a simmer. Add the peaches and blanch for 1-2 minutes. Carefully remove the peaches and allow to cool slightly before handling. Using a paring knife, remove the skins from the peaches. Chop up the peaches, discarding the pits. To a medium saucepan, add the chopped peaches, sugar and a pinch of salt. Over medium heat, cook for 10-15 minutes, until mixture is bubbling and peaches are nearly broken down. Turn off the heat and let cool slightly. Transfer the mixture to the jar of a food processor or blender and pulse until pureed, about 10 seconds. (If you're using a blender, be sure to allow a bit of hot air to escape or else the mixture will explode. Yikes.) Transfer to a bowl and allow to come to room temperature.
- Churn the ice cream mixture into the bowl of your ice cream maker, according to your ice cream maker's instructions. When the ice cream is down churning, transfer one third of the ice cream to a container and drizzle about one third of the peach puree over it. Repeat the process, layering with the remaining ice cream and peach puree. Freeze the ice cream until firm, about 8 hours or so.
(This post is sponsored by Real California Milk. Thank you for supporting the sponsors that keep A Cozy Kitchen cozy.)


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Why You Should Care About Genetically Modified Alfalfa
Wikimedia Commons
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack decided last week to fully deregulate the planting of alfalfa genetically modified to resist the spraying of Roundup herbicide, so why should you care?
You might argue over whether Roundup Ready alfalfa is safe or not. But long before that argument's settled, organic farmers will face major economic losses.
This move had been opposed by organic farmers and consumers because of the strong possibility that genetically modified alfalfa will cross-pollinate non-GM alfalfa. This has been recognized by the Supreme Court as potentially harmful to the organics sector, since organic foods cannot be produced with genetically modified crops. Once organic livestock are fed GM alfalfa, they can no longer be called organic.
The only appeasement the USDA offered were panels on studying ways to prevent contamination from occurring in the future. But this seems akin to studying ways to protect a forest after loggers have been allowed to cut down the trees.
The decision was a stunning reversal of a more measured approach that Vilsack appeared to be taking in December, when the USDA talked about considering the impact of the GM crop on other sectors of agriculture. But that was before he faced an uproar from the GM industry and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal for playing nice with organic farmers. As George Siemon, head of the Organic Valley dairy co-operative, said:
The biotech industry has waged a complete war on the Secretary of Agriculture for ... the consideration of a co-existence proposal. They used all their influence to have the Secretary's job challenged. There here have been op-eds in major papers and magazines ("Sack Vilsack," Forbes), special meetings with the White House, grilling by the Justice Department, endless lobbying, and on Thursday of last week, a Congressional member forum was held where the Secretary was taken to the wood shed and asked repeatedly why he had not approved RR-alfalfa sooner. All this for simply opening the coexistence conversation and acknowledging that property rights and other markets should be considered.
And as Liana Hoodes, director of the National Organic Coalition, said: "Organic farmers and others are now left, once again, having to take all the precautions while biotech takes little responsibility."
So what's the potential impact?
1. Less organic forage crops. Why would any farmer plant organic alfalfa when he knows a farmer nearby is planting GM alfalfa? Not only will his costs be higher in terms of cultivating an organic crop, but the possibility now exists that the crop will not be organic once it's harvested. So why bother?
2. Fewer organic dairy farmers. Organic dairy farmers plant alfalfa in fields where their cows graze, but they may also buy hay for winter. With fewer sources of organic forages, costs for organic dairy farmers will rise. What's the smartest decision here? Reduce your risk by avoiding the organic market altogether. Or maybe buy your organic forage crops from China, as people have been doing with soybeans.
3. Higher prices for organic consumers. If the supply of organic forages falls, the cost will rise. Organic dairy farmers will either be squeezed and go under or organic milk prices will rise. The impact: higher prices at the checkout counter for moms and dads buying organic milk for their kids. (Or maybe we'll see more imports of organic milk powder from nations with stricter GM controls to keep the market going.)
4. Less investment in organic meat. Organic meat has been a fast-growing sector of the market, but why would anyone invest in this business if you could be disqualified by contaminated feed? The rational business decision would be to ignore the U.S. and invest in organic operations outside the U.S.—Uruguay anyone?
5. Fewer conventional export opportunities. The contamination of rice fields by GM test plots in Louisiana led to multimillion dollar law suits. Why? Conventional rice farmers lost markets in countries that didn't want to import GM rice. The same could be true of forages—that is, unless the U.S. is successful in getting the rest of the world to buy GM crops, as the State Department is hoping.
Now you might argue over whether Roundup Ready alfalfa is safe or not. But long before that argument's settled, organic farmers will face major economic losses—the same small farmers that the USDA likes to present as poster children for agriculture.
The other possibility is that organic farmers, certifiers, processors, retailers, and consumers knowingly accept some degree of genetically modified crops—despite regulations preventing it. Either way, consumers will take a hit. In what way or how big a hit? Only time will tell.
This post also appears on chewswise.com.


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UCI autism study singled out
A study by Daniele Piomelli identifying brain chemicals that improved symptoms of fragile X syndrome was selected as one of the 10 major research achievements funded by Brain & Behavior Research Foundation grants in 2012.
Piomelli – UC Irvine's Louise Turner Arnold chair in the neurosciences – and Olivier Manzoni of France's INSERM found that boosting natural, marijuana-like chemicals in the brain can improve transmission between neurons and potentially address behavioral issues related to fragile X syndrome, the most common known genetic cause of autism.
Piomelli and Manzoni's study is among more than 200 supported by BBRF grants last year. Piomelli is one of the world's leading endocannabinoid researchers, and his work is revealing new treatment approaches for anxiety, pain, depression and obesity.
Engineering professor honored
The government of India has announced that UC Irvine Distinguished Professor Satya Atluri will receive the 2013 Padma Bhushan award, the country's third-highest civilian award.
Atluri is an engineer in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and director of the Center for Aerospace Research & Education at The Henry Samueli School of Engineering. His widely cited research spans several disciplines and has led to greater aircraft safety and durability.
"As a teenager growing up in India, I followed with awe the two or three Padma Bhushan awardees in the sciences each year," wrote Atluri in a note to colleagues. "I never dreamed that one day I would be considered to be worthy of this award…I want to share my immense joy on this occasion and thank UCI for giving me a job and an opportunity to think, to teach and to publish."
Atluri is one of six honorees in the category of science and engineering and one of 24 total to receive the honor this year. The awards will be conferred by President Pranab Mukherjee in the spring.
– This content was provided by UCI Communications


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Search billions of records on Ancestry.com
VGS was formed in 1982. It was incorporated in
1986. To learn more about our policies please
click here. The Society publishes a fully indexed quarterly journal called Mississippi River
If you are interested in a genealogical society that encompasses the Louisiana parishes and Mississippi counties along and near the Mississippi River from the northern boundary of Louisiana's Florida Parishes (Louisiana-Mississippi line) to the Louisiana-Arkansas line and beyond, the Vicksburg Genealogical Society (VGS) is for you. We hold monthly meetings between September and May and offer informative programs. Mississippi River Routes is included with your annual $25-per-household membership dues (Our membership year runs from June 1-May 31.). Each issue of Mississippi River Routes features original documented material, including family history, record inventories, church, public, organizational, or corporate records, Bible records, cemetery inventories, letters, diaries, ledgers, and queries, to name a few. We are continually recruiting new members and seeking new material for Mississippi River Routes.
To reach the society by e-mail, please contact Tony Dardeau, Editor of Mississippi River Routes. To join VGS, submit your $25 annual membership dues to our Society mailing address:
In March and April 1996, a group of genealogists organized the Kentucky Comprehensive Genealogy Database. The idea was to provide a single entry point for all counties in Kentucky where collected databases would be stored. In addition, the databases would be indexed and cross-linked, so that even if an individual were found in more than one county, they could be located in the index. At the same time, volunteers were recruited to coordinate the collection of databases and generally oversee the contents of the web page.
This project soon grew into what is now the USGenWeb Project. There are now volunteers who handle the webpages at the state level and at the county level. These volunteers are working hard each day to provide the Genealogical community another way of communicating. Please contact your respective state or county coordinator if you would like to volunteer. The state coordinators for Louisiana and Mississippi are, respectively, Edward J. Hayden, Jr., and Lori Thornton .
If you are interested in Mississippi and Louisiana genealogy, here are some sites you may want to visit.
This page was
created by David Spiers.
Tony Dardeau
© Copyright 2023 Vicksburg Genealogical Society All Rights Reserved


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LogMeIn, the longtime maker of remote access tools, has acquired Bold Software, a provider of web chat and customer communications software. The company says it will use the technology to offer additional features and capabilities to its customers on LogMeIn Rescue, the company's support product.
Under the terms of the deal, LogMeIn acquired all the net assets of Bold Software for approximately $16.5 million in cash.
A portion of the cash is contingent on retention-based bonuses and is expected to be paid over time. LogMeIn expects the acquisition to be accretive to its non-GAAP operating results within twelve months and will provide more details regarding the financial terms of the transaction during its fourth quarter 2011 financial results conference call.
The acquisition is a part of a larger strategy to expand LogMeIn's portfolio of web-based services aimed at customer care organizations, the company says, including call centers, external help desks, and customer service teams.
For those unfamiliar, Bold Software's "BoldChat" product is a live chat and click-to-call customer service solutions that is used by thousands of retail, financial services, manufacturing, software, and telecommunications organizations. Meanwhile, LogMeIn's customer care services are used by tens of thousands of helpdesks and call centers, including 50 of the world's top mobile operators and support organizations like Best Buy's Geek Squad and OEMs like Sling Media.
Post-acquisition, BoldChat will still be available as a standalone offering, while it will also be integrated into other LogMeIn products, in addition to LogMeIn Rescue.


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The worst-to-first Rays flopped in their first game in baseball's ultimate event, managing just five hits - none after the fifth inning.
For now, this puts an end to the rest vs. rust debate. "I don't think it threw off our timing too much," Utley said of the six-day layoff. "I think tomorrow we should definitely be more back on track."
Philadelphia will try to make it two in a row at Tropicana Field when Brett Myers pitches against James Shields in Game 2 Thursday night.
The team that won the opener has captured the Series 63 of 103 times, including 10 of the last 11. But the team with home-field advantage has taken 18 of the last 22 titles.
"It's huge," Phillies closer Brad Lidge said. "You try and downplay it, but obviously you're coming into a place like this, you want to make sure you get the first game, especially because you got your ace on the mound. It's really important to do that."
Hamels, MVP of the NL championship series, improved to 4-0 with a 1.55 ERA this postseason. He had only a pair of 1-2-3 innings, but the composed 24-year-old left-hander allowed two runs and five hits in seven innings.
He benefited from the extra rest.
"I think for a starter it's almost better sometimes, just because it gives you more time to heal up," Hamels said.
Ryan Madson pitched a perfect eighth. Lidge worked the ninth for his 47th save in 47 chances this year, silencing the Rays and their cowbell-clanging fans.
"If you want to take the wind out of the sails," Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said, "you shut the cow bells up and get some home runs. That will do it - except in Citizens Bank Park. If you hit enough there, they ring a bell. They ring the Liberty Bell."
Manuel could crack the jokes. Not much to yuck about for the Rays and their fans. While Carl Crawford homered, playoff stars B.J. Upton and Evan Longoria went a combined 0-for-8.
Scott Kazmir, selected two picks ahead of Hamels in the first round of the 2002 amateur draft, struggled with his control and gave up three runs, six hits and four walks in six innings.
"It wasn't an easy night, and I felt like I had to battle every single inning," Kazmir said.
Philadelphia could have romped but went 0-for-13 with runners in scoring position and stranded 11 runners. Their other run even scored on an out, an RBI grounder by Carlos Ruiz.
"It's better to come up empty with a lot of guys in scoring position than not have any at all," Utley said.
Seeking the city's first major title since the NBA's 76ers in 1983, Philadelphia had six days off after beating the Los Angeles Dodgers for the NL pennant, while the Rays didn't finish off the Boston Red Sox until Game 7 on Sunday night.
Jimmy Rollins, Philadelphia's leadoff batter, flied to right fielder Ben Zobrist, who has made just two regular-season career appearances at the position. But then Jayson Werth walked and Utley, after fouling off a bunt attempt, homered on a 2-2 pitch, sending the ball into the right-field seats and becoming the 34th player to homer in his first Series at-bat.
Only 13 of Utley's 33 homers during the regular season were against lefties, and Kazmir allowed just one homer to a left-handed batter in 131 at-bats, with Boston's David Ortiz connecting Sept. 15.
"Fastball, middle of the plate," Utley said. "I was just trying to put the ball into play."
Mitch Williams, an analyst for Comcast SportsNet, started pumping a fist and cheering. The Phillies' last World Series appearance ended when Williams allowed Joe Carter's game-ending homer in Game 6 at Toronto.
Philadelphia had a chance to pad the lead in the second following two walks, but Upton, the center fielder, made a nifty one-hop throw to the plate on Rollins' fly to short center, and catcher Dioner Navarro applied the tag on Shane Victorino for the inning-ending out.
Tampa Bay loaded the bases with one out in the third on two singles around a walk. But third baseman Pedro Feliz went to his left for an impressive pickup on Upton's grounder and started an inning-ending 5-4-3 double play.
"Definitely the kind of momentum swing into our favor," Hamels said. "If they can load the bases with less than two outs and not be able to score, then you definitely have the upper hand."
Ruiz hit an RBI grounder in the fourth following Victorino's leadoff single, but Crawford's homer on a hanging breaking ball cut the lead to a 3-1 in the bottom half.
Akinori Iwamura reached down for an outside 3-2 pitch and drove an opposite-field RBI double to left-center in the fifth, and Upton followed with a foul pop that Ryan Howard reached into the stands to grab - veteran fans at places such as Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium likely would have not allowed the first baseman to make the play.
Carlos Pena reached leading off the sixth when Howard allowed his grounder to pop off his glove and midsection for an error. But Hamels froze Pena with a pickoff throw and he was easily thrown out at second. Rays manager Joe Maddon screamed unsuccessfully for a balk call, maintaining Hamels' foot landed too far toward the plate.
"I thought it was clearly a balk, and obviously you can't argue a balk," Maddon said. "You get kicked out arguing a balk. What I did was even inappropriate."
Said Hamels: "Yeah, he was out. That's all I can say. " Utley singled with one out in the seventh, stole second and took third on a wild pitch. But J.P. Howell fanned Howard and, after Pat Burrell walked, Grant Balfour struck out Victorino.
"It's never easy when you're down 0-1," Shields said. "But I think we've been pretty resilient all year long."
Notes: It was the first Series game on artificial turf since 1993 - the Phillies' previous one. ... The Rays played an exaggerated shift on Utley and Howard, often putting three infielders on the right side. ... The Phillies also won the opener in 1980 against Kansas City, starting them to their only title since beginning play in 1883. Philadelphia also started the Series with wins in 1915 and 1983, but dropped the first game in 1950 and 1993.


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I wanted to uninstall a specific package in Gentoo and browsed through the emerge man page. I found the
--unmerge option:
WARNING: This action can remove important packages! Removes all matching packages. This does no checking of dependencies, so it may remove packages necessary for the proper operation of your system.Its arguments can be atoms or ebuilds. For a dependency aware version of --unmerge, use --depclean or --prune.
However, I'd like emerge to check whether the package I want to uninstall is required by any other installed package in the system.
--depclean and
--prune don't provide that functionality:
--depcleanremoves packages that were installed as dependencies, but are not needed anymore
--prune"removes all but the highest installed version of a package from your system"
Is there no dependency-checking version of