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Book T of C
Chap T of C
The information processing approach to motor behavior began after World War II. Norbert Weiner's influential book Cybernetics proposed a general theory of control systems and guided movement with clear relevance to motor control. In principle, the flight of a guided missile and the reaching movement of an arm toward a target are similar, both involving the same sorts of information processing.
A guided missile and a reaching arm both use negative feedback. To an engineer, negative feedback does not mean criticism. A negative feedback process is one that reduces deviation of a system from a goal state.
What is negative feedback and how does it relate to motor movement?
For example, a guided missile control system feeds back information about the direction of a heat source (its target) to the guidance system. The information is used to adjust the fins on the missile, turning it so it points at the heat source. As the missile travels, it reduces the deviation (distance) between itself and the target. The word "negative" in "negative feedback" refers to this reduction in the distance between (1) the present state of the system, and (2) the goal state. So a negative feedback system is a deviation-reducing system, which is to say, a system that pursues goals. That turns out to be important for psychology, because almost all the motor behavior of interest to psychologists is directed at goals.
A synonym for negative feedback is deviation-reducing feedback. Negative or deviation-reducing feedback is involved in all goal-directed activity, from eye movements to building a house or solving math problems. In motor movements, often there are two distinct components:
What are two components of many guided movements?
1. A ballistic component in which there is a large movement in the right general direction (like launching a missile)
2. A zeroing in component during which negative feedback processes take over control of the system and guide it to a precise destination (like guiding the missile to its target)
Why do eye movements, when diagrammed, often look like canes?
Jerky eye movements called saccades are the most common variety of eye movement, and they have both ballistic and zeroing-in components. First the eye movement is launched toward a target (the ballistic component) then a network of muscles perform tiny adjustments (the zeroing in component) so that the important part of the visual image lands on the fovea centralis, the most sensitive receptor surface in the eye. As a result of the two components, a diagram of a saccade often looks like a cane, with a long straight jump followed by a little hook.
All movements require some form of aiming to achieve accuracy. The faster a person executes a movement, the less time there is to aim. In 1954 Paul Fitts-a leading researcher in the field-outlined equations describing the speed-accuracy trade-off. The basic idea is that the faster you perform a motor movement, the more mistakes you make. The trade-off was summarized in an equation called Fitts' Law.
What relationship did Fitts's Law express?
Paul Fitts died unexpectedly in 1965. Although the death of one researcher should not be enough to damage a whole field of research, the death of Paul Fitts seemed to symbolize what happened to motor research over the next few years. Federal funding support for research into motor behavior, generous in the post-war period of the 1950s, disappeared in the 1960s. Soon conditions were so unfavorable for researchers that an "academic funeral" for the discipline of motor research was held at Tulane University. "Renowned motor behavior psychologists gathered to read the last rites and bid each other farewell, as each moved on to other related topics in psychology." (Schmidt, 1982)
What caused a new interest in motor research?
But the field of motor research was not dead. The resurgence of cognitive psychology in the late 1960s and 1970s stimulated new research on motor behavior. Soon psychologists were looking at motor behavior as a form of cognition or information processing. As it turned out, motor tasks (such as teaching a robot to navigate a crowded room) involved all sorts of cognitive processes, such as pattern recognition and problem solving. Motor research fit right in with perceptual research and language research as a form of information processing suitable for study by psychologists.
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Copyright © 2007 Russ Dewey | <urn:uuid:6e9d4133-3bfe-41ff-8de3-9d940b4bc9c4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.psywww.com/intropsych/ch07_cognition/motor_activity_as_a_cognitive_process.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398075.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00013-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943207 | 954 | 3.21875 | 3 |
How to Read a Trust Instrument and Create a Trust Plan
After you’ve been named as trustee of a trust, you will need to understand the trustee’s duties and powers as soon as possible in order to create a plan for administering the trust. The conditions of the trust are usually spelled out in a trust instrument. Read the instrument carefully and ask the grantor’s attorney for the answers to any questions you have regarding the document itself or your role as trustee.
Reading the trust instrument
Reading and understanding the trust instrument is the first step in identifying your duties and powers as trustee. In the trust instrument, the trust’s grantor includes all the powers he or she wants you to have and may specify some you can’t have.
The laws of the state the grantor chooses to govern the trust address any issues you can’t find an answer for in the trust instrument. That state’s laws also trump the trust instrument if it goes against them.
With respect to the validity of a trust, the grantor must choose a state’s laws with some connection to the trust. The grantor has the option of choosing either the domicile of the grantor, a trustee, a beneficiary, or even the location of trust assets.
For real property held in the trust, the laws of the state in which the property is located govern that property. After you read the trust instrument, you’ll also know what the grantor’s plans are for the trust over time and for the people included in it as beneficiaries.
If you know about the trust before you actually assume any power over the property, it’s a good idea to talk with the grantor about his or her intentions for the property and exactly what benefit he or she wants the beneficiary to derive from the trust. Many trust instruments are couched in nonspecific language to allow the trustee the widest possible latitude, but the grantor’s actual intent may be much more specific.
Creating a plan based on the trust’s terms
The terms of the trust govern what happens to the trust assets: who takes care of them (the trustee), who benefits from them (the beneficiaries), and how they will be invested. The terms of the trust instrument also dictate whether the property funding the trust remains in a single trust or is divided into multiple trusts governed by the same instrument.
If the grantor wants multiple trusts, the instrument also directs when to divide the assets and when and how to make payments to beneficiaries. You as trustee create a plan for caring for the trust assets and beneficiaries based on what the trust instrument tells you to do and when to do it.
For example, say the terms of a grantor’s trust instrument stipulate that you divide the trust upon his or her death equally into three trusts, one for each of his or her children. As trustee, you have broad discretion under the trust instrument to pay or accumulate income and principal from each trust.
If one child is a spendthrift, you may want to place a fair amount of the assets in long-term growth investments. If another child is preparing to purchase a home, you may decide to place a portion of the assets in his or her trust in a fairly liquid investment so it will be available for a down payment. And if the third child is planning to go to college, you might decide to place funds to cover college costs in liquid investments staggered to mature at one-year intervals. | <urn:uuid:26d3a7e0-2ec4-46ce-af80-c22c7dc24786> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-read-a-trust-instrument-and-create-a-trust-.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397864.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00005-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951774 | 720 | 2.6875 | 3 |
A YouTube map that shows where people are when they view the videos. That the video might be of interest to a dry country like Niger – where herding of goats and other livestock is so important – is not so surprising.
A colleague of mine recently sent a link to a group of us showing some photos taken in Inner Mongolia, China, showing the land degradation being suffered there and its impacts. One of the photos (#16) shows a twisted and broken tree trunk surrounded by sand on the edge of the Taklamakan Desert. The caption says that the trees were “killed by the moving sands.” I have a different take on it.
The picture shows what is probably a Euphrates Poplar, and I would suggest that the trees were probably killed by its surface roots becoming roasted after herds of goats and other livestock ate the trees' fallen leaves. These leaves would normally act as a natural insulation layer and mulch, and over time quite a number of plants grow in the shade and protection. With the trees steadily roasted, so the whole area degrades and the sand blows in. You can see one of the World Bank’s senior agriculturalists, Rick Chisholm, explaining this in the first of my two YouTube videos on Lake Aibi in northwest, Xinjiang, China. (Go straight to 8m 30s on the time line to see the specific segment). | <urn:uuid:33ac02b8-b965-4150-856e-265eaa60e796> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blogs.worldbank.org/eastasiapacific/category/countries/niger | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395560.69/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00017-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960906 | 284 | 2.953125 | 3 |
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A Guide to the James N. Douglas Papers
Born in Dallas in 1935, James Douglas earned his Ph.D. at Yale University in 1961 and worked as an assistant professor at Yale until 1965. At that time he moved to the University of Texas at the urging of former Yale professor and UT McDonald Observatory director Harlan J. Smith.
Douglas was a noted scholar of Jupiter’s radio emissions and he collaborated in this work with F. Arakel Bozyan, one of Douglas’ students. Douglas also constructed a novel type of telescope intended to survey most of the northern hemisphere sky. Variously referred to as the Bandwidth Synthesis Interferometer or the White Light Interferometer, the instrument made use of a wide range of observing wavelengths to mimic the effect of extended antenna elements. The UT Radio Astronomy Observatory was situated near Marfa in West Texas, not far from the McDonald (optical) Observatory.
The radio survey resulted in the discovery of nearly 100,000 radio sources, along with basic data, such as the sources' positions and flux densities, as well as some information on angular structures. The measured positions of the radio sources were accurate enough to identify thousands of them with optical objects, primarily very distant and luminous radio galaxies and quasars whose light and radio waves were emitted when the Universe was a fraction of its current size, and many were subsequently observed spectroscopically at McDonald Observatory.
(Adapted from the UT faculty memorial resolution for James N. Douglas)
The Douglas Papers consist of Dr. Douglas’ professional correspondence, proposals, project files, observed data, and notebooks dating to his early years at Yale and continuing through his career at the University of Texas.
This collection is stored off-site. Contact repository in advance for retrieval.
James N. Douglas Papers, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin. | <urn:uuid:4267dc98-67cc-4183-9d3a-2c450e8694c7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/utcah/03258/cah-03258.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399428.8/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00008-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96039 | 395 | 2.765625 | 3 |
CHICAGO (AP) - New research shows more than half a million
children every year have bad reactions or side effects from
medicines that require medical treatment.
Children younger than age 5 are most commonly affected.
Penicillin and other prescription antibiotics are among drugs
causing the most problems.
The study appears in October's Pediatrics and is base on
national statistics on patients' visits to clinics and emergency
rooms between 1995 and 2005.
The study's lead author is a pediatrician with Children's
Hospital in Boston. Dr. Florence Bourgeois says parents should pay
close attention when their children begin taking a medications for
the first time, and doctors should tell parents about possible
signs of an allergic reaction.
Bourgeois says the data she studied show no deaths, but 5
percent of children were sick enough to require hospitalization.
(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) | <urn:uuid:d17d1fd9-c787-4ac9-b0c1-d66b6e9c3260> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.wtvy.com/4yourhealth/headlines/62327247.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408840.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00186-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947104 | 193 | 2.703125 | 3 |
The Psychology of Quality and More
Activity Network: How to understand it
How to understand it
A project is composed of a set of actions or tasks which usually have some kind of interdependency. For example, before an axle can be turned, it must first be designed, the metal must be purchased, etc. This type of complex system is much easier to understand through the use of diagrams than through textual description, as actual interconnections between tasks can be shown.
The Activity Network diagram displays interdependencies between tasks through the use of boxes and arrows. Arrows pointing into a task box come from its predecessor tasks, which must be completed before the task can start. Arrows pointing out of a task box go to its successor tasks, which cannot start until at least this task is complete.
Fig. 1. The Activity Network Diagram
In a network such as this, the points where arrows meet are called nodes. Thus, as there are tasks (or activities) at these points, it is also known as an Activity-on-Node Diagram. It is usually easier to work with than the alternative Activity-on-Arrow Diagram, where the arrows represent tasks.
There are a number of attributes that can be associated with a task, such as the person doing it and the resources they need to do the job. One of the most important of these is the time required to complete each task as, once this is known, the actual calendar dates for tasks can be calculated. This is done using the Critical Path Method (or CPM). Once the start date for the overall project is known, this will give the earliest and latest start dates for each task.
The amount of time that a task can be delayed without affecting the completion time of the overall project is known as the slack time or float. Slack can either be regarded as a 'safety margin' or as wasted time. The total of all slack times for all tasks in the project gives the total time wasted, and may be reduced if the tasks can be rearranged.
When people and resources are allocated to tasks, it may also be necessary to rearrange tasks so that people do not have to work overtime to work on more than one task at once. This is called leveling or resource smoothing.
The critical path through the diagram is the sequence of tasks which have zero slack time. Thus, if any task on the critical path finishes late, then the whole project will also finish late. There is always at least one critical path. In the figure below, tasks 1 to 3 form the critical path, whilst tasks 4 and 5 may be delayed without affecting the completion date of the project.
Fig. 2. The Critical Path and Slack
It is possible to have what appears to be a task which takes no time to complete. This is called a checkpoint or milestone, and is usually included in the diagram to highlight an important point in the project.
The Activity Network can be used to identify risk in the plan. Typical areas where there is a danger of the schedule being slipped include:
Fig. 3. Risks in the Activity Network
And the big | <urn:uuid:898b157a-0875-468b-a899-b861dbb9a14b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://syque.com/quality_tools/toolbook/Activity/how.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398628.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00083-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951124 | 638 | 3.296875 | 3 |
Muhammad V or Mehmet V, 1844–1918, Ottoman sultan (1909–18). He succeeded to the throne of the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) when the liberal Young Turk revolution of 1909 deposed his brother, Abd al-Hamid II. He exercised no actual power under the new constitution, and the administration was dominated by Enver Pasha. During Muhammad's reign Turkey lost most of its remaining European possessions in the Balkan Wars (1912–13) and lost Tripoli to Italy in 1911–12. Germany gained increasing influence over Turkish affairs, resuming the construction of the Baghdad Railway in 1911. Muhammad sided with the Central Powers in World War I. He died shortly before the Turkish surrender and was succeeded by his brother, Muhammad VI.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:730ca0ca-e33c-4f4c-84ee-e89a052e9450> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.factmonster.com/encyclopedia/people/muhammad-v-ottoman-sultan.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00092-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93576 | 178 | 2.984375 | 3 |
The total fertility rate in the United States -- the number of children born per woman -- has dropped by nearly half since the 1950s to 1.88. Historically, declines in total fertility rates have been seen during times of economic hardship, such as the Great Depression and the 1970s energy crisis. Accordingly, increases were seen in more plentiful eras like the 1950s and 1960s -- out of which came the baby boomer generation. Fluctuations have been less dramatic in recent decades, but geographical differences still exist. That got us thinking: Which states are the most fertile -- and how might the expense of having children and changes in health policy affect women's decision to have children?
The most fertile states in the nation
Do you live in one of the most fertile states? We used the Centers for Disease Control's total fertility rates to determine the most fertile parts of the United States:
1. Utah: 2.374 children born per woman
2. South Dakota: 2.269
3. Idaho: 2.193
4. Alaska: 2.185
5. North Dakota: 2.122
6. Nebraska: 2.119
7. Kansas: 2.118
8. Hawaii: 2.095
9. Texas: 2.075
10. Oklahoma: 2.039
The least fertile states in the nation
Is your home state resistant to multiple children? These are the states (inclusive of the District of Columbia) with the lowest total fertility rates:
1. Rhode Island: 1.593 children born per woman
2. New Hampshire: 1.605
3. D.C.: 1.608
4. Vermont: 1.613
5. Massachusetts: 1.632
6. Connecticut: 1.665
7. Maine: 1.678
8. Oregon: 1.742
9. Florida: 1.769
10. New York: 1.773
The impact of cost
Children are not cheap. One study found that women in California face hospital bills for childbirth ranging from $3,296 to $37,227, and nationwide, out-of-pocket costs for the insured average $3,400. New costs arise virtually every week of pregnancy. A home birth can be some 60% less expensive, but there are other considerations with opting for a home birth. And these bills cover just the pregnancy and birth -- not the diapers, formula, food, and other immediate costs, nor long-term expenses such as your child's education. And then there are the unexpected costs of having a baby.
The CDC recently reported that birth rates for teenagers and those in their early 20s are at record lows, and the birth rate for those between ages 25 and 29 also declined. Older mothers, those between ages 30 and 44 and who might be in a more secure financial state, make up the only group whose birth rates increased. The Population Reference Bureau indicates this may be due to the recent recession but also points out that long-term trends in fertility may be linked to women's employment and earnings, compared with men.
The impact of health policy
Healthcare itself has changed greatly in the past few years. The Affordable Care Act provides many women's health benefits: Contraception, maternity care, breastfeeding services, and well-woman visits are covered, some free of charge. Whereas many pre-health-reform plans did not cover pregnancy and therefore left women with the entire bill, plans are now required to cover pregnancy -- which means that many more women will be able to have a baby affordably. This will give expectant mothers the chance to ask the right questions before deciding on an OB/GYN and choosing a hospital for giving birth.
Your credit card may soon be completely worthless
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Try any of our Foolish newsletter services free for 30 days. We Fools don't all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. | <urn:uuid:b28ce795-50c0-4b15-b227-9a589076fcbd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.fool.com/financial-advice/2014/05/04/the-most-and-least-fertile-states-in-the-us.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408840.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00057-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945181 | 942 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Commonly call the Passover
holiday based on the following sequence of events:
Beginning of Oppression
and his brothers died, and the children of Israel multiplied in the land of Egypt
The Birth of Moses
Levi's grandson, Amram
, the son of Kehat, married Yocheved, and she bore him three children...
Moses' Early Adventures
An Egyptian overseer
hit one of his charges. Seeing that the Egyptian was persecuting the Hebrew
unjustly, Moses came to his rescue and killed the persecutor
The Divine Ambassador
remembered His convenant
, and Jacob
, and decided to deliver their descendants from bondage
Moses Returns to Egypt
Frightened by their sudden appearance, Pharaoh
asked the two brothers what they wanted. The message sounded like a command...
The Ten Plagues
Included Blood, Frogs, Bugs, Pestilence, Boils...
Thus the children of Israel
from the yoke of their oppressors on the fifteenth day of Nissan
in the year 2448 after the creation of the world...
Table of Dates
From 2216 (1544 BCE), when Joseph was sold and led to Egypt, to 2448 (1312 BCE), the giving of the Torah on Mt. Sinai. 232 years that changed the world forever. | <urn:uuid:d7037881-3ea5-4b6c-b35a-f6cc399c1042> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://everything2.com/title/Feast+of+Unleavened+Bread | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00163-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949055 | 277 | 3.546875 | 4 |
1. Watt – A quantifiable measure of power consumed. If you have a 15 Watt lamp, it consumes 15 Watts per hour. The lower the watt, the less energy used and LEDs are providing the most light with the lowest wattage necessary.
2. Kelvin Kº (colors of light) – measured in degrees, is a quantifiable measure of color temperature. You can get anywhere between a bright white light to a softer yellow light, even a dark yellow for turtle friendly applications.
3. Color Rendition Index (CRI) – a way to assess how light sources make objects appear. Any CRI greater than 80 has good color properties and is closest to the light provided by the sun.
4. Average Rated Life – referred to in lamp life is actually the median
5. Mounting Height – the measurement from the ground to the light source. The higher the light fixture is mounted, the larger the spread of light on the ground, but also lower light levels.
6. Distribution (I-V) – Determines how far light is emitted to each side of a fixture:
- Type I – long linear pattern, long distance to the sides with a short pattern out to the front and back
- Type II – Progressively growing distance to the front and back and shortening of the linear sides
- Type III – most commonly available in most fixture types has a perfect oval shape
- Type IV – has a more circular pattern with linear sides that extend farther on the sides
- Type V – Round circular pattern same distance from front to back and side to side
7. Optics – control of light distribution from a fixture, sometimes controlled by aiming of the light or use of a shield to direct the light a specific way.
- Non-cutoff – light is emitted in all directions
- Semi-cutoff – most of the light is emitted below 90 degrees
- Cutoff – controlled lighting where less than 2.5% of the light is allowed to escape the fixture above 90 degrees
- Full-cutoff – used in dark sky friendly locations, optics put the light on the ground below the fixture not allowing light to emit above 90 degrees
8. Amps – a unit of measurement to determine the amount of electrical charge passing a point in an electrical circuit, typically used to determine the amount of power generated by a solar panel to charge the battery and how much power can be stored in a battery, i.e. an 85 Watt panel produces a 5 amp charge per hour and charges a 82 amp hour battery that holds up to 82 amps at one time.
9. Current—a flow of electrical energy. Solar produces DC (Direct Current) power and can run DC electrical devices directly. LEDs run off of DC current and do not require an inverter or ballast to create an AC current for these types of fixtures.
10. Autonomy – The number of days storage an off grid system has for times of bad weather or low sun. This can be determined by calculating the number of amps used per day divided by the number of amps in a battery backup system.
11. Depth of Discharge - The amount of power pulled from a battery; i.e. if the battery is fully charged, its depth of discharge is 0%, if it has been used 25% to light a fixture, then the DOD is 25% etc.
12. Photovoltaic Power – The method of generating electrical power in the form of DC power by harnessing the solar radiation typically through the use of solar panels.
13. Solar Radiation – The radiant energy emitted by the sun on a daily basis. You can feel it on your skin when you step into the sun in the form of warmth. Solar panels convert this radiation into electricity.
Well there you have it. Have any terms you would like to add? Share them below. | <urn:uuid:df834f2f-d278-49ff-bb8d-0149fe34c38a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.sepco-solarlighting.com/blog/13-solar-and-lighting-terms-to-know | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398075.47/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00060-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.907541 | 790 | 3.828125 | 4 |
2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Geography of Asia
| Population (2001)
|540,493 ( 28th)
| 7,096 km² ( 27th)
|Time zone||IST ( UTC+5:30)|
- Chief Minister
- Legislature (seats)
| 16 May 1975
- V. Rama Rao
- Pawan Kumar Chamling
- Unicameral (32)
Seal of Sikkim
Sikkim (also Sikhim) ( Devanāgarī: सिक्किम Indian state nestled in the Himalayas. It is the least populous state in India, and the third smallest in area after Delhi and Goa. Sikkim was an independent state ruled by the Namgyal monarchy until 1975, when a referendum was held and the population voted to join India as its twenty-second state. The thumb-shaped state borders Nepal in the west, Tibet (the People's Republic of China) to the north and east, and Bhutan in the south-east. The Indian state of West Bengal borders Sikkim to its south. The official languages are English, Bhutia, Nepali, Lepcha, and Limbu and Hindi. It must be noted though that almost all written transactions are in English. The predominant religions are Hinduism and Vajrayana Buddhism. Gangtok is the capital and largest town.) is a landlocked
Despite its tiny size, Sikkim is geographically diverse, owing to its location on the Himalaya. The climate ranges from subtropical to high alpine. Kanchenjunga, the world's third highest peak is located in Sikkim, straddling its northern border with Nepal. Sikkim has become one of India's most visited states, owing to its reputation of cleanliness, scenic beauty and political stability.
Origin of name
The most widely accepted origin of the name Sikkim is that it is a combination of two words in the Limbu Su, which means "new", and Khyim, which means "palace" or house, in reference to the palace built by the state's first ruler, Phuntsok Namgyal. The Tibetan name for Sikkim is 'Denjong, which means the "valley of rice".
The earliest recorded event related to Sikkim is the passage of the Buddhist saint Guru Rinpoche through the land in the 8th century. The Guru is reported to have blessed the land, introduced Buddhism to Sikkim, and foretold the era of monarchy in the state that would arrive centuries later. In the 14th century, according to legend, Khye Bumsa, a prince from the Minyak House in Kham in Eastern Tibet, had a divine revelation one night instructing him to travel south to seek his fortunes. His descendants were later to form the royal family of Sikkim. In 1642, the fifth generation descendant of Khye Bumsa, Phuntsog Namgyal, was consecrated as the first Chogyal (king) of Sikkim by the three venerated Lamas who came from the north, west and south to Yuksom, marking the beginning of the monarchy.
Phuntsog Namgyal was succeeded in 1670 by his son, Tensung Namgyal, who moved the capital from Yuksom to Rabdentse. In 1700, Sikkim was invaded by the Bhutanese with the help of the half-sister of the Chogyal, who had been denied the throne. The Bhutanese were driven away by the Tibetans, who restored the throne to the Chogyal ten years later. Between 1717 and 1733, the kingdom faced many raids by the Nepalese in the west and Bhutanese in the east, culminating with the destruction of the capital Rabdentse by the Nepalese.
In 1791, China sent troops to support Sikkim and defend Tibet against the Gurkhas. Following Nepal's subsequent defeat, Sikkim became a suzerainty of Qing Dynasty. But Nepal still gained a big piece of land at west of Teesta.
Following the arrival of the British Raj in neighbouring India, Sikkim allied with them against their common enemy, Nepal. The Nepalese attacked Sikkim, overrunning most of the region including the Terai. This prompted the British East India Company to attack Nepal, resulting in the Gurkha War of 1814. Treaties signed between Sikkim and Nepal — the Sugauli Treaty — and Sikkim and British India — Titalia Treaty — returned the territory annexed by the Nepalese to Sikkim in 1817. Ties between Sikkim and the British administrators of India grew sour, however, with the beginning of British taxation of the Morang region. In 1849 two British doctors, Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker and Dr. Archibald Campbell, the latter being in charge of relations between the British and Sikkim Government, ventured into the mountains of Sikkim unannounced and unauthorised. The doctors were detained by the Sikkim government, leading to a punitive British expedition against the Himalayan kingdom, after which the Darjeeling district and Morang were annexed to India in 1835. The invasion led to the chogyal's becoming a puppet king under the directive of the British governor.
In 1947, a popular vote rejected Sikkim's joining the Indian Union and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru agreed to a special protectorate status for Sikkim. After a period of unrest in 1972-1973, matters came to a head in 1975, when the Kazi (Prime Minister) appealed to the Indian Parliament for representation and change of Sikkim's status to a state of India. A referendum was held in which 97.5% of the people voted to join the Indian Union. A few weeks later on May 16, 1975, Sikkim officially became the 22nd state of the Indian Union, and monarchy was abolished. Some still feel that Sikkim is occupied by India, particularly people around the former Royal Family.
In 2000, in a major embarrassment for China, the seventeenth Karmapa Urgyen Trinley Dorje, who had been proclaimed a Lama by China, made a dramatic escape from Tibet to the Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim. Chinese officials were in a quandary on this issue as any protests to India on the issue would mean an explicit endorsment of India's governance of Sikkim, which the Chinese still regarded as an independent state occupied by India. China eventually recognised Sikkim as an Indian state in 2003, which led to a thaw in Sino-Indian relations. In return, India announced its official recognition of Tibet as an integrated part of China. As part of a significant pact between India and China signed by the prime ministers of the two countries, Manmohan Singh and Wen Jiabao, China released an official map clearly showing Sikkim as part of the Republic of India. On July 6, 2006 the Himalayan pass of Nathula was opened to cross-border trade, a further evidence of improving sentiment over the region.
The thumb-shaped state of Sikkim is characterised by wholly mountainous terrain. Almost the entire state is hilly, with the elevation ranging from 280 metres (920 feet) to 8,585 metres (28,000 feet). The summit of the Kanchenjunga is the highest point. For the most part, the land is unfit for agriculture because of the precipitous and rocky slopes. However, certain hill slopes have been converted into farm lands using terrace farming techniques and is used for cultivation. Numerous snow-fed streams in Sikkim have carved out river valleys in the west and south of the state. These streams combine into the Teesta and its tributary, the Rangeet. The Teesta, described as the "lifeline of Sikkim", flows through the state from north to south. About a third of the land is heavily forested.
The lofty Himalayan ranges surround the northern, eastern and western borders of Sikkim in a crescent. The populated areas lie in the southern reaches of the state, in the Lower Himalayas. The state has twenty-eight mountain peaks, twenty-one glaciers, 227 high altitude lakes, including the Tsongmo Lake, Gurudongmar and Khecheopalri Lakes, five hot springs, and over 100 rivers and streams. Eight mountain passes connect the state to Tibet, Bhutan and Nepal.
The hills of Sikkim mainly consist of gneissose and half-schistose rocks, making their soil brown clay, and generally poor and shallow. The soil is coarse, with large amounts of iron oxide concentrations, ranging from neutral to acidic and has poor organic and mineral nutrients. This type of soil tends to support evergreen and deciduous forests.
A large portion of the Sikkim territory is covered by the Precambrian rock and is much younger in age than the hills. The rock consists of phyllites and schists and therefore the slopes are highly susceptible to weathering and prone to erosion. This, combined with the intense rain, causes extensive soil erosion and heavy loss of soil nutrients through leaching. As a result, landslides are frequent, isolating the numerous small towns and villages from the major urban centres.
The climate ranges from sub-tropical in the south to tundra in the northern parts. Most of the inhabited regions of Sikkim, however, enjoy a temperate climate, with the temperatures seldom exceeding 28 ° C (82 ° F) in summer or dropping below 0 °C (32 °F) in winter. The state enjoys five seasons: winter, summer, spring, and autumn, and a monsoon season between June and September. The average annual temperature for most of Sikkim is around 18 °C (64 °F). Sikkim is one of the few states in India to receive regular snowfall. The snow line is around 6,000 metres (19,600 feet).
During the monsoon months, the state is lashed by heavy rains that increase the number of landslides. The state record for the longest period of non-stop rain is eleven days. In the northern region, because of high altitude, temperatures drop below −40 °C in winter. Fog also affects many parts of the state during winter and the monsoons, making transportation extremely perilous.
Sikkim has four districts, each overseen by a Central Government appointee, the district collector, who is in-charge of the administration of the civilian areas of the districts. The Indian army has control of a large territory, as the state is a sensitive border area. Many areas are restricted and permits are needed to visit them. There are a total of eight towns and nine sub-divisions in Sikkim.
The four districts are East Sikkim, West Sikkim, North Sikkim and South Sikkim. The district capitals are Gangtok, Geyzing, Mangan and Namchi respectively. These Four Districts are further divided into Sub-Divisions. "Pakyong" is the sub-division of East District. "Soreng" is the sub-division of West District. "Chungthang" is the sub-division of North District. "Ravongla" is the sub-division of South District.
Flora and fauna
Sikkim is situated in an ecological hotspot of the lower Himalayas, one of only three among the Ecoregions of India. The forested regions of the state exhibit a diverse range of fauna and flora. Owing to its altitudinal gradiation, the state has a wide variety of plants, from tropical to temperate to alpine and tundra, and is perhaps one of the few regions to exhibit such a diversity within such a small area.
The flora of Sikkim includes the rhododendron, the state tree, with a huge range of species occurring from subtropical to alpine regions. Orchids, figs, laurel, bananas, sal trees and bamboo in the lower altitudes of Sikkim, which enjoy a sub-tropical type climate. In the temperate elevations above 1,500 metres, oaks, chestnuts, maples, birchs, alders, and magnolias grow in large numbers. The alpine type vegetation includes juniper, pine, firs, cypresses and rhododendrons, and is typically found between an altitude of 3,500 metres to 5,000 m. Sikkim boasts around 5,000 flowering plants, 515 rare orchids, 60 primulas species, 36 rhododendrons species, 11 oaks varieties, 23 bamboos varieties, 16 conifer species, 362 types of ferns and ferns allies, 8 tree ferns, and over 424 medicinal plants. The orchid Dendrobium nobile is the official flower of Sikkim.
The fauna includes the snow leopard, the musk deer, the Bhoral, the Himalayan Tahr, the red panda, the Himalayan marmot, the serow, the goral, the barking deer, the common langur, the Himalayan Black Bear, the clouded leopard, the Marbled Cat, the leopard cat, the wild dog, the Tibetan wolf, the hog badger, the binturong, the jungle cat and the civet cat. Among the animals more commonly found in the alpine zone are yaks, mainly reared for their milk, meat, and as a beast of burden.
The avifauna of Sikkim is comprised of the Impeyan pheasant, the crimson horned pheasant, the snow partridge, the snow cock, the lammergeyer and griffon vultures, as well as golden eagles, quail, plovers, woodcock, sandpipers, pigeons, Old World flycatchers, babblers and robins. A total of 550 species of birds have been recorded in Sikkim, some of which have been declared endangered.
This is a chart of trend of gross state domestic product of Sikkim at market prices estimated by Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation with figures in millions of Indian Rupees.
|Year||Gross State Domestic Product|
Sikkim's gross state domestic product for 2004 is estimated at $478 million in current prices.
Sikkim's economy is largely agrarian, based on traditional farming methods, on terraced slopes. The rural populace grows crops such as cardamom, ginger, oranges, apples, tea and orchids. Rice is grown on terraced hillsides in the southern reaches. Sikkim has the highest production and largest cultivated area of cardamom in India. Because of the hilly terrain, and lack of reliable transportation infrastructure, there are no large-scale industries. Breweries, distilleries, tanning and watch-making are the main industries. These are located in the southern reaches of the state, primarily in the towns of Melli and Jorethang. The state has an impressive growth rate of 8.3%, which is the second highest in the country after Delhi.
In recent years, the government of Sikkim has promoted tourism. Sikkim has a vast tourism potential and by tapping into this the state has grossed an earnings windfall. With the general improvement in infrastructure, tourism is slated to be the mainstay of the Sikkim's economy. A fledgling industry the state has recently invested in is online gambling. The "Playwin" lottery, which is played on custom-built terminals connected to the internet, has been a commercial success, with operations all over the country. Among the minerals mined in Sikkim are copper, dolomite, limestone, graphite, mica, iron, and coal.
The opening of the Nathula Pass on July 6, 2006 connecting Lhasa, Tibet to India is expected to give a boost to the local economy, though the financial benefits will be slow to arrive. The Pass, closed since the 1962 Sino-Indian War, was an offshoot of the ancient Silk Route, which was essential to the wool, fur and spice trade.
Sikkim does not have any airports or railheads because of its rough terrain. The closest airport, Bagdogra Airport, is near the town of Siliguri, West Bengal. The airport is about 124 km away from Gangtok. A regular helicopter service run by the Sikkim Helicopter Service connects Gangtok to Bagdogra; the flight is thirty minutes long, operates only once a day, and can carry 4 people. The Gangtok helipad is the only civilian helipad in the state. The closest railway station is New Jalpaiguri which is situated sixteen kilometres from Siliguri.
National Highway 31A links Siliguri to Gangtok. The highway is an all-weather metalled road which mostly runs parallel of the river Teesta, entering Sikkim at Rangpo. Numerous public and privately run bus and jeep services connect the airport, railway station, and Siliguri to Gangtok. A branch of the highway from Melli connects western Sikkim. Towns in southern and western Sikkim are connected to the northern West Bengal hill stations of Kalimpong and Darjeeling. Within the state, four wheel drives are the most popular means of transport, as they can navigate rocky slopes. Mini-buses link the smaller towns to the state and district headquarters.
Today the majority of Sikkim's residents are of Nepali ethnic-national origin who came to the province in the 19th century. The native Sikkimese, consist of the Bhutias, who migrated from the Kham district of Tibet in the 14th Century, and the Lepchas who are believed to have migrated from the far east. Tibetans reside mostly in the northern and eastern reaches of the state. Immigrant resident communities not native to the state include the Marwaris, who own most of the shops in South Sikkim and Gangtok; the Biharis, most of whom are employed in blue collar jobs; and the Bengalis.
Hinduism and Buddhism are the religions professed by most Sikkimese. Sikkim also has a small Christian population, consisting mostly of people of Lepcha origin, converted to the faith after British missionaries started preaching in the region in the late 19th century. The state has never had inter-religious strife. Mosques in downtown Gangtok and Mangan also serve the minuscule Muslim population.
Nepali is the lingua franca of Sikkim. English and Hindi are also spoken and understood in most of Sikkim. Other languages spoken in Sikkim include Bhutia, Dzongkha, Groma, Gurung, Lepcha, Limbu, Magar, Majhi, Majhwar, Nepal Bhasa, Rai, Sherpa, Sunuwar, Tamang, Thulung, Tibetan, and Yakha.
As India's least populous state, Sikkim has only 540,493 inhabitants, with 288,217 males and 252,276 females. It is also one of the least densely populated states with only 76 persons per square kilometre. Its growth rate is 32.98% (1991-2001). The sex ratio is 875 females per 1000 males. With 50,000 inhabitants, Gangtok is the state's only significant town. The urban population in Sikkim is 11.06%. The per capita income stands at Rs. 11,356, which is one of the highest in the country.
Sikkim residents celebrate all major Indian festivals such as Diwali and Dussera, the popular Hindu festivals. Losar, Loosong, Saga Dawa, Lhabab Duechen, Drupka Teshi and Bhumchu are Buddhist festivals that are also celebrated. During the Losar – the Tibetan New Year in mid-December – most government offices and tourist centres are closed for a week. Christmas has also recently been promoted in Gangtok to attract tourists during the off-season.
It is common to hear Western rock music being played in homes and in restaurants even in the countryside. Hindi songs have gained wide acceptance among the masses. Indigenous Nepali rock, music suffused with a Western rock beat and Nepali lyrics, is also particularly popular. Football and cricket are the two most popular sports.
Noodle-based dishes such as the thukpa, chowmein, thanthuk, fakthu, gyathuk and wonton are common in Sikkim. Momos, steamed dumplings filled with vegetable, buff (buffalo's meat) or pork and served with a soup is a popular snack. The mountainous peoples have a diet rich in beef, pork and other meats. Alcohol is cheap owing to the low excise duty in Sikkim and beer, whiskey, rum and brandy are consumed by many Sikkimese.
Almost all dwellings in Sikkim are rustic, consisting of a bamboo frame, woven with pliable bamboo and coated with cow dung, providing a warm interior. In the higher elevations, houses are made of wood.
Government and politics
Like all states of India, the head of the state government is a governor appointed by the Central Indian Government. His appointment is largely ceremonial, and his main role is to oversee the swearing in of the Chief Minister. The Chief Minister, who holds the real executive powers, is the head of the party or coalition garnering the largest majority in the state elections. The governor also appoints the cabinet ministers on the advice of the Chief Minister. Sikkim has a unicameral legislature like most other Indian states. Sikkim is allocated one seat in each of both chambers of India's national bicameral legislature, the Lok Sabha, and the Rajya Sabha. There are a total of 32 state assembly seats including one reserved for the Sangha. The Sikkim High Court is the smallest high court in the country.
|State animal||Red Panda|
|State bird||Blood Pheasant|
|State flower||Noble orchid|
In 1975, after the abrogation of Sikkim's monarchy, the Congress Party got the largest majority in the 1977 elections. In 1979, after a period of instability, a popular ministry headed by Nar Bahadur Bhandari, leader of the Sikkim Sangram Parishad Party was sworn in. Bhandari held on to power in the 1984 and 1989 elections. In the 1994 elections Pawan Kumar Chamling from the Sikkim Democratic Front becoming the Chief Minister of the state. The party has since held on to power by winning the 1999 and 2004 elections.
Roads in Sikkim are in a poor condition because most are exposed to landslides and flooding by nearby streams. The roads are maintained by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), an offshoot of the Indian army. The roads in South Sikkim and NH-31A are in a good condition, landslides being less frequent in these areas. The state government maintains 1857.35 km of roadways that do not fall in the BRO jurisdiction.
Sikkim has a number of hydroelectric power stations, providing a steady electricity source. However the voltage is unstable and voltage stabilisers are needed. Per capita consumption of electricity in Sikkim is 182 kWh. 73.2% of households have access to safe drinking water, and the large number of streams assures abundant water supply, thus the state never witnesses droughts.
Literacy is 69.68%, which breaks up into 76.73% for males and 61.46% for females.= There are a total of 1545 government-run educational institutions and eighteen private schools mostly located in the towns. There are about twelve colleges and other institutions in Sikkim that offer higher education. The largest institution is the Sikkim Manipal University of Health Medical and Technological Sciences which offers higher education in engineering, medicine and management. It also runs a host of distance education in diverse fields. There are two state-run polytechnics, Advanced Technical Training Centre (ATTC) and Centre for Computers and Communication Technology (CCCT) in Sikkim which offer diploma courses in various branches of engineering. ATTC is situated at Bardang, Singtam and CCCT at Chisopani, Namchi. Many students however, migrate to Siliguri and Calcutta for their higher education. | <urn:uuid:19f589c0-7ce8-430e-a387-4f90c481561e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/s/Sikkim.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393093.59/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00123-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95305 | 5,151 | 3.15625 | 3 |
Excerpts from an Organic Center report:
High yields and jumbo produce deliver more water, starch, and sugar per serving, but less vitamins, minerals and antioxidants.
Farmers have doubled or tripled the yield of most major grains, fruits and vegetables over the last 50 years. But American agriculture’s single-minded focus on increasing yields over the last half-century created a blind spot where incremental erosion in the nutritional quality of our food has occurred. This erosion, modest in some crops but significant in others for some nutrients, has gone largely unnoticed by scientists, farmers, government and consumers.
Government data from both America and the United Kingdom have shown that the concentration of a range of essential nutrients in the food supply has declined in the last few decades, with double digit percentage declines of iron, zinc, calcium, selenium and other essential nutrients across a wide range of common foods. As a consequence, the same-size serving of sweet corn or potatoes, or a slice of whole wheat bread, delivers less iron, zinc and calcium.
Fewer nutrients per serving translate into less nutrition per calorie consumed…that is, we have more food, but it’s worth less in terms of nutritional value.
Substantial data show that in corn, wheat and soybeans, the higher the yield, the lower the protein and oil content. The higher tomato yields (in terms of harvest weight), the lower the concentration of vitamin C, levels of lycopene (the key antioxidant that makes tomatoes red), and beta-carotene (a vitamin A precursor). High-production dairy cows produce milk that is less concentrated with fat, protein and other nutrition-enhancing components, and are also more vulnerable to a range of metabolic diseases, infections and reproductive problems.
“To get our recommended daily allowance of nutrients, we have to eat many more slices of bread today than people had to eat in the past,” says Brian Halweil, a senior researcher at the WorldWatch Institute and the “Still No Free Lunch” author. | <urn:uuid:f0652cd0-251f-4595-a959-386867ec1eb7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://acleanlife.org/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398216.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00136-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919594 | 419 | 3.15625 | 3 |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Thom Benson 423-785-3007
River Otter Falls Opens at the Tennessee Aquarium
Meet The Furry Faces of Conservation
Chattanooga, Tenn. (May 6, 2014) – A romp of feisty otters is making a big splash in their new home at the Tennessee Aquarium. River Otter Falls features five waterfalls, multiple pools, a rocky, tiered landscape and sand pits for digging. Groups of two to five otters take turns exploring this habitat surrounded by a beautiful cove forest with free flying birds and a rushing trout stream.
More than two years of planning and construction resulted in a habitat that draws guests into the somewhat hidden world of North American River Otters. “They are animals that use the edge effect, where two very different ecosystems are next to each other like forest and meadow,” said Dave Collins, the Tennessee Aquarium’s curator of forests. “Except in this case, it’s providing a lot of edges between water and land. Otters search for food, travel and watch for predators along the water’s edge. By providing a lot of edges, we’ve created a rich environment for the otters. They have a lot of choices to stimulate them and provide opportunities for guests to observe their natural behaviors.”
Among the first to see River Otter Falls was Bruce Anderson, a retired endangered species biologist. One of the first conservation efforts Anderson worked on, after landing a job with the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA), was restoring River Otters.
North American River Otters had always flourished in the United States until the rise in fur trading during the 1700s. According to Anderson, otters were still being pursued for their pelts into the 20th Century. “During the Great Depression, one otter hide was worth a week’s wages,” said Anderson. “So they were hunted and trapped pretty relentlessly in Tennessee.” As a result, otters disappeard from Middle and East Tennessee by 1958. For nearly 30 years, only a few sightings were reported in West Tennessee and otters were listed as an endangered species.
1984 marked the comeback for River Otters in Tennessee. That’s the year TWRA began the first of a series of endangered species restoration programs. “The first otters were obtained in Louisiana and were released into the Obed Wild and Scenic River,” said Anderson. “Radio transmitters were implanted to track the animals to make sure they were going to survive in our area.” Anderson’s team tracked the otters for 18 months, gathering data on their movements and behavior.
Shortly after that first reintroduction, Anderson feared the program could end abruptly. “The winter after they were released, the temperature at Crossville, Tennessee dropped to 24 degrees below zero and the Obed River froze over completely,” said Anderson. “But they were just fine and never missed a beat. We knew this program would be successful when the life of the transmitters ran out and we hadn’t lost any otters.”
TWRA reintroduced otters in every major river system in the state until 1993. The animals flourished and were taken off of Tennessee’s endangered species list in 1999.
The return of River Otters also helped rebalance natural systems in other ways. “The river habitat was different before we began bringing otters back,” said Anderson. “We had a lot of rough fish like carp that were competing with native fish. The rough fish, and slow swimming fish, are what the otters target first. So the otters greatly reduced the populations of carp and rough fish, allowing native fish populations to improve greatly.”
Anderson helped bring back many species throughout his career with TWRA. He also restored Ospreys, Golden Eagles and Bald Eagles. But he’s always had a soft spot for River Otters, the furry faces of conservation. “It’s a thrill to see them play, roll around and swim at the Aquarium,” said Anderson. “Even though I was involved with a lot of releases, I only saw one or two others in the wild. Seeing otters up close here brings back a sense of accomplishment to realize that I was part of a program that helped restore these animals.” | <urn:uuid:ea90a815-6a92-4358-a16e-c22860618393> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.tennis.org/newsroom/entry/north-american-river-otters-the-furry-faces-of-conservation | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396949.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00073-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974166 | 916 | 2.890625 | 3 |
Smithsonian’s National Zoo Opens New Genetics Lab
The Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute’s geneticists are ironing their lab coats and revving up their DNA sequencers for the celebration of the group’s new state-of-the-art genetics lab at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., where researchers will look at life’s smallest building blocks in search of some of the world’s biggest conservation lessons.
“Successful conservation is achieved when many scientific disciplines intersect. The opening of this lab represents our commitment to that synergy,” said Dennis Kelly, director of the National Zoo. “The scientific research we conduct in the lab will help conservationists around the world continue to establish best practices with endangered species both in the field and in captivity.”
Members of the media are invited to attend the opening event May 25 at 10 a.m. at the National Zoo. Following the DNA-ribbon-cutting ceremony, guests may tour the lab, where researchers will be available to talk about their various projects and demonstrate the lab’s technology. Speakers at the ceremony will include Eva Pell, the Smithsonian Institution’s Under Secretary for Science; Steve Monfort, director of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute, which serves as the umbrella for the Smithsonian’s conservation science (including the genetics lab); and Rob Fleischer, head of the Center for Conservation and Evolutionary Genetics.
Although the Zoo has studied genetics for more than 20 years, the new lab, which is located on the Zoo’s “Research Hill,” was built to accommodate rapidly developing technology and to facilitate additional collaboration with the Zoo’s pathologists, veterinarians, reproductive biologists, ecologists and behaviorists.
“The genetics lab works with other departments on nearly all of the Zoo’s conservation efforts,” Fleischer said. “This ranges from helping animal curators manage their animals by identifying gender or kinship, or diagnosing disease; to using genetics to monitor wildlife populations in nature, and assess genetic variation and inbreeding in small populations; to documenting disease prevalence and dynamics.”
The genetics research that the Zoo’s scientists conduct is diverse. Some of the work is focused onnon-invasive techniques that do not require capturing an animal, but instead look at the animals’ feces (scat, dung), hair, feathers, saliva or shed skin. This approach is useful for estimating population sizes and densities of species that might otherwise be difficult to detect and count.
Other researchers look at ancient DNA taken from subfossil bones, mummies or museum specimens to determine genetic variation in a species even thousands of years ago and how the variation changed over time. This work also allows scientists to track the relationships of extinct and endangered animals and determine what diseases throughout history may have killed off certain species.
Some lab scientists use molecular genetics methods to diagnose and understand the dynamics of disease in natural populations to help figure out the best ways to fight it. This includes important research related to avian malaria and the amphibian chytrid fungus, which is wiping out frogs around the world. (A detailed list of researchers and their specific projects will be available at the event.)
“With this lab, we’ll be able to do things we never dreamed we’d be able to do,” said Jesus Maldonado, Zoo research geneticist. “For example, we’ll be able to do more genetic mapping of genetic disease traits in animals that are not the usual mouse or cow or chicken model. The enhanced ability to implement new methods is the key to answering a lot of questions we’ve looked forward to answering for years.”
The building was constructed with conservation in mind; it is a green building, and it has insulated metal panels to reduce energy use, recycled elements, an energy-efficient heat recovery unit and a sensor-controlled lighting system, among other elements.
# # #
Lindsay Renick Mayer | <urn:uuid:9ba038c2-6b52-42e4-9fed-1d18c21d6c23> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://newsdesk.si.edu/releases/smithsonian-s-national-zoo-opens-new-genetics-lab | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396027.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00188-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.919573 | 831 | 2.90625 | 3 |
About three generations ago farmers relied on folk wisdom to ensure the largest harvest of their crops, which they relied on for food and income. One method was planting by the phases of the moon. The moon's gravitation force is capable of controlling the tides on Earth; it also stimulates plant growth and even the quality of harvested crops. If you're trying to go more "green" and grow some of your own food, consider checking the phases of the moon.
Planting by the Phases of the Moon
Plant spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, lettuce, celery and other annuals that develop flower spikes during the new moon.
Plant vegetables such as melons, peas, peppers, squash, tomatoes, beans and other annuals that produce fruit above ground during the second moon quarter, up to two or three days before the moon is full.
Plant root crops during the moon's waning phase, after the full moon. Include carrots, potatoes, beets, onions and bulbs in your waning phase planting.
Avoid planting during the fourth quarter, because the moon's gravitational force is lowest during this phase. Good gardening projects during the dark of the moon include harvesting, pruning, cultivating, transplanting and weeding.
Mow your lawn during the third or fourth quarter to slow its growth. | <urn:uuid:76c08e56-62f9-4d1e-9b81-1d57bc01f50f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.gardenguides.com/116831-plant-phases-moon.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394987.40/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00112-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948257 | 269 | 3.359375 | 3 |
How do you think the new GigE standards will influence the machine vision industry?
Respond or ask your question now!
Microbolometers detect thermal energy over the long-wave range (8-14 microns). When this happens, the detector heats up in response to the absorbed energy and changes its electrical resistance. The resistance change is processed to create an image. Unlike other IR detector equipment, microbolometers do not require cooling. This advantage contributes to lowering the cost of infrared cameras. ULIS amorphous silicon technology, a unique and mature semiconductor technology offers cost-effectiveness and producibility that are not accessible to other technologies.
Camera applications for ULIS' IR detectors include industrial maintenance, security and surveillance, building inspection, fire fighting and law enforcement, and night vision enhancements for vehicles. For more information, visit www.ulis-ir.com. | <urn:uuid:6df999ef-eb30-4642-906f-dba73836a39f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.advancedimagingpro.com/publication/article.jsp?pubId=1&id=5425&pageNum=7 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393518.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00165-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.813016 | 179 | 2.703125 | 3 |
|> FAQ > How to determine wheel / rim size|
How do I determine my wheel / rim size?
DO NOT MEASURE RIM OR HUBCAP SIZE - A tape measure will give you the WRONG size! It will measure a little over an inch larger than the actual wheel size.
Rim size is the Diameter of the BEAD of the TIRE, which cannot be measured without removing the tire from the rim.
All tires have a "Size Series" printed on them that contains the wheel / rim size. This series of numbers usually begins with a P (for Passenger) or LT (for Light Truck)
Examples: P185/70/R15. LT225/80/R16.
In this designation the two digit number following the R denotes the Rim / wheel diameter is 15 inches. The R itself actually means it is a Radial tire.
The diagram below, from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,
shows the rest of the information printed on tires. This website also includes much more tire safety information, and is worth a visit. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration TIRE Page, Size Load Limits, Pressure | <urn:uuid:7206f0c1-aa87-4126-8336-b67ae31d41c5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.autoamenity.com/FAQ/WheelSize.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404382.73/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00102-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.895459 | 240 | 3.078125 | 3 |
This web address takes you to the electronic version of the 2003 Red List of Threatened Species produced by the IUCN Species Survival Commission. Red List categories and criteria are used to provide information on conservation status and distribution. These categories and criteria are explained in detail and aid the understanding of many terms, e.g. Vulnerable, that are often used incorrectly.
The list is designed to catalogue and highlight those species that are facing the risk of extinction so that efforts can be made to protect them. From an educational point of view, this site is a reliable information source of species status and distribution and as such is helpful with conservation interpretation. http://www.iucnredlist.org/
Some plants are included in this list and are subsequently categorized with the 2003 criteria. However, the 1997 IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants can be found on the UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Centre site that also gives CITES (Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora) listings. http://www.unep-wcmc.org/ | <urn:uuid:6881b0a3-f548-443e-b846-994aea9fc32b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bgci.org/education/2310/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397864.87/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00016-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.914257 | 221 | 2.953125 | 3 |
Martini, Simone (sēmôˈnā märtēˈnē) [key], or Simone di Martino dē märtēˈnō, c.1283–1344, major Sienese painter. His art is admired for its Gothic spirituality combined with a vibrancy and a great elegance of line. A follower of Duccio di Buoninsegna, his earliest known work (1315) was a fresco depicting the Maestà ( Madonna and Child Enthroned with Saints and Angels ) in the Palazzo Pubblico, Siena. In 1317, King Robert of Anjou invited him to Naples to paint St. Louis Enthroned (Naples Mus.). He created altarpieces for the Dominicans of Pisa and Orvieto. One of these is now in the Gardner Museum, Boston. In 1328 he painted one of the first commemorative portraits, an impressive, almost heraldic, image of the soldier Guidoriccio da Fogliano, with a starkly landscaped background (Palazzo Pubblico, Siena). His painting of the Annunciation (1333; Uffizi) is famous for its exquisitely refined use of outline. In this work, as in others, he was assisted by his brother-in-law Lippo Memmi. At the invitation of Pope Benedict XII, he went to Avignon in 1339 and decorated the portal of Notre Dame des Dons (almost obliterated). He became friends with Petrarch and designed a frontispiece for him for a Vergil codex (Ambrosian Library, Milan). His frescoes (of uncertain date) at Assisi include lively scenes from the life of St. Martin. Other works by Simone are in Siena, Berlin, Liverpool, and in the Louvre.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. | <urn:uuid:6eee048d-fae3-4ebb-9761-8854777f5bc0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.factmonster.com/encyclopedia/people/martini-simone.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393463.1/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00046-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.92052 | 418 | 2.890625 | 3 |
MAPLE RAPIDS – Three people in eastern Gratiot County, including two young children, have been sickened in an E. coli outbreak.
The two children were hospitalized and developed hemolytic uremic syndrome, a potentially fatal kidney disorder that stems from E. coli poisoning.
The third patient, a parent of one of the child patients, did not develop the kidney disorder and is recovering from the E. coli infection.
The children are not related.
“This strain of E. coli is very potent and troublesome,” said Mid-Michigan District Health Department (MMDHD) Medical Director Dr. Robert Graham. “We urge everyone to take precautions to prevent becoming infected by this germ.”
The MMDHD, Michigan Department of Community Health and Department of Agriculture and Rural Development are investigating the source of the E. coli but has few leads to go on so far.
“We haven’t been able to pin it down,” Graham said. “The source is important to find, but it’s more important to use preventative measure.”
E. coli is a form of bacteria normally found in animal guts. It can spread from fecal matter into food that humans consume through undercooked meat, unpasteurized natural beverages, dirty water and pets with diarrhea.
People most commonly contract E. coli through tainted meat and milk. It also can be passed from person to person.
E. coli causes nausea, vomiting, low-grade fever, loss of appetite, abdominal bloating, diarrhea and bloody stool. Kidney problems one week after onset allowing chemicals usually filtered out of the blood to build up in dangerous amounts.
People should see medical attention if they are in close contact with someone with E. coli and develop diarrhea or if they have diarrhea that lasts for 48 hours or longer.
Graham urges everyone to take the following precautions:
• Cook all meat, especially ground meat, to a temperature of 155 degrees for 10 seconds or until the juice from it becomes clear.
• Avoid unpasteurized apple cider and milk.
• Wash all fresh fruits and vegetables before eating.
• Wash your hands before preparing or eating food and after visiting the restroom or changing a diaper. | <urn:uuid:1c7a74a3-234c-40c4-ba6f-ac75f7c088a0> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://thedailynews.cc/breaking/2011/10/26/e-coli-sickens-three-in-eastern-gratiot-county/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00148-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946469 | 464 | 3.171875 | 3 |
Anthropology P380: Prehistoric Diet and Nutrition
Lectures 1-2: looking back at human diet
1. First, let's learn to cut through the hype and understand what foods are made of. We'll spend the first few weeks of the semester trying to do this.
2. Secondly, we'll differentiate between what is learned and what is inherited (biological) in terms of what is considered "Good to Eat." Do you think there is a "natural Diet" for humans?
Imagine that you could drop back into the past and observe the foods and eating habits of your ancestors. What would they be like? What could we observe that could help us reflect on our modern eating habits? Let's look at different episodes:
5 years ago
Not too different! Although marketing strategies have changed, both in response to directives from the FDA about truth in labeling (!), but also as a reflection of FADS. What are we to make of the barrage of seemingly conflicting
- nutritional advice, (e.g.,refer to USDA Food Pyramid, or Nutritional Guidelines or other sources from the Food and Nutrition Information Center fpr an example of how industries, like agribusiness, the meat and dairy industries, have helped shape health policy in the US)
- advertising pitched at our desires to eat foods that are both healthy and satisfying? Got Milk? The milk industry thinks you should! www.whymilk.com
We should also note the growth, the last few years, of so-called designer foods, including more and more products from GMO's (genetically modified organixms), including "nutriiceuticals."
50 years ago
Differences in technology and commerce and regional communication (TV). What, no microwaves??! 2003 marked the 50 year anniversary of Swanson's TV dinners, which were frozen foods then.
Fewer "convenience foods" but canned and frozen foods were available, as were packaged breads... milk was delivered to your home in bottles! Vitamins and minerals commonly added to foods (e.g. iodine added to salt to combat goiter and niacine to commercial bread to combat pellagra).
Popular foods very different. "Ethnic" foods were community based, but not common in mass culture. Some foods were "patriotic" (e.g. chipped beef on toast -- white gravy was promoted as an economical way to feed your family with little meat during war time, whereas before it had been considered an "upper class" food by many... now its economic status has changed again -- more characteristic of regional cooking (e.g. southern biscuits and gravy) and "BAD" because its HIGH FAT... yet we see a popular backlash as gravy is promoted as "home cooking" or "comfort food" or "soul food" etc)
500 years ago
Columbian exchange of foods between Old and New World (and the development of modern cuisines) had not yet begun.
- Imagine Italian food without tomatoes!
- Imagine Mexican food without cheese, beef, pork or chicken!
- Imagine Hot Chocolate without the milk!
Many food dishes which we take for granted did not exist until this great interchange occurred. Tomatoes and Potatoes for example, were both New World crops. Potatoes fared better, initially (quickly spread into Northern Europe, which had weather good for root crops). Whereas tomatoes were greeted with distrust when first introduced into Europe because they were from the same family (Solanaceae) as many toxic plants. Meanwhile, hot cocoa (a bitter, but stimulating and spicey mixture of native plants: ground cocoa beans, hot water, chile, sometimes vanilla) had been a favorite drink in Aztec Mexico, but wasn't really popular in Europe until they started adding first sugar, and then milk in the 17th century.
- Library of Congress Exhibit "1492: An Ongoing Voyage"
- World Map, 1482
- Map of "Terra Incognita" from1513 Atlas
- James H.Timeline from "Where do you think you're going, Christopher Columbus?"
5000 years ago
some culturally-caused biological differences in food habits
At this time food production was still limited around the world, to centers of domestication and their surrounding areas. Starchy staples common, but their distribution was more localized than today (e.g. maize agriculture in Mesoamerica and South America, but in North America still exploiting "wild" weeds (proto-domesticates like gourd, sunflower and amaranth). Most people were still dependent on wild foods.
- Crop Evolution page by Paul Gepts, U.C. Davis (great!)
Also spread of pastoralism and milk-drinking and the origins of lactose tolerance in some human populations.
50,000 years ago
diet is wild, and humans co-exist with neandertals
People hunt and gather wild foods in a variety of opportunistic ways -- but many important tools for acquiring and processing food have not been invented yet: the bow and arrow, the boat, the harpoon, cooking containers, grinding equipment. But fire is used to roast foods, and people exploiting both aquatic and terrestrial foods.
500,000 years ago
There are real questions about how successful Homo erectus was at hunting and gathering, and whether or not human populations were successful in climates with long frozen winters. Meat was commonly scavenged from big-game, but they had weapons too (wooden spears).
5,000,000 years ago
the first hominids: savanna apes?
This is the period when proto-humans were just split from ancestral apes, and were starting to exploit savanna foods that apes rarely foraged for. They were probably "feed as you go" foragers with basically ape-like feeding habits and diets. No known tools survive from this period.
50,000,000 years ago
Early primates co-evolved with the Angiosperms (the flowering plants), and we inherit our color vision and sweet tooth (for finding and tasting ripe fruit), and our need for Vitamin C to the adaptations of these early ancestors (more next week).
A key question becomes, what is the balance between biology and culture in human subsistence? Is there a biological baseline -- a "natural" diet that we are adapted for ?
- Primate Information Network: information about many living primates
This creates some interesting trends:
Diet (food) is one of the direct interfaces between an organism and its environment, and therefore selecting, acquiring, ingesting, and digesting food are critical elements of an organism's survival, or adaptation (ecological niche).
Considering primate and human propensity for learned behavior (culture) as a vital component of our adaptive mechanism, most diets we observe today require a complex mix of both biological and cultural explanation. Issue: what influences our CHOICE of which foods to eat?
We'll discuss some examples of biological constraints on human nutrition, and how how human cultural practices have interacted with our dietary heritage as reflected in some physiological traits/adaptations we have inherited from our evolutionary past. Please find more examples of biological and cultural constraints in your READINGS!
Syllabus | Readings | Lectures | Assignments | Quiz Site
Links to related topics
Human Origins and Evolution in Africa Home Page
Jeanne Sept's Personal Home Page
IU Bloomington Home Page
Last updated: 15 January, 2004
Copyright 1998 Jeanne Sept | <urn:uuid:1339d8ca-29ed-40b6-ba02-bf4d93619376> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.indiana.edu/~origins/teach/P380/P380L1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402746.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00198-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960785 | 1,551 | 3.1875 | 3 |
The sovereign state of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is situated some distance off the northwestern coast of the European continent. Commonly called as the United Kingdom, Britain, or the UK, the state is actually an island country that spans to an archipelago composed of Great Britain, Northern Ireland, and some small islands. The only portion of the kingdom that has a land border is Northern Ireland since it is sharing the island with the Republic of Ireland. The kingdom is enclosed by bodies of water namely the Irish Sea, the English Channel, the North Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean. Great Britain is the largest island of the UK and it is connected to France through the Channel Tunnel.
The United Kingdom has an estimated total land area of 245,000 square kilometers of 94,600 square miles. It is mainly composed of the entire island of Great Britain, the northeast part of the island of Ireland called as the Northern Ireland, and smaller islands within the territory. The UK is lying in between the North Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean. It is about 35 kilometers or 22 miles away from the northwest coast of the country of France with the English Channel in between them.
The island of Great Britain has a north-south length of a little over 1,100 kilometers or 700 miles. The widest portion of the United Kingdom is a little under 500 kilometers or 300 miles. The distance between Land’s End in Cornwall and John o’Groats in Caithness is the greatest distance between two points in the UK and it measures about 1,350 kilometers or 840 miles. The land boundary shared between the Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland is about 360 kilometers or 224 miles in length.
England has a total land area of 130,410 square kilometers or 50,350 square miles, covering more than half of the United Kingdom. The highest mountain in England is Scafell Pike with an elevation of 978 meters or 3,209 feet. A number of the big towns and cities in England are included in the top 50 Larger Urban Zones within the European Union.
Scotland has a total land area of 78,772 square kilometers or 30,410 square miles, covering almost one-third of the total area of the UK. Scotland also includes almost 800 islands located mostly on the western and northern coast of the mainland. Some of these islands are Shetland Islands, Orkney Islands, and the Hebrides. The highest elevation in the British Isles is located in Scotland and it is Ben Nevis with a height of 1,343 meters or 4,406 feet.
Wales has a total land area of 20,758 square kilometers or 8,010 square miles covering about one-tenth of the United Kingdom. Wales has a coastline of more than 1,200 kilometers or 750 miles. Off the coast of the mainland of Welsh are some islands and the largest of these islands is the Anglesey which is located in the northwestern side.
Northern Ireland has a total land area of 14,160 square kilometers or 5,470 square miles and is mainly composed of hills. The biggest body of water in Ireland as well as in the UK is found in Northern Ireland and it is Lough Neagh with a surface area of 388 square kilometers or 150 square miles. | <urn:uuid:b1cd9e50-5c69-4c8b-9c5d-48ca9525cf57> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.dimensionsinfo.com/how-big-is-united-kingdom/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398628.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00036-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950935 | 664 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Using a novel deep sequencing technology that can in one fell swoop decode 50 million sequences representing well over a billion bases of DNA, a research team led by University of Delaware scientists is working to unmask where, why and how certain genes are switched on or off in rice--a crop vital to the world's food supply.
The goal of the four-year project, which is supported by a $5.3-million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), is to advance scientific understanding of the rice epigenome--the series of biochemical modifications of the rice DNA that can toggle a gene on or, conversely, silence it. Ultimately, the research may lead to the development of hardier strains of rice, as well as shed light on similar mechanisms at work in corn and other important cereal grains that are closely related to rice.
Blake Meyers, associate professor of plant and soil sciences at UD, is the principal investigator on the project, which also involves Guo-Liang Wang, a rice biologist from Ohio State University; Steven Jacobsen, an expert in epigenetics, and computer scientist Matteo Pellegrini, both from the University of California at Los Angeles; and Yulin Jia, a plant pathologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Dale Bumpers National Rice Research Center in Stuttgart, Ark.
The effort builds on Meyers' previous awards from the NSF Plant Genome Research Program, as well as ongoing investigations of small RNAs--short lengths of ribonucleic acids that act as gene regulators--performed in collaboration with Pamela Green, the Crawford H. Greenewalt Endowed Chair in Plant Molecular Biology at UD, whose lab is next door to Meyers' in the Delaware Biotechnology Institute. These projects have now propelled the research in a new direction, to new frontiers in the field of epigenetics.
Epigenetics refers to a heritable change that is not a result of a change in DNA sequence, but rather a chemical modification of nucleotides in the DNA or its associated proteins, Meyers said. That means that these changes can be reversible, and it's easier to switch them on or off. Small RNAs are one of the key 'control switches,' directing these modifications, Meyers noted.
State-of-the-art sequencing by synthesis (SBS) technology developed by Solexa Inc., in Hayward, Calif., will provide the data essential to the project. This novel deep sequencing tool, which can decode tens of millions of sequences during a single run, has become available over the last year. The application of SBS to epigenetics research was demonstrated in the human genome only within the past few months. The UD-led effort will be one of the first large-scale projects to use this approach in crop plants.
If you think of a gene as part of a set of chromosomes, a gene is just a small fraction of a percent of a complete genome, Meyers said. If we learn about that gene by random sampling, by using 50 million total sequences, which is what SBS provides, we can characterize that gene at depth, he noted. Using this method, we can obtain statistically robust data for nearly all genomic regions in a single experiment.
The scientists will use the technology to look for chemical modifications in chromatin, the building-block material of chromosomes, consisting of DNA and the proteins that interact with it. The scientists want to know how the chromatin is configured and what role changes in the material play in plant development.
Formerly, we had a very narrow picture of a plant's genome; with these new sequencing technologies, we now have the opportunity to acquire a comprehensive picture at fine detail, Meyers said. It's like looking through a high-powered telescope--but now we have a wide-angle lens on that telescope to take in a view with both breadth and depth.
Besides studying the state of the genome using a variety of different strains of rice plants, the research team will develop new bioinformatics methods to process the vast amounts of data and mine new discoveries.
The project is part biology and part technology, Meyers said. Developing the bioinformatics to handle the data is critical. You have to know what to do with it. As our bioinformatics capabilities have grown, so have the resources available to the public through our web sites, he noted. And these online resources have led to important new collaborations.
The research project also includes an innovative education and outreach component targeting graduate students in plant science. Students will write, submit and exchange research proposals with students from different universities. They will then serve on a panel to critique and rank the proposals, modeled after the National Science Foundation's own proposal review process.
Since planning experiments and justifying these through writing proposals is such an integral part of what a scientist does, I thought this would be a good experience for our students, Meyers said. This way, they can also see what their advisers go through, he added, grinning.
Meyers developed the educational project several years ago in the advanced plant genetics course (PL636) he teaches in the UD College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Since then, several colleagues and their classes at Iowa State and Penn State have participated in the program, exchanging proposals with UD, and UCLA and Ohio State are planning to join the program during the current four-year grant.
My hope is that this program and its proposal exchange system can be used broadly by plant genetics and genomics courses at universities to build writing, communication and critical thinking skills among graduate students, Meyers said.
|Contact: Tracey Bryant|
University of Delaware | <urn:uuid:3725f4fb-f83d-4645-bfd9-9fb18f1f0db3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bio-medicine.org/biology-news-1/UD-leads--245-3-million-research-project-on-rice-epigenetics-325-1/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395548.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00008-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951752 | 1,159 | 3 | 3 |
- 1 The Challenge of Speech Recognition
- 2 History of Speech Recognition
- 3 Speech Recognition Today
- 4 The Future of Speech Recognition
- 5 References
In computer technology, Speech Recognition refers to the recognition of human speech by computers for the performance of speaker-initiated computer-generated functions (e.g., transcribing speech to text; data entry; operating electronic and mechanical devices; automated processing of telephone calls) — a main element of so-called natural language processing through computer speech technology.
Speech derives from sounds created by the human articulatory system, including the lungs, vocal cords, and tongue. Through exposure to variations in speech patterns during infancy, a child learns to recognize the same words or phrases despite different modes of pronunciation by different people— e.g., pronunciation differing in pitch, tone, emphasis, intonation pattern. The cognitive ability of the brain enables humans to achieve that remarkable capability. As of this writing (2008), we can reproduce that capability in computers only to a limited degree, but in many ways still useful.
The Challenge of Speech RecognitionWriting systems are ancient, going back as far as the Sumerians of 6,000 years ago. The phonograph, which allowed the analog recording and playback of speech, dates to 1877. Speech recognition had to await the development of computer, however, due to multifarious problems with the recognition of speech.
First, speech is not simply spoken text--in the same way that Miles Davis playing So What can hardly be captured by a note-for-note rendition as sheet music. What humans understand as discrete words, phrases or sentences with clear boundaries are actually delivered as a continuous stream of sounds: Iwenttothestoreyesterday, rather than I went to the store yesterday. Words can also blend, with Whaddayawa? representing What do you want?
Second, there is no one-to-one correlation between the sounds and letters. In English, there are slightly more than five vowel letters--a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y and w. There are more than twenty different vowel sounds, though, and the exact count can vary depending on the accent of the speaker. The reverse problem also occurs, where more than one letter can represent a given sound. The letter c can have the same sound as the letter k, as in cake, or as the letter s, as in citrus.
In addition, people who speak the same language do not use the same sounds, i.e. languages vary in their phonology, or patterns of sound organization. There are different accents--the word 'water' could be pronounced watter, wadder, woader, wattah, and so on. Each person has a distinctive pitch when they speak--men typically having the lowest pitch, women and children have a higher pitch (though there is wide variation and overlap within each group.) Pronunciation is also colored by adjacent sounds, the speed at which the user is talking, and even by the user's health. Consider how pronunciation changes when a person has a cold.
Lastly, consider that not all sounds consist of meaningful speech. Regular speech is filled with interjections that do not have meaning in themselves, but serve to break up discourse and convey subtle information about the speaker's feelings or intentions: Oh, like, you know, well. There are also sounds that are a part of speech that are not considered words: er, um, uh. Coughing, sneezing, laughing, sobbing, and even hiccupping can be a part of what is spoken. And the environment adds its own noises; speech recognition is difficult even for humans in noisy places.
History of Speech Recognition
Despite the manifold difficulties, speech recognition has been attempted for almost as long as there have been digital computers. As early as 1952, researchers at Bell Labs had developed an Automatic Digit Recognizer, or "Audrey". Audrey attained an accuracy of 97 to 99 percent if the speaker was male, and if the speaker paused 350 milliseconds between words, and if the speaker limited his vocabulary to the digits from one to nine, plus "oh", and if the machine could be adjusted to the speaker's speech profile. Results dipped as low as 60 percent if the recognizer was not adjusted.
Audrey worked by recognizing phonemes, or individual sounds that were considered distinct from each other. The phonemes were correlated to reference models of phonemes that were generated by training the recognizer. Over the next two decades, researchers spent large amounts of time and money trying to improve upon this concept, with little success. Computer hardware improved by leaps and bounds, speech synthesis improved steadily, and Noam Chomsky's idea of generative grammar suggested that language could be analyzed programmatically. None of this, however, seemed to improve the state of the art in speech recognition. Chomsky and Halle's generative work in phonology also led mainstream linguistics to abandon the concept of the "phoneme" altogether, in favour of breaking down the sound patterns of language into smaller, more discrete "features".
In 1969, John R. Pierce wrote a forthright letter to the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, where much of the research on speech recognition was published. Pierce was one of the pioneers in satellite communications, and an executive vice president at Bell Labs, which was a leader in speech recognition research. Pierce said everyone involved was wasting time and money.
It would be too simple to say that work in speech recognition is carried out simply because one can get money for it. . . .The attraction is perhaps similar to the attraction of schemes for turning water into gasoline, extracting gold from the sea, curing cancer, or going to the moon. One doesn't attract thoughtlessly given dollars by means of schemes for cutting the cost of soap by 10%. To sell suckers, one uses deceit and offers glamor.
Pierce's 1969 letter marked the end of official research at Bell Labs for nearly a decade. The defense research agency ARPA, however, chose to persevere. In 1971 they sponsored a research initiative to develop a speech recognizer that could handle at least 1,000 words and understand connected speech, i.e., speech without clear pauses between each word. The recognizer could assume a low-background-noise environment, and it did not need to work in real time.
By 1976, three contractors had developed six systems. The most successful system, developed by Carnegie Mellon University, was called Harpy. Harpy was slow—a four-second sentence would have taken more than five minutes to process. It also still required speakers to 'train' it by speaking sentences to build up a reference model. Nonetheless, it did recognize a thousand-word vocabulary, and it did support connected speech.
Research continued on several paths, but Harpy was the model for future success. It used hidden Markov models and statistical modeling to extract meaning from speech. In essence, speech was broken up into overlapping small chunks of sound, and probabilistic models inferred the most likely words or parts of words in each chunk, and then the same model was applied again to the aggregate of the overlapping chunks. The procedure is computationally intensive, but it has proven to be the most successful.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s research continued. By the 1980s, most researchers were using hidden Markov models, which are behind all contemporary speech recognizers. In the latter part of the 1980s and in the 1990s, DARPA (the renamed ARPA) funded several initiatives. The first initiative was similar to the previous challenge: the requirement was still a one-thousand word vocabulary, but this time a rigorous performance standard was devised. This initiative produced systems that lowered the word error rate from ten percent to a few percent. Additional initiatives have focused on improving algorithms and improving computational efficiency.
In 2001, Microsoft released a speech recognition system that worked with Office XP. It neatly encapsulated how far the technology had come in fifty years, and what the limitations still were. The system had to be trained to a specific user's voice, using the works of great authors that were provided, such as Edgar Allen Poe's Fall of the House of Usher, and Bill Gates' The Way Forward. Even after training, the system was fragile enough that a warning was provided, "If you change the room in which you use Microsoft Speech Recognition and your accuracy drops, run the Microphone Wizard again." On the plus side, the system did work in real time, and it did recognize connected speech.
Speech Recognition Today
Current voice recognition technologies work on the ability to mathematically analyze the sound waves formed by our voices through resonance and spectrum analysis. Computer systems first record the sound waves spoken into a microphone through a digital to analog converter. The analog or continuous sound wave that we produce when we say a word is sliced up into small time fragments. These fragments are then measured based on their amplitude levels, the level of compression of air released from a person’s mouth. To measure the amplitudes and convert a sound wave to digital format the industry has commonly used the Nyquist-Shannon Theorem.
The Nyquist –Shannon theorem was developed in 1928 to show that a given analog frequency is most accurately recreated by a digital frequency that is twice the original analog frequency. Nyquist proved this was true because an audible frequency must be sampled once for compression and once for rarefaction. For example, a 20 kHz audio signal can be accurately represented as a digital sample at 44.1 kHz.
How it Works..
Commonly speech recognition programs use statistical models to account for variations in dialect, accent, background noise, and pronunciation. These models have progressed to such an extent that in a quiet environment accuracy of over 90% can be achieved. While every company has their own proprietary technology for the way a spoken input is processed there exists 4 common themes about how speech is recognized.
- 1. Template-Based: This model uses a database of speech patterns built into the program. After receiving voice input into the system recognition occurs by matching the input to the database. To do this the program uses Dynamic Programming algorithms. The downfall of this type of speech recognition is the inability for the recognition model to be flexible enough to understand voice patterns unlike those in the database.
- 2. Knowledge-Based: Knowledge-based speech recognition analyzes the spectrograms of the speech to gather data and create rules that return values equaling what commands or words the user said. Knowledge-Based recognition does not make use of linguistic or phonetic knowledge about speech.
- 3. Stochastic: Stochastic speech recognition is the most common today. Stochastic methods of voice analysis make use of probability models to model the uncertainty of the spoken input. The most popular probability model is use of HMM (Hidden Markov Model) is shown below.
Yt is the observed acoustic data, p(W) is the a-priori probability of a particular word string, p(Yt|W) is the probability of the observed acoustic data given the acoustic models, and W is the hypothesised word string. When analyzing the spoken input the HMM has proven to be successful because the algorithm takes into account a language model, an acoustic model of how humans speak, and a lexicon of known words.
- 4. Connectionist: With Connectionist speech recognition knowledge about a spoken input is gained by analyzing the input and storing it in a variety of ways from simple multi-layer perceptrons to time delay neural nets to recurrent neural nets.
As stated above, programs that utilize stochastic models to analyze spoken language are most common today and have proven to be the most successful.
The most important goal of current speech recognition software is to recognize commands. This increases the functionality of speech software. Software such as Microsoft Sync is built into many new vehicles, supposedly allowing users to access all of the car’s electronic accessories, hands-free. This software is adaptive. It asks the user a series of questions and utilizes the pronunciation of commonly used words to derive speech constants. These constants are then factored into the speech recognition algorithms, allowing the application to provide better recognition in the future. Current tech reviewers have said the technology is much improved from the early 1990’s but will not be replacing hand controls any time soon.
Second to command recognition is dictation. Today's market sees value in dictation software as discussed below in transcription of medical records, or papers for students, and as a more productive way to get one's thoughts down a written word. In addition many companies see value in dictation for the process of translation, in that users could have their words translated for written letters, or translated so the user could then say the word back to another party in their native language. Products of these types already exist in the market today.
Errors in Interpreting the Spoken Word
As speech recognition programs process your spoken words their success rate is based on their ability to minimize errors. The scale on which they can do this is called Single Word Error Rate (SWER) and Command Success Rate (CSR). A Single Word Error is simply put, a misunderstanding of one word in a spoken sentence. While SWERs can be found in Command Recognition Programs, they are most commonly found in dictation software. Command Success Rate is defined by an accurate interpretation of the spoken command. All words in a command statement may not be correctly interpreted, but the recognition program is able to use mathematical models to deduce the command the user wants to execute.
Major Speech Technology Companies
As the speech technology industry grows, more companies emerge into this field bring with them new products and ideas. Some of the leaders in voice recognition technologies (but by no means all of them) are listed below.
- NICE Systems (NASDAQ: NICE and Tel Aviv: Nice), headquartered in Israel and founded in 1986, specialize in digital recording and archiving technologies. In 2007 they made $523 million in revenue in 2007. For more information visit http://www.nice.com.
- Verint Systems Inc.(OTC:VRNT), headquartered in Melville, New York and founded in 1994 self-define themselves as “A leading provider of actionable intelligence solutions for workforce optimization, IP video, communications interception, and public safety.” For more information visit http://verint.com.
- Nuance (NASDAQ: NUAN) headquartered in Burlington, develops speech and image technologies for business and customer service uses. For more information visit http://www.nuance.com/.
- Vlingo, headquartered in Cambridge, MA, develops speech recognition technology that interfaces with wireless/mobile technologies. Vlingo has recently teamed up with Yahoo! providing the speech recognition technology for Yahoo!’s mobile search service, oneSearch. For more information visit http://vlingo.com
Patent Infringement Lawsuits
Given the highly competitive nature of both business and technology, it is not surprising that there have been numerous patent infringement lawsuits brought by various speech companies. Each element involved in developing a speech recognition device can be claimed as a separate technology, and hence patented as such. Use of a technology, even if it is independently developed, that is patented by another company or individual is liable to monetary compensation and often results in injunctions preventing companies from henceforth using the technology. The politics and business of the speech industry are tightly tied to speech technology development, it is therefore important to recognize legal and political barriers that may impede further developments in this industry. Below are a number of descriptions of patent infringement lawsuits. It should be noted that there are currently many more such suits on the docket, and more being brought to court every day.
NICE v. Verint
The technologies produced by both NICE and Verint intricately involve speech recognition. Both companies are highly competitive in the field of call/contact centers and security intelligence. Since 2004 NICE and Verint have both filed multiple patent infringement lawsuits upon each other. They are discussed below.
- January 2008: Patent infringement case brought by NICE against Verint had a deadlocked jury. It is currently awaiting new trial.
- May 19, 2008: It was announced that the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia voted in favor of Verint in their infringement suit against Nice Systems, and further awarded Verint $3.3 million in damages. The suit was over Verint’s patent No. 6,404,857 for a device which can monitor several telephone communications and “relates to emotion detection, word spotting, and talk-over detection in speech analytics solutions.”
- May 27, 2008: US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia found that the technology of Verint Systems Inc. did not infringe on the NICE patent No. 6,871,299. The technology in this patent deals with IP recording.
- August 2008: Verint is currently awaiting a trial date for the patent infringement case they brought against NICE that involves their patented screen-capture technology. Verint stands to receive over $30 million in damages and an injunction prohibiting NICE from developing or selling any products with infringed technology.
And these lawsuits between NICE and Verint are not likely to end anytime soon, evident by Shlomo Shamir, NICE’s presidents, comment that “We believe that Verint’s patents asserted against NICE are invalid, and we intend to continue seeking invalidation of these patents.”
Nuance v. vlingo
June 16, 2008: Nuance filed a claim in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against vlingo for patent infringement of Patent No. 6,766,295, “Adaptation of a Speech Recognition System across Multiple Remote Sessions with a Speaker”. The technology described in this patent is an “adaption of speech recognition system across multiple remote sessions with speaker (patent foot note),” which is essentially the result of storing multiple acoustical models for one speaker. If the suit is found in favor of Nuance, they stand to receive damages and an injunction against the use of their technologies.
Klausner Technologies v. AT&T and Apple
June 16 2008: Klausner Technologies settled the infringement lawsuit they brought against AT&T and Apple over patents for Klausner’s visual voicemail. AT&T and Apple paid Klausner an undisclosed sum and agreed to license the technology from Klausner.
Voice User Interface
The design cycle of a voice user interface (VUI) parallels that of the graphical user interface (GUI), both following the standard software development life cycle (SDLC). Although SDLC varies slightly based on the developer and the company implementing it, it is generally agreed upon as (1) identification of needs (2) gathering of requirements (3) prototyping (4) detailed design (2) programming (3) product usability testing (4) deployment (5) maintenance. The VUI design cycle must however incorporate input from a much more diverse group of specialist than the UI cycle needs, including such people as speech scientists, linguists, human factors experts and business experts. Please note that in the model of the SDLC provided to the right, Steps 1 and 2 are combined and Steps 3 and 4 are combined.
Once a business has adequately articulated their needs to software developers (step 1 of SDLC), developers must learn about their user (step 2 of SDLC). To do this, designers identify personas, model users who encompass the characteristics, personalities and skill levels of potential users. Designing VUIs based on personas helps to ensure that speech prompts are appropriate and understandable to users in addition to helping determine proper dialog style. Dialog style defines the way a user can respond to a speech application. The four main types of dialog styles include (1) directed dialog where the user is given a number of choices and must respond with one of those options (2) natural language dialog where the user is given free range to say what they would like (3) mixed initiative applications which use a more confined type of natural language and defer to directed dialog if the user is not understood and (4) Form Filling in which the user answers a series of straight forward questions as they would if they were filling out a form.
Designers also must carefully decide how to create prompts within the VUI. The two main mechanisms are (1) text-to-speech (TTS) and (2) audio recordings. Typical tools break prompts down into words and phrases which can then be combined during application runtime. The algorithms used within the speech application determine the word and phrase combination.
Two main forms of speech recognition that have been used in the past are (1) constrained grammars which contain a large bank of word that the application can identify and (2) scripted interactions which take you through a step by step process where each step moves to a word bank more specific to the user's needs (ex: 411 call moving from “city and state” bank to “Philadelphia, Pennsylvania bank). To reduce the constriction placed on users, many applications have implemented Statistical Language Models (SLMs) in which the large grammars used in the previous techniques are replaced by the statistical “averaging of a large corpus of sample responses recorded live from users responding to a prompt.” Essentially SLMs have the capability to estimate the probability or likehood that a word or phrase will occur in a given context.
The building of VUIs involves extensive time and money. As a result a result the speech industry has answered back with a number of application templates. Companies such as ScanSoft, Vialto, Nuance and Unisys provide templates for such things as 411 directory assistance, voice-activated dialing, corporate greeter and a number of other automated call center applications.
As is shown in the SDLC flow-chart to the right, testing occurs after multiple steps of the design process including after prototyping, initial development and product completion. This continual implementation of testing, namely usability testing, makes SDLC an iterative process in which designers test, revise and test again. Usability testing is crucial for developers to learn more about users, to discover short-comings within products and to learn how to make their products better. Two common VUI testing techniques are (1) Wizard of Oz testing (WOZ) and (2) prototype testing. WOZ is described as “a human tester plays the recorded prompts to a panel of around 100 people who are asked to navigate the prompts and complete a particular task.” This technique focuses on the understandability and effectiveness of the VUI prompts. Other VUI usability testing techniques include statistical benchmarks, Holistic Usability Measure developed by Juan Gilbert where clients distribute 100 points across characteristics the developer deems important (i.e. accuracy, understandability and efficiency), and Melanie Polkosky’s statistical measure known as factor analysis that incorporates user- goal orientation, speech characteristics, verbosity and customer service behavior.
It is important to note that there are many ways to develop UIs and VUIs other than those described here, however the techniques above describe some of the most “common” methodologies involved in VUI design.
The Future of Speech Recognition
Mobile Search Applications
In recent years there has been a steady movement towards the development of speech technologies to replace or enhance text input applications. We see this trend in products such as audio search engines, voicemail to text programs, dictation programs and desktop “say what you see” commands.. Recently both Yahoo! and Microsoft have launched voice-based mobile search applications. The concept behind Yahoo! oneSearch and Microsoft Tellme are very similar, it is their implementation and the speech technology used in their applications which differ. With both products users speak a “search word” into their mobile phone or PDA while holding down the green talk button, the request is sent to a server that analyzes the sound bit and then the results of search appear on the mobile device. OneSearch is currently available for select Blackberry users in the US and can be downloaded from Yahoo!. Tellme is available for Blackberry users in the US by download from Microsoft and pre-installed on all Helio’s Mystos.
Yahoo! has partnered with vlingo for the speech recognition feature of oneSearch. This voice technology allows users to say exactly what they want, they do not need to know or use special commands, speak slowly or overly articulately. Vlingo’s technology implements Adaptive Hierarchical Language Models (A-HLMs) which allows oneSearch to use regional details and user patters to adapt to the characteristics of its surroundings including word pronunciation, accents and acoustics. A-HLMs uses server side adaptation which means when it learns a new word or pronunciation from one user, it adapts the language models of all users. For example, if a user in Boston (presumably with a Boston accent) is using oneSearch, data generated on all users from the Boston area will help the application to better understand what this user is saying. More information on vlingo can be found at vlingo.com.
Microsoft’s subsidiary Tellme took a different approach to the speech recognition element of their mobile search application. Users are instructed to say specific phrases such as “traffic,” “map” or the name of business. Tellme’s senior product manager David Mitby, explains why they chose to limit speech parameters: "[because] very solid smartphone users pick this up for the first time, it’s not clear what to do. It’s not intuitive media yet."
Future Trends & Applications
The Medical Industry
For years the medical industry has been touting electronic medical records (EMR). Unfortunately the industry has been slow to adopt EMRs and some companies are betting that the reason is because of data entry. There isn’t enough people to enter the multitude of current patient’s data into electronic format and because of that the paper record prevails. A company called Nuance (also featured in other areas here, and developer of the software called Dragon Dictate) is betting that they can find a market selling their voice recognition software to physicians who would rather speak patients' data than handwrite all medical information into a person’s file.
The Defense industry has researched voice recognition software in an attempt to make complex user intense applications more efficient and friendly. Currently voice recognition is being experimented with cockpit displays in aircraft under the context that the pilot could access needed data faster and easier.
Command Centers are also looking to use voice recognition technology to search and access the vast amounts of database data under their control in a quick and concise manner during situations of crisis. In addition the military has also jumped onboard with EMR for patient care. The military has voiced its commitment to utilizing voice recognition software in transmitting data into patients' records.
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- Robert D. Rodman. Computer Speech Technology. Massachusetts: Artech House 1999
- Pieraccini, R. and Lubensky, D.: Spoken Language Communication with Machines: The Long and Winding Road from Research to Business. In Innovations in Applied Artificial Intelligence/Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 3533, pp. 6-15, M. Ali and F. Esposito (Eds.) 2005
- Jurafsy, M. and Martin, J. An Introduction to Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, and Speech Recognition. New Jersey: Prentice Hall 2006
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- Microsoft provides this feature on Vista operating systems. To learn more go to http://www.microsoft.com/enable/products/windowsvista/speech.aspx
- S.H. Wildstrom, “LOOK MA, NO-HANDS SEARCH; Voice-based, mobile search from Microsoft and Yahoo! are imperfect but promising,” BuisnessWeek, McGraw-Hill, Inc. vol. 4088, June 16, 2008.
- E. Keleher and B. Monaghan, “Vlingo Introduces Localized Voice-Recognition Support for Yahoo! oneSearch,” vlingo, June 17, 2008, http://vlingo.com/pdf/vlingo%20Introduces%20Localized%20Voice-rec%20for%20Yahoo%20oneSearch%20FINAL.pdf, accessed: August 8, 2008.
- R. Joe, “Multiple-Modality Disorder,” Speech Techology, vol 13 no. 5, June 2008. | <urn:uuid:fc4c5933-aed4-4093-b9f3-089432612a90> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Speech_Recognition | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399385.17/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00103-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940094 | 6,750 | 3.890625 | 4 |
article is part of a continuing series on the Mahavamsa, the recorded
chronicle of Sri Lankan history
1. King Vasabha was engaged in renovating all the temples
and dagobas that were in a dilapidated condition. At that time,
the monks of ‘Valli-Sera’ temple were very good preachers.
King Vasabha used to listen to their sermons very often. Highly
taken up with their sermons, he built another beautiful temple and
offered it to the monks there. He proclaimed that the income derived
from the waters of the ‘Elahera’ tank, should go to
the maintenance of the temples in the area.
Many are the religious buildings constructed by King Vasabha. He
had built a number of ‘Aramas’ for the Maha Vihara,
a dining hall for Thuparama and a chamber to keep statues at the
Bodhi. The statues of the Buddhas –Kakusanda, Konagama and
Gautama were deposited there. Queen Metta too got a stupa built
near the Bodhi and offered it to the Sangha.
King Vasabha patronized the monks who were engaged in literary work.
He offered alms to monks who were clever at preaching the Dhamma.
At the four entrances to the city he had organized the distribution
of meals and clothing to the needy. He saw to it that the sick priests
were well taken care of. He maintained dispensaries at government
expense and hired attendants to look after the sick monks.
King Vasabha saw to it that the people lived in plenty. For this
purpose agriculture was developed. He encouraged the subjects to
farm their land. He is said to have built 11 tanks, some of which
are Rajupul, Kolamba-gamaka, Kolivasa, Kohala and Vatamangara tank.
Scholars are of the opinion that Vasabha was the first king who
built large tanks.
Out of the tanks that he built, only four have been identified.
They are the tanks at Mahavilachchi, Manakatiya, Niochchipotana
and Hiriwadunne tanks. Though there is mention of 12 canals he constructed
only ‘Ele-hera’ has been identified. A dam was built
across Ambanganga at Ele-hera to build this canal. It flows to a
distance of 48 km and ends at Kirindi Oya.
All this is evidence to prove that ancient Lanka had skilled people
who were able to build huge tanks and canals. There had been people
gifted with such engineering skills to maintain even underground
water systems. It is discovered now that the Ran-Masu park at Anuradhapura
was watered by the waters of Tisa-Weva through an underground tunnel.
The inscriptions at Tammanna and Habassa bear testimony to this.
King Vasabha’s birth place has been in the north of the country.
As such, he had close ties with ‘Nag-dipa’, which meant
the entire Jaffna peninsula then. The people of Lambakarna caste,
who lived there, were related to King Vasabha. There is mention
of a minister named Isigira who ruled Jaffna under King Vasabha’s
supremacy. A gold ‘Sannasa’ (plate) which was discovered
in a land close to the Vishnu Devale of Vadamarachchi refers to
There had been a number of Buddhist shrines in Jaffna. Many ruins
of temples and even some gold coins have been excavated here. The
Naga-dipa then was not the little island we mean today. It referred
to the entire Northern Province. The Greeks who came here in the
2nd century AD, have referred to the Northern part of the country
King Vasabha managed to rule the country to the satisfaction of
all his subjects. He died in 111 AD.
By Halaliye Karunathilake
Edited and translated by Kamala Silva | <urn:uuid:8d3ce0d9-a3d7-4494-82a2-0c48c235b2c6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.sundaytimes.lk/041205/funday/1.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396959.83/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00143-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971318 | 895 | 3.265625 | 3 |
Noah-MP was developed in order to facilitate climate predictions with physically based ensembles. Multi-physics options allows for isolation and analysis of specific parameter schemes ultimately allowing 4,584 combinations to be assessed. In addition, to better predict climate, Noah MP is capable of coupling NCEP Global Forecasting System (GFS) and Climate Forecasting System (CFS) and in the near future, coupling will improve weather predictions with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) modeling system. Some flaws in Noah-LSM have also been modified to better represent several parameters including: surface layer radiation balances, snow depth, soil moisture and heat fluxes, leaf area-rainfall interaction, vegetation and canopy temperature distinction, soil column and drainage of soil, and runoff.
Zong-Liang Yang’s Land, Environment, and Atmospheric Dynamics group in the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin hopes to aid in transitioning the Noah Land Surface Model with Multi-Physics options to a community model.
Some New Features in Noah-MP
1. Major components include a 1-layer canopy; 3-layer snow; 4-layer soil
2. Subgrid scheme: semi-tile vegetation and bare soil (Niu et al. 2010a)
3. Interactive energy balance method to predict skin temperature of the canopy and snow/soil surface
4. Modified two-stream radiation transfer scheme to consider the 3-D structure of the canopy (Niu and Yang, 2004)
5. More realistic snow physics: a thin surface layer, liquid water retention and refreezing, and snowpack densification (Yang and Niu, 2003)
6. A TOPMODEL- based runoff scheme (Niu et al., 2005)
7. An unconfined aquifer interacting with soil (Niu et al., 2007)
8. More permeable frozen soil (Niu and Yang, 2006)
9. Ball-Berry stomatal resistance related to photosynthesis
10. A short-term leaf dynamic model. (Dickinson et al., 1998) | <urn:uuid:b7f18673-9005-4b32-8a72-b4f263fc11a2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.jsg.utexas.edu/noah-mp/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.0/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00026-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.850642 | 435 | 2.578125 | 3 |
PASADENA, Calif., Jan. 24 (UPI) -- An asteroid believed about 500 feet to 2,000 feet in size is being closely monitored by the U.S. space agency as it approaches Earth for a Tuesday fly-by.
Asteroid 2007 TU24 is expected to be about 334,000 miles from Earth at 3:33 a.m. Jan. 29 and should be observable by amateur astronomers with modest-sized telescopes, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.
The asteroid was discovered by the NASA-sponsored Catalina Sky Survey Oct. 11. Scientists at NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have determined there is no possibility of an impact with Earth in the foreseeable future.
"This will be the closest approach by a known asteroid of this size or larger until 2027," said Don Yeomans, manager of the Near Earth Object Program Office. "As its closest approach is about one-and-a-half times the distance of Earth to the moon, there is no reason for concern. On the contrary, Mother Nature is providing us an excellent opportunity to perform scientific observations."
NASA detects and tracks asteroids and comets passing close to Earth to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to the planet. | <urn:uuid:a25e165e-28e9-4461-a789-a34de596fbb5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2008/01/24/Astronomers-study-asteroid-nearing-Earth/UPI-85191201205187/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400031.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00197-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923942 | 268 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Wetland Terms – A
A [abiotic factors–autumn-flowering clematis]
- abiotic factors: physical environmental factors (e.g., water, temperature, soil, light) that influence the composition and growth of an ecosystem.
- adaptation: a specific structure or behavior that helps an organism survive and reproduce in a particular environment; the process that enables organisms to become better suited to their environment.
- aerobic: any process that requires oxygen.
- agriculture: the science or process of farming or cultivating the soil for the production of plants and animals that will be useful to humans in some way.
- alderfly: an aquatic macroinvertebrate of the order Megaloptera. Alderfly larvae have projections or filaments but no wings. They are somewhat sensitive to pollution.
- algae: varied aquatic protists, or phytoplankton, that lack vascular tissue, and are usually photosynthetic.
- algal bloom: an explosive population increase in algae that occurs when large amounts of phosphates and/or nitrates enter a body of water in the presence of warm temperatures.
- anadromous fish: fish that migrate up rivers from the sea to breed in fresh water.
- anaerobic: lacking or not needing oxygen.
- annelids: aquatic macroinvertebrates of the phylum Annelida; segmented worms with bilateral symmetry, closed circulatory systems, and complete digestive systems; includes leeches.
- apparent color: the color given to water by dissolved substances and suspended matter (e.g., metallic ions, plankton, algae, industrial pollution, and plant pigments). Apparent color provides useful information about the water's source and content.
- aquaculture: the production of fish, shellfish, invertebrates, and plants in marine, brackish, or freshwater environment.
- aquatic: living or growing in or on the water.
- aquatic worms: aquatic macroinvertebrates without legs, including flatworms (planaria), roundworms (nematodes), and freshwater earthworms (oligochaetes). They can tolerate pollution.
- arrow arum: Peltondra virginica or duck corn. Arrow arum is an emergent vegetation found in freshwater wetlands; its seeds develop in spike-shaped pods.
- assessment: an evaluation.
- atmosphere: the gaseous mass or envelope surrounding the earth.
- autumn-flowering clematis:Clematis maximowiscziana, exotic invasive plant that grows in swamp forests (intermittently flooded lowland forests). | <urn:uuid:250ff264-8ff1-477d-9a23-28705c57f450> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.doe.virginia.gov/instruction/science/elementary/lessons_bay/glossary/index.shtml | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396222.11/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00201-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.845909 | 548 | 3.71875 | 4 |
|English: A collection of pictograms. Three of them used by the United States National Park Service. A package containing those three and all NPS symbols is available at the Open Icon Library (Photo credit: Wikipedia)|
5. Bullying and Students With Disabilities
[ 779 F.Supp.2d 303 ]
|[ 779 F.Supp.2d 303 ]|
disability that creates a hostile environment." U.S. Dep't of Educ., Reminder of Responsibility Under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act July, 25 2000, available at http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/disabharassltr.html (hereinafter DOE Reminder of Responsibilities Letter). Studies have shown that students with a disability, whether it is visible or non-visible, are subject to increased bullying that is often directed at the disability. John Young, Ari Ne'eman, and Sara Gelser, Bullying and Students With Disabilities, in White House Conference on Bullying Prevention, at 74 (March 10, 2011), available athttp://www.stopbullying.gov/references/white_house_conference/index.html. These students are also at more risk for bullying directed at factors other than their disability. Id. at 77. Harassing conduct may take many forms, including verbal acts and name-calling, as well as nonverbal behavior, such as graphic written statements, or conduct that is physically threatening, harmful, or humiliating. DOE Reminder of Responsibilities Letter, supra.
[ 779 F.Supp.2d 304 ]
|[ 779 F.Supp.2d 304 ]|
and proficiencies needed to avoid and respond to bullying, harassment or teasing. | <urn:uuid:c7fb7046-65b7-41cd-aff3-7677f525f27c> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://specialeducationlawblog.blogspot.com/2013/08/bullying-of-kids-with-disabilities-part.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402479.21/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00007-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.923576 | 380 | 2.875 | 3 |
"At about a year and a half, the child discovers another fact, and that is that each thing has its own name. This shows that, from all the words he has heard, he has been able to single out the nouns, and esepecially the concrete nouns. What a wonderful new step to have taken! He was aware of being in a world of things, and now each of these is indicated by a special word."
- Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind.
The best thing about language development is that it happens so naturally. Our children are picking up on what we are saying - words, sounds and meanings. Montessori once said to surround the child in intelligent conversation. All we really have to do is talk.
Otis is at the stage where he recognises the things around him, that the things in his environment have names. He is at the point and name stage. As Dr Montanoro (in Understanding the Human Being) puts it, there is a "sensitive period for naming things". She suggests that if parents "respond to the hunger for words in an appropriate way, they can give their children a richness and precision of language that will last a lifetime..."
But how to respond you may ask. I know most parents already read to their children. Here are a few other things we've been doing with Otis for language development.
Playing barn. Otis has a basket of farm animals and will play here alone or with others. It's simple play. If I am with him I will tell him the name of the animal and the sound it makes. He's also learning a lot about animal behaviour as we show him how animals move and interact.
Basket of animals. Most children have an affinity for animals and Otis is no exception. He has three animals in this basket kept on his shelves. We name the animal as he pulls them out. We sometimes make the animal sound or Caspar might act out/pretend to be the animal. This is a nice quick and simple activity. In this basket we have three African animals. We try to keep the animals grouped with like, for example by group or type. Even though he doesn't use the basket for long it's really good practice for getting an activity from his shelves, using his mat and then putting it all back.
In the future we will use an animal basket for matching and for a three period lesson.
When we name the animal or any object for Otis we will say the name clearly and strongly. For example "elephant" and repeat, rather than "this is an elephant". This needs to be a relaxed game. Otis will choose this from his shelves but if you are introducing it to your child it's really important that this is a fun and not a forced 'lesson'.
You could really put any objects (that are safe) in a basket, whatever you feel would engage your child.
Point and name. It suprises me that this is Otis's favourite book. It's not a book that I would have chosen for him (it was a gift) but it is the one he brings to me the most. It's not a story but a simple 'first words' book. He loves the interactive slide and I love that the images are true to life. He doesn't say any of the words yet but is making some of the correct sounds.
Hi-bye game. Otis has also caught onto greetings. He likes to play this hi-bye game. He hides behind the door waving and saying 'bye' then reappears. He's actually waving to me here. Hi and bye sound so alike I'm not sure which he is saying. This is imitation at it's finest, he uses the same tone that I use when I say bye to friends.
Animal alphabet cards. Otis has recently spent a lot of time in the car and in waiting rooms using these cards. The cards make up an animal alphabet. There is one animal for each letter of the alphabet. Otis likes to flick through and ask for their names. I laminated the cards and have written the letter the animal corresponds to on the back which helps Caspar to remember the name of the animal if he's using it with Otis.
These animal alphabet cards were given to me by Meg. Meg has kindly offered to send the printable file (with some additional information about how to use them) to the first ten people who leave a comment. Thanks Meg.
Other language development activities we do with Otis;
- name body parts when dressing and washing, naming them as I touch them
- name foods as we prepare and eat them
- name other objects as we use them (clothes, tools, toys)
- name people and places
- read through our photo book and name our friends and family
- name objects that he brings to me such as "flower" or "stick"
- name our experiences like "rain" and "wet"
- describing actions, what we are doing or about to do
- ask questions, give commands
- encourage him to interact and converse with a wide range of people.
Wow, that sounds like a lot but what it all comes down to for me is staying intentional about the lanuage I use and how I use it.
I'd love to hear if you have any tips for language development at this stage.
Edited: Thank you to everyone who left a comment. Meg has kindly agreed to email the animal alphabet file to everyone who left a comment. Thanks again Meg. | <urn:uuid:1cf35443-4867-4f40-a8ec-610dfd017faf> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.howwemontessori.com/how-we-montessori/2012/08/language-development-activities-.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00172-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97511 | 1,149 | 3.609375 | 4 |
People with prehypertension have a 55 percent higher risk of experiencing a future stroke than people without prehypertension, report researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine in a new meta-analysis of scientific literature published in the September 28 online issue of the journal Neurology.
Prehypertension is clinical category created by experts in 2003 to describe patients whose blood pressure was elevated, but still considered within normal range. Hypertension or abnormally high blood pressure is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease and strokes, but much less is known about the health threat posed of prehypertension, which is defined by a systolic pressure reading between 120 and 139 mmHg (the top number) and a diastolic reading between 80 and 89 mm Hg (the bottom number)
"The experts reasoned that, generally speaking, the higher the blood pressure, the greater the risk of death and disease, possibly starting from within the normal blood range," said Bruce Ovbiagele, MD, professor of neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine and senior author of the study.
However, Ovbiagele said, conclusive evidence was lacking, "so we decided to compile all the published studies in the scientific literature to date, and using statistical techniques find out if there is indeed a higher risk of future stroke in people with prehypertension, the extent of that risk, and whether particular characteristics were associated with higher stroke risk."
The researchers identified 12 relevant prospective cohort studies of prehypertension. All of the studies were derived from the general population. Four were from the United States, five from Japan, two from China and one from India. Combined, the studies involved more than 518,000 participants and covered periods ranging from 2.7 years to 32 years, with stroke occurrences documented. The prevalence of prehypertension in the studies ranged from 25 to 46 percent. In the United States, it's estimated roughly one-third of adults have prehypertension.
"Overall, people who had prehypertension (in the studies) were at a 55 percent higher risk of experiencing a future stroke than people without prehypertension," said Ovbiagele. "This result held regardless of sex, race-ethnicity, blood pressure type (systolic or diastolic) or the type of stroke (ischemic or hemorrhagic)."
The health risk was measurably greater for those whose blood pressure levels were at the high end of the "normal" spectrum. "We found that those people who fell within the higher range of prehypertension were at 79 percent higher risk of experiencing a future stroke," Ovbiagele said.
The findings should add clarity to the perceived health risk of prehypertension, said Ovbiagele. "Prehypertension has been controversial since its inception, with occasional accusations that it would not be used to diagnose sick people, but rather it would label healthy people whose blood pressure was towards the upper reaches of normal as unhealthy, without any compelling reason for doing so. Others complained that the new designation would needlessly expose people to blood pressure-reduction drugs, all to the benefit of pharmaceutical companies."
Thomas Hemmen, MD, PhD, director of the UC San Diego Stroke Program and a neurologist at the UC San Diego Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center who was not involved in the study, described it as "ground-breaking."
"Over the years, the blood pressure range identified as increasing stroke and cardiovascular risk has been lowered," Hemmen said. "Now anything that's above 115 is thought to increase risk. But we need more tools for diagnosing prehypertension. We need to learn more so that we can adjust risk and develop therapies. Hopefully, this study will lead to more research."
Both Hemmen and Ovbiagele note little empirical evidence exists to show that taking blood pressure-reducing drugs can prevent future strokes. "There just haven't been any large studies," Hemmen said. On the other hand, both doctors say the new findings should encourage persons with high-but-normal blood pressure to change unhealthy behaviors.
"Young and middle-aged persons should check their blood pressure regularly. If they do fall into the higher range of prehypertension, they should take specific steps to modify their lifestyle, such as reducing salt intake and maintaining a normal weight," said Ovbiagele. "Modifying one's lifestyle is relatively safe and could potentially lower not just the risk of future strokes, but possibly other complications of prolonged elevation of blood pressure, including heart attacks, heart failure and kidney disease."
Explore further: Blacks develop high blood pressure one year faster than whites | <urn:uuid:2c5e0eb3-5f6c-4396-b691-740b427e7fcd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-09-blood-pressure-slightly.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397873.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00194-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964378 | 965 | 2.96875 | 3 |
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. Similarly, you can throw a bunch of numbers, letters, facts, and figures at a 12-year-old, but you can’t make him like it. It’s a crude, but apt analogy.
How do you engage a student? It’s the core challenge of teaching—going beyond classroom management, assigning homework, and testing. You can do all of those things in a week, but how do you get a student to want to learn?
How to engage
The basic reality of education is that if a student doesn’t want to learn, then she won’t. Educators have come up with different ways to get their students excited about learning. There’s the age-old strategy of turning everything into a competition—which team can get the most correct answers on a math quiz? Which student can spell the most advanced vocabulary word? Classroom competitions don’t work. They just get kids excited about the competition rather than the information.
That doesn’t mean that turning the information into a game doesn’t work. Lots of entrepreneurs have delved into the world of edutainment by creating mobile apps and websites that kids can play at home. If you’re a parent, you’ve more than likely seen them. They’re often designed for preschoolers or early elementary kids—those who are still in the early stages of learning math and reading skills—so the games are usually mind-numbingly simplistic. And they’re often marketed to parents, not teachers.
Creating educational games for older students is obviously more difficult because educational concepts become more complex as students get older. Researchers in Madrid determined that educational games can generate real results providing they’re adaptable to each individual student’s needs, can be easily tracked by the teacher to stay on top of students’ progress, and are simple enough to be integrated without the teacher having to learn a lot of new technical skills.
Trying something new
E-Line Media has created a game that is getting real results—by allowing kids to create their own games. Gamestar Mechanic is a learning program developed by E-Line Media and the Institute of Play, with help from a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, that uses game design to help students develop systems-thinking skills.
The key fact to note about Gamestar is that it isn’t a learning platform for computer programming. Instead, students are brought into the design side of things and craft their games using drag-and-drop tools. In doing so, the program engages and develops a variety of different skills, including creative problem solving, writing and storytelling, STEM concepts, and—most importantly—systems-thinking skills.
In a nutshell, the program includes three “levels.” Kids start off with “the Quest,” an actual game that follows the story of a new arrival in Factory 7. As “mechanics,” players will go through the game, fixing broken games and designing games of their own to earn sprites—blocks, tools, avatars, and other resources for building games of their own. From there, players move onto the Workshop, where they use the sprites they’ve earned to build games. When they’ve finished building a game, they can share it with others in the Game Alley, a community of Gamestar users who play one another’s games and leave constructive feedback.
The beauty of Gamestar Mechanic is that it doesn’t dumb anything down. Kids who play the game have to engage real thinking skills to earn points, like solving the physics problem of how to get two characters to move through space to meet at the same place at the same time.
More importantly, it prompts players to think in terms of systems. No element of a game is isolated. Players have to think about the relationships between objects, avatars, actions, and so on. This is a crucial stepping stone to developing critical thinking skills and an understanding of larger systems. Why is systems-thinking important?
“All of human life is mediated by systems,” wrote Robert Torres in his dissertation on Gamestar Mechanic. “Each day, most of us respond to climate changes, negotiate social interactions and use a host of devices to communicate, entertain ourselves, or seek out information. We, in essence, spend our days passing through and thus making meaning within and between natural, social, or technological systems.”
Developing systems-thinking skills is critical to understanding the fact that events don’t happen in a vacuum. Economics, gender theory, race relations, biology, and ecology, among others, are studies of systems—institutions, ideologies, agents, subjects, and so on. Race riots, gender wars, stock market collapses, and disease epidemics are complex systems of cause and effect, and too many students are simply being taught to turn off their critical thinking caps and look at black and white text that simplifies systems into one cause and one effect.
“For kids to have really effective learning, we think more than just play is required. You need the opportunity to act as a creator, not just a player,” said Brian Alspach, Executive Vice President of E-Line Media and the head of the Gamestar division. “You need to be able to explore your own creative vision. You need to be able to connect with your peers and mentors in a community of practice. You really benefit from the whole ecosystem supporting you.”
The program is currently in use by more than 3,000 schools, camps, after-school programs, and community organizations. So far, kids have created more than 250,000 games, which have been played over five million times in more than 100 countries. Teachers can sign up for free, and Alspach says that while it’s utilized mostly in technology classes, teachers have also used it to teach other subject areas, including ESL, language arts, math, art, and science. Teachers can customize the program to focus on certain areas. For example, a language arts teacher may have kids design a game with specific narrative elements, while a science teacher might have students design a game that models natural systems.
What teachers say
“My students were pleasantly surprised that not only were we going to be using video games in the classroom, but that they would be designing, building and then publishing video games for others to play. It was highly motivating for them, and they were very engaged throughout the whole unit,” said Kevin Hodgson, who teaches the sixth grade at William E. Norris Elementary School in Southampton, Massachusetts. “All in all, the Gamestar Mechanic site is a fantastic way to introduce video game design into the school setting with meaningful purpose, and it provides many layers for engagement by students.”
“We usually run game tournaments where children play each other's games, grade them according to the key elements of game design (which they have learned through the Gamestar process) and celebrate the success of the top three highest scoring games,” said Julia Bateson, managing director of Excited-ed Community Interest Company in the UK. “We also find that there is always a good gender mix with girls loving it as much as boys. This is certainly not the case with many of the other game design programs.”
But of course, like any other innovation in the edtech space, results speak louder than words. Does Gamestar produce any noticeable difference in students’ academic performance?
Two dissertations have already been written on Gamestar Mechanic, and the findings show measurable improvements in students’ systems-thinking skills. Using a rubric based on the Systems-Based Inquiry method, Ph.D. candidate Robert Torres found that 83% of the students in his study made some gain in their systems-thinking skills after playing Gamestar Mechanic. The rubric scored students on a point scale of 0-4, and 66% showed an improvement of .5 points in their systems reasoning ability, while 33% showed improvement of one full point.
“We see kids doing amazing things with Gamestar –creating original worlds, telling stories, creating games that explore scientific, mechanical or engineering systems. The learning is truly interest driven and so you've got motivated learners doing fascinating things that tend to cross traditional subject area
lines,” said Alspach.
While Gamestar Mechanic was designed specifically for kids ages 8-14, E-Line Media is working on a few other versions for different age groups, including Gamestar Mechanic Junior for kids ages 6-9, Gamestar Mechanic Unlocked! for high school students and young adults, and Gamestar Mechanic Mobile for use on tablets and smartphones. | <urn:uuid:dd270aee-40ba-48cf-bcbc-ec84739ee3a9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://vator.tv/news/2012-09-04-resetting-education-does-edutainment-get-results | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00182-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962408 | 1,849 | 3.4375 | 3 |
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS
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The present invention relates to vision testing. More particularly, the present invention relates to devices used in vision testing and training.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
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Within the field of vision testing and training, tools may be used in particular to measure a subject's tracking skills. Such tools may exercise a subject's periphery vision, accommodation, and dynamic visual acuity. Current tools in the art, however, may prove too simple to effectively train or test a subject with advanced vision abilities, such as an athlete.
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OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a device for training and testing dynamic visual acuity. More specifically, the device comprises an object that may be tethered. The object may display one or more visual indicia that may be visually perceived by the subject. Each visual indicia may possess a given characteristic. Examples of visual indicia may include letters, numbers, shapes, and the like. Additional exemplary characteristics of the visual indicia may include the identity of the indicia (i.e., what letter, etc.), varying sizes, and contrasting colors. Once tethered, the object can be put into motion, on a trajectory and/or rotationally. The movement of the object may require the subject to track the object in order to identify the visual indicia on the device, which tests or trains the subject's dynamic visual acuity. Additionally, the movement of the object on a tether may cause different visual indicia to come into the view of the subject at different times, thereby training/testing the subject's ability to track and/or perceive different traits.
Additional objects, advantages, and novel features of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows, and in part will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon examination of the following, or may be learned by practice of the invention.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE SEVERAL VIEWS OF THE DRAWING
The present invention is described in detail below with reference to the attached drawing figures, wherein:
FIGS. 1A-1C illustrate an exemplary vision training device in accordance with the present invention;
FIGS. 2A and 2B illustrate another example of a vision training device in accordance with the present invention;
FIGS. 3A and 3B illustrate a further example of a vision training device in accordance with the present invention; and
FIG. 4 illustrates a flow diagram of a method for training a subject using a vision training device, in accordance with an example of the invention.
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OF THE INVENTION
In accordance with the present invention, a device for training and testing dynamic visual acuity is provided. More specifically, the device comprises an object that is tethered using a connector, such as a string. The object may display one or more visual indicia, and each indicia may possess one or more visual characteristics. Examples of visual indicia may include letters, numbers, shapes, and the like. Exemplary characteristics of the visual indicia may include the identity of a letter/number/shape, varying sizes, contrasting colors, different physical orientations, etc. Once tethered, the object can be put into motion. For example, the object may be swung linearly, swung circularly, and/or rotated. The movement of the object may require the subject to visually track the object, while also causing different indicia on the object to enter into the subject's view. In this way, the subject must simultaneously track the object and perceive the indicia, as well as the characteristic(s) of the indicia. Moreover, the movement of the object may cause the subject to use more effort in viewing and identifying the visual indicia on the device.
Turning now to FIGS. 1A-1C, an exemplary vision training and testing device 100 is shown. From a side view, FIG. 1A illustrates the device 100 with an object 105 and a tether 110. The object 105 may comprise of any material that is capable of being labeled or marked with indicia (for example, indicia 120). The tether 110 may consist of any material suitable to tethering the object 105. In FIG. 1B, the top angle view of the device 100 is shown. As illustrated in this example, the object 105 may have a groove 115 at the top of the object 105, where the tether 110 attaches to the object 105 at a tethering attachment point 140.
A plurality of visual indicia is indicated at 120. Indicia 120 may be displayed on the object 105 in any manner necessary to visual training. Indicia 120 may be a dot, a letter, number, shape, etc. The indicia 120 may be organized in horizontal and vertical rows. However, any variation of organization of indicia 120 may be used. For example, the rows may be evenly or unevenly spaced. In an additional example, the indicia 120 may be of a uniform size or may be of varying sizes. Further, the indicia 120 do not need to be the same type. For example, letters and numbers may both be used as indicia. Regardless of the type or combination of types of indicia 120, the characteristics of each indicia 120 may be uniform or varying. Exemplary characteristics include size, color, contrast, brightness, etc. Thus, one row of indicia may be a first color, and a second row of indicia may be a second color, etc.
In FIG. 1B, a side view of the device 100 is shown. Also illustrated is an attachment 130 that may be used to tether the object 105 via the tether 110. The attachment 130 may be of various sizes or shapes. As illustrated in FIG. 1B, the attachment 130 includes an opening 135, but, as will be shown and discussed in later figures, the attachment 135 may also include a button or other type of control mechanism to control the tether 110. The tether 110 attaches to the object at an attachment point 140. This attachment point 140 resides inside of the groove 115 at the top of the base 105. Additionally, as can be seen in this figure, a bottom groove 125 is shown directly opposing the top groove 115, at the bottom of the object 105. In FIG. 1C, the tether 110 is shown wrapped around the object 105, where the tether 110 is guided through the top groove 115 and bottom groove 125. This illustration shows the vision testing device 100 as it is stored and not in use. By providing grooves 115 and 125 to guide the wrapped tether 110, one may more easily transport and store the tether 110, thereby avoiding knotting or tangling of the tether 110 and allowing for easier use when the device is used again.
Turning now to FIGS. 2A-2B, another example of the vision training and testing device 200 in accordance with the present invention is illustrated. FIG. 2A shows a top angle view of the device 200, and FIG. 2B shows a side view of device 200, which comprises generally of an object 205, a tether 210, and an attachment 235. In this illustrated example, the object 205 comprises a base piece 220, that is in the general shape of the device 200, and a cover piece 230, that fits over the base piece 220. The base piece 220 may be comprised of any suitable material as is known in the art. The cover piece 230 may be constructed of any flexible material or fabric that is capable of stretching over the base piece 220. Exemplary materials that may be used for cover piece 230 include 2 mm Neoprene II. Further, the plurality of indicia 250 may be displayed on the cover piece 230, and thus the material of the cover piece 230 is capable of being printed or affixed with visual indicia 250. Note that this permits different indicia/characteristics to be used for training/testing for different training/testing iterations by simply changing cover piece 230. In this example, the cover piece 230 comprises four sections that are then connected at seams 245. Although the seams 245 are not necessary, they may allow the cover piece 230 to be constructed in such a manner as to fit tightly over the contours of the base piece 220.
The tether 210 is connected using connecting piece 225 at the tethering attachment point 215. The connecting piece 225 allows the tether 210 to retract into an internal cavity of the object 205. The act of retracting may be initiated by a mechanism in the attachment 235, such as button 235. With a retractable tether 210, a person using the device 200 may store it more easily without tangling the tether 210. Such a retracting feature may be used with other examples of the device 200, such as the device 100 in FIGS. 1A-1C and device 300 in FIGS. 3A and 3B.
Turning now to FIGS. 3A-3B, a vision training and/or testing device 300 is illustrated in accordance with another example of the invention. The device 300 may comprise generally of an object 305, a tether 310, and an attachment 345. As in FIGS. 2A-2B, the object 305 of the device 300 is constructed of more than one piece or component. For instance, a base piece 315 may serve as a core piece of base component 305. A shell piece 325 may fit on top of the base piece 315. The base piece 315 may include a mechanism to rotate the base piece 315 in respect to the shell piece 325. In FIG. 3A, the base piece 315 is illustrated with a mechanism or a dial at the top of the device, which also may includes indentations (e.g., indentation 320) that can be used to turn the base piece 315.
Additionally, the base piece 315 and the shell piece 325 may include a plurality of visual indicia, which are indicated by 340 and 335, respectively. The visual indicia on each piece may be the same or may differ. Further, the shell piece 325 may include openings, holes, etc. that allow the visual indicia 340 on the base piece 315 to be viewed. These openings 330 may be evenly spaced over the shell piece 325, or may be spaced in a particular pattern. The base piece 315 may display indicia in a specific pattern such that different indicia or even no indicia will be displayed, depending on the rotation of the pieces with respect to each other. Providing various views of the indicia on both the base piece 315 and the shell piece 325 allows for a subject to have varying degrees of difficulty when being tested or trained using vision training and/or testing device 300.
Attachment 345 may connected to the tether 310, and tether 310 may be used to affix the device to a stationary location, such as a ceiling or wall. Attachment 345 may be constructed with an outlying groove, which may be used in winding the tether 320 for storage.
Turning now to FIG. 4, a method 400 for training a subject using a visual training device in accordance with an embodiment of the invention is illustrated. As indicated at block 410, a training device is set into motion, where the training device includes an object with a plurality of visual indicia displayed thereon. This step may be initiated by a person other than the testing subject (e.g., a trainer or other personnel). This step may be preceded by securing a tether of the training device to permit the training device to swing. In some examples, the training device may be motorized, causing the device to swing and/or rotate by itself, which allows the testing subject to self-train using such a device. At block 420, the subject views the training device and tracks the device within his or her field of view. The subject then identifies the plurality of visual indicia displayed on the training device at block 430. For example, the subject may verbally state the visual indicia, which may then be received by a trainer. Or, in a further example, the subject may use an input device, such as a joystick, to identify the visual indicia. This is shown at block 440. The identification of the visual indicia may be directly inputted in a system and recorded (e.g., at block 450). Or, it may be received by a trainer, who then inputs the information into the system.
From the foregoing, it will be seen that this invention is one well adapted to attain all the ends and objects hereinabove set forth together with other advantages which are obvious and which are inherent to the structure.
It will be understood that certain features and subcombinations are of utility and may be employed without reference to other features and subcombinations. This is contemplated by and is within the scope of the claims.
Since many possible embodiments may be made of the invention without departing from the scope thereof, it is to be understood that all matter herein set forth or shown in the accompanying drawings is to be interpreted as illustrative and not in a limiting sense. | <urn:uuid:5d63a536-534f-4a66-b925-3170c76745b1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.freshpatents.com/-dt20121018ptan20120265092.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397865.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00127-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.902033 | 2,676 | 2.53125 | 3 |
Energy & Power
The Museum's collections on energy and power illuminate the role of fire, steam, wind, water, electricity, and the atom in the nation's history. The artifacts include wood-burning stoves, water turbines, and windmills, as well as steam, gas, and diesel engines. Oil-exploration and coal-mining equipment form part of these collections, along with a computer that controlled a power plant and even bubble chambers—a tool of physicists to study protons, electrons, and other charged particles.
A special strength of the collections lies in objects related to the history of electrical power, including generators, batteries, cables, transformers, and early photovoltaic cells. A group of Thomas Edison's earliest light bulbs are a precious treasure. Hundreds of other objects represent the innumerable uses of electricity, from streetlights and railway signals to microwave ovens and satellite equipment.
"Energy & Power - Overview" showing 1 items.
- This model of a direct-current generator was designed by Elihu Thomson to produce a constant voltage. It could also be used as a motor that would maintain a constant speed. It came to the Smithsonian from the U. S. Patent Office, representing patent number 333,573, issued to Thomson on January 5, 1886. The patent itself indicates that no model was submitted (which is not surprising since by that time models were not required), and this example was probably given to the Patent Office at a slightly later date for display purposes.
- Thomson and Edwin Houston were school teachers in Philadelphia in the 1870s when they formed a partnership (the Thomson-Houston Company) to enter the new and competitive arc-lighting field. They produced a number of successful generators, motors, meters, and lighting devices. Most of their system employed alternating current, which was as good as direct current for lighting. With the development of the transformer in the mid-1880s, AC systems assumed added importance because electricity generated at a low voltage could now be converted to high voltage for more efficient transmission and then converted back to safer low voltage for use by consumers. But electro-chemical applications (like plating) required DC generators, and, until the invention of a practical AC motor by Nikola Tesla at the end of the 1880s, street railways depended on DC.
- Thomson-Houston merged with Edison's company in 1892 to form General Electric.
- Currently not on view
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- patent date
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- Thomson, Elihu
- associated company
- Thomson-Houston Electric Company
- Thomson, Elihu
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- accession number
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center | <urn:uuid:c22861fc-5943-4926-a315-8df71b8b33e1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/subjects/energy-power?edan_start=0&edan_fq=place%3A%22United+States%22&edan_fq=date%3A%221880s%22 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408840.13/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00200-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942403 | 561 | 3.53125 | 4 |
Diversity of Deep Sea Corals
Peter Etnoyer, Scientist
Sponsored by the Marine Conservation Biology Institute
One of the values we attach to marine and terrestrial ecosystems is biodiversity. In a bioprospecting sense, biodiversity recognizes the unique genetic composition of each and every species. In an ecological sense, biodiversity recognizes and appreciates all the species in a healthy ecosystem, the niches they fill, and the habitat functions they perform. Deep-sea corals are an important part of deep-sea ecosystems because their branches provide refuge to associated species, including fish, crabs, shrimp, and basket stars. Some skates (a cross between a shark and a ray) are known to lay their eggs on bubblegum corals (Paragorgia sp.). Skates need these corals in the same way that eagles need trees.
Deep-sea corals are long-lived, slow-growing archives of global change, uniquely adapted to life in extreme environments. We are only beginning to understand their diversity, range and distribution in United States waters. One of the objects of this cruise is to document the diversity of deep sea corals in the Gulf of Mexico. Last year, we documented over 100 species in the Northeast Pacific, more than the number of hard coral species in the entire Caribbean Sea! We found very different communities than those in the Atlantic and Caribbean.
Our understanding of a species range and distribution (or biogeography) is limited by the extent of the collections we keep in our museums. If no one from Alaska bothered to send a coral species to the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History or the California Academy of Sciences, for example, we would not know that deep-sea corals exist in Alaska. Fortunately, Alaskan scientists and fisheries observers keep good records. We have a good understanding of the many species found in those cold, dark waters.
A biogeographic database can be biased by the type of collections sent to a museum. Lophelia pertusa is one of the best documented species in the Gulf of Mexico and the South Atlantic Bight. This may be because they are the most abundant species, and are thriving in their best habitat, or perhaps because they are the easiest specimens to collect. The issue of bias is a particular problem for deep-sea exploration, because the history of submersed exploration is measured in decades rather than centuries. Many of our samples come from relatively shallow waters. We now have the capacity to dive to the greatest depths.
On this expedition, we will use an on-board geographic database of habitat- forming deep-sea corals to compare to the species we encounter. This database documents at least 20 species of black corals (Antipathes sp.) in our study area, but only a few species of bamboo corals (Acanella sp.) and primnoids (Callogorgia sp.). We will be asking the question, How well does our understanding of deep-sea coral diversity reflect whats really down there? If most of the species we collect in the Gulf of Mexico are already documented, we might answer pretty well." If we find species where they were never known before, as often happens, we had best keep looking! | <urn:uuid:e84f329f-4b57-42ba-b526-c7adf3b9878b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/03mex/background/coral_diversity/coral_diversity.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00122-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.934087 | 655 | 3.734375 | 4 |
September 11, 2001
On September 11, 2001 , terrorists hijacked 4 airplanes and crashed them into the two towers of the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. The fourth jet crashed in Pennsylvania. About 3,000 people were killed and part of the Pentagon was destroyed. It was soon found out that Osama Bin Laden and his terrorist organization Al Qaeda had been behind the attacks.
The planes left the airports on the morning of September 11. Their original destination was California , so they had tons of fuel on board. Sometime after take-off , the terrorists took over the planes. Some of them had pilot training.
At 8:45 a.m. the first plane crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Centre. 20 minutes later, the second plane hit the south tower. Flames and smoke came out of the towers and the people who were working there tried to escape. About an hour after the attack both towers collapsed.
At about 9:40 a.m. a plane with 58 people on board crashed into the west side of the Pentagon, the country’s military headquarters in Washington. A part of the building collapsed and about 200 people were killed.
A fourth plane probably intended to crash into the White House or the Capitol, but a few passengers wanted to try to overcome the terrorists. The pilots lost control of the plane and it crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.
After the attack
After the attack on the USA, there was panic all over the country. The White House was evacuated and all air traffic over the continent was stopped. The stock exchange in New York stopped business and many tourist sights were closed down.
A month after the attack, the government gave the police and the FBI more power to hunt terrorists. New safety checks at airports were introduced and airlines started checking the baggage of their passengers more carefully.
The United States were convinced that Osama Bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda terrorist group were behind the attacks. In October, the U.S. attacked terrorist training camps in Afghanistan .
Why the Towers Collapsed
The two Boeing 767s that took off from Boston hat a lot of fuel with them because they were travelling to Los Angeles. Each jet had about 90,000 litres of fuel—about 2 tanker trucks full.
When the planes hit the towers they caused a massive fire that spread across many floors at the top of the buildings. Most likely, furniture, wood and paper in the offices began burning quickly , so that the fire could spread in a few seconds. The buildings did have an automatic sprinkler system, but this system was made to put out small fires.
The fire caused temperatures of over 1,000 °C , so that even the steel constructions in the buildings became weaker and weaker.
In the end, the top floors that remained undamaged were so heavy that the whole building collapsed. The World Trade Centre, however, withstood collapse long enough to save thousands of lives. About 99 % of the people in the lower floors could get out of the buildings before they fell.
Rebuilding Ground Zero
In the months after September 11, 2001 thousands of workers helped to clean up the place where the World Trade Centre once stood - known as Ground Zero. Many architects all over the world were called to present designs for rebuilding the site. In the future, glass towers will surround a memorialof September 11.
The World Trade Centre
The World Trade Centre was built by the American architect Minoru Yamasaki in the late 1960s and early 1970s. At their opening in 1972 they were the world's tallest buildings. They were over 400 metres tall and were made of 200,000 tons of steel. Each tower had 110 floors and 97 elevators.
Skyscrapers of this size have to be built in solid bedrock . In New York the solid rock starts at about 15 to 20 metres below the surface. When the builders of the WTC started digging they found out that after a few metres, water from the nearby Hudson River started pouring in. So they dug out small boxes and put steel and concrete into them to give the building a firm stand.
When the World Trade Centre opened in 1973 the project was not very popular among New Yorkers. But as time went on and more and more companies started moving their offices to the twin towers they became more and more popular. The two towers also became famous through movies like “King Kong” and “Superman”.
The World Trade Centre before 9/11- Jeffmock
Extreme sportsmen chose the WTC as the place to try out many stunts. Skydivers parachuted from the top of the towers, climbers went up to the top on the outside walls and a French acrobat walked from one tower to the other on a tightrope. Within a few years the towers were on postcards, T-shirts and ads.
The World Trade Centre also gave the New Yorkers another tourist attraction. On a clear day it was possible to see over 60 km in all directions. Visitors could travel up to the top of the North tower and eat in a luxurious restaurant called “Windows of the World”.
The Twin Towers were like a small city. Over 500 companies , including banks, law firms, television stations and airlines had their offices here and 50,000 people worked in the two buildings every day. On a typical day as many as 200,000 visitors from all over the world passed through the buildings.
In 1993 the World Trade Centre was the target of an earlier terrorist attack. A truck with 600 kg of explosives drove into the basement garage of the building . When it exploded, a few stories were completely destroyed , but only 6 people were killed.
Osama Bin Laden is thought to be the world‘s leading terrorist and the person in charge of the September 11 attacks on America.
Bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia in 1957. His father, Mohammed, founded a construction company and became a billionaire. The company grew very famous and rebuilt mosques all over the world , including Mecca and Medina.
Osama was the 17th son, and within his family he ranked low. He studied engineering in Jeddah.
In the middle of the 1980s bin Laden went to Afghanistan to help the mujahideen, who were Muslims that fought against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He collected a lot of money for this group. At the end of the 1980s , Bin Laden founded Al-Qaeda.
When the United States sent soldiers to Saudi Arabia in 1991 to throw Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, Osama Bin Laden became an opponent of the Saudi government. He thought it was unwise to let Americans expand their influence in Muslim countries.
Bin Laden was thrown out of Saudi Arabia because of his terrorist activities. He went to Sudan for a few years and then to Afghanistan , where he was protected by the Taliban government.
He has been charged with many terrorist attacks in the past 15 years. In the worst attack, the United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in 1998 — 200 people were killed.
Since the September 11 attacks on America the United States and other countries have been searching for him. Many of his helpers have been killed or caught but Osama Bin Laden is still believed to be alive.
Al-Qaeda is a network of extremists organized by Osama Bin Laden. It was founded in the 1980s and Bin Laden has become the main financial supporter.
Al-Qaeda thinks that all Westerners should be thrown out of Islamic states and that countries that do not follow Islamic law are bad. According to its founder, all Muslims around the world should fight a holy war against the United States and Israel. Al-Qaeda probably has contact with terrorist groups all over the world.
Although Osama Bin Laden is the leader and founder of the group , it is not run by him alone. Al-Qaeda does not have a central structure . It is a network of local groups in different countries who don’t know each other. Each group operates on its own and if one group is arrested it does not know anything about the others.
Downloadable PDF Text- and Worksheets
- World Trade Centre
- Osama bin Laden - The World's Prime Terrorist
- The Taliban - Former Militant Leaders of Afghanistan
- Boko Haram - Islamic Terrorists in Nigeria
- New York
- Espionage - History and Methods of Spying
- according =as someone says
- ad = advertisement, poster , commercial
- air traffic = all the flights in the whole country
- although =while
- arrest = capture , catch
- attraction = a very famous sight that everyone wants to see
- baggage = the bags and suitcases that someone has with him when he is travelling
- basement = American word for “cellar”
- billionaire = someone who has more than one billion dollars or Euros etc..
- business =the buying and selling of goods
- Capitol = the building in Washington where Congress ( all the Representatives and Senators) meet
- cause = produce , to be the reason for ..
- charge = to blame
- collapse = to fall down quickly
- concrete = you get it by mixing sand, cement, small stones and water together
- construction company = a firm that builds houses, buildings, bridges etc..
- convince =to make someone feel sure about something
- depart = leave from, start from
- design = plans, drawings
- destination = the place where someone or something is going
- destroy = to damage something so badly that you cannot use it any more
- direction =way, course, path
- elevator = a machine that takes people from one floor of a building to another
- embassy = a group of people who represent their country in the building of a foreign country
- engineering = jobs that have to do with building roads, bridges , machines etc..
- evacuate = everybody had to get out
- expand = make bigger
- explosives = material that can produce an explosion
- FBI = Federal Bureau of Investigation = the police department that is controlled by the American government
- firm stand =here: to fix it so that it won’t move
- flame = the hot bright burning gas that you see when something is on fire
- found = to start something like a company or an organization
- fuel = gas or petrol that makes a motor run
- furniture = objects made of wood like chairs, tables, cupboards etc..
- headquarters = the main building that is the centre of an organization or company
- hijack = to take control of a plane
- in charge = in control
- influence = power
- intend = plan to , was going to
- invasion = the army of one country enters another country
- law = the rules of a country or religion
- law firm =a group of lawyers who defend people in court and give you advice on legal things
- leading = number one
- likely = probably
- local = everything that is in a small area or place
- luxurious = very expensive and beautiful
- massive = great, big
- memorial = an object that reminds people of someone who has died
- network = system, group
- on its own = by itself
- opponent = enemy, rival
- overcome = to defeat
- parachute = to jump down with a parachute
- Pentagon = a building in Washington from which the American army is controlled
- popular = liked by many people
- pour = flow in
- protect =defend, guard
- rank = to be in a position or place
- remain = stay
- run = govern, control
- safety =not in danger
- solid bedrock = the rock in the ground below the soil
- spread = expand , to get bigger
- sprinkler system = machines that are used to pour water on a fire
- steel construction =a building or structure made out of a very hard metal
- stock exchange =place where you buy and sell stocks (parts of companies)
- stunt = something dangerous that is done to entertain people
- supporter =someone who helps a person, an organization or an idea by giving money
- surface =the top layer of something
- surround =around
- target = aim
- thought to be = many people think that ...
- tightrope = a rope high above the ground that someone walks on
- took off = start
- twin =two of the same kind
- undamaged = nothing happened to them
- unwise = not wise, foolish, stupid
- withstood = hold out | <urn:uuid:959af216-752e-4b2a-b168-c25aa91cca7b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.english-online.at/history/9-11/9-11-terrorist-attacks.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396027.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00078-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977731 | 2,579 | 2.984375 | 3 |
Research by a Tel Aviv University team may point the way to protecting cells from the damage wrought by Alzheimer’s disease, and even reverse damage that the disease caused before treatment. The method involves a protein similar to one which protects the brain from damage, but which is lacking in Alzheimer’s patients.
What causes Alzheimer’s is still a mystery, but the direct physical conditions leading to the dementia associated with the disease are very clear to scientists. Plaque accumulations and tangles in neurons kill brain cells in Alzheimer’s sufferers, leading to the degeneration of cognitive function and the loss of memory associated with the disease.
One of the most important objectives of Alzheimer’s research has been to figure out ways to protect brain cells from these senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. In a study published in the May edition of the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, Tel Aviv University Prof. Illana Gozes describes how NAP, a snippet of a protein essential for brain formation, has been proven in previous studies to protect cognitive functioning. Loss of NAP exposes cells to physical damage that eventually destroys them, but applying proteins with NAP-like properties makes them healthy again.
It’s just such a protein that Gozes and her team have discovered. The research, she said, could eventually lead to development of drugs to treat Alzheimer’s.
Gozes holds the Lily and Avraham Gildor Chair for the Investigation of Growth Factors and is director of the Adams Super Center for Brain Studies at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine and a member of Tel Aviv University’s Sagol School of Neuroscience. “Several years ago we discovered that NAP showed efficacy in Phase 2 clinical trials in mild cognitive impairment patients, a precursor to Alzheimer’s,” she said. “Now, we’re investigating whether there are other novel NAP-like sequences in other proteins.”
NAP, also known as davunetide, is an eight-amino acid peptide that has been shown to provide potent neuroprotection in several human trials. NAP is derived from activity-dependent neuroprotective protein (ADNP), a molecule that is essential for brain formation.
“NAP operates through the stabilization of microtubules — tubes within the cell which maintain cellular shape. They serve as ‘train tracks’ for movement of biological material,” said Gozes. “In Alzheimer’s disease, these microtubules break down. The newly discovered protein fragments, just like NAP before them, work to protect microtubules, thereby protecting the cell.”
In the study, Gozes and her team examined the tubulin (a subunit of the microtubule) and the protein TAU (tubulin-associated unit), important for assembly and maintenance of the microtubule. Abnormal TAU proteins form the tangles that contribute to Alzheimer’s. The larger the tangles, the more cognitive function is damaged.
In tests on mice suffering from dementia-like characteristics which found the abnormal TAU proteins, a tubulin fragment with NAP-like sequences was applied to cells with very promising results, Gozes said. As NAP “evaporated,” the brain cells were less protected and deteriorated. The tubulin treatment reversed the damage. “We looked at the mouse ‘dementia’-afflicted brain and saw there was a reduction in the NAP parent protein, but upon treatment with the tubulin fragment, the protein was restored to normal levels,” she said. In addition, the treatment restored the size of mice brains, which had shrunk due to the disease.
Further tests are set to be conducted on more animal cohorts. Eventually, an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s and other dementia-related diseases could come of this research, Gozes believes. “We clearly see here the protective effect of the treatment,” she said. “We witnessed the restorative and protective effects of totally new protein fragments, derived from proteins critical to cell function, in tissue cultures and on animal models.” Further work is needed, she said, but the team’s research could one day turn into a treatment to alleviate, or even reverse, Alzheimer’s disease. | <urn:uuid:cdc710a0-65f9-4c19-b740-d11dd7736ee7> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-discovery-could-reverse-alzheimers-damage/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397565.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00174-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951521 | 895 | 3.453125 | 3 |
Cognitive Psychology Class Notes > Language Production
Language: a shared symbolic system for communication
Discourse: the general study of communicative interactions
- conversation between 2 people
- lyrics of a song
- story line of a film
- content of a book
Linguistics: the study of language per se
Psycholinguistics: the study of language as it is used and learned by people
- many linguists believe that all languages have certain aspects in common
- we all need a way of referring to things, so all languages have nouns
- Hockett's (1960, 1966) 13 Linguistic Universals
- features or characteristics that are common to all known languages
Language as an Information Source: 4 Levels of Analysis
- phonology (sounds)
- syntax (structure)
- semantics (meaning)
- pragmatics (use)
Phonology: The Sounds of Language
- concerned with the sound that results from a specific coordinations of muscle movements in the face, mouth, and throat
- phonemes: basic sounds of language
- categorical perception:
all sounds falling within a set of boundaries are perceived as the same, despite physical differences between them
debt, deal, dome, dirt
- phenomic competence:
extensive knowledge of the rules of permissible English sound combinations
bat vs. abt
- McGurk effect:
Task: Ss saw video of face saying /ga/, but voice was /ba/
Results: Ss reported hearing a syllable 'in between' /da/
Syntax: The Ordering of Words and Phrases
- concerned with how we use rules about word order to form sentences
- also concerned with how we are able to determine if a particular sentence we read or hear is grammatical and logical
- How sentences are formed: Phrase Structure
the process of assigning words to particular syntactic categories
My dog ate burritos.
S - V - O
- 75% of the world's languages use S-V-O word order
- exceptions: Japanese S-O-V, Welsh & Arabic V-S-O
- Chomsky's Transformational Grammar
- surface structure: actual words you hear or read
- deep structure: underlying meaning
- Problems with phrase structure grammar alone:
- ambiguous sentences
(1) Visiting relatives can be a nuisance.
[2 different deep structures correspond to 2 different phrase structures]
(2) The shooting of the hunters was terrible.
[2 different deep structures, only 1 phrase structure--still ambiguous]
[the shooting of the hunters] [was terrible]
[Problem: if the phrase structure grammar is complete, then it should not generate an ambiguous sentence]
- sentences with 1 deep structure and 2+ surface structures
(3) The girl kissed the boy.
(4) The boy was kissed by the girl.
[Problem: 2 different phrase structures, therefore 2 different sentences]
- Transformational rules:
- rules to convert the deep structure idea into a surface structure
- by applying different transformations, we can form:
- active declarative sentences
- passive voice sentences
- future tense sentences
- therefore, sentences (3) and (4) would differ only in their surface structures; one deep structure was merely transformed in two different fashions
Semantics: The Meaning in Language
- morphemes: the smallest unit of language that has meaning
trees = tree + -s [large plant + 'more than one of']
- free morphemes: (words) stand, bland, hand
- bound morphemes: (prefixes and suffixes) un-, -s
- case grammar approach:
- our knowledge of certain words and their relationship to other words influences how we derive meaning from sentences
- believed that sentence parsing is based on semantics rather than syntax
Pragmatics: The Social Rules that Underlie Language Use
- how to interpret words in different social contexts
- how communication is coordinated - conversations
- Grice's (1975) conversational maxims:
- rules of conduct for polite conversations
- effective discourse depends on the participants' being informative, truthful, relevant, and clear
- if any of these maxims is violated, a sense of unease in the conversation arises
- we often'mark' violations of conversational rules
Conversational Postulates and Rules
1. Cooperative principle: be sincere
Make your contributions reasonable, given the agreed purpose of the conversation
2. Be relevant
2a. Don't say what others already know -- don't state the obvious
2b. Don't be superfluous -- don't say too much, don't be too informative
2c. Don't wander -- stick to the topic
3. Be informative
Make your contributions as informative as possible or necessary.
3a. Don't mislead -- don't say something you believe is false, or don't have the evidence for; don't overspecify
3b. Don't say more than you know
3c. Don't say less than you know
4. Manner and tone
4a. Be clear, easily understood
4b. Avoid obscurity, ambiguity
4c. Don't boast
4d. Be brief, orderly, polite
5. Relations with the conversational partner
5a. Infer and respond to partner's knowledge and beliefs
6. Mark intentional violation of conversational rules
6a. Use linguistic or nonverbal (stress, gesture) markers
6b. Use blatant violation as marker
6c. Invite partner's inference as to your reasons for the violation
Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole and J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics, Vol. 3: Speech acts (pp. 41-58). New York: Seminar Press.
Norman, D. A., & Rumelhart, D. E. (1975). Explorations in cognition. San Francisco: Freeman Press.
Problems in Language Production:
1. Speech errors
2. Neurological disorders
- errors in which sounds or entire words are rearranged between two or more different words
- spoonerisms - named after William A. Spooner, head of New College in Oxford (1903-1924)
noble sons of toil -->noble tons of soil
the dear old queen --> the queer old dean
- Dell's (1986) connectionist model of speech production
- Common speech errors recorded by Fromkin (1993):
- Broca's area: associated with language production
- Wernicke's area: associated with language comprehension
- PET scans of normal brain activity (Posner & Raichle, 1994)
- language deficit or difficulty that results from physical damage to the brain, infections or tumors in the brain, and birth defects
- Broca's aphasia:
- associated with an ability to understand language, but an impaired ability to speak coherently
- read Coast Guard story (Gardner, 1975):
E: Were you in the Coast Guard?
P: No, er, yes, yes...ship...Massachu...chusetts..Coast Guard...years.
E: Oh, you were in the Coast Guard for 19 years.
E: Why are you in the hospital?
P: [Points to paralyzed arm] Arm no good. [Points to mouth] Speech...can't say...talk, you see.
E: What happened to make you lose speech?
P: Head, fall, Jesus Christ, me no good, str, str...oh Jesus...stroke.
E: Could you tell me what you've been doing in the hospital?
P: Yes, sure. Me go, er, uh, P. T. nine o�cot, speech...two times...read...wr...ripe, er, rike, er, write...practice...get-ting better.
- syntax is disrupted speech consists mainly of content words
- very similar to telegraphic speech (two-word stage of language development)
- Wernicke's aphasia:
- associated with an ability to produce speech, but an inability to comprehend language and an inability to produce meaningful discourse
- read sample (Gardiner, 1975):
Boy, I'm sweating, I'm awful nervous, you know, once in a while I get caught up. I can't mention the tarripoi, a month ago, quite a little, I've done a lot well, I impose a lot, while on the other hand, you know what I mean, I have to run around, look it over, trebin and all that sort of stuff.
- syntax is preserved
- problems in finding the right word...often make up words to substitute
- associated with a conceptual deficit
How do we Understand Language?
Form a coherent mental representation
Role of context
- inferences integrate information from the text with knowledge (e.g. scripts)
- inferences are used to construct a coherent mental representation
- inferences are used to construct the meaning of a text
- 4 types of inferences that readers can draw:
- "The man swept the floor" --> broom
- inferences made about the thing (the instrument) used to perform the action
elaborative inference (O'brien et al., 1988):
All the mugger wanted to steal was the woman's money. But when she screamed, he stabbed her with the (weapon / knife) in an attempt to quiet her. He looked to see if anyone had seen him. He threw the knife into the bushes, took her money, and ran away.
- involves inferring a general concept from a specific one, or vice versa
- Task: eye movements --> duration of fixation on knife in last sentence
- Results 1: same durations for either weapon or knife; therefore, Ss made an elaborative inference from weapon that knife was OK
- Results 2: for assaulted instead of stabbed, Ss took longer to make the elaborative inference that a knife was used
causal inference (Rayner & Pollatsek, 1989):
John was eating in the dining car of a train. The waiter brought him a bowl of soup. Suddenly, the train screeched to a stop. The soup spilled in John's lap.
- an inference made that something will cause something else
emotional inference (Gernsbacher et al., in press):
One night last week Tom went to visit his best friend Joe, who worked at the local 7-11 to get spending money while in school. While Tom was visiting, Joe needed to go to the storage room for a second. While Joe was away, Tom noticed the cash register had been left open. Tom couldn't resist the open drawer and quickly took a ten dollar bill. At the end of the week, Tom learned that Joe had been fired from the 7-11, because his cash had been low one night. It would be weeks before Tomi's guilt / pride would subside.
- DV = mean reading times
- Results: Ss were faster at reading guilt than pride --> they made an inference based on the emotion that Tom may have felt
- When do readers draw inferences?
- when they need to explain story events or actions
- when they have the processing resources
- when they have the necessary knowledge
- when it is necessary given their goal
Role of Context in Comprehension
Effects of Context on Phonology:
- phonemic restoration (Warren & Warren, 1970):
the ability to fill in sounds that are missing, using context as a cue
It was found that the *eel was on the axle.
It was found that the *eel was on the shoe.
It was found that the *eel was on the orange.
It was found that the *eel was on the table. | <urn:uuid:e22c8eab-1575-4c4e-90d2-c00980697c0f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.alleydog.com/cognotes/langprod.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.18/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00034-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.925633 | 2,506 | 4.0625 | 4 |
Kyrgyzstan’s geographical location as well as its varied topography and altitude result in constantly-changing weather patterns and temperature variations over the seasons. The climate of most of the country is temperate, with only the southern region considered sub-tropical. The distance from the ocean and its closeness to the desert add drought and continental influences to the overall weather and, in the vicinity of massive Lake Issyk-Kul, a marine climate occurs.
Kyrgyzstan enjoys very little rainfall, on average with 247 sunny days a year. Lowland temperatures in the north range from 21°F in January, the coldest month, to 75°F in July and August. The highland regions see winter lows of -14°F or colder and temperatures up to 54°F in the summer. Heavy snowfall is common in winter, especially at altitude. In the north during winter and early spring, freezing winds blow from Siberia and the Arctic Circle, resulting in sharp frosts or even snow as late as April.
In the sub-tropical south, summer highs often exceed 104°F, making sightseeing unbearable and providing a risk of heat stroke to visitors not used to extreme weather. Bishkek can also see spikes in summer to uncomfortable levels, although in general, humidity is low. In regards to the seasons, summer in Kyrgzstan is long, beginning in May and cooling down by September, with unstable weather in spring and fall marking the brief transition period between winter and summer.
Best Time to Visit Kyrgyzstan
The best time to visit Kyrgyzstan is between May and September, when the weather in kinder and transportation is easier. In winter, many roads are closed and, in spring, heavy rainfall makes rural tracks impassable. June in the mountains sees beautiful Alpine flowers for hikers and trekkers, and July and August are cooler in the hills than on the plains. The southern regions are best visited between April and October, although the prime summer months can be unbearably hot for those not used to soaring temperatures. Over the winter, domestic flights are grounded and many tourist facilities are closed, with the exception of the ski resorts in the Tian Shan and Kyrgyz Ala-Too mountains. | <urn:uuid:b1b27a29-faed-4562-97dd-f0344161ac6a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.iexplore.com/travel-guides/middle-east/kyrgyzstan/weather | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00112-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954792 | 460 | 2.640625 | 3 |
This district in southern Kerala is named after the town. Kollam, formerly known as Quilon, is an old sea port/town on the Arabian sea coast. The district is bordered on the south by Thiruvananthapuram, on the north by Alappuzha and Pathanamthitta, on the east by Western Ghats and the Tamilnadu state border and on the West by the Arabian sea. About thirty per cent of this district is covered by the Ashtamudi lake, there by making it the gateway to the backwaters of the state. Kollam, the erstwhile Desinganadu, had a sustained commercial reputation from the days of the Phoenicians and the Romans. Fed by the Chinese trade, it was regarded by Ibn Batuta, as one of the five chief ports, which he had seen in the course of his travels during a period of twenty four years, in the 14th Century. The rulers of Kollam (Desinganadu) and China, exchanged embassies and there was a flourishing Chinese settlement at Kollam. Merchant Sulaiman of Siraf in Persia (9th Century) found Kollam to be the only port in India, touched by the huge Chinese junks, on his way from Canton to Persian Gulf. Marco Polo, the great Venician traveler, who was in Chinese Service under Kublahan in 1275, visited Kollam and other towns on the west coast, in his capacity as a Chinese mandarin. Marco Polo mentions Kollam as Coilum and this is perhaps why Kollam was known as Quilon for a long time.
Producers of cashew and other nut and food products. Vadakkevila.
Kollam - The land of cashews
This site provides information on Kollam including its history, government, institutions and tourism.
Details of administration, population, resources, map, tourism. From the district government.
Kollam District Tourism Promotion Council
Provides tourists with information on tourism, attractions, and pilgrimages in the district.
Provides information and links on various aspects of this village. Map and photographs are also included.
Describes the hotel, rooms, facilities, how to get there. Located near Kottarakara.
Offers search engine marketing through optimization and submission.
Details of trekking, sightseeing and other activities in this site in the Western Ghat foothills.
Last update:January 2, 2007 at 22:05:45 UTC | <urn:uuid:85e93f5a-2824-45b1-8d87-a01e5ee6c2d1> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/India/Kerala/Districts/Kollam/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391766.5/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00128-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956273 | 524 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Definition of Mauts
1. maut [n] - See also: maut
Click the following link to bring up a new window with an automated collection of images related to the term: Mauts Images
Lexicographical Neighbors of Mauts
Literary usage of Mauts
Below you will find example usage of this term as found in modern and/or classical literature:
1. Commentaries on the Laws of England: In Four Books by William Blackstone (1800)
"But we mull not carry.our veneration fo far as to Sacrifice our Alfred and Edward to tiie mauts of ..."
2. Music (1902)
"... which the Germans pronounce with some rudeness mauts-sarte, and which we pronounce with less linguistic exactness but with more sweetness, Mode-zarte, ..."
3. Reports of Cases Decided in the Supreme Court of the State of Oregon by Oregon Supreme Court (1896)
"The authority of an agent cannot be proved by the alleged agent's own stat*- mauts or acts, unless it be also shown that the principal knowingly ..." | <urn:uuid:f4f8eab4-c639-4813-a4b1-24c0795bbb61> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.lexic.us/definition-of/mauts | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397749.89/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00026-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90386 | 230 | 2.765625 | 3 |
Two Very Different Americas
Arizona’s anti-Hispanic attitude is nothing new
By Joseph Baca
For New Mexicans to understand the issues pertaining to Arizona’s controversial new law, SB 1070, it’s necessary to grasp the history of how Arizona has dealt with racial issues since its establishment as a territory.
Historically Arizona and New Mexico have taken divergent paths in race relations. According to a governmental study titled “The Excluded Student: Educational Practices Affecting Mexican Americans in the Southwest,” the division between the two states’ attitudes towards Hispanics occured as they were split from one state into two. The territory of New Mexico, which included present day Arizona, was created after Mexico ceded the land to the U.S., following the war of 1846-48. At the time there were approximately 75,000 Spanish-speaking inhabitants in the Southwest, with 60,000 of these Spanish inhabitants residing in New Mexico, while only about 1,000 Spanish inhabitants resided in Arizona. Then, the region’s culture was dominated by a blend of Mexican, Spanish and Native American, with the primary language being Spanish. Many Americans are unaware of, or have chosen to ignore, that the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which was signed after the war, was created to protect the rights of Spanish speaking people in the area—as well as to protect their culture and language. This historical document is a crucial part of the history of Spanish-speaking people in the Southwest and should be understood by all who live in the region.
The territory of New Mexico was accepted into the Union in about 1850, and divided into separate states around 1863. At the time a resolution was created to give joint statehood to both states, but Arizona, through the Arizona Territorial Teacher’s Association, rejected the idea because they felt that New Mexico had a completely different culture due to the strong Spanish and Mexican influence. The people of Arizona did not like the idea that New Mexico’s laws were written in two languages and the legislature was conducted through interpreters.
New Mexico was not inundated with a huge influx of people from other states in the way that Arizona has been, thus the state has stayed fairly isolated, allowing the conservation of Hispanic culture and language.
When both states applied for statehood, restrictions as to the use of Spanish in schools and by those in elected office were addressed through provisions to each state’s constitution, but in New Mexico three provisions were added, protecting the rights of Spanish speakers. New Mexico was admitted into the Union after succeeding in protecting the rights of Spanish speakers through the new constitution. On the other hand, Arizona took a completely different stance and thus begun the diminution of whatever power Spanish-speaking people ever had in the state. This is the nexus, at which both these states took divergent paths in their attitude towards Hispanics.
Throughout New Mexico’s history as a state, there has been a strong attitude towards preserving traditions and biculturalism. Until recently, New Mexico was not inundated with a huge influx of people from other states in the way that Arizona has been, thus the state has stayed fairly isolated, allowing the conservation of Hispanic culture and language. The Catholic Church in New Mexico has also played a huge role in promoting and preserving Hispano culture, and has been vocal in its opposition to Arizona’s new law, not as a racial issue, but as a humanitarian one. Today, New Mexico has the highest percentage of Hispanics of any state at 44 percent, while Arizona is approximately 30 percent Hispanic. Hispanics have played a huge role in New Mexico politics, with the legislature being about 45 percent Hispanic while Arizona’s legislature is only 16 percent Latino.
Hispanics have played a huge role in New Mexico politics, with the legislature being about 45 percent Hispanic while Arizona’s legislature is only 16 percent Latino.
Since the late ’50s, Arizona’s politics have been a stronghold of conservatism. Barry Goldwater, an Arizona native and one of the most powerful U.S. politicians throughout the ’60s, not only cut the path for Ronald Reagan’s rise to power, he singlehandedly gave rise to the popular conservative movement and created a huge Republican youth movement that have become today’s conservative leaders across America. Arizona Senator John McCain is a son of this movement. Arizonans have always been reactionary and fairly independent, and somewhere in this cauldron a recipe for conservative extremism was created.
While New Mexico has had five Hispanic governors, Arizona has had one, and although New Mexico has had its fair share of political corruption, it is dwarfed by the white collar and political crimes that Arizona has witnessed—many of these crimes committed by people who have pushed racist conservative agendas or supported or been supported by extremists and hate groups. Arizona today is run by an oligarchy of carpetbaggers.
Evan Mecham was Arizona’s governor in the late ’80s. He is known for having cancelled the Martin Luther King holiday in the state and for using the word “pickaninny” when referring to black children. He is also infamous for his impeachment after being found guilty of obstruction of justice and the misuse of government funds.
Maricopa County Sherriff Joe Arpaio has been the very vocal face of the anti-immigration movement in Arizona. He has been plagued by charges varying from corruption to civil rights violations since he took office, and has been under investigation by federal authorities and human rights groups for years, yet he remains enormously popular in Arizona.
What is important to note here is that this corruption was committed by white U.S. citizens—yet the trend is to blame all of Arizona’s crime on Mexican immigrants.
Throughout all this, New Mexico has maintained a fairly innocuous stance on immigration, and we actually allow non-citizens to get driver licenses as a means of maintaining control of the issue. Recently, Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry, who came here from Nebraska, and his Chief Public Safety Officer Darren White, who came here from Texas, have adopted a much tougher policy toward checking citizenship status. Much like what happened in Arizona, if politicians move here from out of state and set their own personal agendas, they have the power to destroy tradition and the threads that have kept communities free from fanaticism. This has not been our history—but it could soon be our future.
Taoist QiGong Class at Open Space Visitor Center
12 Angry Jurors at Aux Dog Theatre Nob HillMore Recommended Events ›› | <urn:uuid:488d9b4c-df69-4752-b0b3-7885b3bf01f5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://alibi.com/feature/32253/editorial/includes/quick_forms.php?form_switch=rss | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395548.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00033-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980704 | 1,344 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Researchers have helped identify over 100 locations in the human genome associated with the risk of developing schizophrenia, in what is the largest genomic study published on any psychiatric disorder to date. The findings point to biological mechanisms and pathways that may underlie schizophrenia, and could lead to new approaches to treating the disorder, which hasn't made much scientific progress in the last 60 years.
Schizophrenia, a debilitating mental illness that affects approximately one out of every 100 people worldwide, is characterized by hallucinations, delusions, and disordered thinking, and often emerges in the teens and early 20s.
Its lifetime impact on individuals and society is high, both in terms of direct health-care and other costs, as well as lost productivity and unemployment, which costs an estimated $6.85 billion a year in Canada.
Medications currently on the market treat only one of the symptoms of the illness (psychosis), and there are no effective treatments for the debilitating cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia. In part, treatment options are limited because the biological mechanisms underlying schizophrenia have not been understood.
Recent research focusing on the genetic underpinnings of schizophrenia has revealed the complexity of the illness. Evidence suggests that it is caused by the combined effects of many genes, and roughly two dozen genomic regions have been found to be associated with schizophrenia. The new study confirms those earlier findings, and expands our understanding of the genetic basis of schizophrenia and its underlying biology.
In the genome-wide association study (GWAS), the authors looked at 36,989 genetic samples from schizophrenia patients and 113,075 healthy volunteers and found 108 specific locations in the human genome associated with risk for schizophrenia. Eighty-three of those loci had not previously been linked to the illness.
"Large collaborative efforts such as this one are needed to identify genes that influence complex disorders," said Dr. Jo Knight, Senior Scientist and Joanne Murphy Professor in Behavioural Science, who spearheaded
Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
's involvement in this project. "The result is a major advance in understanding the genetic basis of brain functioning in schizophrenia."
The study implicates genes expressed in brain tissue, particularly those related to the functioning of brain cells (neurons) and of the channels enabling chemical and electrical signaling between neurons (synapses). These include genes that are active in pathways controlling synaptic plasticity – a function essential to learning and memory – and pathways governing activity in the target cell receiving signals.
Additionally, the researchers found a smaller number of genes associated with schizophrenia that are active in the immune system. This discovery offers some support for a previously hypothesized link between schizophrenia and immunological processes. The study also found an association between the illness and the region of the genome that holds DRD2 – the gene that produces the dopamine receptor targeted by all approved medications for schizophrenia – suggesting that other loci uncovered in the study may point to additional therapeutic targets.
"The fact that we were able to detect genetic risk factors on this massive scale shows that schizophrenia can be tackled by the same approaches that have already transformed our understanding of other diseases," said senior author Dr. Michael O'Donovan, deputy director of the MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics at Cardiff University School of Medicine. "The wealth of new findings has the potential to kick-start the development of new treatments in schizophrenia, a process which has stalled for the last 60 years."
The study is the result of several years of work by the Schizophrenia Working Group of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC), an international, multi-institutional collaboration founded in 2007 to conduct broad-scale analyses of genetic data for psychiatric disease. A total of 55 datasets from more than 40 different contributors, including CAMH, was needed to conduct the analysis.
The samples used in this study represent all of the genotyped datasets for schizophrenia that the consortium has amassed to date. The PGC is currently genotyping new samples to further study schizophrenia and additional psychiatric diseases, including autism and bipolar disorder.
Source: Centre for Addiction and Mental Health | <urn:uuid:2298fd2f-831f-4ff0-8ba1-6078997cd242> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.science20.com/news_articles/100_locations_in_human_genome_associated_with_schizophrenia-140998 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395160.19/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00114-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948163 | 819 | 3.65625 | 4 |
"Children have lost touch with the natural world and are unable to identify common animals and plants, according to a survey.
Half of youngsters aged nine to 11 were unable to identify a daddy-long-legs [what we call a crane fly], oak tree, blue t*t or bluebell, in the poll by BBC Wildlife Magazine. The study also found that playing in the countryside was children's least popular way of spending their spare time, and that they would rather see friends or play on their computer than go for a walk or play outdoors." Read more.
Take the quiz on the paper's page. These are British animals and plants, so don't get too upset if you are in the US can't identify them--I missed two myself. What it does show, though, is that the problem that so many of us see right here in the US is not unique. When 5th grade students pile off a school bus and enter a nature preserve, see a chipmunk and yell, "Beaver!!" there is something very lacking in their education. These same children will see a toad, call it a frog, and have no interest in learning what it really is. They will, in fact, argue that it is a frog...their father told them so.
More troubling is that the children in the British survey said that playing outside was their least favorite thing to do. Is it the lure of electronic gadgets that keeps them inside, or is it fear of strangers, wildlife, the unknown? Lack of control over what they do...?
The cure? Get out. Often. | <urn:uuid:c55aa6bc-3132-4973-9862-4b3c13492140> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://macbethsopinion.blogspot.com/2008/08/british-paper-notes-lack-of-nature.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783402746.23/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155002-00195-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978704 | 325 | 2.578125 | 3 |
Definition of Campion, Thomas
Campion, Thomas: (1567-1620) English physician, poet, and composer. Campion first studied law, but had little sympathy with, or respect for, legal studies. He then spent 3 years (1602-1605) on the Continent and received the M.D. degree from the University of Caen in 1605. After returning to England, Campion practiced as a doctor in London from 1606 until his death in 1620, probably from the plague. Campion's literary output included poetry, songs, and treatises on poetry.
He wrote in both Latin and English:
Last Editorial Review: 6/14/2012
Back to MedTerms online medical dictionary A-Z List
Need help identifying pills and medications? | <urn:uuid:a17f558c-e9da-4fd2-a316-72633c5b772e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=33396 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396459.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00097-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957704 | 163 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Also called a capstone experience, culminating project, or senior exhibition, among many other terms, a capstone project is a multifaceted assignment that serves as a culminating academic and intellectual experience for students, typically during their final year of high school or middle school, or at the end of an academic program or learning-pathway experience. While similar in some ways to a college thesis, capstone projects may take a wide variety of forms, but most are long-term investigative projects that culminate in a final product, presentation, or performance. For example, students may be asked to select a topic, profession, or social problem that interests them, conduct research on the subject, maintain a portfolio of findings or results, create a final product demonstrating their learning acquisition or conclusions (a paper, short film, or multimedia presentation, for example), and give an oral presentation on the project to a panel of teachers, experts, and community members who collectively evaluate its quality.
Capstone projects are generally designed to encourage students to think critically, solve challenging problems, and develop skills such as oral communication, public speaking, research skills, media literacy, teamwork, planning, self-sufficiency, or goal setting—i.e., skills that will help prepare them for college, modern careers, and adult life. In most cases, the projects are also interdisciplinary, in the sense that they require students to apply skills or investigate issues across many different subject areas or domains of knowledge. Capstone projects also tend to encourage students to connect their projects to community issues or problems, and to integrate outside-of-school learning experiences, including activities such as interviews, scientific observations, or internships.
While capstone projects can take a wide variety of forms from school to school, a few examples will help to illustrate both the concept and the general educational intentions:
- Writing, directing, and filming a public-service announcement that will be aired on public-access television
- Designing and building a product, computer program, app, or robot to address a specific need, such as assisting the disabled
- Interning at a nonprofit organization or a legislator’s office to learn more about strategies and policies intended to address social problems, such as poverty, hunger, or homelessness
- Conducting a scientific study over several months or a year to determine the ecological or environmental impact of changes to a local habitat
- Researching an industry or market, and creating a viable business plan for a proposed company that is then “pitched” to a panel of local business leaders
As a school-reform strategy, capstone projects are often an extension of more systemic school-improvement models or certain teaching philosophies or strategies, such as 21st century skills, community-based learning, proficiency-based learning, project-based learning, or student-centered learning, to name just a few.
The following are a few representative educational goals of capstone projects:
- Increasing the academic rigor of the senior year. Historically, high school students have taken a lighter course load or left school early during their twelfth-grade year, which can contribute to learning loss or insufficient preparation for first-year college work. A more academically and intellectually challenging senior year, filled with demanding but stimulating learning experiences such as a capstone project, the reasoning goes, can reduce senior-year learning loss, keep students in school longer (or otherwise engaged in learning), and increase preparation for college and work.
- Increasing student motivation and engagement. The creative nature of capstone projects, which are typically self-selected by students and based on personal interests, can strengthen student motivation to learn, particularly during a time (twelfth grade) when academic motivation and engagement tend to wane.
- Increasing educational and career aspirations. By involving students in long-term projects that intersect with personal interests and professional aspirations, capstone projects can help students with future planning, goal setting, postsecondary decisions, and career exploration—particularly for those students who may be unfocused, uncertain, or indecisive about their post-graduation plans and aspirations.
- Improving student confidence and self-perceptions. Capstone projects typically require students to take on new responsibilities, be more self-directed, set goals, and follow through on commitments. Completing such projects can boost self-esteem, build confidence, and teach students about the value of accomplishment. Students may also become role models for younger students, which can cultivate leadership abilities and have positive cultural effects within a school.
- Demonstrating learning and proficiency. As one of many educational strategies broadly known as demonstrations of learning, capstone projects can be used to determine student proficiency (in the acquisition of knowledge and skills) or readiness (for college and work) by requiring them to demonstrate what they have learned over the course of their project
In recent years, the capstone-project concept has also entered the domain of state policy. In Rhode Island, for example, the state’s high school graduation requirements stipulate that seniors must complete two out of three assessment options, one of which can be a capstone project. Several other states require students to complete some form of senior project, while in other states such projects may be optional, and students who complete a capstone project may receive special honors or diploma recognition.
Most criticism of or debate about capstone projects is not focused on the strategy itself, or its intrinsic or potential educational value, but rather on the quality of its execution—i.e., capstone projects tend to be criticized when they are poorly designed or reflect low academic standards, or when students are allowed to complete relatively superficial projects of low educational value. In addition, if teachers and students consider capstone projects to be a formality, lower-quality products typically result. And if the projects reflect consistently low standards, quality, and educational value year after year, educators, students, parents, and community members may come to view capstone projects as a waste of time or resources.
The Glossary of Education Reform by Great Schools Partnership is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. | <urn:uuid:a11f3977-29b0-4051-bfa7-00d52a24909b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://edglossary.org/capstone-project/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00025-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95207 | 1,245 | 3.546875 | 4 |
Summarization for the Nation!
Reading to Learn
Rationale: Summarization is a great strategy for students to use when reading to learn. Now that third graders have mastered learning to read, they will use text to read and research to further their knowledge for the rest of their lives. A great way for students to comprehend what they are reading is to use summarization, which students will practice with this lesson. To summarize, they will decide what the text's topic sentence it, what sentences support this main topic, and what information isn't necessary to the text's main purpose.
a copy of the book Deadline! From News to Newspaper by Gail Gibbons for each student
a copy of the book From Path to Highway: the story of the Boston Post Road by Gail Gibbons for each student
yellow and orange highlighter for each student
pencil for each student
Summarization rubric for student placed on a bookmark:
_____ Write your topic sentence (main idea)
_____ Find important details that support (help) the main idea
_____ Remove information that it not important by crossing it out
_____ Remove any idea that is already said
_____ Write a 3 – 5 sentence summary
1."Today we will be working on summarization. We had some practice summarizing yesterday, but today we are going to be sure everyone is able to summarize a book we will be reading. Who can raise their hand and tell me what it means to summarize a text? Good job! That's right, summarizing means reading the text to comprehend it and then decide what the main points of the story are so we know the main idea of the text. This makes it is easier to learn what was in the book or article, that's why it is important for you all to learn how to summarize text you read. After picking out the most important parts of the text, you can remove insignificant sentences. So today we are all going to work on finding the main idea of a book and finding the important sentences that support the main idea."
2.Background Knowledge: Because we are going to read the book From Path to Highway together, we are going to go through and discuss some of the words found in it to be sure we know what they mean because this will help us to understand the story better. Raise your hand if you know what colonists are? Good job! They are people who come to a new land to settle here. Who can raise their hand and tell me what they think a postrider is? Good job! He is a person who carried mail on horseback across the town. If we come across any other vocabulary words we are unsure of while reading this book together we will use context clues to figure out their meanings."
3.Pass out highlighters and bookmarks to each student. "This bookmark is going to help you remember what to do when summarizing the text. To help us remember these steps, we are going to use a highlighter and a pencil. Everyone be sure you have a pencil and a highlighter. So when you find the main idea of the story, use the yellow highlighter to highlight it in the text. Next, when you find important information that supports the main idea, use the orange highlighter to highlight that information in the text. Then use your pencil to lightly cross out information that does not support the main idea so we don't really even use it to comprehend and summarize the text. Also use your pencil to mark out information that is being restated, so we don't need it."
4.Pass out From Path to Highway to each student. "We are all going to practice summarizing together. This book talks about how the Boston Post road has changed over the centuries. What could the road possibly have started out as and how could it have changed? Let's read to find out!" Read the story together as a class through echo reading. "Now that we have read the story, we are ready to summarize it." Go through each step on their bookmarks as a class. Write down what you are discussing on the smart board so that students can refer to it when summarizing on their own next.
"First we are going to find the topic sentence. Who can raise their hand and tell me what it could be? That's right- the narrow Indian path has become a modern four-lane highway. Next we are going to find the important details to support the main idea while writing a few of them down on the smart board. Some of those ideas are riders on horseback- many use the narrow Indian paths now, the paths become wider and also now carts and wagons move along the paths with their heavy loads, the paths have become roads. These are just a few."
Now we are going to use our pencils to remove things that aren't important to the text. For example, it is not important to our main idea about trails turning into roads that the horses have been brought from England for growing colonies. So let's cross that out. Is it important that the postrider has instructions to watch for river crossings and resting spots for other postriders who will later use the trail? Not really, this is just good supporting information to understand what a postrider is, but we don't need it to understand the main idea so we can cross this out."
5.Now we are going to make a summary by writing down a few sentences about the book. Raise your hand if you have something you think we should write down. Good job! Write down what we say in your notebooks while I am writing it on the smart board. Indians create trails throughout the land and throughout time colonists walk along these trials and then horses widen the trails. Then postriders use the trials to deliver mail. Then carts are wagons are used to travel the trails and transport goods, this widens the trails. The stagecoach is made next to travel the trails. Then roadbeds are made the make the trails into roads, and then cars are made to travel the roads. This continues into cement is used to make real roads that become highways. Great summary on the Boston Post Road class!"
6.Pass out copies of Deadline! From News to Newspaper to the class. "Now it is your turn to read this text similar to the one we just read together and think while you are reading what the main idea is and what sentences are used to support the main idea." For a book talk before the students begin reading silently I will say "This book is about how news and what you hear is going on in the world and written down into the newspaper you see all around town. Use your bookmark to remind you of the steps to use when summarizing and after you are done reading the text silently write a 3-5 sentence summary of the text. I know you all will do a great job comprehending and summarizing the text!"
7.Assessment: I will assess students by collecting the summaries they write after silently reading Deadline! From News to Newspaper. I will use their bookmark checklist to help me grade their summaries and see how they did. I will also give a quiz by the end of the week with a short passage for students to read then multiple choice questions such as "What is the main idea of the passage? Which is a supporting sentence? Which sentence is not important to the main idea that we could take out?
Gibbons, Gail. Deadline! From News to Newspaper. New York: Crowell, 1987. Print.
Gibbons, Gail. From Path to Highway: The Story of the Boston Post Road. New York: Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data, 1986. Print.
Pierce, Morgan. Flipping Over Summarization. http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/realizations/piercerl.htm
Return to Doorways Index | <urn:uuid:54632ff5-8924-4e2d-b95b-11d0f8a05a29> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.auburn.edu/academic/education/reading_genie/doorways/lancasterarl.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396875.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00187-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95954 | 1,623 | 3.953125 | 4 |
DePauw Institute for Girls in Science Welcomes 30 to Campus
June 25, 2008
June 25, 2008, Greencastle, Ind. - A total of 30 ninth grade girls from across Indiana are on the DePauw University campus this week for the annual DePauw Institute for Girls in Science (DIGS). The summer camp, which was started by a group of faculty members in the mid-1990s, brings teenage girls together for intensive, hands-on learning in biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, economics and computer science.
DePauw science students and faculty serve as camp counselors and instructors. Campers spend eight hours a day in a laboratory, field or classroom for five days; the camp culminates with small group presentations and a poster session for parents, teachers and the DePauw scientific community.
You're invited to attend the poster session, which will take place Friday at 10 a.m. in the atrium of the Percy Lavon Julian Science & Mathematics Center. It is free and open to all.
The DIGS program was created by a group of women science faculty to help increase the number of females in science, technology, engineering and mathematics -- fields where women professionals continue to be underrepresented.
"The transition from middle school to high school represents a notoriously leaky section of the pipeline that brings young women into science professions," says Dana Dudle, associate professor of biology and director of the DIGS camp. "For this reason, the DIGS camp is geared toward female students entering the ninth grade."
Participants were nominated to attend the free camp by their middle school teachers and selected to participate in DIGS. Most campers this year hail from Putnam County, but others have traveled from as far away as Fort Wayne.
Over the course of the week, DIGS campers will extract and identify DNA from bacteria, learn the physics behind toys, and search for fossils at Shades State Park. Fourteen faculty members from eight academic departments are participating in DIGS. The events provide a "fantastic opportunity for DePauw students to serve as role models and teachers," says Dr. Dudle.
The DIGS Camp is supported by DePauw's Women in Science program, the Women's Center, and the office of academic affairs.Back | <urn:uuid:722f6008-9841-4b24-a7e5-de62a2d2a2d4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.depauw.edu/news-media/latest-news/details/21771/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783404826.94/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155004-00058-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956279 | 482 | 2.5625 | 3 |
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We thank our member society, the BC SPCA for allowing us to include this information and their factsheets on our website.
Each year in B.C., more than two million hens lay 636 million eggs. That’s approximately 275 eggs a year per hen! Ninety-five per cent of these birds live on conventional egg laying farms where they spend their entire lives in small, cramped cages, called battery cages.
But are battery cages necessary for egg production? Egg farmers like them because they allow a large number of hens to be kept in efficient and orderly conditions, allowing for high productivity and keeping the birds away from their feces. This results in low costs to the farmer and low prices for the consumer. But in the end, the welfare of the hens is sacrificed.
To learn more about how hens are raised in Canada, read BC SPCA’s detailed factsheets:Print this page | <urn:uuid:77df05b4-8d48-4d79-b433-e7be89fa4b99> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://cfhs.ca/farm/laying_hens/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391519.2/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00141-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93422 | 205 | 3.109375 | 3 |
Wow! It's getting hotter each day bringing on the sweat for us humans but what about our pets?
The day is a hot humid day – it's the kind of day when you start sweating just walking to your car. After a few minutes of vigorous activity you find yourself swimming within your own shirt.
People persire. And while prolific sweating may be uncomfortable for you, it is an efficient method for your body to regulate its temperature. Our sweat glands help regulate body temperature by bringing warm moisture to the surface of the skin (as sweating), which causes cooling as the water evaporates. Because sweat glands are located all over the human body, cooling takes place over a large surface area, better helping the body cool.
How do cats cool their bodies?
You generally don't see cats "sweating" or "panting". On a hot day, you may see a cat and dog - the dog is panting like crazy while the cat is leisurely laying there grooming, seemingly unaffected by the heat. A cat tries several things to cool down.
So, do cats sweat?
Yes they do. Cats are sweating through their paws. But the surface area of their paws is relatively small so in the big picture, this type of sweat is not an effective mechanism.
What else do cats do to minimize their body heat?
Seek shady spots
• Cats generally seek out shady spots and rest. They may rest on surfaces such as tile or hardwood floors, or in the shade under bushes most anywhere their cooling down can begin. Just like when we humans want to avoid a hot concrete or tile surface on our bare feet, cats do the same.
• Cats generally don't hunt (especially indoor cats) or exert themselves when it is extremely hot. Their running and jumping is brought to a halt by the heat.
• Cats will try grooming. A very common heat lowering mechanism, cats will lay back and seem to be leisurely grooming but they are really working to cool themselves. Licking themselves is actually a mechanism for cooling. When their saliva placed by their tongue when grooming themselves, it evaporates off their fur; grooming works to lower their body temperature (similar to us when sweat evaporates off our skin, thus cooling).
• When in distress in extremely hot conditions, cats will pant. When all other mechanisms for cooling fail, cats will pant. This generally occurs at near distress temperatures (or if there is another underlying medical problem).
Remember… cat's normal body temperature is within the range of 100.5 to 102.5 degrees Fahrenheit. If his temperature rises to 105 or 106 degrees, the cat may suffer heat exhaustion. At 107 degrees, heat stroke can occur with potentially catastrophic consequences. Heat stroke can cause brain damage and even death.
A cat that is overheated will appear sluggish or perhaps confused. His gums and tongue may appear bright red, and he will be panting hard. The cat may vomit, collapse, have a seizure and may go into a coma.
An overheated cat is a real emergency situation. Get him to a veterinarian immediately. If possible, immediately pour slightly cool water on him to begin the cooling process. On the way to the veterinary clinic, cover him with cool wet towels. Don't use ice-cold water or he might go into shock.
Source; The Petplace | <urn:uuid:5aacdb76-0b77-42b6-8000-0bb4ef243a84> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.examiner.com/article/do-cats-sweat?cid=rss | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397797.77/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00104-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943094 | 681 | 3 | 3 |
Chapter 5. The Sensorimotor System
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By Eric Hand That many animals sense and respond to Earth’s magnetic field is no longer in doubt, and people, too, may have a magnetic sense. But how this sixth sense might work remains a mystery. Some researchers say it relies on an iron mineral, magnetite; others invoke a protein in the retina called cryptochrome. Magnetite has turned up in bird beaks and fish noses and even in the human brain, as Joe Kirschvink of the California Institute for Technology in Pasadena reported in 1992, and it is extremely sensitive to magnetic fields. As a result, Kirschvink and other fans say, it can tell an animal not only which way it is heading (compass sense) but also where it is. “A compass cannot explain how a sea turtle can migrate all the way around the ocean and return to the same specific stretch of beach where it started out,” says neurobiologist Kenneth Lohmann of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. A compass sense is enough for an animal to figure out latitude, based on changes in the inclination of magnetic field lines (flat at the equator, plunging into the earth at the poles). But longitude requires detecting subtle variations in field strength from place to place—an extra map or signpost sense that magnetite could supply, Lohmann says. Except in bacteria, however, no one has seen magnetite crystals serving as a magnetic sensor. The crystals could be something else—say, waste products of iron metabolism, or a way for the body to sequester carcinogenic heavy metals. In the early 2000s, scientists found magnetite-bearing cells in the beaks of pigeons. But a follow-up study found that the supposed magnetoreceptors were in fact scavenger immune cells that had nothing to do with the neural system. And because there is no unique stain or marker for magnetite, false sightings are easy to make. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science
Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 22357 - Posted: 06.24.2016
By Eric Hand Birds do it. Bees do it. But the human subject, standing here in a hoodie—can he do it? Joe Kirschvink is determined to find out. For decades, he has shown how critters across the animal kingdom navigate using magnetoreception, or a sense of Earth’s magnetic field. Now, the geophysicist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena is testing humans to see if they too have this subconscious sixth sense. Kirschvink is pretty sure they do. But he has to prove it. He takes out his iPhone and waves it over Keisuke Matsuda, a neuroengineering graduate student from the University of Tokyo. On this day in October, he is Kirschvink’s guinea pig. A magnetometer app on the phone would detect magnetic dust on Matsuda—or any hidden magnets that might foil the experiment. “I want to make sure we don’t have a cheater,” Kirschvink jokes. They are two floors underground at Caltech, in a clean room with magnetically shielded walls. In a corner, a liquid helium pump throbs and hisses, cooling a superconducting instrument that Kirschvink has used to measure tiny magnetic fields in everything from bird beaks to martian meteorites. On a lab bench lie knives—made of ceramic and soaked in acid to eliminate magnetic contamination—with which he has sliced up human brains in search of magnetic particles. Matsuda looks a little nervous, but he will not be going under the knife. With a syringe, a technician injects electrolyte gel onto Matsuda’s scalp through a skullcap studded with electrodes. He is about to be exposed to custom magnetic fields generated by an array of electrical coils, while an electroencephalogram (EEG) machine records his brain waves. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 22356 - Posted: 06.24.2016
Jon Hamilton Researchers have identified a substance in muscles that helps explain the connection between a fit body and a sharp mind. When muscles work, they release a protein that appears to generate new cells and connections in a part of the brain that is critical to memory, a team reports Thursday in the journal Cell Metabolism. The finding "provides another piece to the puzzle," says Henriette van Praag, an author of the study and an investigator in brain science at the National Institute on Aging. Previous research, she says, had revealed factors in the brain itself that responded to exercise. The discovery came after van Praag and a team of researchers decided to "cast a wide net" in searching for factors that could explain the well-known link between fitness and memory. They began by looking for substances produced by muscle cells in response to exercise. That search turned up cathepsin B, a protein best known for its association with cell death and some diseases. Experiments showed that blood levels of cathepsin B rose in mice that spent a lot of time on their exercise wheels. What's more, as levels of the protein rose, the mice did better on a memory test in which they had to swim to a platform hidden just beneath the surface of a small pool. The team also found evidence that, in mice, cathepsin B was causing the growth of new cells and connections in the hippocampus, an area of the brain that is central to memory. But the researchers needed to know whether the substance worked the same way in other species. So they tested monkeys, and found that exercise did, indeed, raise circulating levels of cathepsin in the blood. © 2016 npr
By BARRY MEIER and ABBY GOODNOUGH A few months ago, Douglas Scott, a property manager in Jacksonville, Fla., was taking large doses of narcotic drugs, or opioids, to deal with the pain of back and spine injuries from two recent car accidents. The pills helped ease his pain, but they also caused him to withdraw from his wife, his two children and social life. “Finally, my wife said, ‘You do something about this or we’re going to have to make some changes around here,’” said Mr. Scott, 43. Today, Mr. Scott is no longer taking narcotics and feels better. Shortly after his wife’s ultimatum, he entered a local clinic where patients are weaned off opioids and spend up to five weeks going through six hours of training each day in alternative pain management techniques such as physical therapy, relaxation exercises and behavior modification. Mr. Scott’s story highlights one patient’s success. Yet it also underscores the difficulties that the Obama administration and public health officials face in reducing the widespread use of painkillers like OxyContin and Percocet. The use and abuse of the drugs has led to a national epidemic of overdose deaths, addiction and poor patient outcomes. In recent months, federal agencies and state health officials have urged doctors to first treat pain without using opioids, and some have announced plans to restrict how many pain pills a doctor can prescribe. But getting the millions of people with chronic pain to turn to alternative treatments is a daunting task, one that must overcome inconsistent insurance coverage as well as some resistance from patients and their doctors, who know the ease and effectiveness of pain medications. “We are all culpable,” said Dr. David Deitz, a former insurance industry executive and a consultant on pain treatment issues. “I don’t care whether you are a doctor, an insurer or a patient.” © 2016 The New York Times Compan
Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 22352 - Posted: 06.23.2016
Megan Scudellari Shinya Yamanaka looked up in surprise at the postdoc who had spoken. “We have colonies,” Kazutoshi Takahashi said again. Yamanaka jumped from his desk and followed Takahashi to their tissue-culture room, at Kyoto University in Japan. Under a microscope, they saw tiny clusters of cells — the culmination of five years of work and an achievement that Yamanaka hadn't even been sure was possible. Two weeks earlier, Takahashi had taken skin cells from adult mice and infected them with a virus designed to introduce 24 carefully chosen genes. Now, the cells had been transformed. They looked and behaved like embryonic stem (ES) cells — 'pluripotent' cells, with the ability to develop into skin, nerve, muscle or practically any other cell type. Yamanaka gazed at the cellular alchemy before him. “At that moment, I thought, 'This must be some kind of mistake',” he recalls. He asked Takahashi to perform the experiment again — and again. Each time, it worked. Over the next two months, Takahashi narrowed down the genes to just four that were needed to wind back the developmental clock. In June 2006, Yamanaka presented the results to a stunned room of scientists at the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research in Toronto, Canada. He called the cells 'ES-like cells', but would later refer to them as induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells. “Many people just didn't believe it,” says Rudolf Jaenisch, a biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, who was in the room. But Jaenisch knew and trusted Yamanaka's work, and thought it was “ingenious”. © 2016 Macmillan Publishers Limited,
By Teal Burrell Sociability may be skin deep. The social impairments and high anxiety seen in people with autism or related disorders may be partly due to a disruption in the nerves of the skin that sense touch, a new study in mice suggests. Autism spectrum disorders are primarily thought of as disorders of the brain, generally characterized by repetitive behaviors and deficits in communication skills and social interaction. But a majority of people with autism spectrum disorders also have an altered tactile sense; they are often hypersensitive to light touch and can be overwhelmed by certain textures. “They tend to be very wary of social touch [like a hug or handshake], or if they go outside and feel a gust of wind, it can be very unnerving,” says neuroscientist Lauren Orefice from Harvard Medical School in Boston. An appreciation for this sensory aspect of autism has grown in recent years. The newest version of psychiatry’s bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, includes the sensory abnormalities of autism as core features of the disease. “That was a big nod and a recognition that this is a really important aspect of autism,” says Kevin Pelphrey, a cognitive neuroscientist at The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in the work. The sensation of touch starts in the peripheral nervous system—in receptors at the surface of the skin—and travels along nerves that connect into the central nervous system. Whereas many autism researchers focus on the end of the pathway—the brain—Orefice and colleagues wondered about the first leg of the trip. So the group introduced mutations that silenced genes associated with autism spectrum disorders in mice, adding them in a way that restricted the effects to peripheral nerve cells, they report today in Cell. The team singled out the gene Mecp2, which encodes a protein that regulates the expression of genes that help forge connections between nerve cells. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science
By ALAN COWELL LONDON — When Muhammad Ali died last week, the memories spooled back inevitably to the glory days of the man who called himself the Greatest, a champion whose life intertwined with America’s traumas of race, faith and war. It was a chronicle of valor asserted in the most public of arenas scrutinized by an audience that spanned the globe. But there was another narrative, just as striking to some admirers, of a private courage beyond his klieg-lit renown. For the minority afflicted by Parkinson’s disease, Ali’s 30-year struggle with the same illness magnified the broader status he built from his boxing prowess as a black man who embraced radical Islam, refused to fight in Vietnam, earned the opprobrium of the establishment and yet emerged as an icon. “It was his longest bout, and one that ultimately he could not win,” the reporter Patrick Sawer wrote in The Telegraph, referring to Ali’s illness. Yet the affliction “only served to increase the worldwide admiration he had gained before the disease robbed him of his powers.” As a global superstar, Ali touched many lands, and Britain felt a particular bond. Boxing fans recalled his far-flung bouts — the “Rumble in the Jungle” against George Foreman in Zaire, as the Democratic Republic of Congo was then called, in 1974; “The Thrilla in Manila” in the Philippines against Joe Frazier a year later. But in Britain, his two defeats in the 1960s of Henry Cooper, a much-loved British heavyweight who died in 2011, and his feisty appearances in prime-time television interviews left an indelible mark. © 2016 The New York Times Company
Link ID: 22308 - Posted: 06.11.2016
By Esther Landhuis About 100 times rarer than Parkinson’s, and often mistaken for it, progressive supranuclear palsy afflicts fewer than 20,000 people in the U.S.—and two thirds do not even know they have it. Yet this little-known brain disorder that killed comic actor Dudley Moore in 2002 is quietly becoming a gateway for research that could lead to powerful therapies for a range of intractable neurodegenerative conditions including Alzheimer’s and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a disorder linked to concussions and head trauma. All these diseases share a common feature: abnormal buildup of a protein called tau in the brains of patients. Progressive supranuclear palsy has no cure and is hard to diagnose. Although doctors may have heard of the disease, many know little about it. It was not described in medical literature until 1964 but some experts believe one of the earliest accounts of the debilitating illness appeared in an 1857 short story by Charles Dickens and his friend Wilke Collins: “A cadaverous man of measured speech. A man who seemed as unable to wink, as if his eyelids had been nailed to his forehead. A man whose eyes—two spots of fire—had no more motion than if they had been connected with the back of his skull by screws driven through them, and riveted and bolted outside among his gray hair. He had come in and shut the door, and he now sat down. He did not bend himself to sit as other people do, but seemed to sink bolt upright, as if in water, until the chair stopped him.” © 2016 Scientific American
By ANNA FELS ONE of the most painful experiences of being a psychiatrist is having a patient for whom none of the available therapies or medications work. A while back, I was asked to do a consultation on just such a patient. This person had been a heroin addict in her early 20s. She had quit the opioid five years earlier, but her life was plagued with anxiety, apathy and self-doubt that prior treatments had not helped. At the end of the session, almost as an afterthought, she noted with irony that the only time in her adult life when she had been able to socialize easily and function at work was when she had been hooked on heroin. We are in the midst of a devastating and often lethal opioid epidemic, one of whose victims, we learned last week, was the pop star Prince. At such a time, it is hard to remember that there are multiple opioids naturally produced in our brains and required for our well-being. The neural circuitry utilizing these substances controls some of our most fundamental feelings of pain, stress and hopelessness, as well as pleasure and even euphoria. There is obviously a need for extreme caution, but research suggests that certain opioids may actually be useful in treating psychiatric diseases that have proved frustratingly unresponsive to current medications. It is the potentially addictive subset of opioids, whose natural ancestors were originally derived from poppies, that we associate with the word. These substances have been with us for most, if not all, of human civilization. Poppy seeds have been found at archaeological sites of Neolithic man. The Sumerians wrote about “the joy plant”; an Egyptian papyrus from the second millennium B.C. described the use of a product of poppies to stop the crying of children. Hippocrates suggested its use for female ailments, and a ninth-century Persian physician advocated the use of opium for melancholia. Millenniums later, during the American Civil War, the Union Army used 10 million opium pills to treat wounded soldiers. And then there were the two Opium Wars fought between China and Britain. Unquestionably, no other psychoactive substance has played such a central role in human affairs. © 2016 The New York Times Company
By DENISE GRADY Muhammad Ali, who died on Friday after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease, was given the diagnosis in 1984 when he was 42. The world witnessed his gradual decline over the decades as tremors and stiffness set in, replacing his athletic stride with a shuffle, silencing his exuberant voice and freezing his face into an expressionless mask. What is Parkinson’s disease? It is a progressive, incurable deterioration of the part of the brain that produces a chemical needed to carry signals to the regions that control movement. How common is Parkinson’s? About one million people in the United States, and between seven million and 10 million worldwide, are thought to have Parkinson’s, according to the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation. What causes it? Was boxing a factor for Ali? The exact cause is not known. As with many disorders, experts suspect a combination of genes and environment, meaning that people with a particular genetic makeup may be predisposed to the disease if they are exposed to certain environmental factors. Head injuries, such as those sustained repeatedly in boxing, are among the possible risk factors listed by the National Parkinson Foundation. So is exposure to certain pesticides. These factors have both been suggested as possible contributors in Muhammad Ali’s case. Can Parkinson’s disease be treated? Medication can ease the symptoms for a time, but the disease continues to progress. In some cases, implanted devices called deep-brain stimulators can also help with symptoms. But Parkinson’s is not curable. © 2016 The New York Times Company
Link ID: 22284 - Posted: 06.06.2016
By JOHN ELIGON and SERGE F. KOVALESKI Prince, the music icon who struggled with debilitating hip pain during his career, died from an accidental overdose of self-administered fentanyl, a type of synthetic opiate, officials in Minnesota said Thursday. The news ended weeks of speculation about the sudden death of the musician, who had a reputation for clean living but who appears to have developed a dependency on medications to treat his pain. Authorities have yet to discuss how he came to be in possession of the fentanyl and whether it had been prescribed by a doctor. Officials had waited several weeks for the results of a toxicology test undertaken as part of an autopsy performed after he was found dead April 21 in an elevator at his estate. He was preparing to enroll in an opioid treatment program when he died at 57, according to the lawyer for a doctor who was planning to treat him. The Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office, which conducted the autopsy, declined to comment beyond releasing a copy of its findings. The Carver County Sheriff’s Office is continuing to investigate the death with help from the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. The sheriff’s office had said it was looking into whether opioid abuse was a factor, and a law enforcement official had said that painkillers were found on Prince when investigators arrived. “The M.E. report is one piece of the whole thing,” said Jason Kamerud, the county’s chief deputy sheriff. Fentanyl is a potent but dangerous painkiller, estimated to be more than 50 times more powerful than heroin, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The report did not list how much fentanyl was found in Prince’s blood. Last year, federal officials issued an alert that said incidents and overdoses with fentanyl were “occurring at an alarming rate throughout the United States.” © 2016 The New York Times Company
By Gretchen Reynolds A weekly routine of yoga and meditation may strengthen thinking skills and help to stave off aging-related mental decline, according to a new study of older adults with early signs of memory problems. Most of us past the age of 40 are aware that our minds and, in particular, memories begin to sputter as the years pass. Familiar names and words no longer spring readily to mind, and car keys acquire the power to teleport into jacket pockets where we could not possibly have left them. Some weakening in mental function appears to be inevitable as we age. But emerging science suggests that we might be able to slow and mitigate the decline by how we live and, in particular, whether and how we move our bodies. Past studies have found that people who run, weight train, dance, practice tai chi, or regularly garden have a lower risk of developing dementia than people who are not physically active at all. There also is growing evidence that combining physical activity with meditation might intensify the benefits of both pursuits. In an interesting study that I wrote about recently, for example, people with depression who meditated before they went for a run showed greater improvements in their mood than people who did either of those activities alone. But many people do not have the physical capacity or taste for running or other similarly vigorous activities. So for the new study, which was published in April in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, and other institutions decided to test whether yoga, a relatively mild, meditative activity, could alter people’s brains and fortify their ability to think. © 2016 The New York Times Company
Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 22270 - Posted: 06.01.2016
By Kelly Servick There’s an unfortunate irony for people who rely on morphine, oxycodone, and other opioid painkillers: The drug that’s supposed to offer you relief can actually make you more sensitive to pain over time. That effect, known as hyperalgesia, could render these medications gradually less effective for chronic pain, leading people to rely on higher and higher doses. A new study in rats—the first to look at the interaction between opioids and nerve injury for months after the pain-killing treatment was stopped—paints an especially grim picture. An opioid sets off a chain of immune signals in the spinal cord that amplifies pain rather than dulling it, even after the drug leaves the body, the researchers found. Yet drugs already under development might be able to reverse the effect. It’s no secret that powerful painkillers have a dark side. Overdose deaths from prescription opioids have roughly quadrupled over 2 decades, in near lockstep with increased prescribing. And many researchers see hyperalgesia as a part of that equation—a force that compels people to take more and more medication, while prolonging exposure to sometimes addictive drugs known to dangerously slow breathing at high doses. Separate from their pain-blocking interaction with receptors in the brain, opioids seem to reshape the nervous system to amplify pain signals, even after the original illness or injury subsides. Animals given opioids become more sensitive to pain, and people already taking opioids before a surgery tend to report more pain afterward. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Scienc
By Viviane Callier Bees don’t just recognize flowers by their color and scent; they can also pick up on their minute electric fields. Such fields—which form from the imbalance of charge between the ground and the atmosphere—are unique to each species, based on the plant’s distance from the ground and shape. Flowers use them as an additional way to advertise themselves to pollinators, but until now researchers had no idea how bees sensed these fields. In a new study, published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers used a laser vibrometer—a tiny machine that hits the bee hair with a laser—to measure how the hair on a bee’s body responds to a flower’s tiny electric field. As the hair moves because of the electric field, it changes the frequency of the laser light that hits it, allowing the vibrometer to keep track of the velocity of motion of the hair. When the bees buzzed within 10 centimeters of the flower, the electric field—like static electricity from a balloon—caused the bee’s hair to bend. This bending activates neurons at the base of bee hair sockets, which allows the insects to “sense” the field, the team found. Electric fields can only be sensed from a distance of 10 cm or so, so they’re not very useful for large animals like ourselves. But for small insects, this distance represents several body lengths, a relatively long distance. Because sensing such fields is useful to small animals, the team suspects this ability could be important to other insect species as well. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 22263 - Posted: 05.31.2016
by Bruce Bower For a landmark 1977 paper, psychologist Andrew Meltzoff stuck his tongue out at 2- to 3-week-old babies. Someone had to do it. After watching Meltzoff razz them for 15 seconds, babies often stuck out their own tongues within the next 2½ minutes. Newborns also tended to respond in kind when the young researcher opened his mouth wide, pushed out his lips like a duck and opened and closed the fingers of one hand. Meltzoff, now at the University of Washington in Seattle, and a colleague were the first to report that babies copy adults’ simple physical deeds within weeks of birth. Until then, most scientists assumed that imitation began at around 9 months of age. Newborns don’t care that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. For them, it may be a key to interacting with (and figuring out) those large, smiley people who come to be known as mommy and daddy. And that’s job number one for tykes hoping to learn how to talk and hang out with a circle of friends. Meltzoff suspected that babies enter the world able to compare their own movements — even those they can feel but not see, such as a projecting tongue — to corresponding adult actions. Meltzoff’s report has inspired dozens of papers on infant imitation. Some have supported his results, some haven’t. A new report, published May 5 in Current Biology, falls in the latter group. The study of 106 Australian babies tracked from 1 to 9 weeks of age concludes that infants don’t imitate anyone. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 201
Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 22246 - Posted: 05.25.2016
By Ian Randall As if you needed another reason to hate the gym, it now turns out that exercise can exhaust not only your muscles, but also your eyes. Fear not, however, for coffee can perk them right up again. During strenuous exercise, our muscles tire as they run out of fuel and build up waste products. Muscle performance can also be affected by a phenomenon called “central fatigue,” in which an imbalance in the body’s chemical messengers prevents the central nervous system from directing muscle movements effectively. It was not known, however, whether central fatigue might also affect motor systems not directly involved in the exercise itself—such as those that move the eyes. To find out, researchers gave 11 volunteers a carbohydrate solution either with a moderate dose of caffeine—which is known to stimulate the central nervous system—or as a placebo without, during 3 hours of vigorous cycling. After exercising, the scientists tested the cyclists with eye-tracking cameras to see how well their brains could still control their visual system. The team found that exercise reduced the speed of rapid eye movements by about 8%, impeding their ability to capture new visual information. The caffeine—the equivalent of two strong cups of coffee—was sufficient to counteract this effect, with some cyclists even displaying increased eye movement speeds, the team reports today in Scientific Reports. So it might be a good idea to get someone else to drive you home after that marathon. © 2016 American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Link ID: 22243 - Posted: 05.25.2016
By Jessica Hamzelou People who experience migraines that are made worse by light might be better off seeing the world in green. While white, blue, red and amber light all increase migraine pain, low-intensity green light seems to reduce it. The team behind the finding hope that specially developed sunglasses that screen out all wavelengths of light except green could help migraineurs. Many people experience sensitivity to light during a migraine. Photophobia, as it is known, can leave migraineurs resorting to sunglasses in well-lit rooms, or seeking the comfort of darkness. The reaction is thought to be due to the brain’s wiring. In a brain region called the thalamus, neurons that transmit sensory information from our retinas cross over with other neurons that signal pain. As a result, during migraine, light can worsen pain and pain can cause visual disturbance, says Rami Burstein at Harvard University. But not all colours of light have the same effect. Six years ago, Burstein and his colleagues studied migraine in sufferers who are blind, either due to the loss of an eye or retina, or because of retinal damage. They found that people who had some remaining retinal cells had worse migraines when they were in brightly lit environments, and that blue light seemed to have the strongest impact. The finding caused a flurry of excitement, and the promotion of sunglasses that filter out blue light. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.
By D. T. Max When a spinal cord is damaged, location is destiny: the higher the injury, the more severe the effects. The spine has thirty-three vertebrae, which are divided into five regions—the coccygeal, the sacral, the lumbar, the thoracic, and the cervical. The nerve-rich cord traverses nearly the entire length of the spine. The nerves at the bottom of the cord are well buried, and sometimes you can walk away from damage to these areas. In between are insults to the long middle region of the spine, which begins at the shoulders and ends at the midriff. These are the thoracic injuries. Although they don’t affect the upper body, they can still take away the ability to walk or feel below the waist, including autonomic function (bowel, bladder, and sexual control). Injuries to the cord in the cervical area—what is called “breaking your neck”—can be lethal or leave you paralyzed and unable to breathe without a ventilator. Doctors who treat spinal-cord-injury patients use a letter-and-number combination to identify the site of the damage. They talk of C3s (the cord as it passes through the third cervical vertebra) or T8s (the eighth thoracic vertebra). These morbid bingo-like codes help doctors instantly gauge the severity of a patient’s injury. Darek Fidyka, who is forty-one years old, is a T9. He was born and raised in Pradzew, a small farming town in central Poland, not far from Lodz. ... Several of the wounds punctured his lungs, and one nearly cut his spinal cord in half. As Fidyka lay on the ground, he felt his body change. “I can remember very vividly losing feeling in my legs, bit by bit,” he says. “It started in the upper part of the spine and was moving down slowly while I lay waiting for the ambulance to arrive.”
Link ID: 22230 - Posted: 05.19.2016
A bionic body is closer than you think By Dwayne Godwin, Jorge Cham Dwayne Godwin is a neuroscientist at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Jorge Cham draws the comic strip Piled Higher and Deeper at www.phdcomics.com. © 2016 Scientific American
Link ID: 22222 - Posted: 05.17.2016
Dara Mohammadi As the small motorboat chugs to a halt, three travellers, wind-beaten from the three-hour journey along the Atrato river, step on to the muddy banks of Bellavista, an otherwise inaccessible town in the heart of the heavily forested north-west of Colombia. They swing their hessian bags – stuffed with bedsheets, dried beans and cuddly toys – to their shoulders and clamber up a dusty path. Tucked inside the bag of one of the travellers, neuropsychologist Sonia Moreno, is the reason they are here: a wad of unfinished, hand-drawn charts of family trees. The people whose names are circled on the charts have Huntington’s disease, an incurable genetic brain disorder that usually starts between the ages of 35 and 45 years. It begins with personality changes that can make them aggressive, violent, uninhibited, anxious and depressed. The disease progresses slowly, robbing them first of the control of their body, which jerks and twists seemingly of its own will, and then their ability to walk, talk and think until, about 20 years after the symptoms first begin, they die. Their children, each of whom has a 50% chance of inheriting the disease, watch and wait to see if it will happen to them. It is in this way that the disease strangles families. With Moreno is Ignacio Muñoz-Sanjuan, vice president of translational biology at CHDI Foundation, a US nonprofit research organisation that aims to find ways to prevent or slow down the progression of the disease. The foundation spent $140m–$150m (£97m-£104m) on research last year, but Muñoz-Sanjuan is not here on official business. He’s here for Factor-H, an initiative he founded four years ago to help with the other end of the problem – poor families with Huntington’s struggling in Latin America. © 2016 Guardian News and Media Limited o | <urn:uuid:d61a4b1b-3287-422d-b5e3-ea66332f8b22> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.biopsychology.com/news/index.php?descType=always&id=5&type=mmchapter&page=0&book=MM | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00054-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962312 | 7,269 | 3.53125 | 4 |
Codiaeum variegatum – or the croton plant – is a single species within the small codiaeum genus, and belongs to the euphorbiaceae family. This species, which is sometimes known as the garden croton, is sometimes confused with large croton genus that belongs to the same clan. Native to areas of Indonesia, India, Malaysia and Sri Lanka, these colorful evergreen shrubs grow their best in shifting sunlight and rich, acidic soil. This plant is best known for the variety of colors and shapes of its foliage, which can range from deep green and broad to a light, slender-shaped red. They may also appear in a golden yellow, orange, or dark purple; however, some varieties may be variegated or even change hue over time. These plants also contain long, dioecious racemes of inflorescences – the female blossoms being yellow and without petals, while the males have five petals, several stamens and are a bright white color.
Because of its general hardiness and ease of care, the croton plant has become one of the most well loved houseplants available. This plant is so loved, in fact, that a non-profit organization called The Croton Society holds a number of seminars, meetings and even field trips. These well-planned events are done in the hopes of educating the public about this shrub, and helping fellow gardeners grow, breed and improve upon the species. Aside from being a uniquely colorful houseplant, crotons are also thought to have some potent medicinal qualities. Although these plants are considered toxic, if ingested in small quantities while under the supervision of a qualified professional, they are said to contain a host of promising actions – from anti-fungal to purgative, antioxidant to sedative. Some studies have suggested that the croton may also be useful as an anti-amoebic, and may also help in fending off the flu virus. Traditional folk medicine in the Philippines states that the freeze-dried foliage of the croton plant can make for an excellent curative for stomach upsets; while in Vanuatu, fresh leaves are often chewed to help treat amenorrhea.
Although the croton plant in and of itself does not contain any specific symbolism, it is not hard to associate it with strength and a unique, ever-changing beauty. As a gift, these plants are frequently given to new home owners – usually as a welcome present. However, they may also be presented to someone with something of a black thumb, as these shrubs are not only lovely, but very easy to care for.
Croton Plant Pictures
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Leave a Reply | <urn:uuid:0bda82fa-08bf-4e67-8683-deed3ef594b4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://flowerinfo.org/Croton-Plant | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403826.29/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00152-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963143 | 573 | 3.109375 | 3 |
How much water have you used today? It may be more than you think.
On March 22, join the United Nations and individuals across the world in celebrating the 19th annual World Water Day.
According to the U.N., the day is meant to focus "attention on the importance of freshwater and advocating for the sustainable management of freshwater resources."
As the infographic below shows, hundreds of millions of people lack access to clean water, while some of the most common products and services we use every day require hundreds, if not thousands, of gallons of water to exist.
The message on World Water Day may be clear, but the figures cited below can vary. For example, in 2008, the EPA stated that an average family may actually use up to 400 gallons of water daily. In terms of meat production, PETA suggested that it really takes "more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat."
One thing is certain, however. The proportion of people lacking access to clean water has dropped in recent years. The U.N. announced this week that it met its 2015 safe drinking water goals five years in advance. 11 percent of the world population still lacks access to clean water, but the number of individuals has dropped to 783 million, according to the Associated Press.
Yet the struggle for clean water is far from over. UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said in a statement, "Every day more than 3,000 children die from diarrheal diseases. Achieving this goal will go a long way to saving children's lives."
Matt Damon and Gary White, co-founders of water.org, blogged for HuffPost, "Instead of viewing this [problem] as an ocean of people with their hands out waiting for charity-driven solutions, what if we see many of them, or even most of them, as potential customers." They suggest that microfinance and its "democratizing" effect on "access to capital" may help address world water and sanitation problems. | <urn:uuid:e15a1b59-e692-487d-b34d-f0c88a10e008> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/22/world-water-day-2012-infographic_n_1367394.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00111-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95277 | 413 | 3.515625 | 4 |
Astronomers may have, for the first time, directly imaged a planet still in the process of formation, gathering material from a debris disk surrounding its parent star.
First: Holy Haleakala!
Second: note the use of the word "may". It looks to me like it’s real, though.
Third: Oh, you want to see the picture? Well, let me do the honors:
The alleged planet, called LkCa 15b, is the blue spot in the image. The red shows material which is most likely accumulating onto the planet itself, building up its mass. The central star isn’t seen in this image because its light has been blocked out so the fainter material near it can be seen. The star’s position is marked by the star icon.
The image is in the infrared, taken using the monster Keck telescope in Hawaii. What’s shown in red is light at a wavelength of 3.7 microns (roughly five times what the human eye can see) and blue is from 2.1 microns, about three times what we can see. Warm material around the star is best seen at these wavelengths. If this is a planet, it’s at a temperature of about 500 – 1000 K (440° – 1340° F), and has a mass roughly six times that of Jupiter, or about 2000 times the Earth’s mass.
So is it a planet? Read More | <urn:uuid:5ba7c160-6b46-49e8-bc39-9a5aa6d34c84> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/tag/tkca-15b/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00097-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926829 | 306 | 3.53125 | 4 |
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This month I am participating in a Ready for Kindergarten Blog Book Study. As part of the book study, I was sent a free copy of Ready for Kindergarten! by Deborah Stewart to read and share with you! All opinions expressed in this post are mine.
Starting Kindergarten is really exciting, but it can also be a bit overwhelming or stressful if you aren't completely sure that your child is ready to go!
Ready for Kindergarten! by Deborah J. Stewart is a book that was created to give you the tools you need to help your child prepare for kindergarten and feel confident that they are ready!
The book shares simple tips so that you can make your child's pre-kindergarten year successful. You can read more about what is included in the book over on Teach Preschool's Ready for Kindergarten page. Each blogger participating in the book study will feature a portion of the book on their blog along with some play-based activities related to their topic. You can find all of the book study posts over at Teach Preschool.
Part 1 of Ready for Kindergarten talks about the importance of kids building strength from their fingers to their toes. Fine-motor skills, large-motor skills, and self-help skills "all take time, patience, and opportunity to develop fully but all are essential components of kindergarten success." (p13)
Today for my portion of the Book Study I am going to share about Chapter 3: Large-Motor Movement Skills... and specifically Ball Handling Skills.
Ball handling skills can be integrated into playful activities and are really important for helping kids feel physically and socially confident as they start school and participate in a variety of games that require the use of balls.
In Ready for Kindergarten! Deborah mentions that kids entering kindergarten "should demonstrate a basic ability and knowledge of what it means to roll, throw, toss, bounce, and kick a ball." She also indicates that you can help your child develop ball handling skills by introducing them to several different types of activities that use balls. In her book she shares several simple ball handling activities to try.
Here are a few activities that we've done that can help your child work on ball handling skills too...
Play kickball bowling.
Grab some bowling pins and a kickball or soccer ball... and just kick down the pins! The further you stand back, the harder it is and the more you need to concentrate and aim.
Regular bowling is totally fun (and great for teaching ball-handling skills too)... but getting to kick down the pins is even cooler. I think I need to work on this more. My 5 year old was way better than me.
Play Color Match & Bounce
We love making up new games. This one requires colorful paper, painters tape, at least two people, and a ball.
All you do is tape pieces of colored paper all over your floor- in pairs. Two yellows, two reds, etc. Make sure the papers are spread at least 3-4 feet from one another.
To play, have the child holding the ball jump on a colored paper. The other child has to run and go find the paper that matches and jump on that color. Then the child holding the ball bounces the ball to the other child...that child catches it... and then bounces it back. Once that happens, the next child runs to a different colored rectangle... the other child runs to jump on the matching colored paper, and they bounce the ball again to one another. This game goes on and on as they take turns picking the colored paper to jump on and then bouncing the ball to one another.
Notice we snuck some color recognition/matching into this activity too... which is talked about in Chapter 10 of Deborah's book... and some turn taking/social skills, talked about in Chapter 7.
Have a Number Toss
For this activity you can use the same colored cards from the color match activity... but just grab a Sharpie and write a number on each paper. You need at least two people to have a number toss.
To toss means to throw lightly or casually. We emphasized tossing in this game... not catching, though my son enjoyed practicing catching as well.
To play each player needs to run around and quickly choose a number card to stand on. Once chosen, they need to yell their number so that their partner can hear it! (for example in this photo my son yelled 3!!) For kids who are ready for it, they can them work together to add the two numbers together. (ex. My son was on 3, I was on 5... we added them together and got 8!)
Once the numbers are yelled (and/or added together) then one player tosses the ball to the other player. Then the other player tosses the ball back. If they catch the ball it is an added bonus! Then they race again to go find a new different number to stand on and yell it out again... and repeat!
In this activity we managed to sneak in some number recognition and counting too! My 5 year old wanted to play this all afternoon! He loves math and tossing the ball with me.
Roll that red ball...
Do you know the roll that red ball song? If not, learn it and sing it while you play. Rolling is great for teaching kids turn-taking skills, concentration, and hand-eye coordination.
Make a ball cone (and run around the room)
This activity combines some ball handling skills and balancing too... which are both important large-motor skills. We used a plastic orange cone and a ball. If you don't have an orange cone you can staple a piece of paper into a cone shape. It was so fun to do!
Developing large-motor skills are just one of the many ways you can get your child ready for kindergarten!
To discover more ways to help get your child off on the right foot and feel prepared for kindergarten, I recommend checking out Deborah Stewart's book Ready for Kindergarten!
I really enjoyed reviewing Deborah's book and found many great tips and simple activities to try. As a mom of three little ones, I don't have loads of time to do complicated things. I really appreciate the simple and useful suggestions and activities that Deborah shares in her book. In addition to the large-motor skills section, I especially loved Chapter 7 which emphasized becoming part of a community of learners. Often parents get so focused on the academic components of getting their kids ready for school that they neglect how critical social skills and the ability to follow rules are for kindergarten success. These skills, and many others that Deborah shares, help kids be prepared to become part of a community of learners once they start school and make their classroom a place where learning can happen!
Ready for Kindergarten! is a great resource for parents, educators, and other caregivers. It is not just for those who have kids who are in preschool and pre-kindergarten. I wish I would've had this book to read when my son was a toddler. It would have made me feel far less stressed out about kindergarten and would have made me feel more confident.
If you want to learn more about the book and check out the posts by the other Blog Book Study participants, head over to Teach Preschool. You can also buy your own copy of Ready for Kindergarten! on Amazon using my affiliate link.
Do you have a child entering kindergarten soon? Do you feel like he/she is ready?
What other ball activities do you like to do with your kids? You can find some of our favorite ball activities here.
Disclosure: I was given a free copy of Ready for Kindergarten to review. It rocks. I definitely think you should get a copy for yourself. All opinions in this post are mine! | <urn:uuid:dc21297c-26a9-4dd8-b7ae-2078e5239dc4> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.toddlerapproved.com/2013/08/ready-for-kindergarten-book-study-ball.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397565.80/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00184-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960122 | 1,620 | 2.5625 | 3 |
What is Profit?
Profit is basically defined as revenue minus costs. It is
the difference between how much the business gets from selling its
product and the amount it spent.
We will look at the profit and loss account (formally called the trading
and profit and loss account) and see how businesses calculate profit.
This account looks at a business over a period of time, usually
Revenue is the income of the business. When we look at the profit
and loss account, we usually call it sales or turnover.
A simple definition of revenue is:
Revenue = Price x Quantity
In other words, the value of the sales made by a business is equal
to the price of its product multiplied by the number sold. If a hairdresser
charged £11.00 for a haircut and sold 7 haircuts, her revenue
would be £77.00.
Also known as expenses, this is the money the business spends
on a variety of things. We focus on two types of costs - cost
of sales and overhead costs.
Cost of sales refers to how much was spent actually making
the product and focuses on the direct physical inputs (e.g. the
bricks and cement needed to build a house). These can be thought
of as direct or variable costs - as the business produces
more, it will have to raise its spending in these areas. Revenue
minus cost of sales is known as gross profit.
Overhead costs refers to other costs associated with business
activity such as wages, phone bills, etc. They are all important items
that are needed if production is to take place but they are not actual
raw materials or inputs. These are often referred to as indirect
or fixed costs - if production increases, these costs may
remain unchanged or increase slightly (depending upon the extent of
the increase in production). Revenue minus cost of sales and overhead
costs is net profit.
More, More, More
If revenue is greater than costs, the business is making a profit.
If, however, costs are greater than revenue, the business is making
Businesses want more profit as it can be used to expand the business
(see internal sources of finance) or to reward owners/shareholders.
There are two ways of increasing profit:
Both are perhaps more easily said than done and managers face tough
decisions if they are to achieve either of these effectively.
- Increase revenue
- Decrease costs
How will the quantity of products you sell change if you cut your
price? Will consumers rush to buy more as you are cheaper than your
competitors? Will they carry on buying the same quantity? Will they
see your product as cheap and inferior and buy less?
Will an advertising campaign targeted at a particular market segment
boost sales? What will be the effect on overheads?
|What might happen if you cut the pay of your employees?
What would be the effect if you made some redundant? Would efficiency
change if you stopped improving the technology you use? How might
your customers react if you bought cheaper raw materials? Can your
business afford not to run a website?
|As you can see, taking the decisions needed to boost
profit can be difficult and each choice will present possible undesirable
consequences. We can use the profit and loss account to focus on the
activities of the business and consider what might be causing problems
and what could be done to solve them.
Uses of Profit
Once a business has made a profit, it can be used for three different
- Payment of taxation - a sole trader or partnership will pay
income tax on net profit made. A limited company will pay corporation
tax. This is, of course, a legal requirement.
- Payment of owners/shareholders - sole traders and partners can
claim profit in the form of drawings. Shareholders can be paid
- Retained profit - the business can use the profit to finance
future activities such as expansion, marketing, etc or it can
save it as a reserve for a 'rainy day.' | <urn:uuid:a5aa092a-5975-4b76-b2ac-a394e841d67b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://teachersnetwork.org/teachnet-lab/london/dsalbstein/profit/profit.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393518.22/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00171-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950286 | 851 | 3.71875 | 4 |
Hit the road.
Dear Word Detective: The phase “to wend one’s [merry] way” has a meaning which appears obvious — kinda. What does the verb “to wend” actually mean and can you “wend” anything other than your way? I hope you can help; I’ve not slept all day worrying about that one. — Andy.
Hi, Andy. Your boss has asked me to ask you to stop by his office before you leave for the day. Apparently the new pillow you ordered has arrived.
It’s true that “wend” is rarely found today outside the form “wend [one’s] way,” and even then it’s almost always used in a jocular or sarcastic sense (“Jones, perhaps this afternoon you could wend your way back to your desk and do some actual work”). When words come to be used only in such fixed phrases, it’s usually a sign that we’re dealing with a linguistic fossil, as in the case of “deserts” in “just deserts,” derived from the French “deservir,” meaning “to deserve.” This “deserts,” meaning “appropriate reward,” was once common in English, but today is heard almost only in that fixed phrase. (Incidentally, “desert,” the very empty place, comes from the Latin “deserere,” meaning “to abandon,” and “dessert,” post-dinner sweets, comes from the French word “disservir,” meaning “to clear the table.”)
“Wend” is just such a fossil, but, as we shall see, it has some very lively relatives. The source of “wend” is the ancient Germanic root “wand,” meaning “to turn,” which also gave us “wander” (to walk while turning this way and that), “wand” (originally a flexible, easily “turned” stick), and “wind” (to gather up by turning). In Old English, “wend” originally meant “to turn” or “turn over,” and acquired a variety of figurative meanings, ranging from “to change one’s mind” to “to translate” (to “turn” from one language to another) to “to die” (“to wend away”).
By the 13th century, however, “wend” was more often being used to mean “to go or journey in a certain way or direction,” and enjoyed a brief heyday as a popular verb in this sense. But “to wend” was always in competition with “to go,” and eventually “go” won out as the more common verb, leaving “wend” to the poets. “Wend” in fact, nearly disappeared between 1600 and 1800, when it was resurrected in the fixed phrase “to wend one’s way.”
But a final indignity awaited “wend.” Its past tense and participle forms were originally “wende” and “wended” or “wend,” but by around 1200 “wente” and “went” became popular in those roles. But when “wend” began to fade from use around 1500, the word “went” was gradually adopted as the past tense form of “to go” (which is how we use “went” today). From that point on, people who wanted to use “wend” in the past tense had to use “wended,” which is nowhere near as cool as the “went” hijacked by “go.” But, in language as in life, to the victors go (not, you’ll notice, “wend”) the spoils.
Flatfoot Jack and the Fuzz Brigade.
Dear Word Detective: If you were able to get to the bottom of this one you would deserve a medal! In Australia, at least, and, I think, elsewhere, the police are referred to by criminals and other elements of society as “the Jacks.” Long hours of searching and asking questions of other sites has produced exactly zero. How can this be, when the word is so consistently used across the board? Perhaps if you cannot answer my first question, you can answer my second. — Aliki Pavlou
Medal, schmedal. Just send me one of those kangaroo things and a dozen sheep. The roo can do the dishes and the sheep can mow the lawn. They would also give Brownie the Dog (who claims to be part Border Collie) something more tractable to herd than the cats she’s been working with.
“Jacks” as slang for “police” is indeed common in the UK as well as in Australia, but virtually unknown in the US, although “Jacks” may have a close relative in US slang.
To begin at the beginning, “Jack” is what linguists call a hypocoristic (affectionate or “short”) form of the name “John,” derived from the French form of John, “Jacques.” As a slang term, “Jack” has assembled an impressive range of meanings, from “to jack up” (to increase, from the use of “jack” as a mock-personal name for a lifting mechanism) to “jack” meaning “nothing” (as in the eloquent double-negation “You don’t know jack about cars.”).
“Jack” as also been used, since at least the 16th century, as a stand-in for “the common man” or “a fellow,” as in “every man Jack needs a job.” The slang use of “Jack” specifically to mean “police officer” dates to the late 19th century (“A couple of men who were in plain clothes in the tap-room of a public-house, and were suspected by the ‘gaffer’ of being ‘Jacks’,” 1899).
This use of “Jack” to mean “police” seems to have been derived, again as a “short form,” from the use of “John” also as slang for “policeman,” and here things get interesting. This “John” was itself short for “John Darme” a joking Anglicization of “gendarme,” French for “police officer.” So “John Darme” became “John,” which became “Jack” as slang for “cop.”
But wait, it gets better. At least in Australia and New Zealand, “John Hop” was once also slang for “police” via rhyming slang, an underworld “secret language” where the phrase spoken rhymes with the hidden meaning. “John Hop,” of course, rhymes with, and signifies, “cop.” A contraction of “John Hop” (“jonnop”) is still current Australian slang for “police.”
In the US, “John” as slang for “cop” crops up only in “John Law” as the personification of the police and legal system (“We go mooching along the drag, with a sharp lamp out for John Law,” Jack London, 1906). It is possible that “John Law” harks back to the “John Darme” joke, but it may simply spring from the use of “John” in the US since the late 18th century as a personification of the average fellow (“John Q. Public,” etc.), a role now more often filled by “Joe” (as in “Joe Sixpack”).
Looking for the real fake.
Dear Word Detective: I just ran across your own old query about “fugazy.” In case it hasn’t been cleared up, see the Wikipedia entry, second paragraph. — Thomas.
Golly, has it been ten years already? Time flies when I haven’t a clue. Well, I guess it’s time for one of those “The story so far” things.
Back in 1997, I was writing a weekly column called “City Slang” for the New York Daily News, and my editor, a genially deranged specimen named Jack, had frequent opinions about what words I should explore. One day, Jack went to see the movie “Donnie Brasco,” and noticed a scene in which Johnny Depp, playing an undercover FBI agent infiltrating the mob, tells Al Pacino that a diamond Al is trying to fence is “fugazy,” by which Depp’s character means “fake.” I think Jack may actually have left the theater at that point to call and let me know my next column would be about “fugazy.”
Fast forward a few days, and I had seen the movie myself and talked to everyone I know who might know the term, including cops, experts on the Mafia, and people actually “connected” to the mob. No dice. The only “fugazy” anyone knew was Fugazy Continental, a local limousine rental firm famous for its cheesy commercials in the 1970s and 80s (and now its cheesy website at www.contlimo.com). There were, however, several internet sites that claimed the term was actually US GI slang from the Vietnam War and, properly spelled “fugazi,” an acronym for “Fouled Up (actual expletive scrubbed), Got Ambushed, Zipped In (into a body bag), the worst-case result of a bad firefight. There was also, it turned out, a punk band called Fugazi that cited the supposed GI slang term as the inspiration for its name (as reported on the Wikipedia page you mention). But the GI term, even if legitimate slang (several combat vets wrote me to say they’d never heard it), did not match the sense of “phony” the word carried in the Donnie Brasco script. And the earliest use of “fugazi” in print found so far is from 1980, long after Vietnam.
I reported all this and asked for help from my readers, and over the past ten years I have received emails with tidbits of information and possible sources, but no clear path to “fugazy” (or “fugazi”). Many folks suggested it might be related to the Italian “fugace,” meaning “ephemeral,” but the linguistic “form factors” aren’t quite right. On the other hand, it may have been filtered through Sicilian dialect and its form modified in the process. On the third hand (this is giving me a headache), some of the people connected to the film have said that they simply made up the word, meaning that “fugazy” is a fake word for “fake.” But former FBI agent Joe Pistone, the real life “Donnie Brasco” on whose book the film is based, uses “fugazy” five times in his book, so that (and other testimony by Italian-American correspondents from Brooklyn over the years) indicates that it is real mob slang. So, after ten years, the “fugazy” picture is still clear as mud.
My personal hunch is that “fugazy” is a real mob slang term, and that it began as a mocking reference to the Fugazy Continental limousine service and its low-rent “look like a rich guy” ads. A smooth operator who picks up his date in a Fugazy limousine might impress her for an evening, but sooner or later she’ll realize it’s all an act. As someone who was subjected to Fugazy ads for years, I can certainly testify that I, at least, associated the word with “fake” long before “Donnie Brasco.” | <urn:uuid:0afaee1b-3f35-473f-8f2f-f6494aab079b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.word-detective.com/category/columns/february-2008/page/3/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395346.72/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00009-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974306 | 2,739 | 2.859375 | 3 |
Root maggots burrow through plants, making them susceptible to disease and in some cases causing them to wilt and die. Root maggots overwinter in the soil as larvae and pupate near the surface of the soil in the spring, using root crops like turnips for sustenance. Preventing root maggots from invading your turnips takes a combination of methods, beginning the season before you even plant the turnips. Knowing these methods will help keep your turnips healthy and safe.
Destroy all leftover plant material after harvest the season before planting your turnips. Any plant material you leave behind will carry the larvae through the winter to the next season.
Till your garden at least two weeks before planting. Weeds can also serve as a host for root maggots. Do not put fertilizer down at this time as the root maggots prefer organically rich soil.
Practice crop rotation. Choose an area as far away as possible from the spot where you had previously had a root maggot infestation to plant this year's turnip crop.
Place a layer of diatomaceous earth around each turnip plant early in the season. Diatomaceous earth is a coarse, sand-like material that prevents the female root maggots from laying eggs around the base of the turnip. Reapply the diatomaceous earth after each rain. You can purchase this product online or at most garden stores. | <urn:uuid:846e7022-e0a3-4387-a081-8c91c931d84a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.gardenguides.com/101676-prevent-root-maggots-turnips.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392527.68/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00021-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942095 | 292 | 3.453125 | 3 |
Impacts of Land Management on the Climate System
Nearly 27% of the earth’s land surface is covered by forest vegetation. Forests play a critical role in the earth’s climate system. Forest vegetation and soil affect the global carbon cycle by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthetic processes. Forest vegetation is also known to have higher evapotranspiration rates than other land cover types. Afforestation has been viewed as providing a mitigating effect to global warming because of the carbon uptake and enhanced cooling due to increased evapotranspiration. However, the cooling effects of removing greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and increasing evapotranspiration rates with expanding forest coverage are often compensated by the warming effect of decreased surface albedo values associated with more forest coverage. New research is needed to examine the potential impacts of land cover changes, including afforestation, on the climate system in order to provide the scientific basis for adopting land use decisions that are meant to mitigate global warming.
Using the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Community Climate System Model Version 3 (CCSM3) and the high performance computing environment established in the Eastern Area Modeling Consortium, we are developing global and regional climate scenarios that characterize the potential impacts of future land cover changes on the global climate system. Improved parameterizations of forest canopy optical properties (and associated albedo values) along with plausible scenarios of future land-use patterns developed by RWU NRS-06 scientists are being implemented in the CCSM3 to examine the sensitivity of surface temperatures, atmospheric moisture, and other climate variables to potential changes in forest coverage associated with afforestation efforts.
The research results from this study will improve our current understanding of how forests and changing regional forest coverage can impact the earth’s climate. The results will inform land managers and policy-makers on the potential impacts on the earth’s climate of using afforestation as a mitigation strategy to reduce carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.
- Warren E. Heilman, Research Meteorologist, US Forest Service Northern Research Station
- David Hollinger, Plant Physiologist, US Forest Service Northern Research Station
- Ken Clark, Research Forester, US Forest Service Northern Research Station
- Xindi Bian, US Forest Service Northern Research Station
- Richard Birdsey, Project Leader, US Forest Service Northern Research Station
- Yude Pan, Research Forester, US Forest Service Northern Research Station
- Sharon Zhong, Atmospheric Scientist, Michigan State University
- Xiuping Li, Visiting Scientist, Michigan State University
Last Modified: 07/24/2009 | <urn:uuid:02a8cbaa-6494-4fab-a1d8-c49810f78991> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us/disturbance/climate_change/land_cover_change/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395548.53/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00101-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.87919 | 535 | 3.453125 | 3 |
Zyklon B was used in Germany before and during the Second World War for disinfection and pest extermination in ships, buildings and machinery. In the Auschwitz concentration camp as well, it was used exclusively for sanitation and pest control until the summer of 1941. After the end of August 1941, Zyklon was used in the camp, first experimentally and then routinely, as an agent of mass annihilation. Zyklon B consisted of diatomite, in the form of granules the size of fine peas, saturated with prussic acid. In view of its volatility and the associated risk of accidental poisoning, it was supplied to the camp in sealed metal canisters.
The Zyklon used at Auschwitz concentration camp was produced by a firm called Degesch (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Schädlingsbekämpfung mbH), with headquarters in Frankfurt am Main and forming a part of IG Farbenidustrie AG.
The following is a scientific breakdown of Zyklon-B:
Hydrogen cyanide HCN, prussic acid, is a
chemical compound in the form of a powerfully poisonous, volatile
colorless liquid with the odor of bitter almonds. Prussic acid is
considered a battlefield poison agent. Its action depends on the
restraint of cellular respiration as a result of neutralizing the
respiratory enzymes. Prussic acid passes through the mucous
membranes and the skin, but principally through the lungs, into
the blood. It blocks the process by which oxygen is released from
red blood corpuscles and the result is a sort of internal
asphyxiation. This is accompanied by symptoms of injury to the
respiratory system, combined with a feeling of fear, dizziness | <urn:uuid:0861c308-c545-4bee-ac92-cf2a3972850a> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Zyklon.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398628.62/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00064-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.926198 | 366 | 3.078125 | 3 |
Turquoise Jewelry Made in America began with the Native American Indians located at Chaco Canyon in approximately 400 A.D., and possibly earlier. The Anasazi Indians had discovered and mined Turquoise at what we now know as the Conejos area of Colorado, at Cerrillos, in the Burro Mountains of New Mexico, and at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. The artisans carved the stone and used it to make beads and as a material for mosaic inlays for spiritual amulets. By 1000 A.D., Pueblo Bonito at Chaco Canyon had developed a major trade with Turquoise and as far away as Chichen Itza, which was the greatest Mayan City of those times located on the Yucatan Peninsula.
In the Southwestern region of North America the Native American Indians continued making Turquoise Jewelry which was traded amount Native Americans as well as to anglo traders that came across trade roots through Santa Fe and the Southwest. Atsidi Sani, a Navajo Blacksmith, learned how to make Silver Jewelry from the Spaniards between 1868-1870 and that is when Silver Turquoise Jewelry made in America, (Southwestern,) began. Turquoise Jewelry made in American has been a vigorous trade item since that date.
Turquoise Jewelry was also made by early settlers of the United States on the east coast. Turquoise Jewelry was being made in Europe long before they began migrating to America and the United States. Early European Jewelers brought Persian Turquoise with them and introduced it to the early American culture as early as the mid to late 1700's. Turquoise Jewelry made in Southwestern America is very special as American Turquoise is known as some of the finest Turquoise on earth.
Today, December 2012, Turquoise Jewelry made in America is becoming a minority of the Turquoise Jewelry being produced worldwide. Turquoise, being one of the first gemstones founded by mankind is now one of the top ten most popular gemstones on earth. Jewelry with Turquoise and imitation Turquoise is now in demand pretty much globally and it is being heavily produced in China, the Philippines, Viet Nam, Korea, Egypt, Jordan, Mexico and beyond, however, most of this Turquoise Jewelry has very little value other than for the fashion market due to inferior materials and craftsmanship. There is a market for this type of Jewelry but it should never be confused with quality Turquoise Jewelry made in America.
Turquoise Jewelry made in America has always been held sacred and dear to Americans as it is one of our greatest heritages. The great American Western Frontier is one of the most colorful and historical evolutions of the United States past and Turquoise Jewelry made in Southwestern America has played a wonderful roll throughout this period. From the early years when Turquoise was found by the Native American Indians to date, it has been held as a sacred, spiritual and metaphysical gemstone that is believed to be put on this earth by the great ones above. Native Americans, Tibetans, Egyptians and many other cultures agree in unison, health, happiness and good fortune is bestowed onto those who bear authentic, natural Turquoise.
Durango Silver Company produces high quality, authentic Turquoise Jewelry made in America. We are certain we have been blessed from our relationship with Turquoise, we feel it is our honour to offer American Turquoise Jewelry that has real value to our friends and customers. As we have been in this trade for generations, we have accumulated one of the worlds premier natural Turquoise collections which we use to create some of the finest Turquoise Jewelry coming out of the American Southwest today.
We invite you to check out the Turquoise Jewelry we have available by following the links to the left side of this page.
Above and to the left is a wonderful Turquoise Mens Ring created in Sterling Silver by John Hartman of Durango Silver Company, Durango Colorado USA. The spectacular Spiderweb Turquoise Gemstone is from our personal Tibetan Turquoise collection. This is high quality sacred Turquoise from Tibet and it is natural. The Silver design of this all American Ring is remarkable and timeless. To see additional photos of this Mens Turquoise Ring.
To the right is another Turquoise Ring made in America, again, by John Hartman, this is one of John's Victorian style designs. John is one of the premier Gold and Silversmiths from the American Southwest, his Silver Jewelry is collected worldwide and he has a historical past in the overall development of Native American Jewelry from the Southwest USA. Read more about John Hartman, his Jewelry, as well as one of his great acquisitions - Fort Defiance Trading Post. You can also see additional information on this particular Victorian Turquoise Ring by following this link and you can follow the next link to learn more about Turquoise Rings.
To the above are two all American made Turquoise Bracelets, to the left created by John Hartman and to the right created by John Hartman and Ben Yazzie. Both of these beautiful Turquoise Bracelets are made in America, the bracelet on the right shows you how John Hartman continues to influence the future development of Native American Jewelry. John designed this Bracelet and Ben Yazzie actually did the Silverwork based on John's instruction, you will see his influence by checking out his other pieces on the Durango Silver site - this is a Victorian motif! John has been designing for and with Native Americans for well over forty years. He is a master Jeweler and he has worked head to head with great marketing leaders from the past as well as the present. John's historic designs are seen throughout Southwestern Jewelry today as he has been prolific in the past development of Jewelry that has come from this region in the past.
To the above left are two pairs of quality Turquoise Earrings which are "quality Turquoise Jewelry made in America" - The Navajo Cluster earrings on the left were made by Navajo Artisan, Ben Yazzie and the pair on the right were made by John Hartman. Both of these pairs of earrings have beautiful Turquoise gemstones that were hand cut by Dillon Hartman of Durango Silver Co. On the left are natural Sleeping Beauty Turquoise and on the right are #8 waterweb Turquoise accented with Sugilite gemstones.
To the above left is a spectacular gemstone necklace that was made in America by John Hartman. This Gemstone Necklace features a beautiful spiderweb Royston Turquoise center stone that is accented by Sugilite, Spiny Oyster Shell and Gaspeite gemstones. The Silver work in in John's Victorian style which makes this a very colorful piece of Turquoise Jewelry made in America!
To the right is a beautiful Fox Turquoise Necklace set handmade by Ben Yazzi. Ben has been making Silver Jewelry for Durango Silver Company for years, he is a very talented Navajo Artisan that has sold his Native American handmade Jewelry to many famous people including Elvis Presley for over 40 years. Some of the most famous actors as well as musicians collect and wear Bens fine Turquoise Jewelry made in America.
To the above left is a beautiful Turquoise Pendant handmade by Crystal Hartman of Durango, Colorado USA. Crystal has been an American Artist since her childhood, from a little girl, Crystal drew, painted and created all types of very creative things. She went onto college to get a degree in art and now she is a multi talented artisan from the American Southwest and she creates great Turquoise Jewelry made in America. You can see more of Crystal's work and read more about Crystal Hartman on her website.
Above and to the right is a very nice Silver and Turquoise Belt Buckle handmade in Southwestern America by Navajo Artisan Richard Begay. Richard Begay did a wonderful job inlaying this western belt buckle. The overlay and saw work on this beautiful Sleeping Beauty blue Turquoise buckle is beautiful. This western belt buckle features a rectangular center stone of natural Sleeping Beauty Turquoise from Globe, Arizona USA. Richard has been making Navajo Silver Jewelry all of his life as his father did.
Learn more about Turquoise Jewelry Made in America and American Silver Jewelry by following the links in our Learning Center. In addition, we would like to invite you to join our E-Mail Newsletter - about once every other month we send out a Newsletter to inform our members of what's happening with Durango Silver Company, new products, specials for our members and more. We also have a monthly drawing from our member base to give away free Turquoise Jewelry from our company. Please take a moment to become one of our friends by signing in below.
We hope you have enjoyed our presentation on Turquoise Jewelry Made in America and have gained some useful knowledge from it.
All prices are in USD | <urn:uuid:6e745757-ea08-4bd8-9c9c-fb3630aa981f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.durangosilver.com/turquoise-jewelry-made-in-america.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783400031.51/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155000-00087-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965136 | 1,887 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Democracy in Education— Who Needs It?
If you fly over the prairies that stretch across the middle of the
United States, you see below the farms and municipalities neatly laid
out in townships composed of 36 sections, each a mile square. More than
two centuries ago, the U.S. Congress set apart Section 16 in each
township to support public schools. Out of the public domain thus
surveyed grew new territories and, then, state after state. In the
process, the United States became a massive republic composed of
smaller republics. As pioneers moved into the wilderness, they could
settle land where the federal government had already marked out
municipal boundaries and put aside resources to create and maintain
It all sounds very neat and preplanned, and indeed some histories portray the story of public education as the inevitable product of democracy and farsighted leaders. But it was by no means inevitable that Americans would create the most extensive array of public schools in the world. Why should citizens who were deeply distrustful of government, sometimes afraid of it, create government schools as essential to their model republic?
Puzzles abound in the story of democracy in education. Who was in charge? Not the federal government, which was a minor player until recently. The Founding Fathers had a design for creating new states and financing public schools, but the U.S. Constitution did not even mention education. A federal office of education didn't even appear until 1867, and then was puny in size and functions. From time to time, reformers have proposed an activist role for the federal government, but not until 1954 did the U.S. Supreme Court begin its momentous impact on schooling through its landmark decisions on civil rights and civil liberties. Liberals had to wait until the 1960s to break the logjam preventing large-scale federal aid to public schools. Today, although candidates vie to become the "education president," federal programs account for only about 7 percent of public school revenues (and conservatives in Congress think even that is too much money and control).
State governments have long been legally responsible for public education within their boundaries, but their influence has been muted. Even the most famous early state superintendents, leaders like Horace Mann and Henry Barnard, had little power beyond persuasion and faced periodic threats to abolish their offices. As late as 1890, the average state department of education had only two employees, including the superintendent, and very little power to enforce laws or regulations. In the 19th century, Americans kept rewriting their state constitutions to prevent elected and appointed state officials from doing mischief. Not until the 20th century did state governments gain modest powers to legislate and monitor bureaucratic standards, usually of the sort that professional educators lobbied to install.
If both federal and state governments were minor players in controlling and financing schools until relatively recent times, who did that work? Mostly it was officials in local districts, and this generally was what citizens wanted. Both in the past and in the present (as Gallup polls show) Americans have trusted local school boards to make educational decisions far more than they trusted federal or state officials. Everyday citizens tended to agree that the best politics of education was local politics.
Although most citizens have approved of local control, in the 20th century most elite reformers have not. These professional leaders wanted to dampen, not increase, lay participation in democratic decisionmaking. They believed that professional experts knew what was best for children. For that reason, they wanted to centralize and buffer educational decisionmaking rather than leave it to local citizens. From time to time, innovators have even called for the abolition of school districts and their elected trustees. Who needs democracy of that sort? they asked. They did not abandon the rhetoric of democracy, but they redefined what it meant.
Before analyzing these re-visions of democratic governance, I'd like to revisit the origins and consequences of local control in the 19th century.
Choosing Democratic Governance. Without a system of local control by elected trustees in the 19th century, this country might not have created the most comprehensive and popular system of public education in the world. It was hardly inevitable that government schools would trump private ones in the 19th century. A competitive, entrepreneurial spirit among educators had created a healthy private education sector by 1850, much of this fueled by repeated religious revivals. We might have ended up with a miscellaneous collection of public and private and sectarian and proprietary schools, an open marketplace of schools in which no one variety would predominate.
Instead, the public school triumphed. The U.S. Census defined a public school as an institution managed by public authorities, with instruction by publicly selected teachers, taking place in a public schoolhouse. By 1890, about nine in 10 students were enrolled in such an institution. At that time, there were still differences of opinion and practice about what constituted a "public" or "private" school, but hybrids were becoming much less frequent than a half-century earlier. The common school had become the school common to most American children.
Why did this happen? One set of reasons has to do with demography and geography: The population was highly scattered; one-room schools dotted the land. A single common school serving each rural neighborhood made economic sense in an era when roads were poor and transportation rudimentary, and when the local citizens paid for local schooling mostly out of their own pockets, through taxes. Because of the separation of church and state, most Protestant denominations were willing to support a common school and to suspend their sectarian quarrels at the schoolhouse door. Americans disestablished the church, but partially established the public school in its place.
But who was to run these schools? In most places, the answer was neighbors elected to do the job. Under American local control, school trustees constituted the most numerous class of public officials in the world; in some states, there were as many as 45,000 local school trustees, often outnumbering teachers. Decentralized governance addressed public distrust of government by putting the school and its trustees everywhere under the eye and thumb of the citizens. This provided democracy in education, meaning self-rule by elected representatives of the people. Communities were able to retain collective decisions about schooling—who would teach, how much schools would cost, and what kind of instruction to offer. If district voters disagreed with school trustees, they could elect others.
The one-room school was not only a place for children to learn the three R's. The process of making collective decisions face to face reflected the belief that governance should be close to hand and transparent. When citizens decided issues this way, they could show youth how self-rule operated in education and thus contribute to the civic education of the next generation. Education in democracy was partly a matter of book learning; a similar pedagogy of republicanism and political ideology permeated textbooks in American history, for example. But education in democracy also took place in the public life that swirled about the common school and taught the young how self-rule worked (or did not).
In state constitutions, in Fourth of July speeches, and in the rhetoric of political conventions, Americans reiterated a conviction that representative government required educated citizens. It was part of a national ideology, but in education governance, the action took place mostly at the local level. School trustees had to settle matters both mundane and eternal, both Bible reading and leaky roofs. In the 19th century, local majority rule decided many issues that later would be adjudicated by the courts or set by state legislatures (say, about Bible reading or the use of foreign languages). There was little chance that state statutes would be enforced if local citizens disagreed. "Laws on education particularly require neighborly harmony for effectiveness," wrote an observer in 1897. "The coerced minority today is liable to become the tyrannic majority tomorrow."
Questioning Lay Control. Local control by elected school committees set a democratic stamp on public education, but policy elites at the turn of the 20th century complained that the rural school trustees gave local citizens just what they wanted: schooling that was cheap, that reflected local notions of morality and useful learning, and that gave employment to local teachers who fit in well with the community. Leaders like Stanford University professor Ellwood P. Cubberley denounced local control by district trustees as "democracy gone to seed." How could penny-pinching and provincial rural trustees prepare youth for modern society? he asked.
The easiest way to curb the influence of school trustees in these rural communities was to abolish as many districts as possible—or, euphemistically, to consolidate them. This idea was very popular among educational leaders, who wanted more professional autonomy and desired to give children an education that fit their "scientific" modern standards. But consolidation was very unpopular in communities about to lose their one-room schools and local control. In the 20th century, about nine in 10 one-room schools were eliminated along with their district boards.
Elite reformers also believed that in urban districts too many of the wrong people ran things, pointing especially to corrupt machine politicians and immigrants who wanted the schools to respect their cultures and to hire their daughters. How could urban schools become efficient and professional with all these foxes in the chicken coops? Besides, the central urban school committees were far too large and delegated decisions to subcommittees of trustees rather than to the experts. Worse, many cities still retained ward boards that were relics of the old decentralized district system.
Depoliticization in city systems meant radically reducing the size of city school boards. The administrative reformers were remarkably successful in eliminating ward school boards in large cities and in cutting the size of school boards in large cities. The average number of school board members dropped from 21 to seven in the three decades from 1890 to 1920. These political moves, accomplished largely by statutes and charters obtained from state legislatures, concentrated power in the hands of the professional elite and their business and professional allies in school reform.
The solution to both rural and urban educational ills was to take the schools out of "politics," that is, to free them from the vagaries of elective office and the political representation of different social groups. Thus reformers like Cubberley wanted to abolish local trustees where possible, eliminate elected county superintendents, appoint rather than elect state superintendents, and everywhere to base decisionmaking on expertise rather than on political processes. Public participation in decisionmaking was quite unnecessary in such a sanitized system, other than the school board's approving the actions of the superintendent.
Many members of the policy elite in education believed that "democracy" should mean equality of opportunity as defined by the professional educator. The school, in Cubberley's view, was an "instrument of democracy" run by apolitical experts, with authority "in the hands of those who will really represent the interests of the children." Such leaders would be able to educate all children according to their abilities and destiny in life. The people owned the schools, but experts ran them, just as a corporate chief executive managed his firm. That was the new version of democracy in governance: a socially and economically efficient system that adapted schooling to different kinds of students, thereby guaranteeing equality of opportunity.
In the first half of the 20th century, who wanted or needed democracy in education? It depended on whom you asked. Rural citizens, whose children still constituted two-thirds of students in public schools in 1915, thought democracy should mean self-rule, and they fought consolidation. Administrative reformers like Cubberley had another view of the future: The public school was essential to the health of democracy, but expert administration should, over time, replace the messiness of school politics and render it a memory of the bad old days.
No amount of wishful thinking can transform the politics of education into objective administration, for schooling is and always has been intrinsically political. The question is not whether politics, but whose politics. Nonetheless, the administrative reformers in education at the beginning of this century were so successful in carrying out their blueprint for reform of governance that political scientists in the 1950s described public education as a "closed system" in which familiar actors like city and state superintendents and their lay boards worked within a zone of political consent that made decisionmaking predictable and consensual. Ellwood Cubberley would have felt at home.
Indeed, the policy preferences of the administrative reformers of 1910 became the conventional wisdom of educators for a half-century. Big districts and big schools, they said, were better than small ones. A centralized and specialized administrative structure was more efficient and accountable than a decentralized and simple one. Differentiation of the curriculum into several tracks and hundreds of electives generated greater equality of opportunity for the students of varied ability and for the different races and genders.
Today, reformers challenge all of these conventional beliefs. They argue that small schools are better, that big districts should be decentralized, that all students should be helped to meet the same high academic standards, that academic segregation of students into tracks limits their learning, and that schools can benefit from strong involvement of parents in educational reform.
The administrative reformers of 1910 believed that if schools did a good job and tended to their public relations, citizens would be satisfied and would not need to politicize issues. For a time, that strategy seemed to work, at least so long as the voices of outsiders were not heard. But in the last half-century, the history of school governance is in large part the story of efforts to breach the buffers erected around schools during the first half of the 20th century. Groups that were excluded or unfairly treated—for example, African-Americans, Latinos, the handicapped, women—have organized in social movements and have sought access and influence in public education. Besides employing traditional democratic beliefs and political strategies, these new voices have also expanded notions of democracy; they speak, for example, of cultural democracy, of equal respect and equal rights for all cultural groups.
The politics of education has never been more fluid and complicated than in recent years. As in earlier periods of contentiousness, some activists have sought escape from democracy (roughly equated with politics). This time, however, they do not seek to replace politics with expert administration. Indeed, they think public education already too bureaucratic, too constrained by regulations inflicted by special-interest groups. The solution, they say, is to replace politics with markets. Treating schooling as a consumer good and giving parents vouchers for the education of their children solves the problem of decisionmaking: Parents choose the schools that will be best for their children. The collective choices produced by democratic institutions produced bureaucracy and gridlock. The invisible hand of the market will lead the individual to the best personal choice. The market in education will satisfy and liberate families through competition.
But wait. Is education primarily a consumer good or a common good? If Thomas Jefferson, Horace Mann, or John Dewey were now to enter policy discussions on public education, he might well ask if Americans have lost their way. Democracy is about making wise collective choices. Democracy in education and education in democracy are not quaint legacies from a distant and happier time. They have never been more essential to wise self-rule than they are today.
Vol. 19, Issue 12, Page 42 | <urn:uuid:db51bc1f-c4f4-4927-8f60-586f6ff1c7db> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1999/11/17/12tyack.h19.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396147.66/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00056-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979774 | 3,120 | 3.453125 | 3 |
Mixing sound is an excellent way to edit the sounds of a film, and accentuate the mood of a project. There are a variety of mixing tools available for both professionals and amateurs to create excellent mixes to enhance the quality of their film productions. Regardless of type of mixer, most contain modules that will adjust for qualities such as pan position, equalization, and automation. Other functions, such as compression and inserts, are not always available on the main mixer. An example of this is the Recent platform, discussed in greater detail below. However, the lack of features on the main mixer is taken care of by extra modules available with the platform.
A common feature in mixing is called panning. Like all music editing techniques, it can have a great effect on the music. However, errors can always arise as a result of lack of attention to detail or by overdoing the effect. One common error is a shaky foundation to the background of the music. This is the result of skewed low and high frequencies. To avoid this, keep both low and high frequencies centralized, which will create stability.
In addition to sound problems created by panning, mixing problems created by an overuse of effects is extremely common. Overusing reverb is one of the most common effect-related problems. And while equalization can be used to help control the mixes (discussed later), like reverb, they can be used to the detriment of one’s musical creation. Fading, which is regularly employed at the beginnings or ends of musical tracks, can also be used poorly during the mixing process, contributing to the lack of quality in the piece. Of course, there are some problems that can occur outside of the mixing process, such as a poor quality of the initial recording. But despite the fact that these problems do not happen as the result of mixing, they can make the mixing process that much more difficult. Mixing is not a cure-all for a poor recording; there is only so much that can be done.
Another tool featured on most mixers is the 14:2 and 6:2 devices; these are secondary mixers that can be used to add more channels to a main mixer that does not have as many as required. Both of these secondary mixers include auxiliary sends, used to route a musical signal to different locations other than the main mixer. Normally, signals are sent to an effects device. Rerouting is most commonly used to achieve reverb and delay affects. Aux returns are then used to send the altered signals back to the main device. The rerouting process has limited use in digital mixing; however, as the use of effects devices can produce delays in the sound signal, distorting the sound quality.
The Reason platform, whose third version was released in 2005, has been noted for going beyond the traditional tools available on mixers, offering a wide range of effects for a musical creation. Although it takes on the traditional modular environment for digital music synthesis, it is extremely flexible in the ways it can be applied during mixing. One of these applications includes functioning as an individual production tool. One of the new features in version 3 is the addition of mastering processors; these will facilitate the mixing process. However, critics have noted that the instruments included in Reason do not have built-in special effects; they need to be imported from another source. This means that the user needs to rely on the extra modules for particular effects. Despite the need to use the modules, reviewers have expressed satisfaction with the wealth of effects available.
It has been noticed that Reason is capable of producing fat-sounding mixes. They accomplish this type of sound using compression and equalization tools. There are a wide range of sounds available with Reason, and inexperienced mixers can overdo the effects, distorting the sound. The equalization and compression features restrict the ranges in order to keep things under control. | <urn:uuid:e08130cc-ba62-4da6-80bc-6e546feb52a8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.partnersinrhyme.com/blog/audio-tutorials/how-to-produce-a-great-sound-mix-for-a-film-or-video/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396029.85/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00121-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966725 | 789 | 2.984375 | 3 |
California's power woes are worsening as power demands in the high-tech state continue to outpace supplies. Even with the help from out-of-state sources, millions are facing the possiblity of power outages. In the first few months of 2001, residents of California have already suffered through a series of stage 3 alerts, which almost always precede rolling blackouts across various areas of the state.
The scene on the streets and in buildings in California is becoming a very familiar scene on the nightly news. The lack of power paralyzes normal activity, with dead traffic lights creating traffic jumbles, and schools and businesses grinding to a halt. This crisis has been gripping the state for months, but has been building for years.
With the hottest months of the year ahead, the power crisis in California is far from over, the state expects rolling blackouts to continue until utilities can increase the power supply or buy more power from outside sources. In this edition of HowStuffWorks, we will take a look at one of the worst energy crises in American history, what caused it and how it might spill over into other states and spread across the country. | <urn:uuid:24d5c00c-2846-43db-8e03-ca4676a9de0f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.howstuffworks.com/california-power.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398216.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00097-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960336 | 234 | 3.015625 | 3 |
Habitat Protection, Conservation and Restoration
Coastal and marine habitats provide a variety of functions, from supporting the fish species that utilize them to providing economic and social benefits to many coastal communities. The ability to understand the complexity of the interrelated factors affecting habitat health is a critical component to effectively managing our fisheries resources.
Managers must evaluate numerous natural factors such as watershed hydrology, land cover, water chemistry, habitat connectivity, and species distributions, as well as anthropogenic factors such as coastal population growth, land based and offshore construction, and polluted land runoff. GIS is a powerful tool that helps managers visualize the spatial relationships of these factors at local, regional, or watershed scales.
GIS analyses may be used during permit consultations to assess potential direct or cumulative environmental impacts of proposed projects. GIS also facilitates the process of defining Essential Fish Habitat (EFH), Habitat Areas of Particular Concern (HAPCs), and Critical Habitat. GIS assists in identifying and prioritizing opportunities for habitat conservation. Restoration managers often use a variety of GIS techniques in restoration project design and implementation, integrating high-resolution field survey data with historical and current imagery or other local data sets where available.
In addition to spatial analyses, GIS applications such as interactive mapping or static map products are used as outreach tools to communicate habitat conservation activities to the public and other interested stakeholders. | <urn:uuid:82367323-5a2a-492e-a9ef-3ef41a6f71e9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/gis/how/habitat.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395679.92/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00135-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.911905 | 281 | 3.59375 | 4 |
We have reports from a couple of Foresight members who have toured the Allosphere, part of the California NanoSystems Institute at UC Santa Barbara, and it sounds truly impressive. From their website:
The AlloSphere, a 30-foot diameter sphere built inside a 3-story near-to-anechoic (echo free) cube, allows for synthesis, manipulation, exploration and analysis of large-scale data sets in an environment that can simulate virtually real sensorial perception. It is a physical place designed to facilitate creativity and incubate ideas via collaboration. Researchers find a multitude of interactive interfaces for research into: scientific visualization, numerical simulations, data mining, visual/aural abstract data representations, knowledge discovery, systems integration, human perception, and many other areas of inquiry.
The main research/presentation space consists of a three-story, near-to-anechoic room containing a custom-built close-to-spherical screen, ten meters in diameter. The sphere environment integrates visual, sonic, sensory, and interactive components…
Scientifically, it is an instrument for gaining insight and developing bodily intuition about environments into which the body cannot venture: abstract, higher-dimensional information spaces, the worlds of the very small or very large, and the realms of the very fast or very slow, in fields ranging from nanotechnology to theoretical physics, from proteomics to cosmology, from neurophysiology to the spaces of consciousness, and from new materials to new media. [emphasis added]
If you can wrangle an invitation to see this, it’s definitely worth your time. Their site says that “members of the general public” are informed by the Allosphere, so there should be a way to get on the tour list. See also the recent article in Technology Review, costs $2. —Chris Peterson | <urn:uuid:f7f94f5d-db78-42ab-b3e5-bfac36509583> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=4194 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00092-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.90738 | 377 | 2.59375 | 3 |
The Mind Behind the Design: Unraveling Life's Plans and Specifications
by Randy J. Guliuzza, P.E., M.D. *
Suppose someone walks through their neighborhood and spies a new construction site for a custom-built home. Concrete has just been placed for the foundation. About how long ago did the project start?
Simply looking at how much work is in place would probably lead to a wrong answer. Actually, the project began--possibly years ago--within the mind of the designer. The designer's thoughts set the starting point, direction, and goal. His plan overrides everything. A radical new way to begin thinking about all constructed entities is that they mutually consist of items made out of matter, the material part, and their information for assembly, the immaterial part.
The new home's immaterial part consists of the designer's thoughts, concepts, ideas, and plans for achieving a specific goal.1 What is amazing is that even though the designer's thoughts are not composed of space, time, or matter, they establish the initial context for which all additional information and all of the material parts will fit together and make sense.
For instance, this sentence first existed immaterially as a thought in a mind that sets the context for only adding letters as they fit to make a meaningful word. More words are added only as they fit the intent of this thought--which was to illustrate that discrete letters and words are meaningless unless organized in the context of a thought. The designer's ideas become the framework that is used in the material realm to direct all interactions of material things. Thus, ideas are incorporated into the home just as tangibly as lumber.
So, one of the earliest statements in a conversation about design in nature could be:
If I were to ask you to give me two pounds of your ideas, we know that cannot happen because even though your ideas are real things, they are also immaterial. Although thoughts are immaterial, they are crucial to any construction project since they set the starting point, direction, and goal. We need to find the best explanation for the immaterial information directing production of the diversity of life on earth.
Plans and Specifications Always Indicate Design
Man-made items are constructed following directions called plans and specifications. Specifications are a unique kind of writing designed to convey intent. They are written instructions that set advance constraints on precisely what, how, and when particular materials will be used. Plans show geometric details of where materials are placed (though there is overlap between the two). Together, they must be detailed and selective enough to accurately and unambiguously communicate intended fabrication information to obtain all the product's features.
Writing specifications and drawing plans can be difficult work. Designers are forced to initially build the project in their minds. They must visualize numerous details, and then clearly represent everything in that mental picture in words and drawings--a daunting task at any time, but especially for situations where no prototype even exists.
It is important to highlight two points about specifications. First, they are as close of a representation of the designer's thoughts as possible--but they are not the thoughts themselves. Thoughts exist independently of the paper or programs which convey them. Second, when plans or specifications exist for something, they are--without exception--a sign of conscious design. Why? They reveal an intentional state that is characteristically restrictive. It selects in advance particular attributes for an intended purpose--which is the exact opposite of blind natural processes that yield random, ill-defined, piecemeal conglomerations of whatever is available.
So the secret to great architecture is not in the drawings, but in the mind of the architect. When evolutionary biologists determine the structure or sequence of DNA, they believe they uncover the secret of life.2 Disregarding the fact that information is immaterial, they fixate on the material of DNA. But they are incorrect. Functioning just like specifications, DNA is manipulated by specialized proteins that enable it to transfer, transcribe, store, and recall information for building a living thing--but it is not the information. The real secret of life is the information.
Genetic Specifications Are Best Explained by Design
The evolutionist's explanation for the informational content in the first DNA (or RNA) relies initially on a random letter-by-letter increase. There are four letters in DNA or RNA language, and each one of the four letters has an equal chance of being the next letter in a genetic word. Building sequences of genetic words, which would constitute one gene, will ultimately be equivalent to writing a long paragraph in a book. Evolutionists insist that there was no plan to ensure the correct placement of any genetic letter or word, but that, over time, the first gene's informational content--the same as hundreds to thousands of meaningful words--would inevitably arise.
Creationists explain that genetic information originated in a thought that set the starting point, direction, and goal for a product. The thought was the scaffold upon which everything was built. It became the outline for the specific order found in genetic words--meaning that every letter and word is only valuable as it fits in the context of all of the other words, which themselves are constrained to satisfy the thought's purpose for the gene. Immaterial information and material DNA were created in creatures at the same time. Intelligent behavior is recognized by key features of a specification: (1) selecting (2) in advance (3) exact attributes (4) for a purpose.
Learning a Short Example
It is possible that you may have a conversation with someone familiar with evolutionary beliefs. They may assert that the inability to identify the original source of biological information is just a gap in current scientific knowledge. Thus, it is arguing from ignorance to insist God fills the gap. Fortunately, some people who used this response have actually changed their minds following education as to why that thinking was more argumentative than analytical.
First, there is no ignorance. In universal human experience, when plans and specifications are encountered--meaning the causal record is known--they are always a product of intelligence. It is irrelevant that the operation of many processes is yet unknown. The source of information is not among them.
Second, all known natural processes oppose the notion that random genetic mutation and natural selection can generate information. Experiments show that randomly choosing letters one by one with no context to guide selection always generates nonsense regardless of how much time is utilized. (Be prepared for the evolutionist's comeback pushing the omnipotence of natural selection to set context and choose letters.3) So the very first specified genetic information capable of generating various physical traits cannot even get going.
Finally, when intelligent thought is placed head-to-head with random mutation/selection as a basis for information, intelligent thought has more scientific consistency to account for biological specification. Intelligent thought does not depend on mutation/selection being a poor explanation in order for it to be a better explanation.
Pulling It All Together
Many people will be amazed when they realize that their thoughts cannot be reduced to biology or even to atoms. After that fact captures attention, proceed by saying something like:
Since information is required for life but is immaterial, evolutionists have, thus far, failed to explain its origination strictly in terms of matter. They resist the fact that information always comes from a mind. Designers first build a project in their minds, then details go on paper. Specifications select exact features in advance of construction, reflecting intention and purpose--conclusive evidence of intelligent thought. Historically, every time people observe plans and specifications, their source is intelligence. So then, recognizing that the instructions to build a bird contain more information than the plans to build a jetliner, is it reasonable to believe that--only for the case of evolution--the laws of information are violated?
Let me suggest a better explanation that does not fight the facts. If you really want a refreshing way to contemplate graceful architecture, whether man-made or in nature, expand your appreciation to consider how much information was behind selecting and organizing those great building materials. Everything you see is actually fitted on a structure--a framework of unseen thoughts within a wonderful mind. Now, just conceive of the enormity of the mind that can visualize all at once all details for all life with all of their ecological interactions and write the specifications into a genetic alphabet consisting of only four letters. The Bible says that mind is the Lord Jesus Christ's and its infinite greatness is clearly seen by the things He has made (Romans 1:20).
- Part of the thinking process, and a fundamental property of intelligent behavior, is creating ideas, intentions, forecasts, and goals. Yet, thus far, these things have not been shown to reduce down to the purely biological level since no coherent neural basis can account for them strictly within the interaction of action potentials between neurons. Some materialists question whether intentional states of the mind are even real. See Lycan, W. G. and G. Pappas. 1972. What is eliminative materialism? Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 50: 149-59; Rorty, R. 1970. In Defense of Eliminative Materialism. Review of Metaphysics. 24 (1): 112-121.
- "We have discovered the secret of life." National Centre for Biotechnology Education. Posted on ncbe.reading.ac.uk, accessed March 31, 2010.
- Guliuzza, R. 2010. Natural Selection Is Not "Nature's Design Process." Acts & Facts. 39 (4): 10-11; Guliuzza, R. 2010. Natural Selection Is Not "Nature's Intelligence." Acts & Facts. 39 (5): 10-11.
* Dr. Guliuzza is ICR's National Representative.
Cite this article: Guliuzza, R. 2010. The Mind Behind the Design. Acts & Facts. 39 (6): 10-11. | <urn:uuid:6a4379c3-1ca5-48a4-a7cc-f89a5d59e38e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.icr.org/article/5359/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783392069.78/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154952-00141-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942765 | 2,034 | 3.3125 | 3 |
It’s not just Piers Morgan’s obsession: Europeans simply do not understand Americans’ fixation with possessing our own firearms. But that’s really not new. Gun control was the flashpoint that launched the first shots in the Revolutionary War.
In the spring of 1775, British Gen. Thomas Gage decided to seize the Americans’ cache of rifles, artillery, and ammunition stored by the Massachusetts militia in Concord. The night of April 18, he ordered two companies of redcoats on the march. Before the sun came up, America and Great Britain were at war.
Chased back to Boston, the British were surrounded at Bunker Hill. When Gen. Gage tried to break the siege, the surrounding American militiamen broke his army. Of the 2,400 British troops originally stationed in the city, half would be killed or wounded by mid-June. The Americans would turn to George Washington, a onetime comrade-in-arms of Gage’s, to prosecute their war of liberation. The British general would be recalled to England.Continue reading on www.realclearpolitics.com | <urn:uuid:aa6ee133-2ae5-409b-9c0f-15299fe017d2> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://conservativebyte.com/2013/02/gun-controls-complicated-history/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783403823.74/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155003-00171-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.957126 | 233 | 2.6875 | 3 |
Imagine a day when you can feel the fabric of a new coat -- through your phone. That day, and the day when computers commonly have other sense perceptions, is coming within five years, according to new predictions from IBM.
The touch-phone prediction is part of IBM's seventh annual "5 in 5" set of predictions -- five innovations whose pending release within five years is based on the company's assessment of market and societal trends, as well as innovations in its own, world-famous labs. This year's crop explores how devices will be able to mimic human senses, forming the underpinning of what IBM calls the next big phase in computing -- the "era of cognitive systems."
In the touch scenario, the company envisions a smartphone that allows a woman to shop for her wedding dress remotely and feel the satin or silk in the gown on the surface of the screen. IBM said its scientists are currently developing applications for retail, healthcare and other industries that uses haptic, infrared and pressure sensitive technologies to simulate such touch sensations as the texture or weave of a fabric.
Understanding Babies and Dogs
The technologies use vibration capabilities in the phone, emitted millimeters from the screen, to represent a particular touch sensation. IBM notes that such haptic devices as gloves or "rumble packs" have been used in gaming systems for years, but they are in closed environments that don't necessarily correspond to reality. Texture can already be conveyed through vibration, the company said, but what is needed is a "dictionary of textures" that matches the vibrations to the real world.
In the realm of sight, devices will have a heightened ability to understand the content of images. This has already begun, such as Facebook's ability to match faces between photos or FBI systems that can match faces captured by street cameras to a database of images. IBM envisions the next step, where healthcare systems can help doctors analyze MRIs, CT scans, X-rays or ultrasound images.
Systems will also be able to scan images posted on social networks and use that analysis to determine users' interests, or analyze photos from storm scenes so that needs are immediately conveyed to utility crews and emergency crews.
Superman's highly sensitive hearing is also within reach, IBM said. A distributed system of sensors will be able to detect sound pressure, vibrations and sound waves at various frequencies, predicting when trees will fall in a forest or a landslide is about to happen. Such a system could listen to a baby's babbling and crying through a mobile device, and, through a kind of "speech recognition," will be able to know if a baby is hungry, hot, tired or in pain. The same system could learn to interpret those whines, barks and whimpers from your dog.
The Computer Chef
If you thought taste and smell would remain uniquely human, think again. IBM is developing a system that experiences flavor by breaking down ingredients to their molecular level and blending the chemistry of those molecules with what the system knows about human psychology relating to those flavors and smells. The system will be able to play chef, creating new, healthy flavor combinations. The company noted that its Jeopardy-winning Watson computer uses known to answer a question with a fixed answer, while this system will create delicious dishes that have never been seen or tasted before.
And then there's smell. Using tiny sensors, your smartphone will be able to detect if you're getting a cold by analyzing the odors, biomarkers and other molecules in someone's breath. The same technique will be able to diagnose or monitor liver or kidney disorders, asthma, diabetes and epilepsy. Such technology can also be used to "sniff" surfaces in a hospital, making sure they are sufficiently sanitized.
Brad Shimmin, an analyst with Current Analysis, noted that mobile devices in particular have already begun to have tremendous capabilities as front-ends to highly intelligent systems and as self-aware sensors that "know a lot about their environment." He said IBM's predictions are "not far-fetched, but are extensions into the mainstream as new applications of highly expensive implementations that often exist today."
While humans communicate through senses, Shimmin said he expected that sensory communication would primarily be used in one-on-one social communication, not one-to-many or many-to-many.
Posted: 2012-12-17 @ 12:52pm PT
What has this world come to? | <urn:uuid:7210560f-10a8-4298-85cb-a7cf1055a5cc> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.newsfactor.com/news/IBM-Predicts-Computers-with-5-Senses/story.xhtml?story_id=11100005OT0R&full_skip=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396459.32/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00139-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956147 | 896 | 2.65625 | 3 |
(LifeWire) - Vulvar cancer is a relatively rare disease that usually begins as a precancerous skin condition and progresses slowly. Because of its slow growth and often prominent symptoms, vulvar cancer is frequently diagnosed in its early stages -- a time when it is highly curable.
"Vulva" refers to the external female genitalia, and it includes the internal and external labia, vaginal opening, clitoris and perineum (space between the vagina and anus). Vulvar cancer is most often diagnosed in women over 60, and it may occur on any part of the vulva, but typically affects the labia.
Symptoms of Vulvar Cancer
Itching lasting more than 1 month is the most common sign of vulvar cancer. But several other symptoms may also signal the disease, including:
- A vulvar sore that fails to heal
- A growth on the vulva
- Vulvar pain
- Painful urination
- Bleeding other than menstruation
- Burning that persists in an area already treated for burning
- Any change in a birthmark or mole in the vulvar area
If you have any of these symptoms, see a doctor right away to rule out vulvar cancer or get the earliest possible diagnosis.
Causes and Risk Factors
Vulvar cancer accounts for only 1% of all cancers in women. Several conditions and habits increase a woman's risk, along with stage in life, such as the following:
- Older age is a factor. The average age of diagnosis is 69 years.
- Human papilloma virus (HPV) is a virus that is transmitted by sexual contact. The HPV virus can cause condyloma of the vulva, otherwise known as genital warts. HPV can also cause the skin cells of the vulva to become cancerous. HPV associated vulvar cancer is more common in younger women. In fact, some doctors believe vulvar cancers caused by HPV should be treated as a different disease from the cancer generally found in older women.
- Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the virus that causes AIDS. HIV compromises the immune system, rendering women more vulnerable to HPV. A damaged immune system may also allow cancer cells to grow and spread more rapidly.
- Vulvar intraepithelial neoplasia (VIN) is the name for the abnormal cells that often precede vulvar cancer.
- Lichen sclerosus is a condition that thins the vulva and causes itching. Lichen sclerosus increases your chances of vulvar cancer by 4%.
- Cervical cancers are a risk factor for vulvar cancer, if one has a prior history.
- Melanoma is a type of skin cancer. Women who've had this type of cancer or any atypical mole anywhere on their body are at a higher risk for vulvar cancer.
- Smoking is a known risk factor for vulvar cancer. Smokers with HPV infection have a greater chance of developing vulvar cancer than infected non-smokers.
- Multiple sex partners and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in addition to HPV and HIV are also associated with vulvar cancer.
Diagnosing vulvar cancer is a two-step process: A physical examination of the vulva, and a biopsy of suspicious areas, which involves the removal of these suspicious cells for examination under a microscope.
The physical exam may include painting the area with a special dye that causes VIN and vulvar cancer to turn blue. If the area to be biopsied is small, a doctor may remove the whole area during the biopsy, a procedure which may require stitches.
Further examination of the biopsied cells will establish their grade (appearance of cells) and stage (size and extent of tumor). Grades are assigned in numerals 1 through 3, with grade 1 cells being near normal in appearance and grade 3 being the most abnormal. Lower grade cells grow more slowly and are less apt to spread.
The different stages of progression help doctors determine how to best treat the cancer. All vulvar cancers can be described by one of the following four stages:
- Stage I: Tumor is 2 cm or less, contained in the vulva or perineum and has not spread to the lymph nodes.
- Stage II: Tumor is larger than 2 cm, confined to the vulva and/or perineum and has no obvious presence in the lymph nodes.
- Stage III: Cancer extends into the vagina, anus, lymph nodes and groin, and/or lower urethra (tube extending from the bladder that empties urine from the body).
- Stage IV: Malignancy has spread to the upper urethra, bladder, bowels or bones, or it has reached the lymph nodes, groin and other parts of the body.
More than 60% of vulvar cancers are diagnosed in stage I or II, when the 5-year survival rate is greater than 90%.
Treating vulvar cancer almost always involves surgery, the extent of which depends on the severity of the cancer. When the tumor is large, radiation may be used to shrink it before surgery.
Small cancers may be removed by a laser and larger ones by a scalpel. The removal of a large area is called a "vulvectomy," and after this procedure, a woman may undergo reconstructive surgery.
Chemotherapy or radiation may follow surgery if the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes.
"General Information About Vulvar Cancer." cancer.gov. 31 Jul. 2008. National Cancer Institute. 15 Jan. 2009 <http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/treatment/vulvar/patient>.
"How is Vulvar Cancer Diagnosed?" cancer.org. 30 Dec. 2008. American Cancer Society. 15 Jan. 2009 <http://www.cancer.org/docroot/CRI/content/CRI_2_4_3X_How_is_vulvar_cancer_diagnosed.asp>.
"Reproductive Cancers." hmc.psu.edu. 31 Oct. 2006. Penn State University. 15 Jan. 2009 <http://www.hmc.psu.edu/healthinfo/r/reprocancers.htm>.
"SEER Stat Fact Sheets." seer.cancer.gov. 2008. National Cancer Institute. 15 Jan. 2009 <http://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/vulva.html>.
"Vulva Cancer." cs.nsw.gov. Aug. 2006. Sydney Gynaecological Oncology Group. 15 Jan. 2009 <http://www.cs.nsw.gov.au/cancer/sgog/Vulva.htm>.
"Vulvar Cancer." ucsfhealth.org. 8 May 2007. University of California San Francisco. 15 Jan. 2009 <http://www.ucsfhealth.org/adult/medical_services/cancer/pelvic/conditions/vulvar/signs.html>.
"What Are the Risk Factors For Vulvar Cancer?" cancer.org. 30 Dec. 2008. American Cancer Society. 15 Jan. 2009 <http://www.cancer.org/docroot/cri/content/cri_2_4_2x_what_are_the_risk_factors_for_vulvar_cancer_45.asp>.
"What Is Vulvar Cancer?" cancer.org. 30 Dec. 2008. American Cancer Society. 15 Jan. 2009 <http://www.cancer.org/docroot/CRI/content/CRI_2_4_1x_What_is_vulvar_cancer_45.asp?sitearea=> | <urn:uuid:ea1a71e8-4e57-47a1-b52f-f3f1ba9a2338> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://womenshealth.about.com/lw/Health-Medicine/Womens-Health/Vulvar-Cancer-Slow-Growing-Easily-Found-and-Curable.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396875.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00032-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.896248 | 1,617 | 3.109375 | 3 |
God remembers his promises
An EasyEnglish Bible Version and Commentary (2800 word vocabulary) on the Book of Zechariah
This commentary has been through Advanced Checking.
Words in boxes are from the Bible, except for words in brackets (…).
A word list at the end explains words with a *star by them.
‘The *prophet (Zechariah) said that these events would happen. And these events did happen.’
(Matthew 21:4) (A *prophet tells people what God is saying.)
Zechariah wrote his book in the *Hebrew language. The *Hebrew word ‘zechariah’ (or ‘zachariah’) means ‘God remembers’. Zechariah was a *prophet. This meant that he did two things.
(1) He told people what God was saying about the present time.
(2) He told people what God was saying about the future.
Zechariah 1:1 says that the *prophet was the ‘son of Berechiah, son of Iddo’. Ezra 5:1 says that he was the son of Iddo. This is a puzzle for Bible students. There are three possible explanations.
(1) Berechiah was the son of Iddo, who was therefore Zechariah’s grandfather.
(2) There were two Zechariahs. One of them wrote chapters 1-8. The other one wrote chapters 9-14.
(3) One of the names is a mistake.
These notes believe that (1) is correct.
Many Bible students think that Zechariah was a young man in chapters 1-8, but much older in chapters 9-14. They think that he came back from the *exile in Babylon about 530 *B.C. The *exile was when the King of Babylon made the *Jews live in Babylon in 586 *B.C. God punished the *Jews by the *exile because they had not obeyed his rules. ‘*Exile’ is when people live away from home. *B.C. means ‘years Before Christ came to the earth’.
In chapters 1-8, Zechariah helped another *prophet, Haggai. Zechariah started to *prophesy just before Haggai finished. ‘*Prophesy’ means ‘to tell people what God is saying’. Compare Haggai 2:10 with Zechariah 1:1. They both encouraged the leaders and the people among the *Jews. There were two main leaders. Joshua was the Chief Priest and Zerubbabel was the political leader. The *prophets encouraged the leaders and people to rebuild the *temple in Jerusalem. They told them to do this before they built the walls of the city and their own houses. This *temple was God’s house in Jerusalem. People met there to praise him. They also burned things to offer to God there. Soldiers from Babylon destroyed the old *temple in 586 *B.C. The *Jews finished building the new *temple in 516 *B.C.
By this time, Zechariah was older. Chapters 9 to 14 are quite different from chapters 1 to 8. But they are very important. As Zechariah became older, he thought about the future. Much of what he said became true in the life and death of Jesus. This is why the *New Testament repeats so many verses from Zechariah chapters 9 to 14. It repeats more from those chapters than from most other books of the *Old Testament. It is probably true to say that you cannot understand Zechariah chapters 9 to 14 without the story of Jesus! That is why my ‘Something to do’ sections in these chapters ask you to compare *Old Testament and *New Testament verses.
Zechariah means ‘The *LORD remembers’. ‘*LORD’ is one of God’s names. Zechariah taught people that God remembers his promises. God made promises by his *prophets. One of these promises is that the *Jews would return from *exile. Also, that the *LORD would return with them to his *temple in Jerusalem. Here are some of the promises.
Isaiah 40:3 ‘Prepare the way for the *LORD. Make a straight road in the desert for our God.’ Isaiah imagines that God is travelling on a road. It starts from somewhere to the east of Judah and it ends in Jerusalem. There is a note on *LORD at Zechariah 1:1-2.
Ezekiel 43:4 ‘The *glory of the *LORD came into the *temple.’ Ezekiel imagines that God is coming into the *temple at Jerusalem. ‘*Glory’ is something that shines very much.
Jeremiah 29:10 ‘After 70 years in Babylon, I will cause you to return to this place.’ This place is Jerusalem in Judah.
There are three sections in Zechariah’s book.
Chapters 1-6 Build the *temple. The *Jews had started to rebuild their *temple. They did this when they returned from Babylon. But other people opposed them. (See Ezra 4:4-5.) So the *Jews stopped rebuilding the *temple for about 15 years. They decided to build houses for themselves. (See Haggai 1:2-4.) Also, they wanted to build walls round the city to protect themselves. But in 520 *B.C., the *prophets Haggai and Zechariah urged them to finish building the *temple. Zechariah said, ‘Build the *temple first. God will protect you. You do not need city walls to keep out the enemy.’ Zechariah explained this by his 8 *visions. A ‘*vision’ is something that a *prophet ‘sees’. God shows the *vision to the *prophet. The *visions also say that God would take away *sin from the country. *Sin is our behaviour when we do not obey God’s laws. After the 8th *vision, God made a promise. He promised to put crowns on the heads of Joshua the chief priest and Zerubbabel the political leader. They would then rule God’s people together.
Chapters 7-8 Obey the laws of God. Some of the 8 *visions also said that God had taken away *sin from Jerusalem and Judah. But now God’s people must obey God’s laws. This was more important than their *fasts. A *fast is to be sad and to eat no food for reasons of religion or health. First they should build the *temple where they could *worship God. After that, there must be social *justice. The notes explain the words ‘*worship’ and ‘*justice’.
Chapters 9-14 God will send a *messiah who will be PRIEST AND KING. In chapters 1-8, Joshua was the chief priest and Zerubbabel was political leader. But one day God would send a *messiah who would be both priest and king. *Messiah is a word in the *Hebrew language. It meant a special leader. God’s *messiah would take away his people’s *sin and he would rule over them. Some of these ideas are in chapters 1-8 also. This gives unity to the whole book. Today, *Messiah, with a capital M, usually means Jesus Christ. ‘Christ’ comes from the word for *Messiah in the *Greek language.
God would do all this because of his promises. God remembers his promises!
Words in brackets … ( … ) … are not in the *Hebrew Bible. They are there to help us to understand what Zechariah wrote. The notes explain words with a *star by them the first time that we use the word. After that, please refer to the word list at the end.
After the start of the book in verse 1, Zechariah began his book with a short speech in verses 2-6. It tells the people to *repent. This means ‘to be sorry’ for the wrong things that they did. Also, it tells the people ‘to promise to try not to do these wrong things in the future’. Zechariah did not use the word ‘*repent’. He used the words ‘turn back from your evil ways’. Before they start to rebuild the *temple, they must ‘be right with God’. This means that they must *repent. They must turn back to God from their evil ways. Then they will be ready to serve him.
Verses 1-2 ‘*LORD’ is a special word for God that his servants use. It is his *covenant name. A *covenant is a special agreement. God agreed to help his people if they obeyed him. ‘Obey me and I will be your God’, Jeremiah 11:4. But the *Jews did not obey God. This made God very angry with them. These *Jews were the fathers in verse 2. This really means fathers, grandfathers, and their fathers and grandfathers for many years in the past. This is true in verses 4, 5 and 6 also.
Zechariah started his *prophecy in 520 *B.C., probably in November or December. A *prophecy is the words of a *prophet. ‘The word’ that came to Zechariah is what God told him to say.
Verse 3 ‘Them’ in this verse is not the fathers of verse 2, but the people listening to Zechariah in 520 *B.C. The name ‘the *LORD of Everything’ comes three times in this verse. Zechariah says this to show that these are God’s words, not Zechariah’s words. Bible students often translate the *Hebrew name as ‘*LORD of *hosts’. A *host is ‘a lot’. It probably means ‘a lot of servants’. These servants are God’s servants. We cannot see them, but they are always doing God’s work everywhere. This makes God so powerful that he is ‘the *LORD of Everything’! In this verse, God is saying to his people, ‘Come back to me and obey me! Then I will come back (to you). And I will be your God and I will help you.’ If God’s people will keep the *covenant again, so will God. The *Hebrew word for ‘*hosts’ is ‘tsabaoth’. This is why God is often called ‘the *LORD of Sabaoth’. English translations leave out the ‘t’! A good translation of ‘the *LORD of Sabaoth’ is ‘*LORD of *angel armies’. *Angels are God’s servants in *heaven. *Heaven is the home of God.
Verses 4-5 The earlier *prophets included Jeremiah. These *prophets warned the people. God would punish his people if they did not obey him. But the people did not obey, so God sent them into *exile in Babylon. Verse 5 means that the people and the *prophets are now dead or in Babylon.
Verse 6 But, in *exile, the *Jews *repented. The actual *Hebrew word is not ‘*repent’ but ‘turn back’. It is the same word that is in verse 4. The word for ‘happened’ is ‘catch up with’. We can imagine that God’s words are running after his people. Then it is as if God’s words catch up with his people. This makes his people turn back. They cannot continue to run away from God. They are in *exile. But perhaps they did not all really *repent. Perhaps some people did *repent, and some people did not *repent. Some modern English translations do say ‘*repent’, like the Revised English Bible, the New Living Bible and other translations. Actually, if we return to God, we must do this first. We must *repent. We must be sorry for the wrong things that we have done. But we must also promise to try not to do them in the future.
Next, the *prophet describes 8 *visions that he had. They are in Zechariah 1:7-6:8. A *vision is something that a *prophet ‘sees’. It may actually be there, or it may be in his imagination. It may even be in a dream. In all these *visions, God is telling Zechariah something. Zechariah must tell it to the people. It is to encourage them in their work for God. Part of this work was to rebuild the *temple in Jerusalem. The *visions are there to encourage us in our work for God also.
Here is a list of the 8 *visions and where to find them:
The man on a red horse
The 4 *horns and the 4 workmen
The man who is measuring Jerusalem
The chief priest
The *lampstand and the 2 *olive trees
The flying *scroll
The woman in the basket
The 4 *chariots
The notes explain the words *horn, *lampstand, *olive tree, *scroll, and *chariot. They are also in the word list at the end.
Most Bible students think that Zechariah saw these 8 *visions on the same night. It was the 24th day of the 11th month of the second year that Darius was King of Persia. That means that it was about the middle of February, 519 *B.C. Most Bible students think that the *visions connect together somehow. Unfortunately, they do not all agree how they connect together!
Here is one idea:
· *visions 1, 2 and 3 are about the return from *exile;
· *visions 4 and 5 are about the leader;
· *visions 6, 7 and 8 are about the removal of *sin.
Here is another idea:
· *visions 1, 2 and 8 are about the relationship of Judah with other countries;
· *visions 3-7 are about the future of Judah/Israel as a nation.
Probably both ideas are useful to Bible students.
Four *visions (1, 3, 4 and 5) also have messages from the *LORD. They are in:
· *Vision 1 - Zechariah 1:13-17;
· *Vision 3 - Zechariah 2:6-13;
· *Vision 4 - Zechariah 3:6-10;
· *Vision 5 - Zechariah 4:5-10.
Verse 7 In Babylon, the 11th month of the year was called Shebat. It is not an *Hebrew word. The 24th day of Shebat is February 15th for us. The year was 519 *B.C.
Verse 8 The rider on the red horse was probably an *angel. He sat on the horse while the horse stood still. There were probably more *angels on the other horses. Zechariah does not say how many horses he saw. Many Bible students think that Zechariah saw God (the *LORD) and his chief *angels in *heaven. They were making plans. The *angels were servants of God. Usually we cannot see *angels, but Zechariah did see them in his *vision. They were ‘among the *myrtle bushes down in the valley’. *Myrtle bushes have leaves that remain green all through the year. Their leaves have a pleasant smell when someone bruises them. They have white flowers in summer. *Myrtle bushes often mean Judah and Israel in the Bible. The man among the *myrtle bushes probably means that the *LORD will help his people.
The *myrtle bushes were in a valley, that is, a deep place. In the Bible, a deep place often means a place of trouble (for example, in Psalm 88:6).
Verse 9 ‘My *lord’ means ‘sir’. The word ‘*lord’ means 3 things in the Bible. Two are names for God (*LORD and *Lord) and one (*lord) is not a name for God. The word ‘*lord’ (with a small letter l) means someone in authority that you respect. Here it is the *angel that was with Zechariah. This was not one of the *angels on the horses.
Verse 11 The *angel of the *LORD was an important *angel. He was a leader of the *angels. He was probably the man on the red horse in verse 8. ‘All the world’ includes the nations that destroyed Israel and Judah. They were quiet and peaceful. As verse 15 says, they had (feelings of) security.
Verse 12 Now the important *angel speaks to the *LORD God. Zechariah does not tell us whether he can see God. The *angel tells God that his people have suffered for 70 years. Jeremiah had said that the *exile would last for this length of time. ‘This is what the *LORD says. “After you have been 70 years in Babylon I will come to you. I will do what I have promised. I will bring you back to this place (Judah)”.’ (Jeremiah 29:10)
Verses 13-15 There is an important word in this verse that Zechariah repeats in verse 17. It is the word ‘comfort’. It links with words that the *prophet Isaiah wrote. ‘ “Comfort, comfort my people”, says the *LORD (to his *prophets). “Speak to the people in Jerusalem. Say that they have received from the hand of the *LORD double (punishment) for all their *sins”.’ (from Isaiah 40:1-2) There is also something else that links verse 15 with Isaiah 40:2. God wanted to punish his people. He used Assyria and Babylon to do it. But these two nations punished God’s people too much. They hurt God’s people more than God intended. God’s people received ‘double punishment’, Isaiah 40:2. Bible students think that God (through Zechariah) is reminding his people of the words of Isaiah. This was because God was jealous for his people. He loved them and he did not want them to stay in Assyria and Babylon. We do not know how many *Jews returned from Assyria. They were from the northern country of Israel. But many returned from Babylon to the southern country of Judah. Zion is the name of the hill in Jerusalem where they built the *temple.
The *myrtle bushes were in a valley. But Zion is a hill. So God wanted to take his people from a deep place (that is, a place of trouble). And God wanted to take them to the hill called Zion, which would be a good place.
Verses 16-17 Here are God’s plans for his people:
· God will have pity on them and return to his people in Jerusalem.
· God’s people will rebuild his *temple.
· God’s people will build houses in Jerusalem again. The *measuring line was string. Builders used a *measuring line to work out where to build.
· Jerusalem and the cities of Judah will be full of good things.
· There will be much comfort for God’s people.
The *vision was for Zechariah, verses 8-13. The message was for Zechariah to tell everybody, verses 14-17. They had much work to do. Perhaps the thought of all the work depressed them. But God sent this message to encourage them. They would succeed because God was with them. Also, they were following his plans!
Verse 18 The *Hebrew says ‘And I lifted my eyes’. This is an *Hebrew idiom for (way to say), ‘I looked up’. Zechariah says, ‘Look!’ He wants us to see in our imaginations what he saw. A *horn was a sign of strength. *Horns grow on the heads of some animals, like cows, goats and sheep. A *horn shows that an animal is strong and important.
Verse 19 The four *horns mean strong countries on all four sides of Judah and Israel. Assyria destroyed Israel 200 years before this *vision. Babylon destroyed Judah 70 years before. These, and other countries that helped them, are the four *horns. The other countries include Egypt, Moab and Edom. They were all enemies of Judah and Israel.
Verse 20 When people caught wild animals with *horns, they would cut off the *horns. This would stop the wild animal hurting them.
Verse 21 The workmen cut off the *horns from Assyria and Babylon. This meant that these countries would not be able to attack other countries. They would not be strong any more. If you cannot ‘lift up your head’ then you are humble and ashamed.
God chose the people from Israel and Judah. But they did the wrong things. God allowed other countries to punish them. Those countries are like the *horns. But God still cares about his people. He showed Zechariah that he had a plan to destroy those countries. And he would save the people from Israel and Judah.
1. Read Zechariah 1:8-21 without the notes. Try to understand God’s plans:
· to rebuild Jerusalem and the *temple;
· to destroy Assyria and Babylon.
2. Read about ‘the four men on horses’ in Revelation 6:1-8.
3. Read Mark 6:3. Now read it again, but put ‘workman’ for ‘carpenter’ or ‘wood-worker’. The *Greek word in Mark 6:3 is the same word as in Zechariah 1:20! Think about this.
4. If you can, find a map and look for ‘the four *horns’. These will be countries on the four sides of Judah. They include:
· south … Egypt;
· west … Philistia;
· east … Moab and Edom;
· north … Assyria and Babylon. (Both of these are north-east, but the road to them from Jerusalem started by leading to the north.)
But the *vision was not merely about these countries. It was about every country that opposed God’s people.
5. Study Isaiah 40:1-2. Which verses in Zechariah 1 does it make you think about? Learn to say Isaiah 40:1-2 by heart. (‘By heart’ means that you do not look at the words.)
6. Maybe you think that God has something for you to do. If you do, start by *repenting. The word ‘*repent’ means:
· ‘Think again’ … but think as God thinks!
· Be sorry for your *sins. And promise to try not to do them again.
· Then do what God is telling you to do!
7. If things depress you, read Zechariah 1:16-17. Then remember this. God will do everything that he has promised to do!
Verse 1 Read again the note on the start of Zechariah 1:18. Also, read Zechariah 1:16. There, God promised that his people would rebuild Jerusalem. Now Zechariah saw a man with a *measuring line. The man was probably an architect or a builder.
Verse 2 The man probably was going to mark where the walls of the new city should be. Walls would make the city safe. Then nobody could stop them building houses for themselves and a house for God.
Verse 3 Zechariah’s *angel (chapter 1 verses 9 and 19) went to speak to another *angel. The other *angel had a message from God.
Verses 4-5 The message was for the young man with the *measuring line. The new city would not need walls! There were three reasons for this:
· God wanted anybody who wished to enter Jerusalem.
· God would protect them. So he would be (like) their wall, a wall of fire. And he would be their *glory.
· There were too many people to get inside the wall!
‘*Glory’ means ‘great honour’. God’s honour is so great that it shines like a bright light. The first *angel had to run with the message. Walls do not make people safe. Only God can really make people safe! He did this for Jerusalem in *Vision 2. Also, God did not want them to build walls or houses before they rebuilt his *temple!
Verse 6 Verses 6-13 are not part of the *vision. They are a poem that Zechariah wrote, to call the *Jews back from *exile. Some had returned in 536 *B.C. But now Zechariah urged more to come. Some Bible students think that Zechariah wrote this poem earlier. Perhaps he wrote it when he himself was in *exile. He added it to his book when he had returned to Jerusalem. The *Hebrew word for ‘Come (away)!’ means ‘oh!’ This word suggests danger. The danger is in verse 9. ‘The country in the north’ is Babylon. It was north-east of Jerusalem, but the road to Babylon started by going north. ‘To the four winds of the *heavens’ is a *Hebrew way to say ‘in all directions’. So God is calling *exiles from everywhere, not only from Babylon.
7 The *Greek Bible has, ‘Come (away) to Zion’, but the *Hebrew Bible says, ‘Come (away), Zion’, or ‘Oh! Zion!’ The *LORD is warning the people from Zion. They are in danger if they stay in Babylon.
Zion is another name for Jerusalem. Here it means the people, or their families, that once lived in Jerusalem. They were the people in *exile. The Daughter of Babylon was an *Hebrew way to say Babylonian people. Some lived in Babylon, and some lived in other Babylonian cities. ‘In the Daughter of Babylon’ means ‘among the people of Babylon’.
Verse 8 Bible students do not agree what ‘after his *glory, he sent me’ means. Some possibilities are:
· after he gave me the honour of sending me;
· after he insisted that he would send me;
· after God returned (to Jerusalem) he sent me.
Whatever it means, Zechariah had a message for the nations, not only for Judah and Israel. ‘The apple of the eye’ is the part of the eye that we can hurt most easily. It is not really an apple; it is just a part of the eye. When the nations destroyed Israel and Judah, they ‘touched the apple of God’s eye’. They hurt God’s special people, so they hurt God!
Verse 9 ‘Now look!’ is how the *prophets emphasised what they said. God was going to ‘raise his hand to punish them’. The slaves were the people in *exile, people from many countries including Judah and Israel. In the *Old Testament, there was a simple test to work out whether a *prophet came from God. The *prophet said that some things would happen. And the people would recognise him to be a real prophet when these things did happen.
Verse 10 ‘Daughter of Zion’ means ‘people that live in and near Jerusalem’. The *LORD promised to come and live in Jerusalem. That is why they had to build his house, the *temple. The *LORD had gone from Jerusalem when Babylon destroyed Jerusalem. Ezekiel 10:18-19 tells us about this.
Verse 11 ‘Join with the *LORD’ means that they will serve the *LORD. ‘That day’ was the day that the *LORD returned to Jerusalem. But like many verses in Zechariah, it has more than one meaning. It also means when Jesus came to the earth. And when Jesus will come again to the earth. This is because a lot of Zechariah’s book is about Jesus’ return to the earth. Zechariah adds again his remark from verse 9.
Verses 10-11 I will live among you. Twice God tells Zechariah to say this to his people. What does it mean? Christians believe that God is everywhere. He is omnipresent, which means ‘present everywhere’. But God did special things for his people, the *Jews. So, they believed that he lived with them. His home was the *temple. Of course, he was everywhere else also! When God allowed Babylon to punish Judah, Ezekiel tells us that ‘the *glory of the *LORD went away’, Ezekiel 10:18. Here, the *glory of the *LORD included the things that he did for Judah. These things made him shine like a bright light to the *Jews. Then he stopped helping them for a time. Then, it was as if the light went out. The *glory went away. But now God promised to come back. He would help his people again! This was why it was more important to rebuild his *temple than their own houses and city walls. Ezekiel said that the *glory would return in Ezekiel 43:4; 44:4. ‘The *glory of the *LORD came into the *temple’, Ezekiel 43:4.
Verse 12 Judah and Jerusalem mean the people that live in the *holy land. Christians call the country where Jesus lived ‘the *Holy Land’. This is the only place where the words appear in the *Old Testament.
Verse 13 ‘Everybody’ in the *Hebrew language is ‘all flesh’, which means ‘all men and women’. This includes the people from Judah and Babylon. God has got up and done something. He has punished Babylon and not Judah! ‘The *holy place’ here probably means *heaven.
1. Read Ezra 4:1-5. This is a story about people who stopped the *Jews rebuilding Jerusalem.
2. Study what Deuteronomy 13:1-5 and Deuteronomy 18:17-22 teach about *prophets. Now look at where Zechariah says, ‘You will know that the *LORD (really) did send me.’ This is in Zechariah 2:9, 11; 4:9 and 6:15.
3. Read Haggai 1:2-5. Compare it with Zechariah 2:1-5.
4. Follow the message of the first 3 *visions:
Zechariah 1:16 Build my house.
Zechariah 1:21 Destroy those *horns.
Zechariah 2:4 A city without walls.
Pray that God will encourage you by these verses.
Verse 1 The first three *visions were outside Jerusalem. This one is in a court of law in *heaven. The *angel of the *LORD (who becomes the *LORD himself in verse 2) is the judge. *Satan (‘the *satan’ in the *Hebrew Bible) accuses Joshua. He says that he has done something wrong. The *Hebrew words ‘the *satan’ mean ‘the accuser’. Joshua is the chief priest of the *Jews. He was there on behalf of all the *Jewish people.
The *Jews that lived in Egypt about 200 *B.C. made a translation of the *Old Testament into *Greek. Zechariah 3:1 in the *Greek Bible has ‘the devil’ for ‘the *satan’ and ‘Jesus’ for ‘Joshua’. Joshua is one *Hebrew form of the English word Jesus. Zechariah was not writing about the devil and Jesus Christ. However, he does help us to understand what Jesus did! Zechariah’s words mean more than he realised. This is often true about the *Old Testament *prophets.
Verse 2 Our translation makes ‘the *satan’ in the *Hebrew Bible into ‘*Satan’. *Satan has now become the name of God’s enemy. He is the devil in the *Greek Bible. The *angel of the *LORD is now the *LORD himself. ‘Tells you to be quiet’ is really ‘rebukes you’ in the *Hebrew Bible. A boss ‘rebukes’ people when he is angry with them!
‘This man’ means:
· Joshua, the chief priest;
· the people that he acts for, (that is the *Jews);
· the people that Jesus Christ rescued from the fires of hell.
It means the first two of these for *Jews. But for Christians, it means all three of them.
In the Bible, fire is always something that destroys things. God rescued his people from:
· Sodom and Gomorrah, a place of fire, Amos 4:11. God burned the wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, Genesis 19:24-25.
· Egypt, an ‘iron furnace’, Deuteronomy 4:20 and Jeremiah 11:4. A furnace is a very hot fire. An iron furnace was so hot that it could make iron pure! The fire destroys the rubbish.
· Babylon, as in this verse in Zechariah.
Verse 3 The very dirty clothes mean the bad things that the priests and the people had done before the *exile. In the Bible, a priest should not be wearing dirty clothes. The priest’s clothes should be clean. But Joshua’s clothes were very dirty in the *vision because the people had been very evil.
Verse 4 Our translation tells us who said what to whom. The *Hebrew Bible just says ‘he spoke to them’. The very dirty clothes mean *sin. The correct clothes show that God has *forgiven this *sin. Leviticus 8:5-7 tells us what the priests had to wear. They wore these clothes when they did their work in the *temple. Exodus 28 describes how they made the clothes.
Verse 5 A turban is a hat that people in some countries wear. Zechariah says that they should put the turban onto Joshua’s head. The chief priest wore a special turban, Exodus 29:6. Some translations use the word mitre instead of turban. ‘Mitre’ is another word for a special hat. Notice that the *sin was put away but an animal was not offered to God.
Verse 6 Chapter 1:6 also described how God warned the people.
Verse 7 The two things that the chief priest must do are these. He must obey God’s moral laws. Also, he must obey the *ritual laws. The word for ‘require’ is the same as that in Numbers chapter 3. There God used the word 9 times to tell the priests what they must do. This was what they must do in the *temple. As a result, the *LORD would do two things. He would allow the chief priest to rule God’s house and its *courts. The *courts were the yards or spaces round the *temple. Also, God would allow the chief priest to approach God, without anybody else between them.
Verse 8 The last 3 verses are about what will happen in the future. Joshua’s friends are the priests in the *temple in Jerusalem. God had brought them back to the new *temple in the *vision. They showed what God would do years later. He would bring his servant the Branch to Jerusalem. This means that the Branch would also be a priest. There is more about the Branch in the notes after Zechariah 6:15. Isaiah chapters 40 to 55 also tell us about God’s servant.
Verse 9 The word translated ‘sides’ has several meanings in the *Hebrew language: eyes, faces, sides and fountains! Some Bible students say ‘fountains’ is a good translation because:
· The water would make the Branch grow, verse 8.
· The water would wash away *sin, verse 9.
· The water would make the *vine and the *fig trees produce much fruit, verse 10.
· Also, the stone would be like the rock in the desert. When Moses hit it, water came out, Exodus 17:6. Paul tells us that ‘that Rock was Christ’, 1 Corinthians 10:4.
Some Bible students translate ‘*engrave an *engraving’ in a different way. *Engrave means ‘write on a stone or rock’, and what you write is called an *engraving. But the *Hebrew word for ‘*engrave’ also means ‘open’. So they translate it, ‘Look! I will open an opening in it.’ This is what happened when Moses hit the rock. Water came from an opening in the rock. The ‘one day’ when God removes *sin is the day that Jesus died, Hebrews 7:27. So the end of the *vision looks forward to the life of Jesus. Chapters 9 to 14 often look forward to the life of Jesus.
There is also an *eschatological (future) meaning. On the day when Jesus returns, his people will trust him. So God will forgive them. See Zechariah 2:10-11 and Romans 11:26-27.
Verse 10 Notice the way that the sentence starts with ‘On the same day’. This emphasises the importance of the day. As a result, neighbours will sit and rest under each other’s fruit trees. *Vine trees and *fig trees are fruit trees. This is a picture of peace, friendship and *prosperity. *Prosperity means plenty of everything!
1. Read the beginning of the story of Job, where *Satan is also in *heaven.
2. Study Bible verses that are about clothes. Here are some: Genesis 3:21; Exodus 28:2-5; Matthew 22:11-14; Ephesians 6:13-17 (from Isaiah 59:16-17); Revelation 21:2.
3. Look for ways that the Joshua (Jesus) in Zechariah 3 is like the Jesus (Joshua) in the *New Testament.
4. Make and keep a list of names for the *Messiah. Jesus is the *Messiah. These are some of Jesus’ Bible names. Always try to find two or more verses with the name in if you can. Below is a *table, which is a special way to show information.
Verse 1 This links with Zechariah 1:8, ‘I saw (something) in the night.’ Most Bible students think that Zechariah saw all 8 *visions in the same night.
Verse 2 Zechariah recognised a *lampstand. This is something that a lamp stands on. Here there were seven lamps. Each had a pipe that came from a basin. Probably, oil came from the basin and burned in the lamps. Students of history believe that this *lampstand is not the same as the menorah. The menorah is a *lampstand that *Jews use nowadays. They first used it about 100 *B.C. Zechariah lived about 500 *B.C.
Verse 3 The branches of the *olive trees were probably above the lamps. Olives are fruits that contain oil. The oil burns to give light. It is not the same type of oil that people use in cars.
Verse 4 The *olive trees and, perhaps, the *lampstand were a puzzle to Zechariah. He asked again about the *olive trees in verse 11. The question does not mean ‘What are these for?’ He knows that lamps give light and olives give oil. Zechariah asks rather, ‘What do these mean? Why are you showing me these?’ He probably knows that the *lampstand means the *Jews, but what do the two *olive trees mean? ‘My *lord’ here and in verses 5 and 13 means just ‘sir’.
Verse 5 The *angel does not reply until verse 14.
Verse 6 Verses 6-10 separate the *vision in verses 1-5 from its explanation in verses 11-14. Many Bible students say that these verses are a separate section. That may be true. But other Bible students think that chapter 3 is about Joshua, the leader of *Jewish religion. And they think that chapter 4 is about Zerubbabel, the political leader. The phrase ‘things will happen’ means, first, the new *temple will be built. It will not be human strength that does it. It will not be political power that does it. It will be the Spirit of God himself! This is God’s message to Zerubbabel, the political leader of the *Jews that returned from *exile.
Verse 7 There are problems for Zerubbabel. To him, these problems seem like a great mountain. But God’s promise is that they will become like a plain! The first stone or brick of a building is called the foundation stone. Zerubbabel had already put that in place, verse 9. He did it 15 years earlier, Ezra 3:8-11. Now God promises that Zerubbabel will finish the building. He will put the top stone into its place. Its place is at the top of the *temple. The words ‘*Grace to it, *grace’ may mean ‘it is beautiful’. But they also point to the future. *Grace is a special Christian word. It means that God is very kind to people when he does not have to be kind. He forgives them when he does not have to forgive them.
Verse 9 Read again the note on Zechariah 2:9 and Something to do number 2 after chapter 2.
Verse 10 In this verse and verse 9, ‘the hands of Zerubbabel’ mean the people that Zerubbabel ruled. He may have put the base stone in place himself, but his workmen built the *temple. Builders use a *plumb-line when they build walls. It shows them if the wall is standing up straight. It is a piece of *lead (plumbum in the Latin language!) on a piece of string. The *Hebrew words, however, mean ‘stone of tin’! Maybe Jesus is the stone. Then, this may look forward to a time when Jesus will be the judge of everybody!
‘The day of small things’ means the day when Zerubbabel began to build. Then his efforts to build seemed very poor. And people thought that he would never complete the building. But Zerubbabel would not complete it by his own strength or power. Zerubbabel would complete the *temple by the power of God’s Spirit.
‘The 7 eyes of the *LORD’ we could translate as ‘the 7 fountains of the *LORD’. Look at the note on 3:9. They would flow over all the earth. This would link this verse with 3:9. ‘The day of small things’ is a phrase common among Christians. It means ‘when not much happens’. We may laugh because nothing is happening. But Zechariah tells us that God will have the last laugh! God is always doing something!
Verse 11 This verse continues from verse 5.
Verse 12 *Golden probably means the colour of the oil. It was the colour of the metal called gold. The pipes were the same colour as the oil.
Verse 13 This really repeats verse 5.
Verse 14 The two men were people that God had *anointed to do his work. ‘*Anointed’ means ‘poured vegetable oil over’. This ceremony gave them authority to do God’s work. The two *anointed people were Joshua and Zerubbabel. Joshua was the chief priest, a member of the family of Aaron. Zerubbabel was a member of the family of David. The *Hebrew Bible calls them ‘sons of oil’. A priest probably poured the oil, not God himself. The priest was the servant of God.
The *lampstand represents the *temple and the *Jews that served the *LORD. Zerubbabel would build the *temple. And he would lead the people that lived in Judah. Joshua would lead them as they served God. What happened in Jerusalem would be like a light to everybody, Matthew 5:14. The *anointed ones, Joshua and Zerubbabel, would supply the oil that kept the lights burning. The oil means God’s Spirit. This is still true in the Church. The 7 *lampstands in Revelation 1:20 mean the Churches. The only true light is Jesus himself, John 8:12. God will complete his church as certainly as he completed his *temple in Jerusalem.
So, chapters 3 and 4 are not only about the *Jews’ return from *exile. They are also about Jesus, the *Messiah. When Zechariah wrote them, they were about the *Jews, the *temple and Jerusalem. But now they mean more than that. The rock (Zechariah 3:9), the stone (4:7) and the Branch (3:8) are things that make us think about Christ himself. Zechariah spoke ‘more than he knew’. There is a connection between the two ‘sons of oil’ and the *Messiah, Jesus. Notice that:
By means of Joshua, the chief priest, God forgives *sins. Therefore, people can come straight to God, chapter 3.
By means of Zerubbabel, the prince, the people complete the *temple. So, it is as if the light shines through all the world, chapter 4.
1. Follow again through the book of Zechariah how important it is to build the *temple: 1:16; 2:4; 3:7 and 4:9.
2. Learn to say verse 6 by heart. (‘By heart’ means that you do not look at the words.) Remember that verse 6 is still true nowadays!
3. Read Isaiah 40:3-4. Which verse in Zechariah does it make you think about?
Verse 1 A *scroll was the old form of a book. It was a very long piece of paper or leather. People would roll it up to make a *scroll. They wrote on both sides of the paper or leather. This *scroll was open. Therefore, everybody could read it as it flew past.
Verse 2 ‘He’ was probably the *angel in Zechariah 1:9. The *scroll was an unusual shape. Usually they were less than a metre wide.
Verse 3 A *curse is a bad thing that will happen to people. In this verse, there are two sorts of people. Firstly, there are those who are thieves. They are those who *sin against their neighbours. See the last 6 of the Ten Commandments. Secondly, there are those that are not sincere about their promises to God. See the first 4 of the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are the laws that God gave to Moses in Exodus chapter 20. The *Covenant is the agreement between God and his people. ‘Outside the *covenant’ means ‘not one of God’s people’. This *curse, or bad thing, will happen to people who do not obey God’s laws. Such people will not continue to be God’s people.
Verse 4 So God will punish people that do not obey his law. When there is a new *temple and a new chief priest, people will have to obey God’s laws. If they do not obey, God will punish them.
The message of what Zechariah saw is very clear. God is kind. He wants to forgive people. But God is also a fair judge. We need to confess our *sins to him and to trust him. Otherwise, God will punish us.
1. Read the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:1-17. Notice those that are about:
· our attitude to God;
· our attitude to people.
2. Find something that is 10 metres long and 5 metres high. Imagine that the first 4 commandments are on one side and that the last 6 on the other side. Now imagine that it is flying over your country! Then pray that people in your country will obey God’s laws.
Verse 6 The *Hebrew word for ‘basket’ is ‘ephah’. It was something that people used to measure grain. Most Bible students say that in the *Hebrew Bible it means the ‘*sin of the people’. It actually says, ‘This is their eye in all the country.’
Verse 7 The basket called an ephah was not big enough to put a normal woman in. Perhaps it was an image of a woman that was a false *goddess. A *goddess is a female god. The woman was raising the *lead cover. This probably means that the woman was trying to escape.
Verse 8 This teaches us that people, both men and women, can be evil. We could say that the *vision means ‘It is people who do evil things’. The *Hebrew word here for ‘wicked’ means all sorts of evil behaviour:
· Socially evil behaviour. That means evil behaviour in the public life of our town.
· Morally evil behaviour. That means evil behaviour in our own private and family lives.
· Religious evil behaviour. That means evil behaviour in our church life.
The word ‘pushed’ in *Hebrew suggests a struggle. It was difficult for the *angel to close the lid of the basket. It was as if something very evil was trying to escape!
Verse 9 Bible students are not sure why two women took the basket away. It was the job of the priests to remove evil things. Probably ‘wind was in their wings’ meant that they flew very fast. But the *Hebrew word for ‘wind’ also means ‘spirit’. So, it could mean that God’s Spirit was taking the evil thing away.
Verse 11 Shinar is the old name for Babylon, Genesis 11:2. The house was a *temple where people would *worship the false *goddess. This means a special house where people could *worship the *goddess. ‘*Worship’ means to tell someone that you love them. Also, that you will obey them because they are so great. This *vision could mean that the *Jewish people would not *worship false gods in Jerusalem again. But elsewhere people still *worshipped false gods. Also, this *vision means that God would remove their evil behaviour from their country.
1. Study some of the verses about Babylon in the Bible:
· Genesis 11:1-9 The people in Babylon wanted to reach *heaven without God’s help.
· Daniel 3:1-30 Babylon tries to hurt God’s people.
· Isaiah 47:8-15 Babylon is a place where there are evil things and magic.
· Revelation chapters 17 and 18 God’s *angels destroy the riches of Babylon.
2. Which of the Ten Commandments tells us not to *worship false gods and *goddesses? The Ten Commandments are in Exodus 20:1-17.
This *vision means that God’s Spirit will go through the whole world. God will overcome the evil rulers of the nations. And God will bring peace.
Verse 1 A *chariot is a special cart that soldiers used. Horses pulled them. *Bronze has two metals in it: copper and tin. *Bronze is also a colour: between yellow and brown. The two mountains were outside the place where God lives. Perhaps in the morning sun they looked yellow-brown! Since the first *vision (Zechariah 1:7-17) was at night, perhaps this one was in the early morning.
Verses 2-3 The first *vision mentions red, white and brown horses. Here, the colours are not all the same. ‘*Dappled’ means ‘with several colours’. The *chariots show us that God is doing something on the earth. Some translations have ‘grey’ instead of ‘strong’.
Verse 5 We could translate ‘spirits’ as ‘winds’. Whether winds or spirits, this means God’s ministers (servants). Psalm 104:4 says, ‘He (God) makes his *angels into spirits/winds. (He makes) his ministers like a burning fire.’ God sends these spirits or winds out. Previously they were standing in front of him in *heaven.
Verse 6 Some translations have ‘west’ instead of ‘after them’. Other translations add that the red horses go to the east. But this translation says what the *Hebrew Bible says. The other translations make small changes in the *Hebrew words. Perhaps they are right, but we do not really know.
Verse 7 Some translations have ‘grey’ instead of ‘strong’. Look at the note on verses 2-3. Probably, all the horses went through the earth.
Verse 8 This verse seems to mean that God is ruling in the ‘country in the north’, that is, Babylon. This *vision completes the series. God has:
· taken his people back to Jerusalem from Babylon
· encouraged them to build again his *temple in Jerusalem
· made Joshua his chief priest
· made Zerubbabel the political leader
· removed evil things from the country of Judah
· made clear that he (God) is ruler in Babylon
‘Rest’ in this verse means that God’s spirit is happy. What has happened has satisfied him. He has done all that he wanted to do in the world.
Verse 9 This is a *Hebrew way to say ‘God spoke to me’. We often still call the Bible ‘the Word of God’.
Verse 10 Probably, these four men led a group from Babylon to Jerusalem. They had just arrived. They probably brought gifts with them. These gifts were the ‘something’ that the *Hebrew Bible does not name. Josiah was probably their leader.
Verse 11 The silver and gold were probably part of the ‘something’ in verse 10. Many Bible students think that there was only one crown. The plural may mean that:
There was one circle of silver and one of gold. Together, they made one crown.
It is an *Hebrew way to say that it was a wonderful crown.
Several old translations (*Greek and Syrian) have just ‘a crown’. In verse 14, the ‘crowns’ have a singular verb in the *Hebrew Bible. (A singular verb means that there is only one subject in the sentence.) Again, this probably means that there was only one crown. Some Bible students think that they put the crown on the head of the chief priest Joshua. Then they put it on the head of (prince) Zerubbabel. Other students think that there were two crowns. This is unlikely, because no old Bible has Zerubbabel in verse 11.
Verse 12 Zechariah probably meant that Zerubbabel was called the Branch. His name Zerubbabel was the word in the Babylonian language for ‘Branch of Babylon’. ‘Grow up’ in the *Hebrew language is ‘make a branch’. Zerubbabel finished building the *temple about 3 years after this. There are more notes on The Branch after the note on verse 15.
Verse 13 A *throne is a special seat that a king sits on. Here there must be two *thrones, one for the prince and the other for the chief priest. Read the note on The Branch.
Verse 14 These are probably the same 4 people from verse 10. Bible students do not know why some names are different. Notice that the verb is singular, although there are crowns. (A singular verb means that there is only one subject in the sentence.) The verse refers to the crowns as ‘it’. In the future, the priests would see the crown in the *temple. Then they would remember when it was on the head of Joshua. Perhaps it was also on Zerubbabel. Only the priests could go into the *temple itself.
Verse 15 ‘The people from far away’ may be:
· those in verses 10 and 14; or
· the people of God all over the world that make up God’s *temple.
Zechariah refers to the Branch twice: in 3:8 and 6:12. A branch grows on a tree. Zerubbabel is a Babylonian name. It means ‘Branch of Babylon’. So ‘the Branch’ was probably how Zechariah referred to Zerubbabel. But in verse 13, Zechariah says that Zerubbabel will agree with the priest, Joshua. Prince and priest rule together. But after Zerubbabel, we do not know of any princes in Jerusalem. The chief priest alone seems to have ruled the people.
But 500 years later, there were kings in Jerusalem. There were several kings called Herod. But the Herods were not priests. Jesus also lived at that time. Hebrews 5:10 says that God appointed Jesus to be like Melchizedek. Melchizedek was a king and a priest (Hebrews 7:1). And we say that Jesus is both our king and our priest. For this reason, Bible students think that The Branch meant more than Zerubbabel, even to Zechariah. It was a name for a future king who would be a priest also.
Other *prophets also used the word ‘branch’ to refer to the *Messiah. Some verses include: Isaiah 4:2 and 11:1; Jeremiah 23:5 and 33:15.
A famous chapter of Isaiah says that ‘he grew as a delicate shoot’, Isaiah 53:2. A shoot is a part of a plant that is growing. On a tree, a shoot becomes a branch. So Isaiah 53 also tells us about ‘the Branch’! And Isaiah 53 tells us that the *Messiah will take away *sin. This is the job that a priest does. Jesus is the only priest that can really take away *sin. Notice also that Joshua is the *Old Testament word for Jesus!
1. Follow the way that the 8 *visions move from:
· the *temple in Jerusalem, to
· the leaders and people in Judah, to
· the whole world.
2. Study the verses that the note on The Branch refers to.
3.Perhaps God wants you to do something and you are afraid. Then remember Zechariah. God will keep his promises to you by means of the Bible, if you obey him. God will be like ‘a wall of fire round you’, Zechariah 2:5.
Verse 1 This was December 5, 518 *B.C. The people had almost rebuilt the *temple. Perhaps the priests were already burning animals to offer to God.
Verses 2, 3 This is a very difficult verse to translate. The *Hebrew Bible says, ‘He sent Bethel Sharezer and Regem-melech and his men to ask the *LORD.’ Who was ‘he’? Bible students suggest:
· ‘He’ means ‘the people of Bethel’, as in our translation. Bethel was a town nearly 20 kilometres north of Jerusalem. When Israel divided from Judah, the people of Israel went to Bethel and Dan to *worship instead of to Jerusalem. 1 Kings 12:27-29 tells us this. Ezra 2:28 tells us that 223 *Jews went back to Bethel from Babylon. Perhaps ‘he’ in this verse means them.
· ‘He’ was Darius, the King of Persia. This is unlikely, as it means that we must leave out the end of verse 1.
· ‘He’ was a man called Bethel Sharezer. History students have found a man with this name in old papers from Babylon. He lived in Babylon at the time of Zechariah. Also, history students have found that Regem-melech is the name for an official from the king.
So, perhaps king Darius sent an official called Bethel Sharezer to Jerusalem. Ezra 7:7-9 tells us that it took about 3 months to travel from Babylon to Jerusalem. There was a *fast in the 5th month. If the official left Babylon at that time, then he would arrive in Jerusalem 3 or 4 months later. This agrees with verse 1. A *fast is when people do not eat food for reasons of religion. During this *fast, the people remembered when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem in 586 *B.C. There were 4 *fasts that remembered this:
· 9th day of 4th month: Nebuchadnezzar’s men destroyed the walls of Jerusalem, Jeremiah 39:2;
· 5th month: Nebuchadnezzar’s men destroyed the *temple, 2 Kings 25:8;
· 7th month: murder of Gedaliah, 2 Kings 25:25; Jeremiah 41:1;
· 10th day of tenth month: Nebuchadnezzar attacked Jerusalem, 2 Kings 25:1, 2; Jeremiah 39:1.
So some Bible students say that the men did not come from Bethel. They could travel to Jerusalem in one day. Instead, *Jewish leaders in Babylon sent people to ask if they should keep the *fasts. People were now rebuilding Jerusalem, with its walls, its houses and its *temple. The important thing is not who asked the question. Rather the important point was what Zechariah answered. The answer was true for everyone, whether they lived in Jerusalem, Bethel or Babylon!
In order to ask their question, the men burned animals at the *temple as a gift to God. This was how they asked God questions in those days. The answer would come from a priest or a *prophet.
Verse 3 The ‘many years’ would be the time from 586 *B.C. to the time of Zechariah, 518 *B.C.
Verse 5 Zechariah mentions all 4 *fasts. See:
· Zechariah 8:18, the fourth month;
· Zechariah 7:3 and 8:18, the fifth month;
· Zechariah 7:5 and 8:18, the 7th month; and
· Zechariah 8:18, the 10th month.
The 7th month *fast was for the murder of Gedaliah. Perhaps it was (also) for the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur (a *Jewish special day). In this verse, the *Lord asks them why they kept these *fasts. In other words, what was their real reason? Was it to please God, or to please themselves? The ‘people in the country’ are those from Bethel, unless they are from Babylon. (See note on verses 2, 3). The *Lord’s answer would be true for all *Jews, wherever they lived.
Verse 6 We do not know how long they *fasted for (ate no food). Perhaps it was just for one day. Perhaps, like Muslims today, it was only in daylight hours. In this verse, the *Lord answers the question in verse 5. Whenever the people ate, they were eating to please themselves. And their fasts were also for their own benefit. The people were merely doing whatever they wanted to do. They were not trying to please God.
Verse 7 So the people were still trying to please themselves. God reminded them about his words by the earlier *prophets. These *prophets had warned the people about God’s punishment before it happened. The prophets warned the people because they were not obeying God’s laws. Instead, the people were doing whatever pleased them. Now, many years later, the people were still doing whatever pleased them. But God had not changed. He still wanted them to obey him.
The Negev was the region south of Jerusalem. The Shephelah was the country between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean Sea. Some Bible students think that an editor added verse 8 later. If he did, then ‘the earlier *prophets’ are those whose words are in verses 9-10. But the *Lord may be referring to what Isaiah said about *fasts in Isaiah 58:3.
Verses 9-10 These verses remind us of the words of the earlier *prophets Hosea, Amos and Micah. They include 4 important Bible words:
· justice (mishpat in *Hebrew): to do the things that are fair and right, especially in the courts.
· truth (emet). We should not merely speak the truth. We must also do the right things.
· kind love (or *covenant love, or *mercy) (chesed): the *covenant was the agreement between God and his people. *Mercy means kindness when you do not have to be kind.
· pity (racham): the same attitude that a mother has when she looks after her child.
God’s answer (by Zechariah) was this. Your religion does not matter if you do not obey God’s rules. These are God’s rules: *justice, truth, kind love (*mercy) and pity. We call this ‘social *justice’. In other words, everybody should do what is fair and right to everybody else. The foreigners may have been *refugees. These are people that run away from their own countries because of difficulties there.
Verses 11-12 Because there was no social *justice in earlier times, God punished his people. He sent Israel to *exile in Assyria. He sent Judah to *exile in Babylon. ‘Turned their backs’ is a way to say ‘they did not listen’. It is hard to make a mark on a stone. God, by Zechariah, means here that he could not make a mark on (or impress) his people. He could not make them change their minds. And he could not make them obey him. They did not want social *justice. Even God’s Spirit, by the earlier *prophets, did not make them obey him. So, God was very angry.
Verses 13-14 Because God was angry, he scattered his people. Some went to Assyria in about 720 *B.C. Some went to Babylon in about 600 *B.C. Perhaps some went to other places. When his people had left their land, it was desolate. ‘Desolate’ means that nobody remained in the land. So the land became wild. There were no farmers to grow crops. There were only weeds and wild animals. It was not now a pleasant land.
1. Look for the words *justice, truth, kind love and pity in Hosea, Amos, Micah and Isaiah. Write them in the following *table:
Important Bible word
What it means
2. Pray for social *justice in our world. Do what you can to help poor people, widows, *orphans and *refugees.
3. Read what the *New Testament says about *fasts. Look at Matthew 6:16-18; Acts 10:30; 14:23; 1 Corinthians 7:5; 2 Corinthians 11:27.
4. Learn to say Zechariah 7:9-10 by heart. (‘By heart’ means that you do not look at the words.)
Some Bible students think that this is the last chapter of Zechariah. Chapters 9-13, they say, are by another *prophet. If so, this other prophet may also have the name ‘Zechariah’. If they are correct, then this book is like that of Amos, Isaiah and most other *prophets. It ends with a message of hope!
Verse 2 Notice that the word ‘jealous’ comes three times in this verse. In English, this would mean ‘very, very, very jealous’. The *Hebrew word for ‘so angry’ means to feel as if you are ‘on fire’. God loved his people so much that he felt angry (or on fire) with their enemies. Read Zechariah 1:15 again. This is what the word ‘jealous’ means here. Fire in the Bible nearly always means God’s anger. Zechariah says that God is jealous. So God is angry with the people that hurt the *Jews. In this verse, there is a special sort of *Hebrew poetry. It ends as it began. The *Hebrew order of words is:
I am jealous for Zion, I am very jealous.
I am very angry because I am jealous (for Zion).
Notice that the first three words are the same as the last three words. This often happens in *Hebrew poetry, but it is not easy to see in translations. Remember that words in ( … ) are not in the *Hebrew Bible.
Verse 3 God says that he will live in Jerusalem. This means that his *glory will again be in the *temple. The *glory of God means God’s greatness. Sometimes people saw a light that shines very brightly (Mark 9:3). This light shows that God really is there. The mountain of the *LORD is the hill called Zion. They built the *temple on this hill. The mountain was *holy because the *holy God lived there. ‘*Holy’ means ‘very, very good’. Only God is really *holy. God is everywhere. But God also wanted his people to know that he was specially with them in Jerusalem.
In this verse, Jerusalem has a new name. It is ‘City of Truth, the *Holy Mountain’. Two other *prophets gave Jerusalem a new name. See Isaiah 62:2-4 and Ezekiel 48:35.
Verses 4-5 The streets in these verses are really the squares in the city. There will be old people in them, and children in them. Previously there had been terrible wars in Jerusalem. People died before they were old. And enemy soldiers had taken children away to be slaves. But the *Lord was speaking about a time when Jerusalem would be at peace. People would live until they were very old. There would be many children. And the children would be happy as they played.
Verse 6 ‘Seem’ in the *Hebrew Bible is ‘in the eyes of’. In other words, this is what people see. ‘Impossible’ is something too wonderful to be true in the *Hebrew Bible. It is a miracle! A miracle means something that only God can do. ‘It will not seem impossible to me’ is really a question in the *Hebrew Bible. ‘Is it impossible to me?’ The answer that Zechariah expects is ‘No!’
Verse 7 Where will all these people (in verses 4 and 5) come from? God will bring them from the east and from the west. In the *Hebrew language, ‘east’ is ‘where the sun rises’ and ‘west’ is ‘where the sun sets’. ‘Save’ in this verse really means ‘bring from’. God scattered his people among the nations (Zechariah 7:14). Now he will bring them home again. This will include old people and children.
Verse 8 This emphasises the *covenant between God and his people. In this *covenant, God promised to help his people. They promised to love him and obey him. Many Bible students think that here Jerusalem is a sign. In other words, it will not be the present city of Jerusalem, but it will be a ‘new Jerusalem’. Other Bible students see it as the present Jerusalem, but with Jesus who will be ruling there as king. When it happens, it will not matter who is correct! This is because it is a message of hope!
Verse 9 ‘Make your hands strong’ was a *Hebrew way to say ‘get ready for what you must do’. It is in:
· the story of Joshua, Judges 7:9-11. Here, Joshua was getting ready for war.
· the story of David and Jonathan, 1 Samuel 23:16-18. Here, Jonathan told David not to be afraid.
· the story of Ezekiel, Ezekiel 22:14. Here, Ezekiel tells the people that God will scatter them. So their hands will not be strong.
This verse is complex. Not all Bible students translate it the same way. This translation says that the people heard the *prophets when the builders laid the base of God’s house. They heard the promise that God would build his house again. They had built the base two years before, in 520 *B.C. See Haggai 2:18. Now Zechariah was encouraging them to finish the work.
Verse 10 They did not start the building before 520 *B.C. because:
· There was no sure employment.
· There was no security from foreign enemies.
· There was no security from neighbours.
This verse probably refers to 537-520 *B.C. The man and his animals means farmers. The enemies were the people that the soldiers from Babylon moved into Judah. Everything was in a bad state. Even neighbours argued! This was because God was punishing his people. ‘Turn against’ means ‘to argue with’, or perhaps ‘to fight against’.
Verse 11 They had started to rebuild the *temple two years before. Because of this, God started to do good things for his people again. The ‘people that remain’ are those that now live in Judah. Many of them had come from Babylon. Other people had not been into *exile.
Verse 12 Zechariah mentions some of the good things. The *Hebrew phrase for ‘safe seed’ is ‘seed of peace’. The *vine is a plant that grows fruit called *grapes. People make wine from *grapes. Here, the *heavens mean the skies. *Dew is water that comes onto the ground at night as it becomes cooler. In 520 *B.C., Haggai promised that these good things would happen. But they would only happen if people obeyed God. They must rebuild his *temple. Zechariah’s list is a short form of the *covenant. This was the agreement between God and his people. It is in Leviticus 26:3-13 and many other places in the *Old Testament.
Verse 13 ‘House of’ is an *Hebrew way to say ‘people of’. Zechariah put Judah first, unlike Jeremiah 5:11 and 11:10. ‘A *curse’ means to say or to hope that bad things will happen to someone. The nations hoped that bad things would happen to Judah. But now, good things will happen! So, Zechariah encourages his people to finish rebuilding God’s house in Jerusalem.
Verse 14 Bible students are not sure if ‘make your hands strong’ finishes verse 13 or starts verse 14. Our translation puts it in both places! The bad things included the *exile, as Jeremiah wrote in Jeremiah 4:27-29 and other places. But the people should be strong because of the promise in verse 15. ‘Fathers’ in this verse means grandfathers, great-grandfathers and so on. It also includes mothers and grandmothers!
Verse 15 The good things are in verses 12 and 13.
Verse 16 In the *Hebrew Bible, ‘truth’ and ‘honest’ are the same word, ‘emet’. Read again the note on Zechariah 7:9-10. The word ‘sound’ in *Hebrew is ‘shalom’. It means peace. It also means ‘something that satisfies people’. So it is more than just ‘peace’. So we could translate this part of verse 17 like this. ‘Make sure that your judgements are honest. And make sure that they satisfy people.’ The courts in many towns and villages were at their gates. There are examples of this in Deuteronomy 21:19; Ruth 4:1-12; Isaiah 29:21 and Amos 5:10.
Verse 17 These are some of the things that spoil peace. That is why God hates the things in verse 17.
Verse 18 The word of the *LORD has come to answer the question in 7:3. The answer is really in everything between 7:4 and 8:17, but now Zechariah makes it clear to everybody. God wants his people to obey the *covenant. God does not merely want them to keep *fasts to remember past troubles.
Verse 19 They only asked in 7:3 about the *fast in the fifth month. But here God includes in his answer all the major *exile *festivals. There is a list of them in the note on 7:3. A *festival is an important event. There is often music, singing, dancing and great feasts. From now on there must not be *fasts but feasts! The troubles are over. A *fast is when people eat nothing. A feast is when they eat a lot. And they drink a lot.
Verses 20-23 This section extends what Zechariah said in 2:11. It completes the section that deals with past and present history. Then it starts a section that looks to the future. The rest of the book, chapters 9-14, deals with the future. There are several interesting words and phrases in verse 23:
· ten This is often a number that means ‘complete’ in the Bible. Examples are in Genesis 31:7; Leviticus 26:26; Judges 17:10; Ruth 4:2; 1 Samuel 1:8; Jeremiah 41:8. Perhaps here it is a picture of God’s ‘complete’ church.
· all languages and nations This is what happened in Acts 2:5.
· hold firmly Exodus 4:4 uses these words, about Moses who was holding on to the snake’s tail. 1 Samuel 17:35 uses them about David who was holding on to the lion’s beard. In both passages, the men would not dare to stop holding.
· edge of the coat This may link with Ruth 3:9 and Ezekiel 16:8. When they spread the edge of their clothing over them, it gave these people the security of marriage. In the *New Testament, the Church is the bride of Christ, Revelation 21:2. And the name of the bride is Jerusalem!
· let us go with you The *Jews went to the *temple to pray and to look for the *LORD. So this probably means that people from everywhere wanted to obey the *covenant. ‘God is with you’ reminds us of many Bible verses. Here are some examples: Genesis 21:22; Genesis 26:3, 24; Exodus 3:12; Joshua 1:5.
1. Read the new names for Jerusalem in Isaiah 62:2-4 and Ezekiel 48:35.
2. Think about your town. Are there old people and children there? If not, pray that there will be. Old people and children are signs that God is doing good things in your town.
3. Read other verses where God says that nothing is too hard for him: Genesis 18:13-14; Jeremiah 32:26.
4. Read other verses about strong hands. (See the note on verse 9.)
5. Compare Haggai 1:6-11 with Haggai 2:18-19.
6. Pray for the things in Zechariah 7:9-10 and 8:16-17 to happen in your area. Do what you can to make them happen.
7. Study the verses in the note on Zechariah 8:23.
Verse 1 Hadrach was a town north of Hamath (verse 2). Hadrach, Hamath and Damascus were cities in the country called Syria. Damascus was the capital city of Syria. Some Bible students think that the end of the verse should be this. ‘Everybody, including Israel, is looking at the *LORD.’ It is not possible to say who is correct. Our translation fits better with the beginning of the verse.
Verse 2 There is still a town at Hamath today. It is called Hama. Tyre and Sidon were towns on the Mediterranean coast. They were to the west of Syria.
Verse 3 Tyre was a great city. Part of it was on an island, about 1000 metres from the coast. They built a wall round it. It was about 1000 metres long, 10 metres wide and very high. Because nobody could get into Tyre, it was called a strong place, or a ‘*stronghold’. In verses 2 and 3, we learn that the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon had:
· wisdom They were very clever (verse 2).
· defence They built a *stronghold (verse 3).
· wealth They had as much silver and gold as there was dust and dirt (verse 3).
But these could not stop the *LORD from destroying them (verse 4).
Verse 4 Notice this: It is the *LORD who will destroy Tyre and Sidon, not an enemy army. So some Bible students do not think that this describes what Alexander the Great would do. Read the Special Note after the note on verse 8. ‘The *stronghold in the sea’ was the island part of Tyre.
Verse 5 Ashkelon, Gaza and Ekron were cities where the people called *Philistines lived. In this verse, God speaks about these cities as if they were people.
The people in those cities will see what happens in Tyre and Sidon. Then, they will be afraid. Those cities were on the Mediterranean coast. There had been 5 of them, but an enemy destroyed Gath 200 years earlier, 2 Chronicles 26:6. So, at the time of Zechariah, there were only 4 Philistine cities. The other city was Ashdod, which is in verse 6.
Verse 6 Notice that something happens in the middle of this short verse. Suddenly, God says what he will do! He will destroy everything that is valuable to the people in Philistia. The word ‘foreigner’ may mean ‘bastard’. A bastard is the child of people that are not married. Alexander the Great was a bastard. Therefore, many Bible students think that these verses are about what he did to Tyre and Sidon. He was the only leader whose army entered the island of Tyre. And he defeated the city.
Verse 7 The people called *Philistines drank blood and they ate animals including dogs, pigs and mice. It was part of their religion (Isaiah 65:4; 66:3, 17). But God will take away these things. Then the *Philistines will be as God’s people. They will even become leaders in Judah. This surprised Zechariah and it made him use the word ‘even’! The *Philistines would be like the *Jebusites. King David allowed them to become part of Israel. He did this when he first defeated Jerusalem. He made it his capital city, 2 Samuel 5:6-9.
Verse 8 This verse tells us that this section is *eschatological. In other words, it is about the time when Jesus will return to the earth as ruler. We know this because the *Romans attacked the *temple in A.D. 70. Then they defeated God’s people. A.D. means ‘years after Jesus came to the earth’. When Jesus returns to earth, nobody will defeat him or his people.
We can look at the last 6 chapters of Zechariah in these ways:
1) They tell about the future history of the *Jews, including the time when Jesus would come to the earth.
2) They are *eschatological. They tell about the time when Jesus will return to the earth as ruler.
3) They probably include (1) and (2).
So Zechariah 9:1-8 may be about Alexander the Great. He was the King of Macedonia who destroyed Tyre in 333 *B.C. He did not destroy the *temple in Jerusalem, however. But these 8 verses are also a good section to start the main *eschatological part of Zechariah. Some of chapters 1-8 also have *eschatological parts.
Zechariah 9:1-8 tells us that:
· the land outside Judah will become God’s land;
· many people who are living in these countries will serve God.
A Bible student whose name is R. Mason wrote this. ‘If there is hope for the *Philistines, there is hope for all (people).’ (Cambridge New English Bible Commentary on Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi, Cambridge University Press, 1977)
1. Find a map. On it, look for the Philistine and Syrian cities in verses 1-6.
2. The *Roman word for Ashdod was Azotus. Read about the work of Philip in the cities of Gaza and Ashdod, Acts 8:26-40. Does this make you think of anything in Zechariah 9:1-8?
3. Pray that Jesus will soon return to the earth as its ruler. ‘Even so, come, *Lord Jesus’, Revelation 22:20.
Verse 9 Read the note on Zechariah 2:10 for what ‘Daughter of’ means. Read also Zephaniah 3:14. Here are some verses from Genesis 49:
These verses are mysterious. Also, they excite Bible students! They are mysterious because we are not certain about their meaning. And they excite us because they tell us about a wonderful event in the future. Jacob spoke these words just before he died. Here are some notes on these verses:
· sceptre This is a special stick that is a sign of authority.
· Judah He was the fourth son of Jacob (and Leah), Genesis 29:35. The word ‘judah’ means ‘praise’. The kings of the country of Judah were from the family of Judah. Two exceptions are Saul and Ishbosheth, 2 Samuel 2:20.
· Shiloh Nobody knows what this word means. Some people think that it means ‘Prince of peace’. Many Bible students think that it is a name for the *Messiah. The *Greek word for *Messiah is Christ.
· law-giver He is someone with authority, like a king.
· between his feet This is a way to say the children, grandchildren and so on that come after him.
· the vine This is a small tree. *Grapes grow on it. The grape is a fruit that makes wine. If you can tie a horse to it, it must be a strong tree! That means that the land produces strong plants.
· wash in wine This means that the land will give very much fruit. People could wash in wine instead of water!
· blood of *grapes This is a way to say ‘wine’, in poetry.
All through the *Old Testament, *prophets said that a special king (or *messiah) would come. Examples are Isaiah 9:6-7; 11:1-5; Micah 5:2-4; Psalm 72:1-11; 89:38-45. The passage from Genesis 49:10-12 refers to this king. And Zechariah wrote, ‘Your king is coming to you.’ Who is the king, and when will he come?
Who is the king? The answer is in the *New Testament, in the *Gospels of Matthew (21:1), Mark (11:1) and Luke (19:29). They describe Jesus as he came in to Jerusalem. He was riding on the *foal of a *donkey. Matthew mentions two *donkeys!
When will he come? He came to Jerusalem 2000 years ago, but he will come again. That is when there will be peace in all the world. Therefore, this section of Zechariah tells us about Jesus when he came the first time. It also tells us about when he will come again.
The *Hebrew Bible says, ‘He is *righteous, (and he) has *salvation. (He) is gentle and he is riding on a *donkey.’ The words ‘has *salvation’ are a puzzle to Bible students. Some say that it means that he can save other people. This is true. He can save people and he does save them. But other Bible students say that the *Hebrew word means that somebody saved him. If so, then God saved him and sent him to Jerusalem. This could refer to the times when people tried to kill Jesus. But God made him safe until Jesus came to Jerusalem on a young *donkey. Look at Something to do number 1 below. Certainly, God saved him when he raised Jesus from the dead. The other words are:
· righteous This means very, very good. Only God is really *righteous. Therefore, this means that Jesus is God.
· gentle Some translations have ‘poor’. But ‘gentle’ reminds us of Isaiah’s picture of the *Messiah, God’s servant, in Isaiah 42:1-4. See also Matthew’s description in Matthew 11:29.
· riding on a donkey … the foal of a donkey. A foal is a young animal and a donkey is like a small horse. Kings of Israel rode on donkeys, but Alexander the Great rode a big horse. Perhaps this verse tells us that Jesus is not like Alexander. Matthew seems to say that Jesus rode on a *donkey and its *foal. But Mark and Luke write about only one animal! We should probably translate Matthew’s ‘*donkey and young *donkey’ as ‘*donkey, even a young *donkey’. The same word means both ‘and’ and ‘even’ in the *Hebrew language.
Verse 10 The Old *Greek Bible has ‘he will take away’. Several English translations follow this. But if the *Hebrew Bible is right, then God does some things. He saves the *Messiah from his enemies and he raises him from the dead. And the *Messiah himself does other things. He rides into Jerusalem on a *donkey. If he wrote today, Zechariah would probably not write about horses, *chariots and bows and arrows. He would probably write about tanks, war-planes, bombs and guns instead!
From ‘sea to sea’ means from the Red Sea (near Egypt) or the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean Sea. From ‘the river to the ends of the earth’ means from somewhere south of Jerusalem to the River Euphrates in the east. Zechariah probably meant the whole of the land where the *Jews should have lived. This is in Exodus 23:31; Numbers 34:1-15 and Ezekiel 47:15-21. They never lived in all this land. But this was what they hoped for. In the end, Jesus will return to the earth. Then God’s people will live where God wants them to live.
1. Read these verses. Somebody tried to kill Jesus, but God saved him: Matthew 2:6-18; Mark 4:35-41; Luke 4:9-12; 4:29-30; John 5:18; 8:59; 10:31. Now read verse 9 in our translation again. Does it describe the life of Jesus?
2. Pray for peace on earth, especially that the Prince of peace (Shiloh?) will return soon to the earth.
Verse 11 God will do something because of the *covenant. This was an agreement between God and his people. They agreed to love and obey him. He promised to look after them. They killed and burned animals to make the *covenant official. This is called the ‘blood of your *covenant’ here. It started with Abraham, Genesis 15:9-11. It continued with Moses, Exodus 24:5-8. Then it happened every day in the *temple in Jerusalem, Exodus 29:38-46. In the *New Testament, Jesus used the phrase ‘blood of the *covenant’ to describe his death, Mark 14:24. Christians remember this ‘blood of the *covenant’ in the *Lord’s Supper, called *Holy Communion or Mass by many Christians. The word ‘testament’ also means ‘*covenant’. So our Bibles have an Old *Covenant and a New *Covenant. God will take the prisoners away from the prison. The prison here is a deep hole in the ground. It is a sign of their place of *exile. These prisoners may be the people that have not yet returned to Jerusalem.
Verse 12 In Isaiah 22:10, the walls of Jerusalem are ‘the *stronghold’. God calls his people back to this *stronghold, to Jerusalem. The hope was probably for the king of verses 9-10. ‘Double’ may mean:
· They would have twice as much joy as the *sorrow that they suffered. *Sorrow means to feel very unhappy.
· They would receive the double share that the oldest child would receive, Deuteronomy 21:17.
· Twice as many people would live in Judah.
Verse 13 Here God says that his people are like weapons of war! Weapons is another word for arms. They are fighting the sons of Javan. This means people from Javan. But where is Javan? It has two possible meanings:
· Greece Therefore, some Bible students think that it is about wars with Greece, 2 or 3 centuries after Zechariah died.
· Distant parts of the world, as in Genesis 10:1-5 and Isaiah 66:19. Therefore some Bible students say that it has an *eschatological meaning.
Notice that Judah and Ephraim do not fight. God uses them to help him control the whole world. Ephraim is another name for Israel.
Verse 14 This is the language of theophany. Theophany means to see God when he does something on the earth. There are examples of this in 2 Samuel 22:8-18, Psalm 29 and Habakkuk 3:3, 11. Here God is in a great storm. The *horn is ‘shofar’ in the *Hebrew language. It is the *horn of an animal. (A horn is something that grows on an animal’s head.) A *horn made a noise when someone blew into it. Perhaps here it is a sign of *thunder. *Thunder is the noise that comes with lightning. Teman was south of Jerusalem. It was a desert place where there were many storms.
Verse 15 Here, Zechariah describes the battle as if it were a great party. God’s people would defeat the enemy. God’s people would kill their enemies as easily as if they were eating food. The noise like drunk people does not mean that they are drunk. It means that their shouts are very loud. And there is no wine. But the blood of the enemy soldiers looks like wine. God’s people are full, like a bowl that is full of wine to pour on the *altar in the *temple. This means that the battle will be a terrible punishment for God’s enemies. See Revelation chapter 16.
Verses 16-17 A *flock of animals is a group of animals. God’s people are called his *flock. They are so precious to him, that they are like *jewels in a crown. A *jewel is a precious stone, such as a diamond. New wine means fresh fruit juice.
Like other sections of Zechariah chapters 9-14, here is a section that can have a meaning in history. It can also have second meaning when Jesus returns to the earth. Both meanings tell us that God keeps his promises. He does what his *covenant promises to do. He will protect his people at all times.
1. Study the words ‘blood of the *covenant’, or similar words, in these passages: Exodus 24:8; Matthew 26:28; Mark 14:24; Luke 22:20; John 6:53-56; 1 Corinthians 11:25; Hebrews 10:4, 19-22.
2. Start to make a list of Zechariah’s *prophecies in the life of Jesus. Put it in the form of a *table like this one:
What Zechariah wrote
Where he wrote it
Where it is in the *Gospels
The king would ride on a *donkey
Keep the list. Add to it when you find other examples.
Verse 1 There were two rainy seasons in Israel and Judah. The first (or former) rain was in the autumn. The second (or latter) rain was in the springtime. Springtime was in March and April in Judah and Israel. They planted seeds in the autumn. The former rain made the seeds grow. The second rain came just before the harvest, so the crops were good. Zechariah tells the people that only the *LORD can send rain. The false gods (teraphim, verse 2) cannot send rain. We need rain to produce our food. Even today, only God can send rain. In verses 1 and 2, rain is a sign of what our spirits need. Only God can supply that also.
Verse 2 ‘Images of false gods’ is teraphim in the *Hebrew language. People kept teraphim in their houses and they prayed to them. We do not know how they got the answers. But the answers did not come from God. So the answers were always lies. Perhaps the answers came from people that used magic. Samuel told the people not to use magic, 1 Samuel 15:23. But Hosea 3:4 tells us that they still used teraphim 300 years later. Here, Zechariah also writes about people that use teraphim. Such people are like sheep that have no *shepherd. After the *exile, most *Jews did not use teraphim. But this verse suggests that perhaps a few people did still use them.
Verse 3 ‘The *shepherds’ means the leaders of the people. ‘Leaders’ in the *Hebrew language is ‘male goats’. God says that he visited the leaders. And God adds that now he will visit the people. The word ‘visit’ is a special Bible word. When God ‘visits’ people, God may do good things for those people. Or, God may punish people when he visits them. So we have translated the first visit as ‘punish’ and the second visit as ‘care about’. The ‘house of Judah’ means the people that live in Judah. They have returned from *exile in Babylon. God sees them as his sheep, so he calls them his *flock. A *flock is a group of animals.
Verse 4 ‘From him’ may mean from Judah or from the *LORD. Verse 3 mentions both of them.
Here are three words for a leader:
· corner stone This is the stone at the top of a building that holds it together. It stops the building from falling down. A number of verses use it to mean ‘leader’. These verses include Isaiah 19:13. In Easy English’s translation, it is: ‘The princes in Zoan have made fools of themselves. The princes of Noph have confused each other. The leaders of the groups (of people) have made Egypt choose wrongly.’ The word ‘leaders’ is ‘corner stones’ in the *Hebrew Bible. Also, the verses include Psalm 118:22. In Easy English’s translation, it is: ‘The builders threw away a stone. It is now in an important place at the corner (of the building).’ Peter uses ‘corner stone’ as a name for Jesus in 1 Peter 2:5-8.
· tent peg This is something that stops the wind blowing the tent away. Isaiah uses the word to mean leader in Isaiah 22:23-24, which in Easy English’s translation is: ‘(v22) And I will put the key of the house of David on his shoulder. What he opens, nobody will close. What he closes, nobody will open. (v23) And I will fix him in place (like a) firm *tent peg. And he will bring honour to his father’s house.’
· battle bow This is the only place in the Bible where it calls a leader a battle bow. But students tell us that many countries in the East use it to describe their kings.
‘They will all rule together’ means that the ruler will have all the qualities that these words represent. Notice what he will do:
· He will bind his people together so that nothing scatters them, (corner stone).
· He will make his people safe so that they do not fear danger, (*tent peg).
· He will lead his people against all enemies, (battle bow).
These pictures describe future leaders of Judah. But they also describe Jesus, the perfect leader.
Verse 5 The leaders will be like heroes; but the greatest hero of all will be Jesus, the *Messiah! This is the language of war. The enemy is ‘(men) that ride on horses’. But it may not mean a military war. It may be a war against all kinds of evil things.
Verses 6-10 This section is mainly about Israel. When Zechariah wrote it, many people in Judah had returned from *exile in Babylon. God promised that he would make them strong, verse 6a. (‘a’ means the first part of a verse.) But the rest of verse 6, and all of verses 7-10, are probably about Israel. Israel was the northern part of the country, and Judah was the southern part. Other names for Israel in the Bible include Ephraim and Joseph. Assyria had taken them into *exile over 200 years earlier. But now God says that he will bring them home. Assyria scattered Israel in 722 *B.C. more than Babylon scattered Judah in 587-586 *B.C. (See 2 Kings 17:6.) But God will blow a whistle to call them wherever they are, verse 8!
Verse 6 Notice that God says, ‘I will answer them.’ He did not say this in Zechariah 7:13. But now he will hear their prayers. Their punishment is over.
Verse 7 This would make them *rejoice. *Rejoice means ‘show people that you are very, very happy’. It may still be in the future, because Zechariah says, ‘their sons will be happy’.
Verse 8 ‘Blow a whistle for them’ reminds us of Isaiah 5:26 and 7:18:
Isaiah 5:26 (The *LORD) will send a signal to distant nations. And he will (blow on his) whistle to one nation from the ends of the earth.
Isaiah 7:18 On that day, the *LORD will (blow his) whistle for the flies in Egypt. They are at the upper end of the river in Egypt. And he will call for the bees in the country called Assyria. (Bees are insects.)
‘Blow a whistle for’ means that God is ‘calling for’ people, as a *shepherd calls for his animals. They will hear him wherever they are. God calls for the people that he has ‘bought’. We do not know how he bought them here. But this word has another meaning in the *New Testament. Christians believe that Jesus bought us back from the devil. This happened when Jesus died, 1 Peter 1:18-19. Here, perhaps, God looks forward to the time when that will happen. Jesus’ death was 500 years after Zechariah wrote these words. There is a note on *Satan (the devil) after Zechariah 3:1-2.
Verse 10 They will come home from Assyria, which here probably includes Babylon and Persia also. They will also come home from other countries. Zechariah mentions Egypt. He says that God will take them home to Lebanon and Gilead. These places are near Israel. So many people will come back that they will need extra land!
Verses 11-12 Here, Zechariah uses history as an *eschatological sign. God brought his people from Egypt. The story is in the Book of Exodus. He will bring them again in the near future. And many Bible students think that it will happen again before the end of the world! In verse 11, the first ‘he’ is probably Ephraim (in other words, the people of Israel). And the second ‘he’ is probably the *LORD.
1. Read Jeremiah 27:9 and Ezekiel 22:28. They tell us about false gods and people that use magic.
2. Add to your *table after chapter 9 (Something to do number 2) Matthew 9:36.
3. If you have a map, find the places that Zechariah mentions in chapter 10.
4. Study some verses in the *Old Testament that describe God or his servant as a *shepherd: Genesis 49:24; Psalm 23; Isaiah 40:11; and Ezekiel 34:23-24.
5. Study more verses about corner stones: Judges 20:2; 1 Samuel 14:38; Job 38:6; Isaiah 28:16.
Verses 1-3 Some Bible students say that these verses are part of a poem that starts in Zechariah 10:10. Other Bible students do not agree. Bible students are not certain whether the leaders in verses 1-3 are *Jewish or foreign.
Verse 1 *Prophets often linked Lebanon and Bashan, Isaiah 2:13; Jeremiah 22:20 and Ezekiel 27:5-6. *Cedar trees grew well in Lebanon. Ezekiel, in chapter 17 of his book, compared the royal family of Judah to a *cedar tree. Here, the *cedar trees may mean the leaders of many nations.
Verse 2 The *juniper trees, strong trees and *oak trees probably also mean the leaders of nations. ‘He’ in this verse and verse 3 is probably God. Zechariah does not tell us how God will do these things.
Verse 3 *Shepherds are sheep farmers. In Jeremiah 25:34-37, *shepherds mean the rulers of foreign nations. The lions make a noise. This is because someone, perhaps God, has destroyed their homes. This makes them dangerous. Again, like *shepherds, lions mean the leaders. Read Jeremiah 50:44 and Ezekiel 19:1-9.
Many Bible students say that this is a very difficult part of Zechariah to understand. To help us, some Bible students divide it into three sections:
Verses 4-6 The *LORD gives his people one last chance to obey the *covenant. He gives them a good *shepherd, or leader. But God knows that it will end with failure.
Verses 7-14 The people do not accept the good leader.
Verses 15-17 So the *LORD lets them have a bad leader instead.
In this section, we can imagine that Zechariah is telling a story. It is about Judah, Israel and their *shepherds (leaders). Zechariah says the words of God. Some *shepherds (leaders) were good, but other shepherds were bad. The people did not want the good *shepherds (leaders). The *New Testament tells us that the real ‘Good *Shepherd’ is Jesus. Read the section after the note on verse 14 called 'Who was the *Potter?'
Verse 4 A *shepherd is a sheep farmer. A *flock is a group of animals like sheep or goats. But here the *flock means God’s people and the *shepherd is their leader. God asks Zechariah to be the *shepherd, or leader, because their present leaders are bad leaders. Bible students do not know if Zechariah actually did these things. Perhaps he merely wrote about them. But some *prophets did act their *prophecies. Look in Something to do, number 3.
Verse 5 Notice two things here:
Some people buy the sheep. They are the foreign enemies. They want the female sheep to have many *lambs. A *lamb is a baby sheep. They will have much wool and meat. Other people sell the sheep. They are the bad leaders in Israel. They will have much money from the sale. Remember that the sheep here mean God’s people. The bad leaders and enemies hope to get a profit from what they do.
There is a special sort of humour here called ‘*irony’. It means that the words mean the opposite of what they say. In fact, the enemy is guilty. And God did not make the bad leaders rich.
Verse 6 The *LORD knew that the good *shepherd would not save the *flock. Their present leaders would scatter them and their enemies would *oppress them. Some Bible students think that ‘the country’ here may mean ‘the whole earth’. The *Hebrew Bible uses the word ‘hand’ three times here:
· to the hand of his neighbour
· to the hand of his king
· from the hand of those that *oppress people
Each time, ‘hand’ here means ‘power’. ‘*Oppress’ means ‘to be very, very unkind to people, especially if you want to gain money’.
Verse 7 Bible students do not agree how to translate ‘the people that bought and sold the sheep’. Some think that it should be ‘the people that the enemy *oppresses’. Most agree with our translation, but some, such as The New International Version, do not. Both translations can teach us something. The first pole is called ‘pleasant’. This means God. Read Psalms 27:4 and 90:17. The second pole is called ‘union’. This means God’s people, Judah and Israel.
Verse 8 Who were the three *shepherds? Bible students have suggested over 40 answers to this question! Perhaps three just means all the bad leaders, because three often means ‘complete’ in the Bible. If Zechariah is saying how God feels, then:
Isaiah 1:13 is an example of when God is becoming impatient with his people.
And John 15:25 tells us that Jesus said, ‘They hated me without a cause.’
Verse 9 Zechariah has said how God feels. Then here he tells us what God will do. He will let their enemies destroy his people.
Verse 10 ‘All the nations’ probably means ‘all God’s people in all the world’. Here God breaks his *covenant with his people. This means that he cancels it. In the *covenant (a word that means ‘agreement’):
· his people agree to love and obey God;
· God agrees to lead and protect his people.
But because the people wanted bad *shepherds (leaders), God cancels the *covenant.
Verse 11 The bad *shepherds wanted the good *shepherd to go. Then they could be rich again, verse 5! See also the note on verse 7.
Verse 12 Because he said in verse 9, ‘I will not be your *shepherd’, he could not ask them to pay him. But they gave him 30 (pieces) of silver. Nehemiah 5:15 tells us that this was a large amount of money. Notice that they ‘weighed’ it. This tells us that there were no coins at that time.
Verse 13 Read the note below, 'Who was the *Potter?'
Verse 14 The union between Judah and Israel broke when Solomon died, 400 years before. But both were still the *LORD’s people. Now, the break would be permanent. Perhaps it means the break between the people of Judah and the Samaritans. The Samaritans later lived in Israel, John 4:9.
Matthew 27:3-10 says:
The two words *treasury and *potter sound very similar in the *Hebrew language. A *treasury is where you keep your valuable things and your money. A *potter is someone that makes pots. Bible students are not sure which word Zechariah used in verse 13. So, some translations have ‘I threw them to the *treasury.’ Matthew used both words.
Why did Matthew say that Jeremiah said these words? Perhaps it was because Jeremiah saw a *potter at work near the *temple in Jerusalem, Jeremiah 18:6 and 19:1. Or perhaps, Jeremiah did write the last 6 chapters of the book that we call Zechariah. We do not know.
Another interesting idea is this: Perhaps the word *potter means someone that melted gold and silver. Some Bible students think that there was someone like this near the *temple. He melted the gold and silver pieces that people offered to God. He made something new from them. The *Hebrew word for *potter means ‘someone that shapes things’.
Verse 15 Now the *prophet must act the part of a bad *shepherd. Here, God says that he is ‘foolish’.
Verse 16 The *hoof is the foot of a sheep or a cow. In one translation, ‘he will tear off their *hoofs’ is ‘he will throw away their broken bones’ (Revised English Bible). The word-picture is of a leader that only cares about himself. He will feed himself, but he will not care about his *flock (people).
Verse 17 With an eye and an arm that cannot fight, the bad *shepherd has no power. He can do nothing!
1. Read Zechariah 10:10–11:3 as one poem.
2. Find the key word ‘*shepherd’ in Zechariah 11:4-17. A key word is a word that helps to explain a passage in a book.
3. Read about *prophets that acted their *prophecies: Isaiah 20:2; Jeremiah 27:2; Ezekiel 24:16.
4. Read the story of Ezekiel’s two poles, in Ezekiel 37:15-23.
5. Add to *table after chapter 9 (Something to do number 2) Matthew 26:15.
Verse 1 Notice that Zechariah says that the *LORD is still doing these things. Read Colossians 1:16-17, especially the end of verse 17, ‘He (Jesus) holds all things together (in their places).’ Zechariah says this because the message is so important. The *Hebrew word here for ‘warns’ is ‘massa’. It is something that is very heavy. This means that it is very important. The same word is in Zechariah 9:1. Israel here probably means all the *Jewish people, Judah and Israel. It does not mean just the northern country, as in Zechariah 11:14.
Verse 2 ‘*Stagger’ means ‘to walk as if you will soon fall over’. All the people will seem drunk! It is not the cup that makes them *stagger. It is what is in the cup. Other *prophets wrote about the cup that God uses. Isaiah 51:17 mentions ‘the cup of the *LORD’s anger’. Jeremiah 51:7 says ‘Babylon is a gold cup in the *LORD’s hand. It will make all the earth drunk.’ These cups mean what God will do. When he punishes people, they will not walk. They will *stagger!
Zechariah was describing a battle against Jerusalem. Many nations will attack Jerusalem. But God will make their soldiers weak, like drunks.
Verse 3 Again Zechariah uses the *Hebrew word ‘massa’. But now, it is not the message that is heavy. It is the rock that is heavy. Many people try to move it, but they only hurt themselves. When people do not obey God, they always hurt themselves.
So when the nations oppose Jerusalem, they will hurt themselves.
Verse 4 But here God himself hurts people also. He makes them mad and he makes their horses frightened and blind. Those who do not obey God are like mad and blind people. Deuteronomy 28:28 links these two ideas. ‘The house of Judah’ may mean ‘the royal family of Judah’. But it may mean ‘the people that live in Judah’.
Verse 5 Here and in verse 6, some translations have ‘leaders’ instead of ‘families’. Bible students are not sure which is correct. Most translations have ‘families’. The people of Judah probably decided then to make the *LORD their God also. Perhaps, before this, they had not bothered to trust God. Jerusalem was the capital city of Judah.
Verse 6 Judah was the country round Jerusalem. The enemy could get into Judah easily, but they could not get into Jerusalem. This verse tells us that the people of Judah would destroy their enemies. However, the people in Jerusalem would watch safely!
Verse 7 The people in Judah saw that God was fighting for Jerusalem, verse 5. God used Judah to defeat the enemy, verse 6. God did this so that Jerusalem could not feel more important than Judah. In other words, Jerusalem would not have more honour than Judah. It was God that defeated the enemy, verse 4.
Verse 8 In the *Hebrew language, ‘protect’ is ‘be a shield’. A shield is something that a soldier covers himself with. It protects him from arrows and swords. The weak people will become strong, like David. The family (‘house of’ in the *Hebrew language) of David will be like God. And they will seem to their enemies like the *angel of the *LORD. This may be a name for the *LORD himself, or it may be the leader of God’s *angels, Zechariah 1:11.
This phrase comes in verses 3, 4, 6, 8 and 9. When is ‘that day’? Bible students believe that there are several meanings:
The *historical meaning is that it happened in the history of Judah and Jerusalem. Perhaps it happened when the four *chariots came, Zechariah 6:1-8, or the trouble in Zechariah 8:9-13.
The church meaning is that Jerusalem here may mean all God’s people, including the church. Whenever there is trouble, God will send help. But we may have to wait for it.
The *eschatological, or end of time, meaning is when Jesus returns to the earth. He will save Jerusalem, the city and the church. Jesus, of course, came from the family (house) of David.
The section that follows is about the death of Jesus. One day, the *Jewish people will be sorry for it. They will cry and weep. But what made Zechariah think of this? What did he see that the *Holy Spirit of God used to make him *prophesy this? We shall never know. Bible students have had many ideas. One idea is in the note on verse 10. But really, it does not matter. Part of what Zechariah said actually happened. Jesus died and a soldier *pierced him with a sword. This means that he pushed a sword into him. The rest of the *prophecy is still in the future!
Verse 10 One way to understand this difficult verse is to use the *historical, church and *eschatological idea.
*historical: Somebody killed someone in Jerusalem with a knife. *Pierced means ‘stuck a knife or sword into’. Zechariah wrote, ‘They will look to me whom they *pierced.’ So, the dead man may be a *prophet. Or it may mean the *LORD. But this is just an idea. Bible students do not agree who murdered whom, or when. There are many possibilities in *Jewish history.
church: John 19:33-37 tells us about a soldier who *pierced (or stuck a sword into) Christ’s body. Many *Jews wept at Jesus’ death. This included Peter, Matthew 26:75; and Mary, John 20:11. Probably hundreds more wept as they became Christians on the Day of *Pentecost, Acts 2:37.
*eschatological: Revelation 1:7 tells us about the time when Jesus returns to this earth. ‘They that *pierced him’ will weep. This means the people that were responsible for the death of Jesus in Jerusalem.
So, the people in Jerusalem are very, very sorry. This is because God has poured his Spirit on them. God’s Spirit gave them God’s *grace and he made them pray to him. ‘*Grace’ means ‘kindness when you do not have to be kind’. The *Hebrew word here for ‘prayer’ means ‘ask for *grace’. Notice that Zechariah wrote, ‘they will look to me whom they *pierced’. The speaker is the *LORD. Therefore Bible students say that Zechariah meant the *Messiah. *Messiah was a name for a *Jewish king or leader. But when Jesus the *Messiah came, he was the *LORD in human form. People looked on God whom they *pierced. Jesus was, of course, God’s only son, but he was God also. In this verse, ‘bitter’ means ‘very, very sad’.
Verse 11 Hadad-rimmon puzzles Bible students. Megiddo was a place in Israel. Probably people gathered there to weep for someone that died. Perhaps the person that died was:
· the false god Hadad; or
· the *Jewish king Josiah, 2 Chronicles 35:25.
Verses 12-14 The house of David (and his son Nathan) means ‘all the political leaders’. The house of Levi (and his son Shimei) means ‘all the priests’.
1. Study cups in the *Old Testament:
· Cups that do good things to people, Psalms 23:5 and 116:13.
· Cups that do bad things to people, Isaiah 51:17; Jeremiah 25:17, 28-29.
2. Add to your *table after chapter 9 (Something to do number 2) John 19:37 and Revelation 1:7.
3. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, with all that it means (Psalm 122:6).
4. Learn to say Zechariah 12:10 by heart. (‘By heart’ means that you do not look at the words.)
Verse 1 This verse links Zechariah 12:10-14 to 13:2-6. It mentions the family of David (12:12). And it mentions the evil things in the country (13:2-6). The *Hebrew words suggest that water will flow from the fountain continuously. It will never stop.
So the people will become holy again. It will be as if God was washing away the *sin of murder from people, Zechariah 12:10. And they will not remain unholy, Zechariah 13:2-6. ‘Unholy’ is a technical word in the *Hebrew Bible. For example, the birth of a baby made women unholy, Leviticus 12:2. Ezekiel 18:6 tells us that there were also other reasons that made people unholy. It was not a *sin. But unholy people could not go to the *temple. There are things to do in Leviticus to remove this unholy state.
The fountain shows us that God will forgive the people. And he will make them holy.
Verses 2-6 The words ‘false gods’ and ‘bad spirits’ in verse 2 suggest that the *prophet is a false *prophet. He says whatever the bad spirits from the false gods tell him to say. When the *LORD destroys the false gods, the false *prophet pretends that he is a farmer! Even his parents say that they will kill him. *Prophets wore rough clothes, like Elijah, 2 Kings 1:8 and John the *Baptist, Matthew 3:4. The injuries on his body probably came from a meeting of false *prophets. The *Hebrew Bible says that these injuries are ‘between his hands’. False *prophets would cut each other with knives as they became excited! No *New Testament writer says that this is a *prophecy of the injuries in Jesus’ hands. Jesus was not a false *prophet.
Verse 7 These words remind us of Isaiah 53:10, ‘It pleased the *LORD to bruise him.’ ‘My *shepherd’ is ‘the man that is close to me’. For Christians, this *shepherd and this man are both Jesus. The sheep are the *LORD’s people. The death of Jesus scattered many of them, ‘Lift my hand’ means ‘hurt’ or ‘hit’. When Jesus died, it hurt Mary, Luke 2:35. Notice the *Hebrew poetry, where the second line says the same as the first:
Strike the *shepherd
And scatter the sheep
I will lift my hand
Against the little ones
If we use the *historical, church, *eschatological (chapter 12) idea, then it may mean this. The Church will suffer difficult times before Jesus returns to the earth.
Verse 8 Bible students are not sure to what this refers. This verse may also describe the terrible time before Jesus returns.
Verse 9 People use fire to make gold and silver pure. Fire burns away the rubbish. Fire here means difficult times. It will be as if the fire is ‘burning away’ the rubbish from God’s people. They will suffer troubles. But God is working in their lives. He will make them more holy (1 Peter 1:6-7).
1. Study these verses about fountains and rivers:
· the fountain (or waters) of life, Psalm 36:10;
· the fountain of *living water, Jeremiah 2:13;
· the river of life, Ezekiel 47:1-12; Joel 3:18; Psalm 46:4; Zechariah 14:8.
2. Read Psalm 12 about how silver becomes pure.
3. Add to your *table after chapter 9 (Something to do number 2) Matthew 26:31 and Mark 6:34.
4. Read John 10:1-42. Then try to answer this question: Did Jesus think about Zechariah 13:7 when he said this?
These verses mean that there will be a terrible battle in Jerusalem. Many nations will defeat Jerusalem’s people. But then God will appear. He will rescue the people in the city. He will fight for his people.
Verse 1 Notice that Zechariah does not say that a ‘day of the *LORD’ will come. Instead, he surprises his readers. He says that it will be a ‘day for the *LORD’. This makes it a special day. This *prophecy probably has only an *eschatological meaning.
Verse 2 This gives some details of what the nations will do to Jerusalem. They will defeat the city. Then they will enter it and rule it. They will take everything in the houses for themselves. The soldiers will *rape the women in the city. This means that they will force the women to have sex with them.
Verse 3 The great day of battle in the past was when the *Jews went out from Egypt, Exodus 14:13-14. But there were other battles, all through Israel’s history. (See Something to do number 1.)
Verse 4 The *Mount (or Hill) of Olives was to the east of Jerusalem. It was higher than the hill where they built the *temple. Some Bible students think that Mark 11:23 refers to the *Mount of Olives. (‘If you say to this mountain, “Let someone remove you and throw you into the sea”, it will happen.’) So perhaps Jesus thought of Zechariah 14:4 when he said those words. People could not escape Jerusalem to the east because of this hill. So, if a valley appeared through it, it would help people to escape from the city. Acts 1:1-11 tells us that Jesus went up to *heaven from the *Mount of Olives. Some Bible students think that he will return to it. Those Bible students therefore think that this will be ‘a day for the *LORD’.
Verse 5 Bible students do not know where Azel was. Uzziah’s *earthquake was about 750 *B.C. Amos referred to it in Amos 1:1. An *earthquake is when the ground shakes and buildings fall down. The ‘*holy ones’ are probably *angels, who are God’s servants in *heaven. Notice the change from ‘his’ to ‘you’ at the end of the verse. This often happens in books by the *prophets.
After the terrible battle, God will rule the whole world. Everybody will realise that he is the only God. And Jerusalem will be a special city.
Verse 6 Some translations have ‘no light, no cold or frost’. Frost is a powder, like ice, that comes on very cold days and nights. But Bible students are not sure what this verse means.
Verse 7 This day will be one continuous day. There will be no night, Isaiah 60:19-20 and Revelation 21:25; 22:5. Probably, only the *LORD knows when it will happen, Matthew 24:36.
Verse 8 Jerusalem needed wells in the city for water. When the *LORD stands on the *Mount of Olives (verse 4) there will be plenty of water. It will be ‘living water’. That means ‘water that gives life’. In Psalm 46:4-5 and Ezekiel 47:1-12, there are similar promises. Perhaps Jesus thought about these words of Zechariah in John 7:38. Some Bible students think that verses 6-11 change the promise that God made in Genesis 8:22. Now there will be no seasons, because the rivers will bring water to the land.
Verse 9 In several Psalms (93, 97 and 99) we read, ‘The *LORD is king.’ Jesus said, ‘The time has come and the kingdom of God is very near’, Mark 1:15. A kingdom is a country that has a king. The *Jews always believed that there was one God. ‘The *LORD our God is one *LORD’, Deuteronomy 6:4. But now everybody else will agree.
Verse 10 The hills north and south of Jerusalem will become flat. Jerusalem will then not need them to defend the city. Arabah is the valley of the River Jordan. Geba was 6 miles north of Jerusalem and Rimmon was 35 miles south of Jerusalem. But the city itself will not become flat. The places in the city are:
· east (Gate of Benjamin)
· west (Corner gate)
· north (*Tower of Hananel)
· south (Royal *Winepresses)
Verse 11 The number of people who live in Jerusalem will never again be small. Probably not many people lived there while Zechariah was alive. But it would be different in the future.
In this passage, Zechariah explained how God will defeat Jerusalem’s enemies.
Verse 12 Zechariah said that a *plague will strike the armies that will attack Jerusalem. A *plague is a bad thing that happens to many people at the same time. Here it is an awful disease. It will make people *rot (turn into a nasty pile of dirt), before they die. Perhaps Zechariah remembered what happened to Sennacherib’s army in 2 Kings 19:35. Then, 180 500 of them died in one night!
Verse 13 People are so eager to escape that they kill each other to do so. They are so frightened that they will do anything to get away.
Verse 14 The people from Judah and Jerusalem fight together against their enemies. They will collect very great wealth.
Verse 15 Even the animals will die. There will be no horses to ride away on. *Mules and *donkeys are similar to horses.
God will not merely be the king of Jerusalem. God will be the king of every nation. And people from every country will gather in Jerusalem for the annual *Festival of Tabernacles (tents). But if any nation refuses to come, God will punish that nation. Such a nation will have no rain.
Verse 16 The *Festival of Tabernacles was an important *festival. A *festival is a party with much music, food and drink. A tabernacle is a tent. In this *festival, the *Jews made tents or huts. They lived in them for two weeks at the start of October. This *festival was very ancient. It was probably the one in Judges 21:19 and 1 Samuel 1:3. In this *festival:
· All the people came to Jerusalem. There would not be enough room for them all to sleep in the houses. This is one reason why they made tents. Also, it helped them to remember their journey from Egypt. Then they lived in tents for 40 years, Leviticus 23:42-43.
· The people listened to God’s laws, Nehemiah 8:14-18.
· Everybody could come. Both *Jews and people who were not *Jews could come.
· People gave thanks to God for the harvest, Deuteronomy 16:13.
Zechariah *prophesied that this *festival would bring all nations together. After God defeats his enemies, the whole world will *worship him in Jerusalem.
Verses 17-19 People that do not come up to the *festival will be sorry! There will be no rain. This means that there will be no crops and no food. The people in Egypt did not need rain, as they used water from the River Nile to grow their crops. But God still expected them to come up to Jerusalem.
Verse 20 Exodus 28:36 tells us that ‘*Holy to the *LORD’ was on the hat that the Chief Priest wore. This meant that he had to be *holy always. ‘*Holy’ means ‘very, very good’. Only God is really *holy. But he considers that his people are *holy too. Jeremiah 2:3 says ‘(All) Israel is *holy to the *LORD.’ Even the horses were *holy, because they did not still carry soldiers to war. And the pots and bowls in the *temple were certainly *holy. They used the bowls to scatter animal blood on the *altar in the *temple. They used the pots to cook the animals that they offered to God. Each family would offer some to God and then eat the rest, Leviticus 7:15.
Verse 21 The bowls remind people of religion. The pots remind people of the other parts of life. ‘In that day’ there will be no difference. So people would be *holy when they prayed. But they would also be *holy at other times. Even when they were working, they would still live *holy lives. Everything will be ‘*holy to the *LORD’. We can translate ‘*Canaanite’ in two ways:
· It may mean someone that lives in Canaan. Such a person is probably an enemy of God. Read the note on Armageddon below.
· It may mean someone that trades. Many Canaanites were traders. Jesus put the traders out of the *temple, Matthew 21:12-13. Perhaps Jesus was acting Zechariah’s *prophecy.
Many Bible students think that Zechariah 14 describes the battle of Armageddon. They think that this chapter describes the events at the end of the world. Jesus will return to the earth at the place where he left it. He left it from the *Mount of Olives. So these Bible students think that he will return to it there. He will fight a great battle and defeat all the nations of the world. Then he will be king over a new earth.
The word ‘armageddon’ comes from two *Hebrew words: Har (the hill at) Megiddo (a place in northern Israel). There was a great battle in and near Megiddo. Judges 4 and 5 describe what happened. Judges 5:19-21 says, ‘the kings of Canaan fought in Taanach, near the waters of Megiddo. The stars in their courses fought from *heaven against Sisera. The river of Kishon carried them away.’
Sisera was a leader of the *Canaanite armies. They fought against God’s people, Israel. But God’s people did not fight. They just watched what God did. Something happened up in the skies. This is why Judges 5:20 mentions the stars in *heaven. (The stars’ courses are their paths through the skies.) There was a great storm. The storm made the water in the River Kishon rise. Sisera’s *chariots stuck in the mud. Then Barak (the *Jewish leader) and his people chased the *Canaanites and defeated them. The River Kishon flowed past Har Megiddo. Judges 5:19 calls the river ‘the waters of Megiddo’. Taanach was a place near to Har Megiddo.
Similar events will happen when this world ends. God’s people will watch as God himself defeats the enemy. We do not know how. But we can have confidence in God. What God did once (in Judges chapters 4-5) he can do again. This time the enemy will not only be Canaan. Canaan is an example of people that do not serve God. But, in the future, the enemy will be all the nations of the world that do not love God.
Zechariah 12:11 refers to Megiddo. Perhaps, as Zechariah wrote his book, the *Holy Spirit reminded him about Megiddo. Zechariah remembered what had happened at Megiddo in the past. And Zechariah realised that such events could happen again. They could happen at Jerusalem in the future.
The word Armageddon appears only once in the Bible: Revelation 16:16. This describes a great battle at the end of time. In this battle, Jesus defeats Babylon. Babylon means all the bad things in the world. The good thing about Armageddon is that afterwards, Jesus will be king of everything. As Zechariah says, he will be the *LORD of Everything!
1. Read some of the ‘past days of battle’:
· the defeat of Jericho, Joshua 6
· the defeat of Jabin, Judges 4
· the defeat of Ethiopia, 2 Chronicles 14:8-15
2. Add to your *table after chapter 9 (Something to do number 2) Acts 1:11-12.
3. Use your complete *table after chapter 9 to tell as much as you can of the story of Jesus. (See Something to do number 2.)
4. Study Armageddon in Revelation chapter 16.
altar ~ a special table where the priests burned gifts to God in the *temple.
angel ~ a servant of God from *heaven; usually we cannot see them.
anointed ~ someone who has authority to do God’s work. A leader would pour oil on such a person to appoint him to do this work.
B.C. ~ years Before Christ came to the earth.
Baptist ~ a Baptist puts a person under water or puts water on a person; it is to show that they want to obey Christ.
bronze ~ a metal; its colour is between yellow and brown.
Canaanite ~ someone who lives in Canaan; probably an enemy of God; OR someone who trades.
cedar ~ a type of tree.
chariot ~ a special cart that soldiers used. Horses pulled chariots.
courts ~ the yards or spaces round the *temple.
covenant ~ an agreement. God’s *covenant with his people was a special agreement.
curse ~ say that something bad will happen to a person.
dappled ~ a mixture of several colours.
Daughter ~ ‘Daughter of Babylon’ means ‘people who live in Babylon’ and so on.
dew ~ water that comes onto the ground at night as it becomes cooler.
donkey ~ an animal like a small horse; people ride on them.
earthquake ~ when the ground shakes and buildings fall down.
engrave ~ write on a stone or rock.
engraving ~ what you write (*engrave) on a stone or rock.
eschatological ~ about what will happen when Jesus returns to earth at the end of time. Eschatology is the study of this.
exile ~ away from home; or, a person that lives away from home. ‘In exile’ means away from home.
fast ~ a sad time when you eat no food for reasons of religion.
festival ~ an important happy event. There are often great meals. People often sing and dance.
fig tree ~ a fruit tree.
flock ~ a group of animals or birds; God’s people are like a flock, because he calls them his sheep.
foal ~ a young animal, especially a young *donkey.
forgive ~ when someone stops being angry with another person who has done bad things.
frost ~ a powder, like ice, that comes on very cold days and nights.
glory ~ great honour, so great it shines like a bright light.
goddess ~ a female false god.
golden ~ the colour of the metal called gold.
Gospel ~ one of the four books at the beginning of the *New Testament - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
grace ~ kindness that people do not deserve.
grape ~ a fruit that you can make wine from.
Greek ~ the language that people speak in Greece.
heaven ~ a name for the home of God; it can also mean the sky.
Hebrew ~ the language that the *Jews spoke.
historical ~ about past events.
holy ~ very, very good; only God is really holy. ‘Holy ones’ is sometimes a name for *angels.
hoof ~ the foot of a sheep or a cow.
horn ~ a bone with a sharp point on it that grows on the heads of goats, sheep and other animals. People blew into horns to make a loud noise.
hosts ~ many, a large number of *angels, people or things.
irony ~ a sort of poetry where words mean the opposite of what they say.
Jebusites ~ the people who used to live in Jerusalem before King David made it his city.
Jew ~ a person who is born from Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their children.
jewels ~ valuable stones like diamonds.
Jewish ~ a word that describes a *Jew or anything that belongs to a *Jew.
juniper ~ a type of tree.
justice ~ to do the things that are fair and right, especially in the courts.
lamb ~ a baby sheep or young sheep.
lampstand ~ something that a lamp stands on.
lead ~ a heavy metal.
living water ~ water that gives life. See Psalm 46:4-5; Ezekiel 47:1-12 and John 7:38.
lord ~ someone in authority; ‘my *lord’ means ‘sir’. With a capital L, a name for God.
LORD ~ the *covenant name for God that his servants use.
measuring line ~ a long ruler to measure how long something is.
mercy ~ kindness to someone, especially when you do not have to be kind to them.
messiah ~ leader; with capital M a name for Christ. Christ is the *Greek word for messiah.
Mount ~ a hill or mountain.
mule ~ an animal like a horse.
myrtle ~ a plant. Myrtle bushes have leaves that remain green all through the year. Their leaves have a pleasant smell when someone bruises them. They have white flowers in summer. Myrtle bushes often mean Judah and Israel in the Bible.
New Testament ~ the second part of the Bible, which the writers wrote after Jesus came.
oak ~ a type of tree.
Old Testament ~ the first part of the Bible, which the writers wrote before Jesus came.
olive ~ a fruit that people use to make oil. Or, the tree where these fruits grow.
oppress ~ be very unkind to someone, often to get money.
orphan ~ a child without parents.
Pentecost ~ the time when God’s Spirit came to the first Christians.
Philistines ~ people who were enemies of Israel’s people.
pierce ~ stick a knife or a sword into.
pit ~ a deep hole in the ground. It may be a prison.
plague ~ a terrible disease that happens to many people at the same time.
plumb-line ~ string with lead (a heavy metal) on the end that builders use.
potter ~ a person who makes pots.
prophecy ~ words that a *prophet speaks.
prophesy ~ tell people what God is saying.
prophet ~ someone who tells people what God is saying.
prosperity ~ plenty of everything.
rape ~ to have sex with a woman, when the woman does not want it.
refugees ~ people that leave their own countries because of difficulties there.
rejoice ~ be very happy (and often, sing about it).
repent ~ be sorry for evil deeds and promise to try not to do them again.
righteous ~ very, very good; only God is really righteous.
ritual laws ~ laws about the actions of the priests, especially in the *temple.
Roman ~ a person from Rome. Rome was a powerful city; it had a strong army.
rot ~ to become a nasty pile of dirt.
salvation ~ safety, the Christian meaning is ‘safety after we die’.
satan ~ someone who accuses; later it became Satan, the name of God’s enemy.
sceptre ~ a special stick that is a sign of authority.
scroll ~ the old form of a book. It was a very long piece of paper or leather. They rolled it up to make a *scroll.
shepherd ~ a sheep farmer.
Shinar ~ the old name for Babylon.
sin ~ something that is against God’s rules; or to do what is against God’s rules; evil deeds.
sorrow ~ what you feel when you are very unhappy.
stable society ~ a society that does not change very much.
stagger ~ to walk as if you will soon fall over.
stronghold ~ a very strong place.
table ~ a number of boxes to show information clearly.
temple ~ a special house for God (in Jerusalem) or a house for false gods (in places like Babylon).
tent peg ~ something that stops the wind blowing the tent away.
throne ~ a special seat that a king sits on.
thunder ~ the noise that comes with lightning in a storm.
tower ~ a very high building.
tread ~ to walk firmly on something.
treasury ~ where you keep your valuable things and your money.
vine ~ a plant that grows fruit called *grapes. People make wine from *grapes.
vision ~ something that a *prophet ‘sees’. God shows it to the *prophet.
winepress ~ a very big basket. In this, people begin to make wine from fruit called grapes.
worship ~ to tell someone that you love them and you will obey them.
worthless ~ someone who does their work in a very poor way.
B. Davidson ~ Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon ~ Bagster
Cruden’s Complete Concordance ~ Morgan and Scott
Zechariah by Thomas V. Moore ~ Geneva Series Commentary ~ Banner of Truth Trust
Oxford Bible Atlas, 3rd Edition ~ Editor Herbert G. May ~ OUP
John R. Kohlenberger III ~ The Interlinear NIV Hebrew-English Old Testament ~ Zondervan
Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, Jonah by Mitchell, Smith and Brewer ~ The International Critical Commentary ~ T&T Clark
Sir Lancelot C. L. Brenton ~ The Septuagint with Apocrypha, Greek and English ~ Hendrickson
Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi by Joyce G. Baldwin ~ Tyndale Old Testament Commentary ~ Inter-Varsity Press
Ralph L. Smith ~ Word Biblical Commentary No. 32: Micah-Malachi ~ Word
Translations of the Bible:
The Authorised Version ~ CUP.
The New Living Translation ~ Tyndale House Publishers Inc.
The New Revised Standard Version ~ Nelson
The Revised English Bible with Apocrypha ~ Oxford and Cambridge University Presses
© 1997-2005, Wycliffe Associates (UK)
This publication is written in EasyEnglish Level B (2800 words).
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The Time Traveler from The Other World
by Donald Webb
A note about the title: the novel has been historically referred to as Voyage dans la lune, ‘A Trip to the Moon’. Cyrano insisted on L’Autre Monde ou les états et empires de la lune. The distinction is crucial and is made repeatedly thoughout the novel: Cyrano takes an imaginary voyage to Earth’s satellite; he takes us on a real trip to “the other world.”
* * *
What if...? The question has to be asked, because Cyrano de Bergeracs LAutre Monde is one of the great missed opportunities of history.
What if... Cyrano had lived to publish his novel himself, as well as the full version of its sequel, Les Etats et empires du soleil? Its not entirely implausible: a century later, many subversive works were printed in Holland, whence they were smuggled into France.
What if... he had at least been able to entrust his novel to someone other than Henry Le Bret, who was a devoted, life-long friend and who might have risked his own life if he had tried to preserve Cyrano’s literary memory intact?
What if... Cyranos complete novel had been widely read in the 17th and 18th centuries? It could have changed history quite significantly. Not because Cyranos ideas were fundamentally new and original: whose are? His science and philosophy had already been broached in one form or another by the ancients or by advanced contemporaries. Rather, Cyrano distills the most radical ideas of his time into a potent literary liqueur.
The history of ideas is a reference tool; the important thing is the historical context in which ideas are raised and propagated. For example: trips to the Moon or life on other worlds? The idea goes back to the ancient Greeks, to primordial legends, and recedes into the mists of prehistory. The reason is that life on other worlds is not an idea as such but an archetypal function of imagination itself: to paraphrase Voltaire’s Candide, If such is life on this world, what must the others be like?
Cyrano de Bergerac was a talented writer by the standards of the first half of the 17th century, but he is more important for his sheer intellectual courage. Do you bemoan political conformity and the obscurantists of today? What was life like under the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV? What on earth could people have been thinking when Copernicus heliocentric model was still more than a century away from general acceptance?
What if... we brought even Voltaire, who lived a century after Cyrano, into modern times? Wed have to explain everything to him. Cyrano de Bergerac would be delighted with Darwins discoveries and the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, not to mention the Apollo missions. Cyrano would quickly understand everything. This is one of the very rare cases in literature where we meet a true time traveler. Cyrano seems to come to the year 1650 from three centuries in his future.
What if... someone less subject to conflict than Henry Le Bret had been at the hinge of history? If such is life in this timeline, what must the others be like? The lengthy intellectual tug of war between tradition and reason known as the Querelle des anciens et des modernes — the Debate of the Ancients and Moderns — would have begun earlier than it did. It might even have been over before it started: Cyrano set a standard for audacity that puts him in good company with Voltaire.
He might have galvanized the Age of Enlightenment, and that wave of the future could have only risen even higher. With such a head start, we might have colonies spanning the Solar System.
And if humanity were better off, might it be better? Might today’s ideological and sectarian strife be seen for the medieval superstition it is? Cyrano finds in the course of his voyage to “the other world” that the latter question is far more difficult to answer than those of physics.
Who stands at the hinge of history today? Another Cyrano? Another Le Bret, forced to compromise? Or the sinister forces of reaction, which Cyrano opposed?
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by Henry Makow Ph.D. — (from Nov. 4, 2009)
When a reader tipped me to a talk entitled “The Making of a Slave,” delivered by a slave owner in 1712, I decided to compare past and present.
Past methods of enslavement were highly sophisticated, and closely resemble modern feminist social engineering.
Willie Lynch, a British slave owner in the West Indies, was invited to the colony of Virginia in 1712 to teach his methods to slave owners there.
He advised slave owners to foster division, “fear, envy and distrust for control.” Pit young versus old, light skinned versus dark skinned and most importantly, male versus female.
In a section called “The Breaking Process of the African Woman,” he advocated shifting her dependency from the African male to the slave owner. This is achieved by beating and humiliating the male in front of the female. Then, beating the female if she doesn’t get the message. This instills a kind of frigidity.
“We reversed nature by burning and pulling a civilized nigger apart, and bull whipping another to the point of death, all in her presence. By her being left alone, unprotected, with the male image destroyed, the ordeal caused her to move from her psychological dependent state to a frozen independent state. In this frozen psychological state of independence, she will raise her male and female offspring in reverse roles.”
“For fear of the young male’s life, she will psychologically train him to be mentally weak and dependent, but physically strong. Because she has become psychologically independent, she will train her female offspring to be psychologically independent. What have you got? You’ve got the nigger woman out front and the nigger man behind and scared. This is a perfect situation of sound sleep and economic [gain].”
She will teach her female offspring “to be like herself, independent and negotiable (…we negotiate her at will.)” She will raise her “nigger male offspring to be mentally dependent and weak, but physically strong, in other words body over mind.”
“We will mate and breed them and continue the cycle. This is good and sound and long range comprehensive planning.”
Sound familiar? We recognize these patterns in the US Black community and, thanks to the hidden agenda of feminism, increasingly in White society as well.
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As a rising figure of the modernist movement, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was selected to design the German Pavilion for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona.
Through masterful proportioning and planning, Mies created a rhythmic and entirely unprecedented space, which elevated industrial-age materials to a level of grace never before achieved. Inside, Mies included chairs and stools conceived as a resting place for the King and Queen of Spain. Determined to create a chair worthy of royalty, Mies is thought to have based the designs, with their signature crisscross frames, on the campaign chairs of Ancient Rome. Mies: “I feel that it must be possible to harmonize the old and new in our civilization.”
Although the Barcelona Pavilion only stood for seven months, it is recognized as a defining achievement of modern architecture, as are the accompanying Barcelona Chairs (although the King and Queen reportedly never sat in them).
Mies, a close friend and mentor to Florence Knoll during her time at the Illinois Institute of Technology, formally granted Knoll the production rights to the Barcelona Chair and Stool in 1953. The designs immediately became a signature of the Knoll brand and have been built to Mies van der Rohe’s exacting standards ever since. | <urn:uuid:81d37428-ae67-4df1-8d61-861f59f4def6> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.knoll.com/product/barcelona-couch | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397865.91/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00091-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941104 | 263 | 2.625 | 3 |
noun[mass noun] archaic
Crystalline zinc sulphate.
- A viscous residue in the bottom of each and a foul smell that denoted combinations of alum with white vitriol, sulphate of iron, and of acetate of lead with opium and ipecac.
- Formerly it was ground finely in oil, either pure or with a mixture of white vitriol and added to the dark oil paints.
- Some sulfates were formerly known as vitriols; blue vitriol is cupric sulfate, green vitriol is ferrous sulfate, and white vitriol is zinc sulfate.
For editors and proofreaders
Line breaks: white vit|riol
Definition of white vitriol in:
What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
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Debate and discussion of any biological questions not pertaining to a particular topic.
5 posts • Page 1 of 1
the human genome has between 26,000 and 38,000 genes, about which a little over 1% actually codes for protein. Generally speaking, one gene creates one polypeptide. So says one source, but I do have trouble believing this report, because it implies that the human body has roughly 260-380 proteins. Aren't there more than that?
My questions are:
1) how many proteins does the human body have? (Google was tough to use here for me.)
2) Give an example of a polypeptide that is not a protein.
3) How do you reconcile the number of proteins with the above information (which is regurgitated from an examkrakers MCAT review manual, except for the logical extension that, based on the given information, we must conclude that there are at most 260-380 proteins in the human body).
I would question that 1% figure, unless you mean that 1% of the total genome is coding sequence—that is a little more believable. If the genome is ca. 3E9 bases and only 1% were coding, that would be around 3E7 bases of information. If the average gene is, say, 30 kD, that corresponds to around 1E3 bases/gene or around 30,000 genes. For a rough calculation, that puts things in the right ball park.
As to a polypeptide that is not a protein?? I don’t know what you mean; not an enzyme? or not a structural protein? or exactly what? To my mind a polypeptide is, by definition, a protein, be it a small peptide, or F1-ATP synthetase. But maybe you mean “protein” in some special or functional way. In any event, there certainly are more than 260-380 proteins represented in the human genome.
A gene by definition codes for a protein... and the number is revised it's more like around 20,000. A couple of them look like they code for genes but they don't.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Ok, just a few corrections:
1. Agreed with Dave - The human genome consists for ~21.000 genes.
2. A gene does not necessarily code for a protein. A gene codes for an RNA molecule. It can be mRNA, rRNA, tRNA etc. And because cuaternary structure sometimes more genes code for a protein(ex: 2 genes code for hemoglobin)
Ok, now for your questions:
1. the human body has(and this is a rought estimate, much work remains to be done here) 80000-100000 proteins. You can reconcile this with much smaller of genes if you think of the big picture. For example, a single gene expressed in your brain codes for a large polypeptide that is cleaved and gives rise to the hormone ACTH, MSH, and a beta endorphin. Therefore, in this case, one gene codes for 3 proteins. Another very common phenomenon is alternative splicing: introns are spliced in a different way. Sometimes only parts of introns are removed, and sometimes different segments of a gene are treated by introns to make one polypeptide and as exons to make another polypeptide. Therefore, through this mechanism a gene can generate more than one polypeptide. Another very important phenomenon occurs in lymphocytes(a type of white blood cells). Lymphocytes are the only cells in the human body that reorganise their genomes: they literally cut their DNA and exclude some material from their DNA. This highly complex mechanism, catalysed by a large group of enzymes collectively called recombinase enables one single gene to generate many thousants of different proteins.
2. An example is, as I said, one alpha subunit of hemoglobin. Or one beta subunit, whichever you prefer.
3. Already explained.
One last thing: Indeed, only 1,5% of the DNA humans have is made up of exons(either coding for proteins or other RNAs with cellular function). But it is that 1,5%, along with the much longer introns(which make up aproximately 24% of the DNA molecule) make up the 21.000 genes in the genome. The rest of the DNA is made out of what is reffered as non-coding DNA. Non-coding DNA does not code for RNA with a cellular function. This is a very important thing because some transponsable elements(which are catalogued as non-coding) are transcribed into RNA, and some are even translated into proteins. But these RNAs and proteins do not have any cellular function.
Here is a very easy to understand diagram of human DNA. From Biology 7th edition, Campbell and Reece
"As a biologist, I firmly believe that when you're dead, you're dead. Except for what you live behind in history. That's the only afterlife" - J. Craig Venter
5 posts • Page 1 of 1
Who is online
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Homer, one of the most famous poets of all time, is firmly entrenched in the Western canon as a master of classical literature. His two most renowned works, the Iliad and the Odyssey, are core texts for students and scholars alike. Now, Prof. Margalit Finkelberg of Tel Aviv University's Department of Classics has created an illuminating new tool, the world's first Homer Encyclopedia.
Published in three volumes by Wiley-Blackwell last year and more recently in electronic form, the encyclopedia is an invaluable window into Homer's life and work, elucidating the characters and settings of his work from primary characters to the smallest village mentioned in passing. The volumes also examine the pre-history of Homer and the period in which he lived and wrote, and how the text has been received and transmitted by various cultures and societies throughout history to the present day. One of its groundbreaking areas of research is the reception of Homer in the Jewish and Arabic traditions, a subject that has rarely been explored.
With contributions from 132 scholars worldwide, this three volume work is a universal exploration of all things Homer. "Through this encyclopedia, you can enter Homer's world and get lost in it," says Prof. Finkelberg, who was recently awarded the 2012 Rothschild Prize in the Humanities. "It is unique for its comprehensive view -- the entire field is seen as vibrant, alive and contemporary. Homer's work is put in a modern living context, rather than approached as an impenetrable classic monument."
An avatar of Greek culture
One section of the encyclopedia examines "textual reception" over 2,000 years of history. Its purpose is to examine how Homeric texts were received from the view of different societies and cultures, e.g. Victorian England. Studying the history of the reception of a major text is an emerging field of study, Prof. Finkelberg explains -- and profoundly important to the progress of the humanities.
One of the most original features of this work is an in-depth study of Homer in the context of Jewish and Arabic traditions, conducted by leading specialists. Though Homer's work is foundational to the Western tradition, it has never been central to these Eastern traditions, which put more of an emphasis on "useful" texts, such as those regarding science, medicine, and philosophy.
The findings, she says, are surprising. Because the Hellenic world is little-known in these cultures, Homer is seen as a symbol of Greek culture in its entirety. "Poetry was not translated in these cultures, and because of this, very little was known about the art of the Greeks beyond philosophers like Aristotle. For them, Homer represented everything to do with Greek culture, including paganism," explains Prof. Finkelberg. Anything "Greek" was essentially "Homeric" and vice versa.
Prof. Finkelberg believes that the publication is a crucial addition to encyclopedias on the work of other poets such as Dante and Virgil. After all, Homer is not just any writer. In the absence of the sacred religious texts that are central to other traditions, such as the Bible to Judeo-Christian traditions, the Iliad and the Odyssey are the formative texts of Greek culture.
Because of this, the fields of Homeric archaeology and Biblical archaeology rest on the same historical axis, suggests Prof. Finkelberg. Homer's use of history reflects real historical events and has inspired actual archaeological discovery. It was through Homer, for example, that German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann was to search for the ruins of Troy, the site of the Trojan War in Homer's works. Previously, the city was believed to be a mere literary invention.
Though Homer cannot be used as a historical text in the modern sense, Prof. Finkelberg says that his literary works are themselves not unlike an archaeological site, where different levels of history can be pieced together to reveal intriguing tale of a world long past. | <urn:uuid:25d4019b-8aa3-4bb2-89e3-775cc3eb039b> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.speroforum.com/a/PXXWINAECN34/71282-First-Homer-encyclopedia-brings-epic-poetry-and-ancient-Greece-to-life | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397873.63/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00123-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962637 | 808 | 3.015625 | 3 |
An examination of the recent decision in the United States on net neutrality, and potential consequences, especially for the Caribbean.
On Tuesday, 14 January, the United States (US) Court of Appeals of the District of Colombia struck down the rules established by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to safeguard Internet neutrality. The decision has reignited debate on the issue, and the FCC has stated that it is carefully considering whether to file an appeal. As discussed in one of our earliest articles, Net neutrality – both sides of the divide, there are camps that felt vindicated by this recent outcome. However, what might be some of the consequences generally, and specifically for the Caribbean, should this judgement not be successfully overturned?
The FCC’s Open Internet rules in a nutshell
The “Open Internet” principle established by the FCC, which is another term for Internet, network or “net” neutrality, aimed to preserve the equality of Internet use by maintaining a level playing field across all consumers. The FCC’s position has been captured in three basic rules:
1. Transparency. Fixed and mobile broadband providers must disclose the network management practices, performance characteristics, and terms and conditions of their broadband services;
2. No blocking. Fixed broadband providers may not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices; mobile broadband providers may not block lawful websites, or block applications that compete with their voice or video telephony services; and
3. No unreasonable discrimination. Fixed broadband providers may not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic.
In adopting such as posture, the FCC hoped to preserve the Internet as a platform for “innovation, investment, job creation, economic growth, competition, and free expression”, which would also support the US’ National Broadband Plan (Source: FCC).
Summary of the latest US decision on net neutrality
In its ruling for the case, Verizon Communications Inc. versus the FCC, the Court of Appeals of the District of Colombia circuit sided with the appellant. The crux of the decision centred on the classification systems used in the United States for different types for licensees or service providers and consequently the extent to which the FCC had the authority to regulate certain behaviour.
As observed in the excerpt above from the FCC’s Report and Order on Open Internet, the rules are geared primarily towards broadband providers. However, according to the Court of Appeals, the FCC is empowered to regulate ISPs and broadband providers (as “common carriers”), but it had not properly established or justified its authority in its Report and Order:
That said, even though the Commission has general authority to regulate in this arena, it may not impose requirements that contravene express statutory mandates. Given that the Commission has chosen to classify broadband providers in a manner that exempts them from treatment as common carriers, the Communications Act expressly prohibits the Commission from nonetheless regulating them as such. Because the Commission has failed to establish that the anti-discrimination and anti-blocking rules do not impose per se common carrier obligations, we vacate those portions of the Open Internet Order.
(Source: United States Court of Appeals)
As a result, the court struck down the FCC’s no blocking and non-discrimination rules that would be directed at ISPs and broadband providers, whilst maintaining the rule on transparency.
Possible consequences of an equal Internet world
The principle behind net neutrality is that ISPs, broadband providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally. Further, they should not discriminate or charge differentially based on the user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication (Source: Wikipedia). In the US Court of Appeals rejecting the application of the FCC’s Open Internet rules to ISPs and broadband providers, essentially, it sets the stage for providers to introduce systems that discriminate and/or block Internet traffic based on self-imposed conditions.
Should those discriminatory systems come into effect, first, one of the key concerns would the introduction of different tiers of service. High speed and bandwidth services might be available only to those who are prepared to pay for them, whilst the average consumer may be relegated to much slower speeds and considerably poorer quality of service.
In that new paradigm, one of the likely focal points for tiered systems would be video content providers, such as YouTube, Netflix, TV stations, and perhaps even Skype. Those providers might be “penalised” for the Internet resources they consume. However, end users might also be required to pay a premium to their local providers to access that content with sufficient bandwidth in order to have a reasonable viewing experience.
Second, and without a doubt, the Internet as managed (i.e. with net neutrality enforced), has created a level playing field, where in the age of Web 2.0, it is possible for an individual to have as much impact or mindshare online as a moneyed organisation. This environment has not only fostered innovation and competitiveness, it has also accelerated the growth and value of the Internet across all sectors, organisations and users.
In the Caribbean, the reasonable connectivity to Internet that our Small Island Developing States in particular have enjoyed, have allowed our micro, small and medium enterprises to “punch above their weight”, and to present their offerings to a global market. It has also allowed us to access services and resources that are not readily available in the region. Hence, although currently we might complain about Internet speeds and pricing in the Caribbean, and to varying degrees, lobby local providers to upgrade their networks, a shift to a “less equal Internet” might result in our telcos adopting a more laidback stance on the issue.
Finally, the Caribbean’s policy on net neutrality appears to be unclear. The latest publicly available document on Internet Governance makes no mention of that principle. However and perhaps more importantly, there may not be any established systems through which net neutrality can be maintained in the region. Having said this, individual countries, through their governments or regulators might be able to engage their local telcos on the matter. However, local service providers could experience the knock-on effect of tiered pricing systems, should they be introduced in the US, and thus might need to adjust their business models accordingly.
In summary, as our closest neighbour and major link to the Internet, decisions in the US are likely to have an effect on the Caribbean. Although, at the time of writing, the FCC had not decided whether to appeal the decision, debate on net neutrality has been protracted and is likely to continue into the foreseeable future, regardless of the final outcome. In light of the latest development, it would be prudent for the Caribbean to (re)examine the issue carefully, and roll out a plan that would ensure that we are prepared for any eventuality.
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The oldest information about the Jewish settlement in
Bełchatów quotes seven persons living there in 1764.
This could be one family. But who were these people?
Unfortunately, the above-mentioned source gives no names,
only the number. Historians did not however check the
old record books from Bełchatów. The registers for non-Christian
citizens, which were established in 1809 (separate ones
for Jews were initiated in 1826), show surprisingly many
Jewish names, which can only indicate that several Jewish
families already lived in town. Among the civil records,
for example, there is a death record for Jakob Salmowicz
from 1811, the 70 year-old father of the local rabbi,
Lewek. Most probably Jakob had lived there for several
years before he died in Bełchatów!
The oldest surnames mentioned in the earliest records
are Konzens, Cwilik, Markowicz, Ambramowicz, Kusy, Rzeslawski,
Birnbaum, Sztatlender, Szarpanski—all appeared
in documents from 1809 to 1811. The professions of the
first (known) Jews are tanner, inn-keeper, or trader,
and all of them traditional and typical for shtetls in
The name Bełchatowski appears in civil records of Bełchatów
in 1824 for the first time (a newborn Dawid). Later more
Belchatowskis appeared in nearby Piotrkow which would
explain why the newcomers from Bełchatów received this
name Belchatowski (it means “from Bełchatów”).
As there is only one Bełchatów in Poland, this surname
It is important to underline that all this does not refer
to Grocholice, a small village just two miles away and
a separate kahal, which had a different administration
(now it is a part of Bełchatów).
Although Bełchatów was mentioned 1391 for the first time
in historical documents, it remained a small settlement
for 400 years. The bad quality of soil, little natural
water, no roads connecting it to more important cities
nearby, created a very poor economy and made life very
difficult. With the exceptions of a few peasant families
who had lived there in very primitive conditions, there
was nothing which could attract newcomers or improve
living standards. Members of the Kaczkowski noble family,
owners of Bełchatów (their renovated manor is now a local
museum), looked for various possibilities for an improvement.
The real impetus came in the 1820s as a weaving industry
started to boom in this area. Jews were very welcome
to settle in Bełchatów, and their number grew rapidly,
as well as the percentage of the total population (in
1860 already 76% of 1500 inhabitants were Jewish). They
came generally from other Polish towns situated to the
west (such as Zdunska Wola). Most probably the close
distance to the new flourishing center of the cotton
industry (production and trade) in Lodz motivated them.
Leon Kaczkowski supported the newcomers, offering lots
to build houses on around the Stary Rynek (Old Market),
space for a synagogue, a cemetery, and a primary school.
In 1842, among the nine owners of weaving manufactures,
there were three Jews, one Pole and five Germans. By
1867, Jews owned 13 of 16 textile factories in Bełchatów.
Jews were not only wealthy owners of the industry, but
first of all, workers, who were very badly paid. They
worked either in factories or at home, if they managed
to possess a weaving mill. At the end of the 19th century,
Bełchatów had 32 textile factories (some of them were
In 1921 Bełchatów had more than 6,000 inhabitants (59%
were Jewish), and got back its municipal rights in 1925
(after being lost in 1869 as a revenge of Tsarist rulers
after the uprising 1863). Thirteen of 25 city councils
were Jews. All possible Jewish streams, both social and
political were represented in Bełchatów, from the Orthodox
Chassids to agnostic Jews who became members of the Socialist
(and even secretly because it was officially forbidden)
or Communist party.
In September 1939 Bełchatów was invaded by the German
army and included into the so-called Warthegau, a province
of the Third Reich. Soon many transports of stateless
Jews expelled from Germany were brought to Bełchatów,
which was declared “a Jewish city” in 1941
(Jüdische Stadt). 5,500 Jews from Bełchatów and
surrounding cities were squeezed into the unenclosed
ghetto. The liquidation of the ghetto began in August
1942, when a smaller part of the inhabitants were transported
to the Litzmannstadt Ghetto and the larger part to the
concentration camp Kulmhof (Chelmno nad Nerem) where
they were murdered in vans.
Only 1% of the Bełchatower Jews survived the war (in
hiding or in concentration camps). They all decided not
to stay and emigrated to various countries around the
world or to the newly established State of Israel.
Today Bełchatów has more than 60,000 inhabitants. After
reserves of brown coal were discovered in 1960, a huge
mine and a power plant were built.
Today no Jews live in Bełchatów. | <urn:uuid:f79da062-2325-4a42-92ae-98aead577274> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.belchatow.at/History.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783399106.96/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154959-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963728 | 1,224 | 3.09375 | 3 |
CONTRARY TO POPULAR BELIEF, Walt Disney was not put in deep-freeze postmortem but planted in the soil like nearly everyone else. Disney died in 1966, years before the science of cryogenics became a fact of modern life. Cryogenics is simply the freezing of a human body for preservation. The idea is to stave off natural processes in the hope that a cure will one day be found for whatever malady took the living person out of this world.
Alcor Life Extension Foundation is a leading player in the cryogenics business. Established in 1972, the foundation operates in an airport industrial park in Scottsdale, AZ. Flanked by small job shops, and electrical supply houses, the innocuous-looking Alcor building gives no hint of the facility’s true purpose: warehousing the dead.
“The earliest cryogenic organizations failed because the survivors quit making payments,” says Alcor spokesperson Paula Lemler. “Alcor was set up under a ‘Patient’s Care Trust’ of $2.4 million so we don’t have that problem. Currently, we are equipped to care for 75 patients. We have 58 now, both whole bodies and ‘neuros,’ which is a cryogenic term for ‘heads only.’ Many people actually prefer neuro to whole-body preservation because it’s less expensive. Others hope to get a better body upon revival than the one they were stuck with in their previous lives.”
Only 500 square feet of Alcor’s 21,000-sq.- ft. building is dedicated to warehousing and maintenance. In this area, also known as the “patient care bay,” bodies are stored in 9-ft.-tall stainless steel containers called “Dewars.” Named after a pioneer in the field of thermal insulation (not the Scotch brand), a Dewar weighs 6,500 lbs. when filled with liquid nitrogen. Each is designed to hold seven whole bodies and five neuros.
At the moment seven Dewars fill the patient care bay. They are computer-monitored 24/7, and maintained by a staff of human volunteers who regularly refill the tanks with liquid nitrogen and make certain tank temperatures remain a constant -320°F. The volunteers, who live on the premises, also help prepare new patients in a that process involves an extended cool-down period prior to interment in the bay.
“We are legally able to do this thanks to the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, the legislation that makes organ donation possible,” Lemler says. “Part of our mission is to educate the public about cryogenics. We give tours, talk to the media, and lecture on the subject. Almost everyone who works here is an Alcor member, and most knew the people in the patient care bay when they were alive. We’re all driven by the same desire. We want to see cryogenics work.”
Ed. note: As this article went to press, several major news outlets broke the story that a controversy was brewing over allegedly defaulted payments to maintain the remains of one of Alcor’s clients, baseball great Ted Williams.
A PERFECT 10
When you realize, fairly early on in the day, that your call center is facing an unexpected surge in calls — 402 by 10:30 a.m. — what can you do? Faced with this scenario back in 1995, you might have done your own intraday forecast:
Look at previous traffic patterns and calculate half-hourly proportions for a day’s calls. Let’s say, for illustration, that equals 18%. Now divide the calls already received by 18%. If this trend continues, you can expect a total of 2,233 calls today.
Now break down the revised forecast into the remaining half-hours by multiplying historical half-hourly proportions by 2,233. If you normally get 6.6% of traffic between 3:30 and 4:00 p.m., today you can expect 147 calls during that period. Run Erlang C to determine the impact on staffing.
All in a Day’s Work
Short-term/intraday call center forecasting
|402||Calls received by 10:30 a.m.|
|÷18%||Divided by usual percentage of calls received by 10:30 a.m.|
|2,233||Revised calls forecast for day|
|× 0.066||3:30-4:00 p.m. proportion|
|147||Intraday forecast for 3:30-4:00 p.m.|
|Source: O+F, Nov./Dec. 1995| | <urn:uuid:e6b4968a-4a91-4b3f-88c2-a6236d1e3a92> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://multichannelmerchant.com/opsandfulfillment_warehouse/keep-a-cool-head-01092003/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.9/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00100-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948231 | 994 | 3.03125 | 3 |
Talk About Teaching And Learning
Problem Solving Learning
During the College Years
From within and outside of academia, professors are being exhorted to change how learning takes place in undergraduate courses. Learning should be more ... active, collaborative, interdisciplinary, problem-based, learner-centered, inquiry-based, virtually enabled, real-world focused, constructivist, multicultural, case-based, hands-on, multi-modal, connected to research, and preferably posted ahead of time to the class website as a PowerPoint file. How is a well-meaning professor to sort out all these possibilities? How does one discriminate the fads and fancies from the recommendations that would warrant serious investments of time and effort?
In this article, I make the case for making a systematic effort to include in a Penn education opportunities for a particular strategy that I will characterize here as complex, open-ended, problem solving learning (PSL). The idea itself is not a new one, with roots reaching back to John Dewey in the early 1900s.1 Dewey promoted open-ended problems that present genuine uncertainty and perplexity as the means to develop “reflective thinking,” contrasting them with well-structured problems whose solutions can be anticipated with a high degree of certainty, based on known procedures or techniques. For support, I draw on two substantial lines of contemporary research, one focused on intellectual development beyond adolescence and the other on cognitive research on problem solving and reasoning.
In 1968 William G. Perry published a book titled Forms of Ethical and Intellectual Development During the College Years,2 based on a longitudinal study begun in the late 1950s with Harvard and Radcliffe undergraduates (admittedly not a diverse population at that time). Prompted by the variety Perry had noticed among undergraduates’ responses “to the relativism which permeates the intellectual and social atmosphere of a pluralistic university,” the study—which he had originally conceived of as a study of personality differences—ended up mapping a developmental trajectory in young adults. The perhaps surprising central focus in Perry’s developmental model was on observed variations and systematic changes in the beliefs and assumptions that individuals hold about knowledge.
In the ensuing years, other researchers using a variety of methods and working with more varied populations have contributed converging evidence3 supporting a developmental sequence through a series of qualitatively different positions or orientations related to beliefs about the nature and justification of knowledge, particularly for young adults involved in Western higher education. Broadly speaking, the various models depict a gradual progression through something like the following positions:
(1) an absolutist perspective, which treats knowledge as fixed; frames right and wrong answers in a dualistic, black and white way; and conceives of learning as receiving knowledge from experts;
(2) a multiplist perspective, which recognizes varying degrees of uncertainty about knowledge and focuses on knowledge as either temporarily uncertain (until the experts figure it out), or inherently uncertain, with even experts disagreeing, and thus a matter of subjective opinions, all of which are equally valid;
(3) a relativist perspective, which conceives of knowledge and standards for evaluating knowledge as relative and contextual, requiring reflective judgment. One must develop standards based on evaluation of available evidence, logical coherence, and critical reasoning to determine whether to commit to a set of beliefs or a course of action.
Students’ epistemological orientations affect their decisions and behavior as learners, their relationships with faculty and peers, and the outcomes of their efforts. At the same time, higher education generally promotes sequentially more complex perspectives on learning. Progress is slow, though, with changes tracked over years rather than weeks or months. One large-scale longitudinal study4 found that the typical graduating senior did not progress beyond a subjective-multiplist position, remaining unable to coordinate critical inquiry and probabilistic justification in arguments. Only advanced doctoral students consistently scored at the highest levels.
Why complex, open-ended, PSL to promote intellectual and cognitive development? PSL incorporates the critical features of uncertainty and complexity, which can serve as powerful mechanisms in two ways. First, uncertainty shakes up ideas about knowledge as unchanging, absolute, unambiguous, concrete, and received from authority. Leading students in the direction of more sophisticated thinking about the nature and sources of knowledge, it is linked with epistemological development.
Second, grappling with the uncertainty of how to approach a complex problem also drives the development of higher-order cognition—sometimes referred to as metacognition. If first-order cognition has to do with such things as perceiving, learning, and remembering, higher-order cognition involves evaluative and strategic processes that operate on first-order cognition.5 Posed with problems that engage only first-order learning processes, the student might think, “This is the stuff I have to learn; now I have to memorize and/or practice it.” Faced with a complex, open-ended problem to solve, the learner may be forced to ask questions such as “What am I trying to figure out or do? What do I already know? How well do I know it? What don’t I know?” Instead of engaging in generic strategies or study skills, the student is prompted to think at a meta-strategic level: “How am I going to frame this problem? What are the essential constraints? What might a solution look like? What strategies might work? How will I know if they are working?”
When undergraduates start to recognize and grapple with the complexity and uncertainty of knowledge, some of the most important work of a college education can begin in earnest. The focus of learning shifts toward such matters as theory and argument, critical consideration of ideas from multiple perspectives, development of standards of evidence, logical reasoning, and the ability to take systems of thought as objects of study and to compare them rather than only being able to operate within a given one. Even for talented, serious students this may be a rocky transition, particularly if they have previously been academically successful learning in the mode of receiving knowledge, which may have served them well on the standardized tests used for college admissions.
Many kinds of courses and experiences in the undergraduate curriculum already feature some aspects of PSL, such as studio courses, research methods courses, senior design projects, independent study, thesis research, and, perhaps uniquely, Penn’s rich variety of Academically Based Community Service Courses. However, the role these courses play in students’ undergraduate careers has often been viewed from a departmental or credentialing perspective, with less consideration paid to the unique role these experiences might play in students’ larger intellectual development.
I would not be one to argue for a wholesale transformation of undergraduate curriculum to PSL. Powerful thinking and learning are not just about developing metacognitive skills and more sophisticated epistemological beliefs. They also require deep, rich, flexible knowledge bases and fluency in the procedures and practices of a discipline. Learning to think within a discipline and using complex problem solving learning are complementary components in an undergraduate education. Each component makes the other more purposeful and effective. As students begin to take on original scholarship of significant scope, these may naturally merge. Often this only happens reliably in post-graduate education, but there is no a priori reason to believe that undergraduates could not be achieving these levels more routinely. With a dynamic student population, first-rate faculty, the resources of a major research university, strong ties to the surrounding urban community, and leadership committed to the University’s educational mission, the University of Pennsylvania is an ideal place to try.
1 Dewey, J. (1997). How we think. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc.
2 Perry, W. G. (1968). Forms of intellectual and ethical development in the college years: A scheme. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. (p. 4).
3 For a review of research in this area, see Hofer, B. K. & Pintrich, P. R. (1997). The development of epistemological theories: Beliefs about knowledge and knowing and their relation to learning. Review of Educational Research,67(1), 88-140.
4 King, P. M. & Kitchener, K. S. (1994). Developing reflective judgment: Understanding and promoting intellectual growth and critical thinking in adolescents and adults. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
5Kuhn, D. (1999). A developmental model of critical thinking. Educational Researcher, 28 (2), 16-26.
Christine Massey, a cognitive development psychologist, is the director of PENNlincs in the Institute for Research in Cognitive Science. She will lead a discussion on problem-based and problem-solving learning at the Third Annual SAS Dean’s Forum on Teaching and Learning, to be held Wednesday, April 26, from 1–4 p.m. in 401 Fisher Bennett Hall.
This essay continues the series that began in the fall of 1994 as the joint creation of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Lindback Society for Distinguished Teaching.
See www.upenn.edu/almanac/teach/teachall.html for the previous essays.
Almanac, Vol. 52, No. 31, April 25, 2006
April 25, 2006
Volume 52 Number 31 | <urn:uuid:1e3beb45-b884-4c70-b2ed-48f77beb69d8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.upenn.edu/almanac/volumes/v52/n31/tatl.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395620.56/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00188-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945665 | 1,933 | 2.59375 | 3 |
- Home /
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- Enhance vocabulary development and comprehension. Research shows that repetition and multiple exposures to content-area words and concepts greatly improves understanding.
|age recommendation||4-7 years|
|grade||pre-k; kindergarten; 1st grade; 2nd grade; 3rd grade|
Thank you, you will now be redirected to comparisons.
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Check In-Store Availability | <urn:uuid:68e05ad5-e491-40f0-a24f-faa26ac974cd> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/483014/Scholastic-File-Folder-Games-Center-Collection/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394414.43/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00153-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.681546 | 92 | 2.703125 | 3 |
|Name: _________________________||Period: ___________________|
This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. What does the high pitched command signal should happen?
(a) It signals that the Richardsons should be attacked and brought down.
(b) It signals that the drums should begin.
(c) It signals that everyone should go home.
(d) It signals that the children should ask for food and water.
2. Why does a Sawi wife shave her head?
(a) Because of lice.
(b) Because her husband has died.
(c) Because it would show how wise she was.
(d) Because it customary for a bride to have a shaved head.
3. What is the name of the sea which the Kronkel river empties into?
(a) The Agramenon Basin.
(b) The Atlantic Ocean.
(c) The Arafura Sea.
(d) The Agrabar Waterway.
4. How many tribes are in the area of New Guinea?
(a) Only one.
(b) Five distinct tribes and ten which could not be classified.
(c) Fifteen distinct tribes.
(d) An estimated four hundred.
5. What do the Sawi warriors bring on their first trading mission to Pirimapun?
(a) Sago flour, beetle grubs, lori parrots and chickens.
(b) Guns, ammunition, spears and dynamite.
(c) Elaborately carved masks and feather-adorned costumes.
(d) Pottery made from dark red riverbank clay.
Short Answer Questions
1. What is the Ironwood Curtain?
2. What time of day does the Richardson family arrive at their new home?
3. How does Don Richardson find a way into the hearts and minds of the tribe?
4. Are the Sawi women involved in head hunting?
5. What is the primary redemptive analogy which Richardson uses to reach the tribal people?
Short Essay Questions
1. What was the moment in which Yae realizes that he has been tricked?
2. What do the elders Kigo, Hato and Numu do with the gifts they receive from the Tuans who are on the boat?
3. Why do the Sawi people see Kani and Mahean as the epitome of manhood?
4. What is Ebenezer Vine trying to accomplish with his lecture tour?
5. Why do the Sawi people hide in the thorn bushes when the plane comes?
6. Why does Richardson title this chapter "Baptism of Strangeness"?
7. What does the village of Mauro look like?
8. What do the young 7-month-old Stephen and the grown Sawi man Narai have in common?
9. What does Richardson believe is unavoidable in modern life?
10. For his journey to Haenam, Yae dresses in a very careful way. What are some of the underlying meanings which his clothing convey?
This section contains 1,161 words
(approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) | <urn:uuid:c12d1591-e4a4-494e-b16c-ed05c1699454> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.bookrags.com/lessonplan/peace-child/test3.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.71/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00112-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93804 | 686 | 2.96875 | 3 |
Below follows an excerpt of a fine paper submitted by a student for the LIT 335 midterm museum assignment. The excerpt includes the first page and a half of the paper, with the corresponding footnotes and references.
The paper is used with the student's permission, and is intended as a model only. Its words or ideas may not be copied without explicit acknowledgement and proper attribution in your paper. In fact, you are not likely to do well by copying this paper, even with acknowledgement: use it as a model, but find your own words and ideas to complete the assignment. Do not just plug your own artifacts into the framework of the model.
Noteworthy characteristics of this paper:
Life in ancient Greek society was affected to a large extent by the dominant religious belief system of mythology. The various gods and goddesses were worshipped and entreated for help in different areas of life, and the gods and goddesses had their own realm of special influence and their own special devotees. Mythology not only filled the role of religion, it also had other roles in helping the ancient Greeks understand themselves and their relationship to the universe, society and each other. The use of the images of Athena and Hermes in Greek art, coins and monuments shows how these gods fulfilled the social, psychological, metaphysical and cosmological functions of myth.
Hermes was the son of Zeus by the nymph Maia. On the same day that he was born, Hermes built a lyre, composed songs and played music on it, and killed two of the cattle of Apollo, his older brother. Hermes used his charm and cleverness to avoid punishment for this deed. In fact, Hermes charmed Apollo with the music of his lyre and gave the instrument to him as a gift. In return, Apollo rewarded him saying:
"And now, because you are, in truth, so clever, even though you are little, honor among the immortal gods will be bestowed on you...I shall make you a glorious and blessed leader among the immortal gods." (Hendricks 90)
Thus, Hermes became the god of thieves, travelers, and crossroads (Hendricks 84), as well as the protector of cattle.
The ancient Greeks erected monuments called herms, named after the god Hermes. These were "set up as dedications to him at halfway markers between the city and the rural territories of Attica, at the city gates, and at the entrances to important public places"("Herm Head." 30-51-1. Gallery Notes). One of these statues consists of a square pillar with a sculpted head of Hermes on top, and male genitals on the front ("Herm Head." 30-51-1). The placement of these at entrances, gates, and halfway points along city journeys refers to his position as god of travel and trade ("Herm Head." 30-51-1. Gallery Notes).
For the ancient Greeks, the herms fulfilled two of the four functions of myth. First, the herms had a sociological function (Campbell). The Greeks realized the danger involved in travel at that time, and cattle and trade were important to them, so Hermes was the relevant god to beseech for these intentions. Greek society looked to Hermes to guard the entrances and paths towards their cities, and belief in the power of Hermes was a unifying force in their society.
The use of herms also shows the metaphysical function that faith in Hermes fulfills. The Greeks were aware of their mortality, and looked to Hermes with "a sense of awe, gratitude and even rapture" (Campbell), as he was a god, and they recognized his power as greater than their own. He fulfilled the role of protector for the humble and faithful Greek mortals.
"Herm Head." 30-51-1. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology.
Rhoda A. Hendricks. Classical Gods and Heroes (New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1974).
Joseph Campbell. Handout from Mythology class: (compiled by Eva Thury). Four Functions of Mythology According to Joseph Campbell.
"Herm Head." 30-51-1. Gallery Notes. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology
For information on citing artifacts, see this link. | <urn:uuid:192f95ad-d163-4973-b5b1-f668a6364b3f> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://showme.physics.drexel.edu/thury/Myth/Museum_Paper_Sample.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396027.60/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00083-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961881 | 870 | 3.625 | 4 |
June 20, 2012
New Method For Manufacturing Graphene
Considered by many as the most promising material of the future, graphene still remains an expensive and hard-to-fabricate substance. Researchers from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, and the Interdisciplinary Research Institute in Lille developed a low cost method for manufacturing multilayered graphene sheets. The new method does not require any specialized equipment and can be implemented in any laboratory.
A low cost method for producing graphene sheets has been developed in cooperation within research project by teams from the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IPC PAS) in Warsaw and the Interdisciplinary Research Institute (IRI) in Lille, France. The method is simple enough to be provided in almost any laboratory throughout the world.Graphene was discovered in 2004, by peeling off carbon layers from graphite using an ordinary scotch tape. "In what had been peeled off the researchers were able to find one-atom-thick sheets. And that was graphene. If we are thinking about industrial applications of graphene, we have to find better controlled methods for producing this material in a large scale, without using an expensive, specialized equipment", says Izabela KamiÅska, a PhD student from the IPC PAS, a scholarship holder of the Foundation for Polish Science within the International PhD Projects Programme. KamiÅska has carried out her experiments at the International Research Institute.
Considering the structure, graphene is a two dimensional system composed of six-membered carbon rings. The hexagonal graphene lattice resembles a honeycomb, with the difference that the graphene sheet has the lowest possible thickness: of one atom only.
Unusual properties of graphene are closely related to the unique structure. Graphene is almost entirely transparent, more than hundred times stronger than steel and very flexible. At the same time it shows excellent thermal and electric conductivity, which makes it a good material for applications in electronics, e.g. for manufacturing thin, flexible and strong displays or fast processing circuits. It is also suitable as a material for various sensors.
The existing methods for fabricating graphene — including deposition of epitaxial layer on a metallic substrate or silicon carbide, or chemical or physical vapour deposition — require expensive, specialized equipment and complex manufacturing procedures. Meanwhile, the only more complex apparatus used in the method for producing graphene sheets developed at the IPC PAS and the IRI is an ultrasonic cleaner, an equipment common in many laboratories.
The new process for producing graphene sheets starts with graphite, one of carbon allotrope, on the molecular level resembling a sandwich composed of many graphene planes. These sheets are hardly separable. To weaken interactions between them, graphite must be oxidized, which is usually accomplished with the Hummers method. A powder obtained in that way — graphite oxide — is subsequently suspended in water and placed in an ultrasonic cleaner. The ultrasounds exfoliate oxidized graphene sheets from each other and the resulting colloid contains single graphene oxide flakes with diameter of about 300 nanometers.
The researchers from the IPC PAS and the IRI used graphene oxide manufactured at Materials Science Division in North East Institute of Science and Technology (NEIST) in Dispur, India. "One-atom-thick graphene oxide colloids were a good starting material, but numerous oxygen-containing functional groups became a real difficulty. The problem was that they changed dramatically the physico-chemical properties of the material. Instead of an excellent conductor we had... an insulator", explains KamiÅska.
To remove oxygen from graphene flakes, the researchers from the IPC PAS and the IRI decided to use non-covalent pi-pi stacking interactions between the carbon rings of graphene oxide and the aromatic rings of a compound called tertathiafulvalene (TTF). A TTF molecule is composed of two rings containing three carbon and two sulphur atoms each. "Practically, it was sufficient to mix graphene oxide with tertathiafulvalene, and then put the whole in an ultrasonic cleaner. The interactions between the TTF rings and the graphene oxide rings resulted in a reduction of graphene oxide to graphene with a simultaneous oxidation of the TTF molecules", describes KamiÅska.
As a result, the obtained composite contained graphene flakes with TTF molecules intercalated into them. A droplet of the composite solution was subsequently deposited onto an electrode and dried. Graphene flakes formed on the surface a smooth coating with controllable thickness from 100 to 500 nm that was composed of a few dozen to a few hundreds alternate graphene sheets and TTF molecules.
The final stage in the production of graphene coating was to expel tertathiafulvalene molecules, which was attained by a simple chemical reaction with an appropriately selected compound.
"One of our motivations for the research was to look for new methods for detecting biological substances. That's why after expelling TTF from the graphene coating we checked immediately if we could reincorporate the chemical into the matrix. It turned out that yes. Therefore it is possible to develop a process allowing one to bind a selected compound to a TTF molecule, and then to incorporate the entire complex into a graphene sheet on an electrode and monitor the electric current flow", sums up Prof. Marcin OpaÅÅo (IPC PAS).
A publication describing the new method appeared early this year in the prestigious journal Chemical Communications, with the cover showing computer visualisation of the graphene sheets with TTF. At present, the researchers from the IPC PAS and the IRI continue their work on further decrease of graphene matrix thickness. The final stage reached also the experiments which show that it is possible to incorporate into the graphene sheet TTF molecules with attached mannose (one of the monosaccharides).
On The Net: | <urn:uuid:f74e2526-7804-4f5d-b048-eb1d1dfb80be> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112642447/new-method-for-manufacturing-graphene/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396106.25/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00186-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943348 | 1,220 | 3.6875 | 4 |
The first book by University of Alabama at Birmingham Associate Professor of Art History Cathleen Cummings, M.A., Ph.D., “Decoding a Hindu Temple: Royalty and Religion in the Iconographic Program of the Virupaksha Temple, Pattadakal,” has been published.
The book interprets the visual images and symbols of the temple. Queen Lokamahadevi, the chief wife of the early Chalukya king Vikramaditya II, began construction of the temple in approximately 733, at the dynasty’s royal consecration site of Pattadakal in Karnataka, India. Dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva and adorned with carved images of Shiva, Vishnu and other deities, the Virupaksha Temple is widely considered one of the most important of the freestanding structures erected during the Chalukya era, and it represents the zenith of temple construction of its period, Cummings says.
“Although this temple has been studied for more than a century and appears in virtually every textbook on Indian art, its iconographic program has never been fully explored,” Cummings said.
The work demonstrates that the visual images and symbols of the temple express royal aspirations, both material and spiritual, and past successes. Specific imagery that legitimizes the king through references to his genealogy and lineage, his royal marriage, and his conquests and defeats of other rival monarchs are identified, as well as his role in upholding the social order, she says. The book also looks at the issue of female patronage to show that the temple reflected the importance of the role of the queen to the functioning of the kingdom.
“Decoding a Hindu Temple: Royalty and Religion in the Iconographic Program of the Virupaksha Temple, Pattadakal” received the 2011 American Institute of Indian Studies’ Dimock Book Prize for best unpublished manuscript in Indian studies. The South Asian Studies Association published the book. It is available for purchase onAmazon. | <urn:uuid:743a0d82-7012-429b-a7e9-2e7d4039f8d9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | https://www.uab.edu/news/faculty/item/5156-uab-art-history-professor-pens-book-on-indian-temple-s-iconography | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396100.16/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00103-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949185 | 414 | 2.875 | 3 |
gives the cotangent of z.
- Mathematical function, suitable for both symbolic and numerical manipulation.
- The argument of Cot is assumed to be in radians. (Multiply by Degree to convert from degrees.)
- Cos[z]/Sin[z] is automatically converted to Cot[z]. TrigFactorList[expr] does decomposition.
- For certain special arguments, Cot automatically evaluates to exact values.
- Cot can be evaluated to arbitrary numerical precision.
- Cot automatically threads over lists.
- Cot is the cotangent function, which is one of the basic functions encountered in trigonometry. It is defined as the reciprocal of the tangent function: . The equivalent schoolbook definition of the cotangent of an angle in a right triangle is the ratio of the length of the leg adjacent to to the length of the leg opposite it.
- Cot automatically evaluates to exact values when its argument is a simple rational multiple of . For more complicated rational multiples, FunctionExpand can sometimes be used to obtain an explicit exact value. TrigFactorList can be used to factor expressions involving Cot into terms containing Sin and Cos. To specify an argument using an angle measured in degrees, the symbol Degree can be used as a multiplier (e.g. Cot[30 Degree]). When given exact numeric expressions as arguments, Cot may be evaluated to arbitrary numeric precision. Other operations useful for manipulation of symbolic expressions involving Cot include TrigToExp, TrigExpand, Simplify, and FullSimplify.
- Cot threads element-wise over lists and matrices. In contrast, MatrixFunction can be used to give the cotangent of a square matrix (i.e. the power series for the cotangent function with ordinary powers replaced by matrix powers) as opposed to the cotangents of the individual matrix elements.
- Cot is periodic with period , as reported by FunctionPeriod. Cot satisfies the identity , which is equivalent to the Pythagorean theorem. The definition of the cotangent function is extended to complex arguments using the definition , where is the base of the natural logarithm. Cot has poles at for an integer and evaluates to ComplexInfinity at these points. Cot[z] has series expansion about the origin that may be expressed in terms of the Bernoulli numbers BernoulliB.
- The inverse function of Cot is ArcCot. The hyperbolic cotangent is given by Coth. Other related mathematical functions include Tan and Cos.
Introduced in 1988
(1.0)| Updated in 1996 | <urn:uuid:6b98e357-b600-4355-9c8b-ace1a9562b88> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/Cot.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783395613.65/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154955-00014-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.818701 | 543 | 3.34375 | 3 |
Alligator snapping turtle (Macrochelys temminckii): Listed as a Threatened Species. This species is illegal to capture, possess or own without proper permits issued by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department..
IDENTIFICATION: 15-26 inches (38-66 cm). Not including the leatherback sea turtle, this is the largest species of turtle occuring in North America and some captive specimens have been known to exceed 250 pounds (*** kg). Unlike its relative the common snapping turtle, Macrochelys has a short neck bedecked with several fleshy tubercles, an enormous head, highly serrated carapace and marginal scutes and as strongly cusped beak. The bridge is narrow and the cruciform plastron is small. The eyes are surrounded by a series of fleshy tubercles often creating the appearance of a star-like pattern. The interior of the mouth is drab colored often matching the color of the flesh. The tongue is brightly colored pink, small and bifurcated. No other living species of turtle posseses such a tongue. The basal coloration of the carapace is chestnut to drab brown. The head, neck, limbs and tail are drab olive to dark tan. In older specimens the head tends to lighten in coloration ranging from beige to ivory.
GEOGRAPHIC DISTRIBUTION : The alligator snapping turtle occupies a geographic range that includes southwestern Georgia, northern Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, eastern Oklahoma, extreme southeastern Kansas, southwestern and eastern Illinoisin the Mississippi Valley to Iowa and southwestern Kentucky. However, specimens may be difficult to locate in portions of their historic range as the construction of dams, commercial collecting, habitat loss and pollution have made a negative impact on alligator snapping turtle populations.
BEHAVIOR AND ECOLOGY: Alligator snapping turtles are aquatic bottom dwellers. They have been found in a variety of environs including lakes, oxbows, bayous, deep rivers, canals, creeks, ponds and even brackish estuaries. This species is an opportunistic feeder known to consume a wide variety of food items such as: acorns, briar roots, various aquatic plants, insects, mollusks, fish, salamanders, frogs, turtles, snakes and mammals. Despite the varied diet, this turtle isbest known for its ability to lure unsuspecting fish into its mouth. This is accomplished by holding the mouth agape and wriggling a brightly colored potion of the tongue in a manner similiar to a convulsing and drowning worm. When the fish moves in for a closer inspection the mouth is slammed shut, water expeled through the nostrils and the fish is swallowed. Another feature possessed by this turtle is the recurved cusp at the end of the beak. This characteristics is undoubtedly useful for securing struggling fish. Adults can stay submerged for intervals of 30 to 50 minutes. Occasionally, submerged specimens can be seen gulping water and expelling it through their nostrils. This behavior is suggestive of phayngeal respiration which involves a gaseous exchange across capillary rich surfaces in the throat..
Females do not reach the behemoth proportions exemplified by old males. Females are distinguishable from males by having a cloacal opening that does not extend beyond the posterior margins of the carapace. Females can lay as many as 50 eggs per clutch. INcubation temperatures ranging from 20-25 degrees Centigrade have resulted in incubation times of 79 to 107 days (Ernst, et al., 1994). The average incubation period for eggs hatched under captive conditions is roughly 80 days. Upon hatching, alligator snapping turtles average 38 mm in carapace length. | <urn:uuid:86f924a3-0c6c-4d4d-b705-b594bd5470a9> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.texasturtles.org/Macrochelys_temminckii.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783398216.41/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154958-00185-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.928096 | 780 | 3.515625 | 4 |
QT Pathologies (EN)
Boutonnière deformity is a deformation of the finger in which the distal interphalangeal joint (DIP joint) is hyperextended, or bent away from the palm, while the proximal interphalangeal joint (PIP joint) is hyperflexed, or bent towards the palm.
This results in a deformed finger.
- Boutonnière deformity of the little finger
The usual cause is a stubbing injury of the finger, but the deformity can also be due to arthritis (see Rheumatoid arthritis section).
In the normal finger, the straightening forces in the tendons are balanced between the central slip and the terminal tendon. If the central slip is torn by injury it can no longer straighten the middle joint, which drops into a bent position. The straightening force is now all transferred to the terminal tendon, which pulls the end joint up and it then becomes difficult to bend the end of the finger fully into the palm.
The same posture can develop if the central slip is injured by a cut on the back of the middle joint.
Pain and swelling of the middle joint of the finger.
The finger lying in a bent position from the middle joint.
Inability to actively straighten the middle joint of the finger.
Inability to bend the finger fully at the end joint.
It can be hard to distinguish this injury from the much more common middle joint sprains, as both injuries cause pain, swelling and stiffness, and the characteristic deformity may not appear for some days or weeks after the injury.
An x-ray should be taken to look for a fracture and check the joint is in place. Occasionally an ultrasound scan may be required.
If the injury is caused by a cut, the tendon can be repaired. Stubbing injuries are usually treated by splintage. A splint will be applied to keep the finger in a straight position at the middle joint and will usually allow the end joint to bend. Several types of splint are available. A splint is normally worn for between four and eight weeks. Use of the splint is usually monitored by a hand therapist, as using it correctly is important for good healing of the tendon.
The majority of injuries treated by splintage will heal leaving satisfactory function of the finger, though this can take several months to regain maximal function. In some cases the finger does not recover full movement, and lacks full straightening at the middle joint and/or limited bending at the end joint. Occasionally the tendon fails to repair itself. It can be treated by a further period of splintage and if this fails there are surgical options available.
During your consultation, Dr. D'Agostino will discuss the current treatment options and can help you choose the best treatment based on your particular case. | <urn:uuid:80049930-c4fe-447f-96a4-5b8efadceaf3> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.hand-surgery.eu/en/hand-conditions/boutonniere-deformity | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783393332.57/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154953-00039-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.929651 | 585 | 2.890625 | 3 |
for National Geographic News
A giant new species of crested duck-billed dinosaur has been unearthed in Mexico, researchers say.
The discovery of the 72-million-year-old fossil adds to the rich gallery of dinosaurs that scientists now know lived in western North America during the latter part of the dinosaur era.
The new species was dubbed Velafrons coahuilensis in honor of the state of Coahuila in north-central Mexico where the fossil was found (see map).
Reaching lengths up to 35 feet (10.5 meters) long, the newfound dino was a plant-eater belonging to a group of duck-billed dinosaurs, or hadrosaurs, that roamed the region together with carnivores like tyrannosaurs and velociraptors.
"Specimens of this group of dinosaurs are some of the most common found in Coahuila, supporting the hypothesis that duckbills were one of the favorite foods for tyrannosaurs," said Terry Gates, a paleontologist with the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City.
The specimen consists of a mostly complete skull with a bony crest on its forehead, and a partial skeleton.
The animal was a youngster at the time of death, scientists say, and was about 25 feet (7.5 meters) long.
Velafrons, which means "sailed forehead" in Latin and Spanish, represents the first occurrence of a crested duck-billed dinosaur in this region of North America.
The discovery was announced in the December edition of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
America's Inland Sea
The dinosaur record from Mexico has been relatively sparse—the new species is one of the first dinosaurs from that country to be identified.
But "Mexico, like other regions of Western [North] America, was home to a diversity of dinosaurs large and small, from predatory tyrannosaurs, which were the top carnivores, to a range of horned and duck-billed herbivores, to a variety of smaller denizens," said Scott Sampson, a Utah Museum of Natural History paleontologist and co-author of the study.
SOURCES AND RELATED WEB SITES | <urn:uuid:9dd83a3f-9018-4511-9531-e4dbcb934951> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/02/080212-mexico-dinosaur.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397636.15/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00163-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958333 | 457 | 3.828125 | 4 |
Some Factors That Influence Course Evaluations—And Some That Don’t
Some course characteristics that are not under an instructor’s control can influence student ratings of instruction (commonly called course evaluations). While these effects do not always represent bias, they should be taken into account in interpreting course evaluations fairly and accurately.
The research investigating relationships between course characteristics and student ratings of instruction suggests that there are some small but noteworthy correlations.
- Smaller class sizes tend to get higher ratings than larger ones. It is not clear whether this relationship reflects differences in teaching methods typically used in the two contexts, or whether it is an effect of size alone.
- Classes in mathematics and the natural sciences tend to receive lower ratings than those in other disciplines.
- Elective courses tend to get slightly higher ratings than required courses, especially if a required course is outside a student’s major.
- Graduate student instructors tend to receive lower ratings than appointed faculty.
The effect of any one of these factors may not be great, but a combination could affect a teacher’s mean rating significantly.
Instructors often fear that student ratings are unduly influenced by factors that may be unrelated to effective teaching, such as:
- course difficulty
- grading leniency
- instructor popularity
The research has generally found little or no consistent relationship between such factors and student ratings (Centra, 1993).
What about students’ grades?
Some studies have shown a modest correlation between expected grade and course ratings (Braskamp
and Ory, 1994). However, this can be accounted for by the likelihood that students who learn more tend both to get higher grades and give higher ratings. Braskamp and Ory conclude, “In sum, faculty do not receive high student ratings only because they give high grades.”
Braskamp, L. A. & Ory, J. C. (1994). Assessing faculty work: Enhancing individual and institutional performance. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Centra, J. A. (1993). Reflective faculty evaluation: Enhancing teaching and determining faculty effectiveness. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Perry, J. D. (2002). Course Evaluation Practices at IU Bloomington. Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculties.
For more help or information
Contact firstname.lastname@example.org for advice about interpreting student ratings and improving instruction.
Contact email@example.com for advice about administering the evaluation or to get copies of the BEST Multi-Op form. | <urn:uuid:1802cff5-7eb9-4061-9b46-190c18f07ba8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://citl.indiana.edu/resources_files/teaching-resources1/teaching-handbook-items/factors-affecting-evaluations.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783394937.4/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154954-00091-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.901851 | 532 | 2.515625 | 3 |
Metastatic breast cancer (also called stage IV or advanced breast cancer) is breast cancer that has spread beyond the breast to other organs in the body (most often the bones, lungs, liver or brain).
Although metastatic breast cancer has spread to another part of the body, it is considered and treated as breast cancer. For example, breast cancer that has spread to the bones is still breast cancer (not bone cancer) and is treated with breast cancer drugs, rather than treatments for a cancer that began in the bones.
Some women have metastatic breast cancer when they are first diagnosed (called de novo metastatic breast cancer). However, this is not common in the U.S. (5 percent of diagnoses) .
More commonly, metastatic breast cancer arises months or years after a person has completed treatment for early or locally advanced (stage I, II or III) breast cancer. This is sometimes called distant recurrence.
Learn more about breast cancer staging.
Learn more about breast cancer recurrence.
Learn More | Current Article
Although metastatic breast cancer cannot be cured, this does not mean is cannot be treated. Treatment of metastatic breast cancer focuses on length and quality of life.
Treatment is guided by many factors, including:
Learn more about treatment for metastatic breast cancer.
Learn more about quality of life.
Learn more about support groups and other sources of assistance and support.
Survival for metastatic breast cancer varies greatly from person to person.
One study found about 37 percent of women lived at least 3 years after diagnosis with metastatic breast cancer . Some women may live 10 or more years beyond diagnosis .
It is important to note survival data are based on women diagnosed before some of the newer treatments for metastatic breast cancer were available.
Modern treatments for both early-stage and metastatic breast cancer have improved survival for women diagnosed today.
Chronicles of Hope
*Please note, the information provided within Komen Perspectives articles is only current as of the date of posting. Therefore, some information may be out of date at this time.
Fast Facts on Metastatic Breast Cancer
Facts for Life: Metastatic Breast Cancer
Metasatic Breast Cancer
Questions to Ask Your Doctor, Metastatic Breast Cancer
How has having breast cancer changed your outlook? | <urn:uuid:1fcffa0d-75bc-4274-b5b0-00580bec010e> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://ww5.komen.org/BreastCancer/MetastaticBreastCancerIntroduction.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396875.58/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00144-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941159 | 477 | 3.328125 | 3 |
The sport or practice of fighting with the fists, especially with padded gloves in a roped square ring according to prescribed rules (the Queensberry Rules).
- Great Harwood took a different angle and staged a boxing, wrestling and weight-lifting contest on the cricket field.
- As for what goes on in the ring, the actual boxing can be a lot of fun.
- Through practising the boxing, people can build up their body and improve the physical defence against disease.
For editors and proofreaders
Line breaks: box¦ing
What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
Comments that don't adhere to our Community Guidelines may be moderated or removed. | <urn:uuid:6ecea33d-3027-4db9-9df7-921eff4997d5> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/boxing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397696.49/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00028-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.916803 | 142 | 2.765625 | 3 |
You inform Tapestry about your services and contributions by providing a module class.
The module class is a plain Java class that you create to inform Tapestry about your services and contributions.
A system of annotations and naming conventions allow Tapestry to determine what services are provided by the module.
A module class exists for the following reasons:
- To bind service interfaces to service implementations
- To contribute configuration data into services
- To decorate services by providing interceptors around them
- To provide explicit code for building a service
- To set a default marker for all services defined in the module
All public methods of a module class must be meaningful to Tapestry (be one of the categories above). Any extra public methods result in startup exceptions (because the method may contain a typo).
Service Builder Methods
Service builder methods were the original way to define a service and provide the logic to construct it; although this is now more commonly (and succinctly) accomplished using the bind() method, there are still many cases where service builder methods are useful.
Service builder methods are public methods. They are often static. Here's a trivial example:
Any public method (static or instance) whose name starts with "build" is a service builder method, implicitly defining a service within the module.
Here we're defining a service around the Indexer service interface (presumably also in the org.example.myapp.services package).
Every service has a unique id, used to identify it throughout the Registry of services (the Registry is the combined sum of all services from all modules). If you don't provide an explicit service id, as in this example, the service id is drawn from the return type; this service has an id of "Indexer".
You can give a service an explicit id by adding it to the method name: buildIndexer(). This is useful when you do not want the service id to match the service interface name (for example, when you have different services that implement the same interface), or when you need to avoid name collisions on the method name (Java allows only a single method with a given name and set of parameters, even if the return types are different, so if you have two different service builder methods that take the same parameters, you should give them explicit service ids in the method name).
Tapestry IoC is case insensitive; later we can refer to this service as "indexer" or "INDEXER" or any variation thereof, and connect to this service.
Service ids must be unique; if another module contributes a service with the id "Indexer" (or any case variation thereof) a runtime exception will occur when the Registry is created.
We could extend this example by adding additional service builder methods, or by showing how to inject dependencies. See the service documentation for more details.
Main article: Defining Tapestry IOC Services
An alternate, and usually preferred, way to define a service is via a module's bind() method. The previous example can be rewritten as:
For more details, see see Defining Tapestry IOC Services. In most cases, autobuilding is the preferred approach.
Generally speaking, you should always bind and autobuild your services. The only exceptions are when:
- You wish to do more than just instantiate a class; for example, to register the class as an event listener with some other service.
- There is no implementation class; in some cases, you can create your implementation on the fly using JDK dynamic proxies or bytecode generation.
The bind() method must be static; an exception is thrown if the bind() method exists but is an instance method.
You will occasionally find yourself in the position of injecting the same services into your service builder or service decorator methods repeatedly (this occurs much less often since the introduction of service autobuilding). This can result in quite a bit of redundant typing. Less code is better code, so as an alternative, you may define a constructor for your module that accepts annotated parameters (as with service builder injection).
This gives you a chance to store common services in instance variables for later use inside service builder methods.
Notice that we've switched from static methods to instance methods. Since the builder methods are not static, the MyModule class will be instantiated so that the methods may be invoked. The constructor receives two common dependencies, which are stored into instance fields that may later be used inside service builder methods such as buildIndexer().
This approach is far from required; all the builder methods of your module can be static if you wish. It is used when you have many common dependencies and wish to avoid defining those dependencies as parameters to multiple methods.
Tapestry IoC automatically resolves the parameter type (JobScheduler and FileSystem, in the example) to the corresponding services that implement that type. When there's more than one service that implements the service interface, you'll get an error (but additional annotations and configuration can be used to ensure the correct service injected).
For modules, there are two additional parameter types that are used to refer to resources that can be provided to the module instance (rather than services which may be injected).
- org.slf4j.Logger: logger for the module (derived from the module's class name)
- ObjectLocator: access to other services
Note that the fields are final: this is important. Tapestry IoC is thread-safe and you largely never have to think about concurrency issues. But in a busy application, different services may be built by different threads simultaneously. Each module class is a singleton, instantiated at most once, and making these fields final ensures that the values are available across multiple threads. Refer to Brian Goetz's Java Concurrency in Practice for a more complete explanation of the relationship between final fields, constructors, and threads ... or just trust us!
Care should be taken with this approach: in some circumstances, you may force a situation in which the module constructor is dependent on itself. For example, if you invoke a method on any injected services defined within the same module from the module class' constructor, then the service implementation will be needed. Creating service implementations requires the module builder instance ... that's a recursive reference.
Tapestry detects these scenarios and throws a runtime exception to prevent an endless loop.
Module Class Implementation Notes
Module classes are designed to be very, very simple to implement.
Again, keep the methods very simple. Use parameter injection to gain access to the dependencies you need.
Be careful about inheritance. Tapestry will see all public methods, even those inherited from base classes. Tapestry only sees public methods.
By convention, module class names end in Module and are final classes.
You don't have to define your methods as static. The use of static methods is only absolutely necessary in a few cases, where the constructor for a module is dependent on contributions from the same module (this creates a chicken-and-the-egg situation that is resolved through static methods).
Services are often referenced by a particular marker interface on the method or constructor parameter. Tapestry will use the intersection of services with that exact marker and assignable by type to find a unique service to inject.
Often, all services in a module should share a marker, this can be specified with a @Marker annotation on the module class. For example, the TapestryIOCModule:
This references a particular annotation class, Builtin:
The annotation can be applied to method and constructor parameters, for use within the IoC container. It can also be applied to fields, though this is specific to the Tapestry web framework.
Caution: injection via fields uses reflection to make the fields accessible. In addition, it may not be as thread-safe as using the constructor to assign to final fields.
Using this style, the previous example of a module class may be rewritten: | <urn:uuid:24dba683-eab9-4f72-a7f6-87431eb39749> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://tapestry.apache.org/tapestry-ioc-modules.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783397111.67/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154957-00017-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.89029 | 1,641 | 2.796875 | 3 |
Postmodern Law – Introduction
Before exploring the topic of Postmodern law, it may be helpful to give the discussion an historical context. No one does this better than Harold J. Berman, former professor of law at Harvard Law School. Berman maintains that there is currently a major debate over our understanding of law. The West’s legal system is rooted in certain beliefs, he writes, including “the structural integrity of law, its ongoingness, its religious roots, [and] its transcendent qualities.”1
However, Berman explains that today these foundational beliefs are rapidly disappearing, not only from the minds of philosophers, but from “the minds of lawmakers, judges, lawyers, law teachers...[and] from the consciousness of the vast majority of citizens....The law is becoming fragmented, more subjective, geared more to expediency and less to morality, concerned more with immediate consequences and less with consistency or continuity. Thus the historical soil of the Western legal tradition is being washed away in the twentieth century, and the tradition itself is threatened with collapse.”2
Declaring that the Western legal tradition is on the verge of collapse is a bold statement, but not too strong for the situation we are facing in the early years of the twenty-first century. Berman notes the historical background for this dramatic shift in ideology. In many ways, Western civilization has never recovered from the utter destruction and slaughter of World War I (1914–1918). That war, fought within the Western powers and traditions, cast grave doubts about the viability and desirability of Western traditions, as the most enlightened, best educated, most scientifically astute of all peoples proceeded to mow themselves down in frightening numbers. This led, Berman says, to a “loss of confidence in the West itself, as a civilization...and in the legal tradition which for nine centuries has helped to sustain it.”3
The current crisis in Western civilization has paved the way for a new approach to legal theory. This is where Postmodernism finds a foothold to enter the debate over the place and substance of law.
Postmodern Law – Rejection of Enlightenment Ideas
Postmodernists view the European Enlightenment as a white male undertaking that elevated reason and empirical data. It focused on objective knowledge of a real world, such as the scientific method for discovering objective facts about the universe, and the concept of justice in relation to law.
From a Postmodern law perspective, the source of knowledge and justice is at the root of the problem. Postmodernists insist that Western law, which grew out of Christianity and the Enlightenment, reflects white male bias. They attack “the concepts of reason and objective truth, condemning them as components of white male domination. They prefer the more subjective ‘ways of knowing’ supposedly favored by women and minorities, such as storytelling. As to the rule of law, it is an article of [Postmodern] faith that legal rules are indeterminate and serve only to disguise the law’s white male bias.”4 For this reason, Postmodernists are intent on eliminating religious roots and transcendent qualities from Western law. They desire more fragmentation and subjectivity, and less objective morality than the Judeo-Christian tradition demands. In the end, they are intent on creating and using their own brand of social justice merely for left-wing political purposes.
Postmodern Law – Critical Legal Studies
At the center of this assault on traditional Western law is the Critical Legal Studies movement. Critical Legal Studies (CLS) publishes “critiques of law focused on progressive—even radical—political change rather than on efficient government.”5 In fact, the CLS slogan is “critique is all there is.” Using Derrida’s deconstruction principle, they dissect a law to discover its subjective meaning, no matter what the law objectively states.
“While CLS and the newer movements share a left-leaning or progressive outlook, the new movements tend to have a narrower focus....[T]he new radicals concentrate on race and gender issues, and particularly on how the law creates or contributes to unequal power relations,”6 according to Farber and Sherry.
The heart of the Postmodern law thesis is that “reality is socially constructed by the powerful in order to perpetuate their own hegemony [power over other people]. As one radical feminist puts it, ‘Feminist analysis begins with the principle that objective reality is a myth.’”7 To amplify the focus on the legal inequalities imposed on women and minorities by those in power, CLS includes the core ideas of “the thought of French postmodernists such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. This meant extending the insight that law is socially constructed into an argument that everything is socially constructed.”8 From Foucault, Postmodern legal radicals draw the assertion that what counts for objective knowledge “is a power relation, one category of people benefiting at the expense of another category of people.”9 Foucault sees all relationships between people as power relationships. Universal standards of legal judgment, common to all, do not exist. Any claim to universal truth is merely a mask for gaining political power over women and minorities.
Stanley Fish, professor of Law and English, argues, “the name of the game has always been politics.”10 One example of the Postmodern focus on politics over objective knowledge has been provided by Susan Estrich, Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Southern California Law School and a syndicated columnist who has worked with many liberal politicians and appeared on numerous television talk shows. Estrich was asked why she supported Anita Hill when Hill charged Clarence Thomas (during his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court) with sexual harassment but opposed Paula Jones when she made sexual harassment allegations against President Clinton. Ms. Estrich replied, “You believe in principle; I believe in politics.”11
Estrich, like Marx, Nietzsche, and Foucault, sees law simply as a tool for political power. According to Marx, “Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another.”12 Estrich implies that she uses the law in any way necessary to get what she wants. Thus, the law is no longer a God-ordained, objective standard by which to judge behavior and maintain an ordered society, but a weapon to beat political opponents into submission to a point of view.
Postmodern Law – Conclusion
Even if all knowledge were socially constructed, the matter of truth would remain important. Brawley’s story was false—not just in one community but in all communities—because truth is universal. If law is not based on objective truth, we can only look forward to authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Justice and truth must go hand in hand.
Trial lawyer Gary Saalman predicts the results of a Postmodern law focus on racial, gender, and cultural politics becoming an integral part of the legal system: “Postmodern legal theory trickles down to breed cynicism toward all government and the entire criminal justice system. This, then, is the real issue. No one questions the fact that law requires interpretation, or that judges or juries may have acted unfairly, sometimes based on race or gender bias. The question is this: How do we view such unfairness? Do we accept that all people must inevitably be unfair and subjective, as postmodernists claim? Or do we recognize such unfairness as the evil it is and resist it? When we accept what postmodernism preaches, we lose all basis for calling the system to fairness. We instead challenge minority populations to pursue power so they can take their turn.”13
Rendered with permission from the book, Understanding the Times: The Collision of Today’s Competing Worldviews (Rev. 2nd ed), David Noebel, Summit Press, 2006. Compliments of John Stonestreet, David Noebel, and the Christian Worldview Ministry at Summit Ministries. All rights reserved in the original.
1 Quoted in Daniel A. Farber and Suzanna Sherry, Beyond All Reason: The Radical Assault on Truth in American Law (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1997), 39.
2 Ibid., 40.
3 Ibid., 21.
4 Ibid., 5.
5 Ibid., 19.
6 Ibid., 21.
7 Ibid., 23.
8 Ibid., 22.
9 Ibid., 24.
10 Quoted in Dennis McCallum, ed., The Death of Truth (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 1996), 170. See Stanley Fish, There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech: And It’s a Good Thing, Too (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1993).
11 Susan Estrich in an online letter to Stuart Taylor Jr., http://www.slate.com/id/3628/entry/23734/.
12 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New York, NY: Pocket Books, 1964), 95.
13 McCallum, 175.
What is your response?
Yes, today I am deciding to follow Jesus
Yes, I am already a follower of Jesus
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Beatrice is a native Melbournian who moved to the Netherlands in 2009. With a background in independ...
Are Amsterdam’s canals clean enough to swim in?04 August 2014, by Beatrice Clarke
On those rare summer days when the temperature creeps into the high 20s and the sun shines warmly down, glittering canal water can look terribly inviting. Wouldn’t you love to slip into the cool depths and go for a swim? Often the thought of unknown bacteria and submerged bikes holds us back, who knows what’s in the water!
This article provides some insights into one of life’s great mysteries: is it safe to swim in Dutch waterways?
Amsterdam’s canals never cleaner
An investigation by pop science website Kennislink revealed some positive developments for canals in the nation’s capital: water quality has never been so good! Never in 400 years have Amsterdam’s canals been so clean! So much so that water manager Waternet has stopped regularly flushing out the canals. Despite the good news however, canal water quality can still be further improved.
Historically canals used as dumps
For hundreds of years open water in Amsterdam was treated as a garbage dump and sewer. People dumped rubbish straight into canals and sewerage flowed in via pipes and gutters. The situation was especially bad during periods when the city grew quickly, such as at the end of the 19th century. Amsterdam’s canals remained polluted well into the 20th century, even after the introduction of sewers and rubbish collection services.
Canal pollution today
Thanks to new measures introduced by Waternet, there has been a rapid improvement in canal water quality in recent years.
At present the main polluting factor of Amsterdam’s canals is the "overflow" of sewerage during heavy rains. Waternet spokesperson Maarten Ouboter explains that during and after downpours rainwater flows into the sewer system causing the contents to overflow at hundreds of points around the city. This issue usually occurs less than 10 times a year, with pollution levels usually subsiding after around three days via dilution and biodegradation.
Waternet is working to bring sewerage overflow under control by installing big underground tanks. These containers can temporarily store large quantities of rainwater that would otherwise interfere with the sewerage system.
There are also around 1.000 houseboats in Amsterdam whose waste water still goes directly into the canals. Within a few years all houseboats and vessels must be connected to the sewer.
The word from Waternet
The official line from Waternet is that swimming in Amsterdam’s canals is not permitted as water quality is not clean enough and also because the canals are classified as boating ways (vaarwegen). This judgement is still current for summer 2015.
However, Waternet is aiming for bathing-safe quality canal water. This will only be achieved once all houseboats are connected to the sewerage system, roughly around 2016. The water manager also warns about hazards like rubbish and submerged debris, particularly bicycles, which they regularly haul out of canals.
The Amsterdam City Swim
The Amsterdam City Swim, launched in 2012, demonstrates the potential of clean canals. That year then-Princess Maxima took the plunge (and survived), swimming two kilometers to raise money for charity.
In the lead up to the swim, Waternet closely monitored canal water quality for the presence of two "guide" bacterias: E. coli and enterococcus. The water quality was found to meet swimming standards. Notably, there had not been any heavy rain and thus no sewerage overflow prior to the analysis.
Zwemwater: the app
Until Amsterdam’s canals are pristine perhaps it is wiser to visit one of the many official outdoor swimming spots around the Netherlands. Zwemwater, an app and website, lists more than 800 swimming locations around the country, providing up-to-date information about swimming water quality.
The app features an interactive map and rates locations using three categories of water quality: goed (good), waarschuwing (warning) and zwemverbod/negatief zwemadvies (swimming ban/negative swimming advice).
Water quality checks
The swimming advice is based on water quality checks conducted by the governmental department Rijkswaterstaat, the provinces, area services and water boards. Zwemwater gathers the data from these separate sources and displays it on the app and website.
The app also mentions the dates of the most recent and upcoming water quality checks, and provides information on facilities available at each location. Water quality is only measured at outdoor swimming spots during official bathing season (May 1st to October 1st).
In true Dutch fashion the responsibility of choosing to swim or not lies with the individual. For locations with a warning, meaning that swimming there can be hazardous for health, people are permitted to swim, but must assess themselves if there is a health risk (for example by checking for algal bloom). On these occasions young children and elderly people, who are the most vulnerable, are advised to find a different spot to swim.
Swimming in the future
Perhaps by summer 2016 select canals in Amsterdam will start appearing on the Zwemwater app. Then everyone will be able to enjoy a dip in Amsterdam waters, only mind the rusty bikes! | <urn:uuid:fa055a48-b7b4-427f-9596-09f282185a39> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.iamexpat.nl/read-and-discuss/lifestyle/articles/amsterdam-canals-clean-enough-to-swim-in | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783408828.55/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624155008-00061-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951841 | 1,117 | 2.5625 | 3 |
Summary of Stratigraphy
[Note: The geologic classification and nomenclature of this report follow the usage of the State Geological Survey of Kansas, which differs from that of the U. S. Geological Survey.]
The rocks that crop out in Harper County are of sedimentary origin and range in age from Paleozoic to Cenozoic (Pl. 1). The oldest rocks are a part of the Ninnescah Shale of the Leonardian Series, Permian System. Nearly all outcrops of the Ninnescah Shale in the county are in the eastern tier of townships. The Harper Siltstone, also of Permian age, crops out in a belt about one township wide that roughly coincides with R. 6 W. through the county. The Harper Siltstone is composed of two members, the Chikaskia Siltstone (lower) and the Kingman Siltstone (upper). The upper limit of this formation is not clearly marked, but the Kingman Siltstone member seems to be more resistant to weathering than the overlying Salt Plain Siltstone. The outcrop line of contact can be drawn only approximately between the Ninnescah and Harper, but roughly parallels the west line of R. 6 W. The youngest Permian rocks exposed in the county are rocks of the Salt Plain Siltstone, which crop out in approximately the western half of the county. Cenozoic deposits of the Pleistocene Series ranging in age from Nebraskan to Recent unconformably overlie the Permian rocks in much of Harper County. These deposits consist chiefly of silt, sand, and gravel, and are widely distributed in the valleys and over much of the upland area of the county. A generalized section of the geologic formations exposed in Harper County is given in Table 2. Configuration of the pre-Pleistocene surface is shown in Plate 4, and geologic cross sections based on the test-hole information are shown in Plate 2.
Table 2--Generalized section of stratigraphic units exposed in Harper County. Classification of the State Geological Survey of Kansas. The Pleistocene stratigraphic nomenclature is that of the State Geological Survey as adopted in January, 1959.
|Physical character||Water supply|
|Recent||Alluvium||30||Silt, sand, and gravel in major valleys.||Moderate supplies adequate for domestic and stock use may be obtained in some areas.|
|Dune sand||20||Medium and fine sand and some silt.||Generally above water table; yields little or no water to wells.|
|40||Clay, silt, sand, and gravel beneath terraces along principal streams.||Moderate supplies of water available for domestic and stock use.|
|10||Wind-deposited silt, locally clayey; in part composed of locally derived material.||Lies mostly above water table; yields no water to wells.|
|100||Silt, sand, and gravel; colluvium in part. Sand and gravel chiefly in deeper chanels; water-laid silt and colluvium in upper part.||Wells that penetrate channel deposits yield moderate to large supplies of water. Wells in areas where channels are absent yield little or no water.|
|20||Silt, sand, and gravel; some caliche in highest upland position.||Lies above water table and yields no water to wells.|
|25||Silt, sand, and gravel, and some volcanic ash. In upland position in northern part of area; in dissected terraces in southern part of area.||In northern part of area where there is sufficient thickness, water supplies adequate for industrial or irrigation use can be obtained. In southern part of area supplies adequate for domestic and stock use can be obtained.|
|20||Silt, clay, sand, and gravel underlying Kansan deposits in upland area.||Where sufficient thickness is penetrated, moderate to large quantities of water are obtained.|
|Tertiary (?)||Pliocene (?)||Undifferentiated
|25||Sand and gravel, minor amounts of silt and clay. Gravel derived chiefly from local material.||Lies above water table; yields no water to wells.|
|265||Chiefly red silty shale. Contains thin sandstone and siltstone beds throughout.||Yields small quantities of water from weathered zones. Quality of water variable. In some areas water is unsuitable for domestic use and inadequate for stock use.|
|80||Red silty shale, thin sandstone, and siltstone beds in upper part, reddish-brown siltstone and silty shale and some sandstone in lower part.||Yields small quantities of water of good to poor quality from weathered zone and from sandstone. In much of the area supplies are inadequate for domestic or stock use.|
|Runnymede||Siltstone||450||Varicolored calcareous, blocky clay shale, predominantly brownish red. Contains thin dolomitic and calcite-cemented zones of siltstone, limestone, and sandstone.||Yields small quantities of water of good to poor quality from weathered zone. In some areas supplies are inadequate for domestic or stock use.|
The rocks exposed at the surface in Harper County total only a few hundred feet in thickness. From these surface exposures the geologic history of the near-surface deposits may be interpreted, but the history of the deeply buried rocks must be studied through the use of drill-hole logs and samples obtained during exploration for oil and gas. The geologic history of the Paleozoic Era as it is discussed here is based chiefly on a report by Lee, Leatherock, and Botinelly (1948).
Harper County, like the rest of Kansas, is underlain by a basement complex of crystalline rocks older than Paleozoic. The area that is now Harper County was invaded by the sea in Cambrian time and remained submerged most of the time until the end of the Mississippian deposition. Unconformities in the deposits older than Mississippian indicate that the area was probably a landmass for short intervals during pre-Mississippian time. Near the end of the Mississippian, the area became a landmass and remained so for a considerable time during which a large part of the Mississippian deposits was removed. Late in Mississippian time the Nemaha Anticline was formed. This major structural feature, which extends across Kansas from Nemaha County into Oklahoma, is east of Harper County, but the effects of the deformation were important in this area. The Sedgwick Basin to the west of the Nemaha Anticline was formed, and minor anticlinal ridges paralleling the Nemaha Anticline were formed in the basin. The Mississippian deposits were eroded to base level and the detritus was deposited in the Sedgwick Basin. These deposits are one of the most important oil producing zones in the Sedgwick Basin. After this period of erosion early in Pennsylvanian time, the area was again submerged and remained so until the end of Permian time. Rocks representing all the systems of the Paleozoic Era are present in Harper County, but the thinning of some units indicates that structural movements took place repeatedly throughout the Paleozoic Era.
The area that includes Harper County has remained above sea level since the emergence at the end of the Permian. Many of the late Permian deposits have been removed. During the Mesozoic Era, deposition was negligible, hence Cenozoic deposits rest directly on the remaining Permian deposits.
During early Tertiary time, the landmass in Kansas continued to be eroded, and very little if any deposition took place.
During late Tertiary (Pliocene) time, western Kansas was covered by a thick mantle of alluvial deposits. Some alluvial material probably was deposited in Harper County but was removed by later erosion. It is possible that remnants of deposits in four small areas capping hills in southeast Harper County, which are unlike later Pleistocene deposits in western Kansas, may be Pliocene (Pl. 1). A thin veneer of gravel resembling these deposits was observed farther west and may be the same age, but some of this material seems to have been reworked and may be slope wash from a higher deposit that has been removed entirely.
Quaternary System--Pleistocene Series
Widespread deposition during late Pliocene time was followed by a period of stability marked by extremely arid conditions; only local erosion and deposition occurred during this and period. An abrupt climatic change marked the end of the and period and the beginning of Pleistocene time.
Beyond the glaciated areas in Kansas, Pleistocene deposits consist of fluvial and eolian deposits that were laid down in a cyclic pattern during alternating glacial and interglacial stages. Four main glacial stages and the intervening interglacial stages are represented in these cycles. The glacial stages--the Nebraskan, Kansan, Illinoisan, and Wisconsinan--represent the advance and early retreat of the continental glaciers; the interglacial stages--the Aftonian, Yarmouthian, and Sangamonian--represent periods of relative stability when the glaciers were remote or had disappeared completely. The Wisconsinan Stage was interrupted by a major retreat or recession of the glacier, therefore the Wisconsinan Stage has been divided into an early Wisconsinan substage, a Bradian interglacial substage, and a late Wisconsinan substage. Deposits of all the Pleistocene divisions are present in Harper County. Distribution of these deposits was controlled chiefly by the drainage patterns during the various stages.
Nebraskan and Aftonian Stages
The climatic change at the Pliocene-Pleistocene time boundary caused a rejuvenation of streams, and during the early Nebraskan Stage eastward-trending streams deepened their valleys, some to a considerable depth. Downcutting probably continued until the maximum advance of the glacier. After the glacial maximum and during the retreat of the glacier, the valleys or channels cut during the glacial advance were filled with coarse clastic deposits. This early valley-filling phase probably took place rapidly as the streams became overloaded and dropped their coarse load. As the glacier retreated farther, the load carried by the streams in Harper County decreased, and the materials carried were finer. These finer materials were deposited over the older coarse materials. During the late glacial and interglacial phases much eolian material probably was deposited, but eolian deposits of the Nebraskan and Aftonian Stages have not been recognized in Harper County. The Nebraskan deposits in Kansas are represented by the Holdrege and Fullerton Formations.
Nebraskan deposits occur along the northern border of Harper County, where they are overlain by younger deposits in much of the area. Beds in Kingman County that have been classified as Nebraskan or early Aftonian in age, on the basis of molluscan and vertebrate faunas, can be traced laterally into Harper County, where the deposits consist of sand and gravel in the basal part and mostly silt in the upper part. A caliche bed occurs in the top of the silt. Both the Holdrege and Fullerton Formations of the Lower Pleistocene presumably are represented in these deposits, and the caliche is believed to represent the remnants of the Afton soil. These deposits were not differentiated from the overlying Kansan deposits on Plate 1.
Kansan and Yarmouthian Stages
After the relatively stable conditions of the Aftonian Stage, climatic changes at the start of the Kansan Stage again caused rejuvenation of the streams in Harper County. In the upland area in northern Harper County where the Kansan deposits lie on Nebraskan deposits, there is little evidence of downcutting, but in southern Harper County considerable downcutting must have occurred; the Kansan deposits in this area form terraces along the present streams, are below older rocks bordering the valley, and lie directly on Permian rocks.
In Harper County the Kansan deposits are represented by the Grand Island and Sappa Formations. The lower unit, the Grand Island Formation, consists of sand and gravel and minor amounts of silt and clay; the Sappa Formation consists principally of silt and minor amounts of clay but locally may contain sand, some caliche, and volcanic ash. The caliche generally is near the top of the formation and probably represents the remnants of the Yarmouth soil. During deposition of the Sappa Formation or during Yarmouthian time, a volcanic ash (Pearlette Ash) bed was deposited in the area. Two deposits of the Pearlette Ash are present in Harper County. One deposit, in the NW SW sec. 18, T. 31 S., R. 7 W., is on the upland, and the other deposit, in the NW NE sec. 28, T. 33 S., R. 6 W., forms a terrace along Bluff Creek.
The Upper Pleistocene Subseries of the Pleistocene Series consists of the Illinoisan Stage, Sangamonian Interglacial Stage, early Wisconsinan glacial substage, Bradian interglacial substage, and late Wisconsinan glacial substage. Climate during these stages of the Pleistocene was more arid than that during the Nebraskan, Aftonian, Kansan, and Yarmouthian Stages of Lower Pleistocene. Therefore the character and mode of occurrence of the deposits also differ. In much of western and northern Kansas the Upper Pleistocene contains thick eolian deposits. In the Upper Pleistocene the coarser clastic materials are generally in terraces along the present streams, although there are some sheet deposits. Eolian deposits in the Lower Pleistocene are lacking, but they may have been deposited and later removed by erosion. The coarser clastic deposits of the Lower Pleistocene in many places are sheet deposits or lie in very broad, relatively shallow channels unlike those of the Upper Pleistocene.
Illinoisan and Sangamonian Stages
The best developed Illinoisan fluvial deposits (Crete Formation) are in central Kansas and along Smoky Hill River in central and western Kansas. In central Kansas many of these seem to be sheet deposits overlying older Pleistocene deposits along Smoky Hill River; in east-central Kansas the Illinoisan deposits are generally in terraces along the present streams. In northern and western Kansas thick eolian deposits (Loveland Formation) of Illinoisan and Sangamonian age occur. Thinner eolian deposits are widespread in south-central Kansas but are difficult to identify in many places, because they have been to some extent removed or reworked, and the distinctive Sangamon soil where present at the top of these deposits merges into the modern soil. During the early part of the Illinoisan Stage, there seems to have been a major shift or change in drainage over much of east-central Kansas, including the Harper County area. In north-central Kansas, Republican River is believed to have abandoned its ancestral "Belleville" channel and established its present drainage pattern. In McPherson and Harvey counties the "McPherson" channel was abandoned and the drainage system of Smoky Hill River was diverted from the Arkansas River drainage system to the Kansas River drainage system.
In northwestern Harper County, deposits of sand and gravel overlying known Kansan deposits are thought to be Illinoisan in age. These deposits are present on the highest points along a part of the northern county boundary, but they have not been differentiated on Plate 1. Conditions seem to indicate that, after a short period of sheet deposition, structural movement or capture of an important trunk stream to the east and south caused an adjustment of drainage in this area. Sheet deposition ceased and a period of downcutting produced channels as much as 250 feet below Kansan deposits in the uplands area in central Harper County. The channel near the center of section B-B' and the deepest channels in section E-E', Plate 2, are believed to have been cut and at least partly filled during Illinoisan time.
The upper deposits in these channels and in adjacent areas differ from the lower deposits. These upper deposits are principally silt, but include sand and gravel at the top. This upper part is fairly widespread and is believed to be principally a slope-wash or colluvial material. The channels are not apparent from the surface, and all these deposits have been included in slope deposits of Illinoisan to Recent age on Plate 1.
During early Wisconsinan time most of the present drainage system in the state was established. In Harper County the upper part of Bluff Creek established its present course, parts of the deep channel trending eastward through the city of Harper were abandoned, and new streams, which headed farther east than the Illinoisan streams, were established. During the Wisconsinan Stage extensive tracts of dunes were deposited. Most of the dunes are now stable, but a few are still active. Probably much loess was deposited in the upland areas of Harper County during the Wisconsinan Stage, but most was derived locally and was moved only relatively short distances, hence is not easily distinguished from the weathered silty shale that underlies it in much of the county.
Kansas Geological Survey, Geology
Placed on web Feb. 27, 2009; originally published March, 1960.
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Click any word in a definition or example to find the entry for that word
|present participle||walking around|
|past tense||walked around|
|past participle||walked around|
This is the British English definition of walk around. View American English definition of walk around.
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[About this transcript: Items inside italicized square brackets have been added for clarity. Page and chapter numbers are hyper-linked to facsimiles of the original pages, with the kind permission of the 1st-Hand-History Foundation ( www.1st-hand-history.org ).
[Walling, A. G. History of Southern Oregon, comprising Jackson, Josephine, Douglas, Curry and Coos Counties, compiled from the most authentic sources. Portland, Oregon, 1884, pages 9-82.]
DISCOVERY OF THE PACIFIC.
Prehistoric--The New World Divided between Spain and Portugal--Discovery of the South Sea--Voyage of Magellan--Naming the Pacific--Cortereal and the Straits of Anian.
Intense gloom enshrouds the history of the Pacific coast prior to the sixteenth century. The investigations of the geologist have revealed how the great inland arms of the ocean gradually became land-locked seas whose receding waters left behind the deposit of alluvium brought down from the mountains by the thousands of small streams pouring into them, by which process were evolved the great fertile valleys whose names have become the synonyms of abundance; but of its history they are silent. The patient researches of the archæologist have here and there cast a faint ray of light into the encircling gloom, but the fleeting outlines thus momentarily revealed serve but to confuse the mind and render more intense the deep shadow hanging over all. What races of human beings have acted here the great drama of life, their wars, customs, manner of living, religious beliefs and the degree of civilization they attained, are all hidden by an impenetrable veil. Here and there a voiceless skeleton disentoombed from its resting place for centuries far beneath the verdant carpet of the earth it once trod, silently points to ages long before the stony lips of the Sphynx were carved or the mighty Atlantis sunk beneath the seething billows of a convulsed ocean; yet of those ages it reveals naught but the simple fact of their existence.
Rude monuments of rocks and mounds of earth, a few rough carvings in the rocky walls of towering cliffs and crude paintings on the surface of huge stones, objects of superstitious awe and reverence to the simple natives, speak of races now passed away, of whom the aborigines of to-day know nothing except the faint allusion made to them in the legends of their ancestors. These traditions also speak of the presence long years ago of a race of pale faced people who visited these shores in ships, yet so intangible are they that scarcely a theory can be founded upon them; certainly nothing positive can be proved. That the Chinese or the Tartars in the years of their great warlike strength and foreign conquests may have visited the western coast of America is far from improbable; in fact archæologists have discovered many evidences of such visits in the crumbled ruins of Mexico, Central America and Peru, and in the customs and religious ceremonies of the people whom the conquering
10 PACIFIC COAST.
swords of Cortes and Pizarro so ruthlessly slaughtered; but Oregon and Washington offer but little testimony either to confirm or confute the theory. It is quite possible, and even probable, that the traditions referred to had their rise in the visits of the early Spanish explorers. Leaving these mysteries to be revealed by the investigations of the future, let us step from out the shadow upon the lighted plain of authentic record.
Immediately upon the return of Columbus in the spring of 1493, with the startling intelligence that he had reached India in his voyage westward, for such was his belief at that time, the Spanish sovereigns applied to the Pope, who then arrogated to himself not only the spiritual but the temporal sovereignty of the universe, for special grants and privileges in all lands thus discovered. Formerly the head of the church had bestowed upon Portugal, which had for a century past been the foremost nation in making voyages of exploration and discovery, sovereign rights in the south and east, similar to those Spain now desired in the west. With an arrogance such as none but the ruler of a universe can display and a munificence to be expected only from one bestowing that which he does not possess or which costs him nothing, the successor of Peter and God's representative upon earth drew a line from pole to pole across the globe one hundred leagues west of the Azores, and assigned to Portugal all newly-discovered lands lying east of it and to Spain all lying to the westward. This partition was unsatisfactory to ambitious Portugal, and after two years of wrangling the obliging Pope moved his dividing line 270 leagues farther west.
Though the Portuguese were obedient to the Pontiff's decree and left Spain in undisputed possession of all its western discoveries, not ceasing, however, to make many voyages of exploration, this was far from being the case with the English. The sovereigns of that "tight little isle" were wont to be very independent in their conduct, and had been accustomed for some time to show little respect for the temporal authority of the Pope when it conflicted too strongly with their personal, political or territorial interests. It can well be imagined, then, that this partition of the undiscovered world into equal portions between Spain and Portugal did not deter England from making voyages of discovery to the new world and claiming sovereign rights over all lands explored, a claim which neither the Pope nor his two pet subjects dared to dispute. Following in the footsteps of her island neighbor and immemorial enemy, France, and Holland also, ignored the papal bull and in later years grasped eagerly after their share of the prize.
And what was this land towards which the eyes of the great nations of Europe were turned? It was, as they supposed, the west coast of India, the wonderful island of Zipango and the fabulously wealthy land of Cathay described by Marco Polo. Here was to be found the "gold of Ophir" which had enriched the kingdom of the mighty Solomon, diamonds and precious stones in abundance, and the fountain of perpetual youth. Imagination and legend had peopled it with wonderful nations and cities and had stored it with a wealth of precious stones and metals such as the known portions of the globe never possessed. Love of dominion and cupidity, that great ruling power in human nature, led them forward in the contest.
From 1492 to 1513, when Vasco Nuñez gazed from the mountains upon the vast "South Sea," many voyages of discovery were made, and the Atlantic coast of America
PACIFIC COAST. 11
was explored by the Spanish, Portuguese and English navigators from sunny Brazil as far north as the icy shores of Labrador. These voyages had satisfied geographers that not the India of the east, but a new continent, probably a great eastern extension of Asia, had been found by Columbus, and that this must be crossed or circumnavigated before reaching the hoarded treasures of Cathay. Indeed as early as 1498 Vasco de Gama, a Portuguese, reached India by sailing eastward around the Cape of Good Hope, and it was plainly evident that between that point (Calcutta) and the farthest point yet reached to the westward lay many wide leagues of land and water, unexplored and unknown. The idea prevailed that a great sea existed to the southwest beyond this new land of America, an idea which was strengthened and supported by statements of the natives carried as slaves to Europe in every returning vessel, and, indeed, several efforts had been made to pass into this unknown sea by going southward along the coast of America. The title of "America" had been applied to the southern half of our continent which was at first supposed to be separate and distinct from the northern half, or Asia, as it was believed to be.
It was a quiet day in September, 1513, that Vasco Nuñez de Balboa gazed from the mountain tops of Central America upon the sleeping waters of the Pacific, upon which the eye of a Caucasian then rested for the first time. Having crossed the narrow isthmus joining the two Americas from his starting point at the Spanish settlement of Antigua on the gulf of Urabà, he was guided by a native to a point from which he saw the unknown ocean glistening in the sun far beneath him. As at that point the isthmus runs east and west, the Atlantic beating against its shores on the north and the Pacific lapping its sandy beach on the south, he christened the latter the "South Sea," while the Atlantic was by way of contrast named the "North Sea;" though this latter title was soon transferred to a supposed ocean lying north of America, separated from the South sea by a narrow isthmus similar to that of Panama, and connected with it by a short strait, as will appear further on.
The announcement that this great "South Sea" actually existed led to increased exertions to discover a route by which vessels could pass around America and traverse the unknown ocean in search of the Indies. It soon became evident that America united with the supposed land of Asia lying north of it to form a either new continent hitherto entirely unknown, or a great southeastern extension of Asia equally a stranger to geography. Exertions to discover the supposed southern passage to the great South sea were then redoubled, and in five years were crowned with complete success. A Portuguese navigator, a native of Oporto, but sailing under the Spanish flag, commanded the first vessel that plowed Pacific waters, and to this expedition is due the further honor of making the first complete navigation of the globe, proving conclusively what all geographers of the time had learned to believe, that the world was round and could be encompassed by the traveler by going either east or west. The name of this celebrated navigator, whose voyage was second only to the one made by Columbus in 1492 in the knowledge it revealed of the earth's geography, was Ferdinando de Magalhaens, spelled Magallanes by the Spaniards and by English authors given as Magellan. He had made several voyages for Portugal via the Cape of Good Hope, but becoming dissatisfied had left his native land and entered the service of Spain, to again attempt for that nation the effort of reaching the east by sailing westward. His special destination
12 PACIFIC COAST.
was the Moluccas, then claimed by Spain, and to aid him on his voyage he possessed a chart upon which was designated a passage into the South sea; but instead of the open sea which it actually is, this chart exhibited a narrow strait piercing the body of the southern half of America. The origin of this chart and the authority for marking upon it such an utterly incorrect geographical feature, are unknown; but the probabilities are that the chart embraced the idea of some geographer as to what the nature of the desired passage into the South sea must be, and was founded solely upon theory. That this was probably the case is supported by the fact that a somewhat similar passage was supposed to lead through North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific. In fact it took nearly three centuries to prove the Straits of Anian to be utterly fabulous and mythical.
On the twentieth of September, 1519, Magellan sailed from San Lucar with five vessels and 265 men, reached Rio de Janeiro on the Brazilian coast December 13, and coasted thence to the southward, carefully exploring every promising bay and inlet. When he reached the broad estuary of the Rio de la Plata, he thought surely the long-sought strait had been discovered, but all efforts to pass through the continent by that route were completely unsuccessful. There was no passage through the huge rocky wall of the Andes. Abandoning the attempt he sailed again southward, reaching Port St. Julian, about 49° south latitude, on the thirty-first of March, where he remained five months. August 24, 1520, he again resumed his search, and on the twenty-first of October reached Cabo de las Virgenes, at the entrance of the long-sought straits, having lost one vessel by shipwreck and one by desertion. With the remaining three he passed through, naming the land to the southward "Terre del Fuego," because of the many fires seen burning there. Upon the strait itself he bestowed the title "Vitorio," the name of one of his ships, though it has always properly been known as the Straits of Magellan. His passage through them of thirty-six days was a tempestuous and dangerous one, and when his vessel's prow cleaved the waters of the great unplowed sea on the twenty-seventh of November, the contrast between its quiet and smiling waters and the foam-lashed breakers of the tortuous strait was so great and so suggestive that he bestowed the name Pacific upon it. This circumstance and title are recorded in an account of the voyage written in Italian by Antonio Pigafretta, afterward Caviliere di Rhodi, who accompanied the great explorer.
Immediately upon entering the Pacific ocean Magellan steered to the northwest to reach a warmer climate, crossed the line February 13, 1521, arrived at the Ladrones March 6, and at the Philippines on the sixteenth of the same month. Here he was killed in a battle with the natives April 27, and the survivors of the expedition, numbering 115 men, continued the voyage under the leadership of Caraballo. They touched at Borneo and other islands, and reached the goal of their voyage, the Moluccas, on the eighth of November. One of the vessels, the Vitorio, in command of Sebastian del Cano, sailed again westward from the Moluccas, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and reached San Lucar September 6, 1522, with only eighteen survivors of the 265 who started upon the expedition, having been gone three years and accomplished the first complete circumnavigation of the globe. The new ocean was variously known for a number of years as South sea, Magellan's sea and Pacific ocean, the last title gradually superseding the others until it became universal.
PACIFIC COAST. 13
This wonderful voyage naturally altered the popular idea of the new land which Columbus had discovered. The vast extent of the Pacific ocean and its apparently unlimited stretch to the northward convinced the map makers that their former idea was erroneous, and that the new land, or "Novus Mundus" as the name appears on many ancient maps, could not possibly be an eastern extension of Asia. They then came to believe that America and Novus Mundus were united by the Isthmus of Panama to form an entirely new continent, and that the true Asia lay still further to the west across the new ocean. The direct and natural result of this idea was a belief that a passage into the Pacific could be discovered by sailing around the north end of Novus Mundus as easily as Magellan had found one by going to the southward of America. In fact such a passage as this was supposed to have been discovered in the year 1500 by the Portuguese navigator, Gaspar Cortereal, the first explorer of the coast of Labrador. He passed through a strait into a sea which he believed and reported to be connected with the Indian ocean. This mistaken idea was not so proven until modern explorers demonstrated the fact that no such passage exists south of the ice-bound waters of the Arctic ocean. He had in fact passed through the straits and entered the bay afterwards entered and named by Hudson in his own honor. Upon the maps for many years straits of this character, leading indefinitely westward, were marked and called Straits of Labrador until their extent and the character of the sea into which they led were revealed by the later explorations of Hudson and others. The name Cortereal bestowed upon them, however, was Straits of Anian, though what was the significance of the title has never been satisfactorily explained. The Straits of Anian seemed in later years to become entirely disassociated in the minds of explorers from the Straits of Labrador or Hudson, and the universal idea of them seems to have been that of a narrow passage from sea to sea, between the continents of America and Asia, What caused this peculiar notion it is impossible to state, and the supposed passage is now universally referred to by historians as the "Fabulous Straits of Anian." To find it the English, French and Spanish searched diligently along the Atlantic coast, while the Spaniards, alone, sailing northward from the Pacific coast of Mexico, explored along our western shore for more than two centuries before the belief in its existence was finally abandoned.
Leaving the former and the results of their voyages to be referred to briefly further on, let us turn our attention to those voyages in the Pacific which made known to the world the geography of the northern Pacific coast.
EARLY EXPLORATIONS IN THE NORTHWEST.
Cortes Conquers Mexico and Turns his Eyes towards California--He Hopes to Reach the Indies by following the Coast--California Discovered by Ximenes--Cortez Undertakes its Conquest--Tale of the Florida Refugees--Voyage of Ulloa--Wonderful Story of Friar Marcas--Coronado seeks Cibola and Quivira--Voyage of Cabrillo and Ferrelo.
Immediately following the first discoveries by Columbus, Spain began to plant colonies in the West India islands. Her enlightened sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella, proposed to open at once the great storehouse of wealth this new land was popularly supposed to be. Gold and jewels were procured from the natives by every possible means, including cheating in trade and conquest by the sword, and sent back to enrich the mother country. The same year that saw Magellan set sail upon his voyage around the globe, witnessed the inauguration of another enterprise fraught with great results to the future of America. Hernando de Cortes entered Mexico with the sword in one hand and bible in the other, bent upon winning riches and power for himself and His Most Catholic Majesty, the King of Spain, and impressing upon the heathen Aztecs the beauties of the Christian religion with musketry and cannon. The details of his bloody conquest it is needless to relate.
Having subjugated Mexico and overturned in blood the throne of the Montezumas, Cortes looked westward for more countries to subdue and plunder of their accumulated wealth. On the fifteenth of October, 1524, he wrote to Spain's most powerful monarch, Charles V, that he was upon the eve of entering upon the conquest of Colima, a country bordering on the South sea (Pacific ocean), and that the great men there had given him information of "an island of Amazons, or women only, abounding in pearls and gold, lying ten days' journey from Colima." Though Colima is the name of one of the present states of Mexico, there is but little doubt that Cortes referred to Lower California. This was the opinion of Miguel Venengas, who wrote in 1749: "The account of the pearls inclines me to think that these were the first intimations we had of California and its gulf."
The idea held by Cortes was that possessed by geographers generally, that America, if not an actual portion of Asia, into which the Pacific projected a long distance northward, was at least separated from that ancient continent simply by a narrow strait; and this idea, though founded simply upon theory, was wonderfully correct. It was his plan to sail northward, along the coast until the Straits of Anian were encountered, or failing in that, to continue westward and southward until he reached the rich lands of India. The fatal defect in this theory was in not ascribing to the Pacific ocean and the American continent the magnificent proportions they were in after years found to possess.
PACIFIC COAST. 15
At the time Cortes wrote his letter the Pacific coast had been several times explored from the Isthmus of Panama as far northward as 350 leagues from that point. In 1522 he began the construction of several vessels at Zacatula to carry out his ideas, and in 1526 they were joined by a vessel which had come through the Straits of Magellan. In 1527 three of these vessels were completed and made a short voyage along the coast; but orders came from Spain to send them to India by a direct route across the ocean instead of the long way along the coast proposed by Cortes. Other ships were begun at Tehuantepec, but rotted on the stocks while the great conqueror was in Spain. In 1530 he began the construction of others. Finally, in 1532, he dispatched two vessels from Acapulco, reaching as far north as Sinaloa, both being wrecked at different points, and their commanders and all but a few of the men slain by the natives. The next year two more vessels were dispatched from Tehuantepec, one of which accomplished nothing. The crew of the other one mutinied and killed their commander, Becerra, and continued the voyage under the pilot, Fortuño Ximenes, landing upon the extreme southern point of the peninsula of California, in 1534, where Ximenes and twenty of his men were slain in an encounter with the natives. The survivors succeeded in navigating the vessel back to the main land, where it was seized by Nuño de Guzman, the governor of Northern Mexico. He was a bitter enemy of Cortes, and his rival in covering the advancing pathway of civilization with a carpet of blood.
To resent this insult, Cortes sent three vessels northward by sea, and started himself, by land, at the head of a considerable body of troops. He changed his intention, however, and embarking a large portion of his force upon the vessels which had met him at Chiametla, he set sail for the new country discovered to the west by Ximenes, which was said to abound in the finest of pearls. On the third of May, 1535, his little squadron came to anchor in the bay where the mutineers had met their fate the year before, and in honor of the day, which was that of the Holy Cross in the Roman Catholic calendar, he bestowed upon it the name of Santa Cruz. This was probably the one now known as Port La Paz. To this body of land the name of California was soon after given, though by whom, for what reason and what is the significance of the title remain perplexing questions to the present day, and this name gradually expanded in its application until in after years it signified the entire Spanish possessions on the Pacific coast, that portion above the mouth of the Colorado being known as Alta California.
Cortes landed upon this barren and inhospitable coast with 130 men and forty horses, with visions of conquest floating before his mind. He hoped to find in this new country another Mexico to yield its vast stores of gold, pearls and ornaments into his bloody hands. Two of his vessels were at once sent to Chiametla for the remainder of his troops, and returned with but a portion of them. They were again dispatched upon the same errand, one only returning, the other having gone to the bottom of the sea. Cortes then went to the Mexican coast in person, returning to Santa Cruz just in time to rescue those he had left there from death by starvation. More than a year's time had now been fruitlessly squandered, and explorations inland had revealed the fact that the land was utterly barren and worthless. With the exception of a few pearls on the coast, the Spaniards had found nothing to tempt their cupidity,
16 PACIFIC COAST.
the great controlling power which bound them together and made them subservient to discipline. Many had died and the remainder were mutinous. In the meantime the wife of Cortes, hearing of his ill success, sent a vessel to Santa Cruz with letters, imploring him to abandon his enterprise and return. News came at the same time that a Spanish nobleman of high rank, Don Antonio de Mendoza, had been appointed to supersede him as viceroy of New Spain, and had already installed himself in office in the city of Mexico. He hastened to the mainland, leaving a portion of his forces still at Santa Cruz, under the command of Francisco de Ulloa; but finding his authority in New Spain entirely gone and being much embarrassed financially by the expenses of his unprofitable venture, he sent word to Ulloa to return, and in 1537 the sandy deserts of Lower California were abandoned by the ragged remnant of that little army of adventurers who had entered it with such high hopes two years before.
About this time there arrived in Mexico four wandering refugees whose story had much to do with the nature of explorations for the next few years. They were Alvaro Nuñez de Cabeza-Vaca, two other Spaniards and a Negro or Moor. They had landed in Florida in 1527 with a plundering expedition that invaded that portion of the coast under Panfilo Narvaez. The company was almost exterminated by shipwreck, famine and battle, and these four survivors wandered for nine years through the interior of the region bordering upon the gulf until they finally arrived in Mexico. They had encountered no civilized or wealthy nations in their long journey, but had been informed, at various places, of populous countries inhabited by rich and civilized races further to the northwest.
Mendoza was moved by these stories to invade the northwest. It was the civilized nations the Spaniards were eager to subdue; not because their conquest afforded them more honor in a military sense, for their warfare was but a series of bloody butcheries of unwarlike races whose undisciplined and unprotected masses, armed simply with spears, were mowed down like grain by the cannon, musketry and steel of the mailed warriors of Spain; but because these civilized nations possessed the great stores of gold and precious jewels which were the loadstone that drew these representatives of European chivalry to the New World. The viceroy organized a body of fifty horsemen for the purpose of invading this new country, and then abandoned the idea, sending, instead, two friars and the Moor to explore and report the true facts of the case before he ventured upon more extensive efforts.
They departed in March, 1539, and on the eighth of the following July, Cortes, who still claimed the right of exploration into the unknown ocean and government over all lands discovered, having again equipped three vessels, sent them from Acapulco under the command of Ulloa. One of these was soon wrecked in a severe storm, and the other two proceeded to Santa Cruz bay and then coasted along Lower California and Mexico, completely around the gulf that lies between them, failing, however, to notice the mouth of the great Colorado river. This voyage settled many geographical questions, and the gulf was named by Ulloa the Sea of Cortes, though it was generally marked on Spanish maps as the Vermilion sea, and on those of other nations as the Gulf of California. On the twenty-ninth of October, of the same year, Ulloa again sailed from Santa Cruz, whither he had returned at the conclusion of his last voyage, and sought to examine the coast westward as he had to the east. Passing around the
PACIFIC COAST. 17
cape, now called San Lucas, he sailed slowly northward until about the first of February, 1540, he reached an island near the coast in latitude 28°, which he named Isle of Cedars. Headwinds and sickness held him here until April, and then the same causes, coupled with a lack of provisions, compelled him to abandon his purpose of proceeding further northward.
This voyage attracted but little attention, so absorbed were the mercenary adventurers in Mexico in the report of Friar Marcas de Niza of the wonderful things discovered by him and his companions in the new region whither they had been sent by Mendoza.
From these accounts, as contained in the letter addressed to the viceroy by Father Marcas, and from other evidence, it is probable that the reverend explorer did really penetrate to a considerable distance into the interior of the continent, and did find there countries partially cultivated, and inhabited by people possessing some acquaintance with the arts of civilized life; though as to the precise situation of those regions, or the routes pursued in reaching them, no definite idea can be derived from the narrative. The friar pretended to have discovered, northwest of Mexico, beyond the thirty-fifth degree of latitude, extensive territories, richly cultivated, and abounding in gold, silver, and precious stones, the population of which was much greater, and further advanced in civilization, than those of Mexico or Peru. In these countries were many towns, and seven cities, of which the friar only saw one, called Cevola or Cibola, containing twenty thousand large stone houses, some of four stories, and adorned with jewels; yet he was assured, by the people, that this was the smallest of the cities, and far inferior, in extent and magnificence, to one called Totonteac, situated more towards the northwest. The inhabitants of Cibola had, at first, been hostile to the Spaniards, and had killed the Negro; but they had, in the end, manifested a disposition to embrace Christianity, and to submit to the authority of the King of Spain, in whose name Friar Marcas had taken possession of the whole country, by secretly erecting crosses in many places.
Such was the account of the worthy friar, but the reverend gentleman drew entirely too long a bow. That such a civilization could have existed there in the sixteenth century and have completely disappeared from view by the eighteenth, is too improbable to be credited. The ancient ruins of Arizona and New Mexico and the customs and traditions of the Zuni and Moquis Indians, confirm the opinion that a semi-civilized race inhabited that region centuries ago; but nothing has been discovered pointing to such dense population, cities of "twenty thousand large stone houses," or such wealth and civilization as the friar claimed to have observed. The probability is that, encountering a semi-civilized race, and desiring to spread among them the beauties of the Christian religion, he told these exaggerated stories to the viceroy in order to induce him to invade and subdue this new country, for in those days the pathway for the bible was hewn by the sword. Related by a respectable priest who claimed to have himself witnessed the wonders he portrayed, the story was fully credited, and Mendoza sent a combined land and sea expedition to reconnoitre and open the way for a complete conquest of this great nation.
The marine portion, under the command of Fernando de Alarcon, sailed from Santiago May 9,1540, and discovered and entered the Colorado river in August, which
18 PACIFIC COAST.
was then named Rio de Nuestra Soñora de Buena Guia, in honor of the viceroy, whose shield bore the above inscription. Alarcon ascended the stream in boats a distance of eighty leagues, inquiring diligently for the seven great cities. From the Indians he received many confusing accounts of wonderful riches and remarkable objects to be found in the interior, accounts no doubt similar to those which had been the foundation of Friar Marcas' wonderful tale. Completely baffled he returned to Mexico.
The land forces, consisting of cavalry, infantry and priests, a perfect complement for the conversion of stubborn heathen, were under the command of a resolute soldier named Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, a man intensely practical and unaccustomed to drawing upon his imagination when relating facts. After traversing many miles of desert and mountain they reached a country for which Cibola appeared to be the general name, though it was found to be entirely devoid of the refinement and riches reported by Friar Marcas. The seven cities proved to be seven small villages, thinly inhabited by a race but little removed from a savage state. The climate was agreeable and the soil very fertile. Large stone houses, rudely built and unornamented, were found, which were later called cases grandes de los Azteques (great houses of the Aztecs) by the Spanish settlers, upon the theory that they had been erected by the Aztecs while living in that region prior to their invasion of Mexico. Coronado left Cibola in disgust and proceeded further towards the northwest, wandering for two years hither and thither in search of the many fabulously rich countries the Indians were constantly informing him were to be found somewhere else. Quivira in particular was the object of great solicitude because of the reported wealth of its monarch; but when he reached it in latitude 40°, it proved to be a buffalo country and its inhabitants simply a race of hunters. If the latitude is correct, he must have penetrated as far north as the Platte or headwaters of the Arkansas. He returned to Mexico in 1543 with his faith in Indian stories shaken to its foundation stones.
The next effort to explore the western coast was made in 1542, when Mendoza dispatched Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo with two vessels in search of the Straits of Anian. Cabrillo examined the coast as far north as the 38th degree of latitude, when he was driven back by a storm and forced to take refuge in a harbor called by him Port Possession, in the island of San Bernardino, in latitude 34°. Here he died January 3, 1543, and the pilot, Bartolomè Ferrelo, took command and resumed the voyage northward. He discovered near latitude 41° a cape which he named Cabo de Fortunas (Cape of Perils), being no doubt the one subsequently named Mendocino in honor of the viceroy, Mendoza. The furthest point northward reached by Ferrelo on the first of March, 1540, is given by some authorities as 44° and others 43°, either of which would be off the coast of Oregon; and to this little vessel-load of adventurous men, half clothed, living upon short allowance of food, and afflicted with scurvy, must be given the credit of making the first discovery of the coast of Oregon, the prize for which great nations disputed for centuries.
SEARCH FOR THE MYTHICAL STRAITS OF ANIAN.
Spain Abandons the Effort--Growth of the East India Trade--Voyage of Sir Francis Drake--The Bay of San Francisco--Rev. Fletcher's Romances--Other Freebooters Invade the Pacific--Maldonado's Description of the Straits of Anian--Voyage of Juan de Fuca--Its Authenticity Discussed--Admiral Fonte's Voyage--Rio de los Reyes.
The return of Ferrelo from his voyage along the coast, of Coronado from his explorations inland, and of the few survivors of DeSoto's expedition through Florida to the Mississippi, conclusively proved that "neither wealthy nations nor navigable passages of communication between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, were to be found north of Mexico, unless beyond the 40th parallel of latitude." Having established this fact, the Spaniards desisted from their attempts to explore to the northwest of Mexico, or to search for the Straits of Anian. The fact was that the discovery of such a passage between the two oceans was now looked upon as undesirable by them, in view of the valuable trade they had established with the east.
From being the most energetic in searching for the Straits of Anian, the Spaniards suddenly became extremely apathetic to outward appearance, but were by no means so actually. Their interest in that supposititious passage was as lively as ever, and they were now even more anxious that it should not be discovered at all than they had formerly been to find it. The reason for this change of ideas is very simple.
Spain was now the complete master of Central America, Mexico and the West India islands, which formed an important and almost vitally necessary intermediate station between Europe and the Indies, a point of advantage which no other nation possessed. While she was securing this important foothold in the New World, Portugal had bent her energies upon opening a trade with the Indies by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and had succeeded in establishing a most valuable commerce with that rich and populous region, which Spain viewed with envious eyes. She turned her attention from the coast of America, and dispatched several armed fleets across the Pacific to obtain lodgment in the Indies. After several unsuccessful attempts the Philippine islands were subjugated in 1564, and the practicability of crossing the Pacific in both directions, which had at first been doubted because all efforts to return had been made in the region of the trade winds, established beyond cavil. In a few years Spain's commerce on the Pacific became extremely important. Annually large vessels sailed from Central America with gold and merchandise, which were bartered for spices, silks and porcelain in the Philippine islands and China. These were landed at the Isthmus of Panama and transported across to vessels in waiting to convey them to Spain. A large trade was also carried on along the coast to Peru and Chili [=Chile].
20 PACIFIC COAST.
Exemption from interference by rival nations was the secret of the immense growth of this India trade. The annual galleon from India was loaded with a cargo of immense value, and yet the ship bore no armament for defense. No flag but that of Spain fluttered over Pacific waters, and there was no need of cannons. It was in expectation of this condition of affairs that Spain ceased her efforts to find the Straits of Anian. The discovery of such a passage would be most calamitous. Through it could come hostile ships of war and the freebooters who were wont in those days to roam the high seas in search of plunder, and prey upon the defenseless commerce of the Pacific. The length and precarious nature of the voyage into the Pacific through the Straits of Magellan, served to keep that ocean for many years free from hostile ships.
This exemption from outside interference could not last forever. Spain arrogantly claimed dominion over and the exclusive right of trade with all regions that had been even technically discovered by Spanish navigators, even if no settlement of any kind had been attempted. Foreigners of all nations were prohibited under pain of death, from having any intercourse whatever with the territories claimed by the Castilian monarch, or from navigating the waters adjacent to them. To such presumptuous conduct as this neither England nor France would submit. They willingly respected all rights of dominion acquired by actual settlement, but this sweeping claim to exclusive control of almost the entire New World they would not countenance for an instant. The result was that English, French and Dutch "free traders" made sad havoc with the Spanish shipping on the Atlantic coast of America; and though the nations were at peace, these plundering expeditions were winked at by the sovereigns, who often directly and always indirectly received their share of the booty.
These roving marauders made great exertions to discover a northern passage into the Pacific, urged on by the reports constantly received of the wonderful richness of the East Indian commerce of Spain. These reports at last overcame the fears of English seamen, and they invaded the Pacific by the passage of Magellan's tempestuous straits.
There was one bolder and more reckless, more ambitious and successful than the others, who won the reputation of being the "King of the Sea." In 1578, he thus passed into the Pacific with three vessels, and scattered terror and devastation among the Spanish shipping along the coast. He captured the East Indian galleon, on her way home loaded with wealth, levied contributions in the ports of Mexico, and, finally, with his one remaining vessel freighted with captured treasures, sailed north to search for the Straits of Anian. Through it he proposed passing home to England, and thus avoid a combat with the fleets of Spain, that lay in wait for him off the Straits of Magellan. His name was Captain Francis Drake; but afterwards the English monarch knighted him for becoming the most successful robber on the high seas, and now the historian records the name as Sir Francis Drake. When near the mouth of Umpqua river, in Oregon, he ran his vessel into a "poor harbor," put his Spanish pilot, Morera, ashore, and left him to find his way back, thirty-five hundred miles, through an unknown country thickly populated with savages, to his home in Mexico. This feat must have been accomplished, as the only account existing of the fact comes through Spanish records, showing that he survived the expedition to have told the
PACIFIC COAST. 21
result. Drake then continued his voyage until he had reached about latitude 43°, when the cold weather, although it was after the fifth of June, forced him to abandon the hope of discovering the mythical straits. The chaplain who accompanied the expedition, being the historian of the voyage, says of the cold, that their hands were numbed, and meat would feeze when taken from the fire, and when they were lying-to in the harbor at Drake's bay, a few miles up the coast from San Francisco, the snow covered the low hills. He then evaded the Spanish fleet by crossing the Pacific and returning to England by the Cape of Good Hope. For a long time it was believed that Sir Francis Drake discovered the bay of San Francisco; that it was in its waters he cast anchor for thirty-six days, after having been forced back along the coast by adverse winds; but now it is generally conceded that he is not entitled to that distinction. Who discovered that harbor, or when the discovery was made, will probably never be known. What clothes it in mystery is, that the oldest chart or map of the Pacific coast known, on which a bay resembling in any way that of San Francisco at or near the proper point, was a sailing-chart found in the East Indian galleon captured in 1742, by Anson, an English commodore, with all her treasure, amounting to one and a half million dollars. Upon this chart there appeared seven little dots, marked "Los Farallones," and opposite these was a land-locked bay that resembled San Francisco harbor, but on the chart it bore no name. This is the oldest existing evidence of the discovery of the finest harbor in the world, and it proves two things: first, that its existence was known previous to that date, second, that the knowledge was possessed by the Spanish Manilla merchants to whom the chart and galleon belonged. Their vessels had been not unfrequently wrecked upon our coasts as far north as Cape Mendocino; and as Venegas, writing sixteen years later, says nothing of such a harbor, we are led to believe that its existence was possibly only known to those East India merchants, and was kept a secret by them for fear that its favorable location and adaptation would render it a resort for pirates and war-ships of rival nations to prey upon their commerce.
With Sir Francis Drake, unquestionably, lies the honor of having been the first European to actually land upon the coast of California. The account of that event, given by Rev. Fletcher, the chaplain of the expedition, states that the natives, having mistaken them for gods, offered sacrifices to them, and that, to dispel the illusion, they proceeded to offer up their own devotions to a Supreme Being. The narrative goes on to relate that--
Our necessarie business being ended, our General, with his companie, travailed up into the countrey to their villiages, where we found heardes of deere by 1,000 in a companie, being most large and fat of bodie. We found the whole countrey to be a warren of strange kinde of connies; their bodies in bigness as be the Barbarie connies, their heads as the heads of ours, the feet of a Want [mole] and the taile of a rat, being of great length; under her chinne on either side a bagge, into which she gathered her meate, when she hath filled her bellie, abroad. The people do eat their bodies, and make accompt for their skinnes, for their King's coat was made out of them. [The farmer will readily recognize the little burrowing squirrel that ruins his fields of alfalfa, where the ground cannot be overflowed to drown them.] Our General called this countrey Nova Albion, and that for two causes: the one in respect to the white bankes and cliffes which lie toward the sea; and the other because it might have some affinitie with our countrey in name, which sometimes was so called.
22 PACIFIC COAST.
There is no part of earth here to be taken up, wherein there is not a reasonable quantitie of gold or silver. Before sailing away, our General set up a monument of our being there, as also of her majestie's right and title to the same, viz: a plate nailed upon a faire great poste, whereupon was engraved her majestie's name, the day and yeare of our arrival there, with the free giving up of the province and people into her majestie's hands, together with her highness' picture and arms, in a piece of five pence of current English money under the plate, whereunder was also written the name of our General.
It is claimed by some English historians that Drake proceeded as far north as latitude 48°; but as the claim is founded simply upon the word of this lying chaplain and is utterly inconsistent with other statements in the same narrative and is entirely at variance with an account of the voyage written by Francis Pretty, one of the crew, and published within a few years after his return, it is worthy of but little consideration. Fletcher's account was published by a second party in 1652, seventy years later and long after the death of every man who could personally dispute its assertions, and bears no marks of authenticity. Many passages are taken bodily from Pretty's narrative, which seems to have been the foundation upon which a tissue of falsehood and absurdities was erected. The assertion that snow covered the hills about San Francisco in the month of June and that meat froze upon being taken from the fire, is enough to condemn it all in the mind of anyone familiar with the fact that snow seldom falls there even in winter, and that meat never freezes at any season of the year. These facts are important; for if Drake went to the 48th degree, he must have coasted along Oregon and Washington nearly to the Straits of Fuca; but if not, then his furthest point northward was off the mouth of the Umpqua, no further than Ferrelo had gone in 1543. To the latter opinion the best authorities hold.
Other English freebooters, encouraged by the dazzling success of Drake, followed his example, and for years Spain's commerce in the Pacific suffered many ravages at their hands. Meanwhile the English and Dutch navigators continued their efforts to discover the northwest passage, while the Spanish government was constantly excited and alarmed for fear these indefatigable searchers would be rewarded with success. Rumors that the Straits of Anian had been discovered were spread from time to time, creating great consternation in Spain, Spanish America and the Philippine islands. Several navigators pretended to have passed through these mythical straits, either to give themselves importance in the nautical world, or to secure some employment in their profession or emolument for the valuable services they thus claimed to have rendered. The narrative of this character which attracted the most universal attention, was one of a voyage which was no doubt entirely fictitious, claimed to have been made by Captain Lorenzo Ferrer de Maldonado, a Portuguese, and related by him in a memorial to the Spanish Council of the Indies, wherein he petitioned for a remuneration for his valuable services and a commission to occupy and defend the passage against the ships of other nations.
In his narrative, which was precise and careful in its details, were given all the geographical ideas of the time in regard to the regions that would naturally be visited during the voyage described, nearly all of which have since been proved to be erroneous. This fact is conclusive evidence that the narrative was a manufactured one and the voyage a myth. In it the Straits of Anian are described as follows:
PACIFIC COAST. 23
The Strait of Anian is fiften degrees in length, and can easily be passed with a tide lasting six hours; for those tides are very rapid. There are, in this length, six turns and two entrances, which lie north and south; that is, bear from each other north and south. The entrance on the north side (through which we passed) is less than half a quarter of a league in width, and on each side are ridges of high rocks; but the rock on the side of Asia is higher and steeper than the other, and hangs over, so that nothing falling from the top can reach its base. [The reader must bear in mind that this narrator claims the previous course of the vessel to have been through the long and tortuous channel of the Straits of Labrador in latitude 75°, from which it sailed southwest 790 leagues to the entrance of these straits in the 60th parallel of latitude; also that the straits were supposed to be a passage between Asia on the west, and America on the east, leading from this great North sea into the great South sea.] The entrance into the South sea, near the harbor, is more than a quarter of a league in width, and thence the passage runs in an oblique direction, increasing the distance between the two coasts. In the middle of the strait, at the termination of the third turn, is a great rock, and an islet, formed by a rugged rock, three estadias (11,000 feet) in height, more or less; its form is round and its diameter may be two hundred paces; its distance from the land of Asia is very little; but the sea on that side is full of shoals and reefs, and can only be navigated by boats. The distance between this islet arid the continent of America is less than a quarter of a league in width; and, although its channel is so deep that two and even three ships might sail almost through it, two bastions might be built on the banks with little trouble, which would contract the channel to within the reach of a musket shot.
Such is the only detailed description of the Straits of Anian, and it is thus given in full because of the effect it had upon maritime explorations for two centuries thereafter. The author was evidently well posted on the maps and geographical theories of the day, and prepared his narrative with careful consideration of them; but he failed in his cunning scheme, as the Council of the Indies not only denied his petition for a reward, but also declined to entrust him with the fortification and defense of the valuable passage he claimed to have discovered. That to this story there was a foundation of fact is within the limits of possibility. There may have been made prior to the time the memorial was presented, some voyage to the extreme northern Atlantic coast of America, of which no record has been preserved. To have made the voyage claimed as high as the 75th parallel and passed through long straits into an open sea, traversing this southwest 790 leagues (about 3,000 miles) is plainly impossible. That, like Cortereal nearly a century before, he may have passed around the coast of Labrador and through the straits, which are near the 60th parallel, into Hudson's bay, is possible; and, like his great predecessor, he may have assumed that this sea could be followed until the supposed strait leading into the South sea was found. Believing thoroughly in this theory, Maldonado may have written this fictitious narrative with the hope that it would gain for him the command of an expedition to go in search of the straits and take possession of them. One thing is noticeable, and that is that in Behring's straits we find the old theory that but a short and narrow passage separated Asia and America was a correct one.
The next supposed discovery of the Straits of Anian which attracted much attention, was that claimed to have been made by Juan de Fuca while in the Spanish service in the Pacific in 1592. The only account or record of this voyage was published in 1625 in the celebrated historical and geographical volume called "The Pilgrims," edited by Samuel Purchas, being "A note made by Michael Lock, the elder, touching the Strait of Sea commonly called Fretum Anian, in the South Sea, through the Northwest Passage of Meta Incognita," Since this reputed voyage entered largely
24 PACIFIC COAST.
into the discussion and settlement of "The Oregon question," the main portion of Mr. Lock's document is given, without attempting to preserve the Old English orthography. It says:
When I was in Venice, in April, 1596, haply arrived there an old man, about sixty years of age, called, commonly, Juan de Fuca, but named properly Apostolas Valerianus, of nation a Greek, born in Cephalonia, of profession a mariner, and an ancient pilot of ships. This man, being come lately out of Spain, arrived first at Leghorn, and went thence to Florence, where he found one John Douglas, an Englishman, a famous mariner, ready coming for Venice, to be pilot of a Venetian ship for England, in whose company they came both together to Venice. And John Douglas being acquainted with me before, he gave me knowledge of this Greek pilot, and brought him to my speech; and, in long talks and conference between us, in presence of John Douglas, this Greek pilot declared, in the Italian and Spanish languages, this much in effect as followeth :
First, he said he had been in the West Indies of Spain forty years, and had sailed to and from many places thereof, in the service of the Spaniards.
Also, he said that he was in the Spanish ship which, in returning from the Islands Philippines, towards Nova Spania, was robbed and taken at the Cape California by Captain Candish, Englishman, whereby he lost sixty thousand ducats of his goods.
Also, he said that he was pilot of three small ships which the Viceroy of Mexico sent from Mexico, armed with one hundred men, under a captain, Spaniards, to discover the Straits of Anian, along the coast of the South Sea, and to fortify in that strait, to resist the passage and proceedings of the English nation, which were forced to pass through those straits into the South Sea; and that, by reason of a mutiny which happened among the soldiers for the misconduct of their captain, that voyage was overthrown, and the ship returned from California to Nova Spania, without anything done in that voyage; and that, after their return, the captain was at Mexico punished by justice.
Also, he said that, shortly after the said voyage was so ill ended, the said Viceroy of Mexico sent him out again, in 1592, with a small caravel and a pinnace, armed with mariners only, to follow the said voyage for the discovery of the Straits of Anian, and the passage thereof into the sea, which they call the North Sea, which is our northwest sea; and that he followed his course, in that voyage, west and northwest in the South Sea, all along the coast of Nova Spania, and California, and the Indies, now called North America, (all which voyage he signified to me in a great map, and a sea-card of my own, which I laid before him), until he came to the latitude of 47 degrees , and that, there finding that the land trended north and northwest, with a broad inlet of sea, between 47 and 48 degrees of latitude, he entered thereinto, sailing therein more than twenty days, and found that land trending still sometime northwest, and northeast, and north, and also east and southeastward, and very much broader sea than was at the said entrance, and that he passed by divers islands in that sailing; and that, at the entrance of this said strait, there is, on the northwest coast thereof, a great headland or island, with an exceeding high pinnacle, or spired rock, like a pillar, thereupon.
Also, he said that he went on land in divers places, and that he saw some people on land clad in beasts' skins; and that the land is very fruitful, and rich of gold, silver, pearls, and other things, like Nova Spania.
Also, he said that he being entered thus far into the said strait, and being come into the North Sea already, and finding the sea wide enough everywhere, and to be about thirty or forty leagues wide in the mouth of the straits where he entered, he thought he had now well discharged his office; and that, not being armed to resist the force of the savage people that might happen, he therefore set sail, and returned homewards again towards Nova Spania, where he arrived at Acapulco, Anno 1592, hoping to be rewarded by the Viceroy for this service done in the said voyage.
* * * [Here follows an account of his vain endeavors for three years to secure a proper recognition of his services by the Viceroy or the Spanish monarch, and his resolution to return to his native land to die among his countrymen.] * * *
Also, he said he thought the cause of his ill-reward had of the Spaniards, to be for that they did understand very well that the English nation had now given over all their voyages for discovery
PACIFIC COAST. 25
of the northwest passage; wherefore they need not fear them any more to come that way into the South Sea, and therefore they needed not his service therein any more.
Also, he said that, understanding the noble mind of the Queen of England, and of her wars against the Spaniards, and hoping that her majesty would do him justice for his goods lost by Captain Candish, he would be content to go into England, and serve her majesty in that voyage for the discovery perfectly of the northwest passage into the South Sea, if she would furnish him with only one ship of forty tons' burden, and a pinnace, and that he would perform it in thirty days' time, from one end to the other of the strait, and he willed me so to write to England.
And, from conference had twice with the said Greek pilot, I did write thereof, accordingly, to England, unto the right honorable the old Lord Treasurer Cecil, and to Sir Walter Raleigh, and to Master Richard Hakluyt, that famous cosmographer, certifying them hereof. And I prayed them to disburse one hundred pounds, to bring the said Greek pilot into England, with myself, for that my own purse would not stretch so wide at that time. And I had answer that this action was well liked and greatly desired in England; but the money was not ready, and therefore this action died at that time, though the said Greek pilot, perchance, liveth still in his own country, in Cephalonia, towards which place he went within a fortnight after this conference had at Venice.
The remainder of the long document gives the details of correspondence held by Lock with Juan de Fuca during the next few years, showing that up to 1598 the pilot was still willing to go with him to England, but that in 1602, when Lock had finally finished his business in Venice and prepared to return to England, a letter to the Greek failed to elicit a response, and the writer heard a little later that the old navigator was dead.
Much controversy has been and is still being carried on among historians as to whether such a person as Juan de Fuca ever lived, or such a voyage as Lock described was ever made. Mexican and Spanish records of the period have been carefully searched by those eager to prove the truth of this narrative, without revealing any confirmatory evidence whatever. The negative the records, of course, could not establish. The voyage must stand or fall by the manner in which the narrator's geographical descriptions bear the light of modern investigation. One thing is clearly noticeable; its geographical descriptions of regions claimed to have been visited are far more accurate than those of any navigator of the preceding or subsequent century in any quarter of the globe; and the narrative is entirely free from those extravagant assertions in regard to the wonderful wealth of the people or magnificence of their cities, contained in the accounts of voyages whose authenticity can not be questioned, which assertions were always found to have been grossly exaggerated and often wholly the creatures of imagination. Prima facie, then, it is more authentic than accounts of nearly contemporaneous voyages of which undisputable records exist. Now to examine its statements by the clear light of facts. Juan de Fuca locates his passage between 47° and 48° of latitude, while the fact is that between the 48th and 49th, just such a passage as he describes exists. This is the entrance to Puget sound and is still known as the Straits of Fuca. His account of the passage, its leading off in all directions and its many islands, is substantially correct, and his error in locating the entrance a few miles to the south is a far less grievous one than those made in every account handed down to us of those times. The advanced age, length of time elapsed and annoyances of his long efforts to secure his just reward, could easily account for so slight an error when detailing the circumstances from memory alone; and it must be remembered that the account was written by Lock, a second party, and is liable to
26 PACIFIC COAST.
slight errors in statement, though probably none very material, as Lock was an intelligent and respectable merchant and appears to have been an extremely careful and methodical man. Fuca was in the passage twenty days, though he does not state that he sailed straight along through it all this time, but must of necessity have spent fully half his time in circumnavigating islands and running into bays while endeavoring to follow the main channel. At the end of this time, saying nothing about the number of miles traveled, he came out again into the open sea, supposing himself to have passed through into another ocean. Here arises the difficulty most historians have in reconciling the narrative with the facts; and the difficulty exists, not in the narrative itself, but in the fact that these historians have not sufficiently acquainted themselves with the geographical theories which obtained at the time of Fuca's voyage. They seem to think, that he must necessarily have supposed that he had gone clear through the continent into the Atlantic, an utter impossibility. Such was most certainly not the case. The Straits of Anian were at that time believed to be a passage running north and south, separating the continents of Asia and America, and extending from the South sea to the North sea. Across this North sea it was many hundred leagues around the north end of America before reaching the Atlantic. In sailing in a generally northward direction, therefore, between Vancouver island and the main land of British Columbia and finally entering again into the Pacific ocean, it was most natural for him to suppose that he had passed from the South sea through the Straits of Anian into the North sea. He did not claim to have sailed eastward, as so many historians seem to assume, for had the passage led so far in that direction he would have doubted its identity with the Straits of Anian; nor did he claim to have entered the Atlantic, but simply the North sea. It seems then that the only evidence against its authenticity is the negative one of there being no record of such a voyage in Spanish archives; and this is at least partially explained by the statement that neither the viceroy nor the king would recognize the services of the navigator. For this reason, they may have permitted no record of the voyage to be made. If Juan de Fuca made the voyage as narrated, then Spain's claim to the country for some distance above Puget sound, so far as the right of discovery is concerned, was a good one, and the title conveyed from her through France to the United States good to an equal degree. Another argument against it is the fact that even at the time Fuca was pouring his tale into the willing ear of the English merchant, another Spanish expedition was engaged in looking for this passage, and in the letter ordering the exploration the reasons for doing so are set forth at length, though no allusion is made to the Greek, who, according to Lock's narrative must have been importuning the king for his reward at the very time the letter was written. It may be argued, however, that Fuca's statements to the king may have been what induced him to order this expedition, instead of the causes set forth in the royal mandate.
In 1708 there was printed in a London magazine entitled Monthly Miscellany, or Memoirs of the Curious, a most absurd and self-contradictory account of a voyage said to have been made in 1640 from the Pacific to the Atlantic through a great chain of lakes. Though it was probably invented by James Petiver, an eminent naturalist and contributor to the magazine, yet it created a great sensation in England, France and Holland, and was received with considerable faith for more than half a century.
PACIFIC COAST. 27
The narrator states that Admiral Pedro Bartholomè de Fontè, sailed from Callao in April, 1640, with orders from the viceroy of Peru to explore the Pacific for a northwest passage and to intercept some Boston vessels which had been reported as bound upon the same mission on the Atlantic coast. Since Boston was in 1640 but a small struggling settlement and the Puritans were not looking for any northwest passage, it would seem as though this statement alone was enough to have condemned the entire narrative; but as it was not published for sixty-eight years after that date probably neither the writer nor the people stopped to consider the absurdity. The story informs us that at Cape San Lucas Fontè detached one of his four vessels to explore the Gulf of California and with the others continued up the coast. Having sailed for a long time among islands which he named Archipelago of St. Lazarus, he finally reached, in latitude 53 degrees, the mouth of a large stream christened by him Rio de los Reyes, or River of Kings. He sent one vessel further up the coast under the command of Bernardo, and then entered the river and followed it northwesterly until it opened out into an immense lake filled with beautiful islands, which he named Lake Belle. It was surrounded by a fine country, and the inhabitants were very hospitable in their treatment of the strangers. Leaving his vessels at their large town, called Conasset, on the south shore of the lake, Fontè and some of his party continued their journey down a large stream called Parmentier, though whether in boats or on foot along the bank the narrative is silent, until they entered another lake further east. This he named in his own honor, and then proceeded through a passage, called Strait of Ronquillo in honor of one of his captains, into the Atlantic ocean, having thus passed entirely through the American continent by water. It then goes on to state that he encountered a Boston ship commanded by Nicholas Shapley, with whom, also, was the owner, Seymour Gibbons, "a fine gentleman, and major general of the largest colony in New England, called Maltechusetts." After exchanging courtesies with these strangers, whom he decided to treat simply as traders and not as hostile explorers for the northwest passage, he returned by the water route to Lake La Belle and thence in his vessels to the Pacific, where he was again joined by Bernardo. The journey claimed to have been made in the meantime by this lieutenant is equally wonderful. Having coasted as far as the 61st degree of latitude Bernardo discovered a great river, up which he ascended till he, also, emerged into a large lake. He named these Rio de Haro and Lake Velasco. From the lake he went in canoes to the 79th parallel, but as the land was seen "still trending north, and the ice rested on the land," he concluded to return. He was satisfied "that there was no communication out of the Atlantic sea by Davis's strait; for the natives had conducted one of his seamen to the head of Davis's strait, which terminated in a fresh lake, of about thirty miles in circumference, in the 80th degree of north latitude; and there were prodigious mountains north of it." Satisfied from the report of Bernardo and his own observations that the Straits of Anian did not exist, Fontè returned with his fleet to Peru.
This story, so absurd in the light of modern research, and which was not published till long after the explorers, if, indeed, there were any, had become imperishable dust, was received with great credence; though it was in every particular contradictory to those of Maldonado and Juan de Fuca. For fifty years it was copied into all works upon North America and many maps of the continent had indicated upon them a pas-
28 PACIFIC COAST.
sage such as Fontè's was supposed to have been; and during the eighteenth century all explorers of the northwest coast searched for the Rio de los Reyes, while inland expeditions from the Atlantic coast kept the fact that such a river existed constantly before them.
These various narratives, so entirely unreconcilable with each other, all had their firm supporters, and efforts have been made by historians at different times to prove each one of them to be an approximately correct account of a veritable voyage, but without success. The only one that can exist for a moment in the light of the geographical knowledge of to-day is that of the Greek pilot, Juan de Fuca, and to prove that, except by inference and comparison, is impossible. They all served their purpose, however, to stimulate the spirit of exploration, which has resulted in the spread of knowledge and the advancement of civilization.
VOYAGES IN THE PACIFIC AND ATLANTIC.
Voyages of Viscaino--His Vain Efforts to have San Diego and Monterey Occupied--The Lethargy of Spain-- Explorations of Henry Hudson and William Baffin-- Dutch Navigators find the Atlantic and Pacific to be Connected by an Open Sea and name Cape Horn--Freebooters Swarm into the Pacific by the New Route--Feeble Efforts of Spain to Protect her Commerce--Attempt to Colonize Lower California--Organization of the Hudson's Bay Company.
If Juan de Fuca's statement was true, then the. Spanish monarch was simply feigning indifference about finding and taking possession of the northwest passage; for in 1595, while the old pilot was in Spain, Philip II. ordered a survey of the Pacific
coast. Of this move Torquemada says :
His majesty knew that the viceroys of Mexico had endeavored to discover a northern passage; and he had found, among his father's papers, a declaration of certain strangers, to the effect that they had been driven, by violent winds, from the codfish coast on the Atlantic, to the South Sea, through the Strait of Anian, which is beyond Cape Mendocino, and had, on their way, seen a rich and populous city, well fortified, and inhabited by a numerous and civilized nation, who had treated them well; as also many other things worthy to be seen and known. His majesty had also been informed that ships, sailing from China to Mexico, ran great risks, particularly near Cape Mendocino, where the storms are most violent, and that it would be advantageous to have that coast surveyed thence to Acapulco, so that the ships, mostly belonging to his majesty, should find places for relief and refreshment when needed. Whereupon his majesty ordered the Count de Monterey, Viceroy of Mexico, to have those coasts surveyed, at his own expense, with all care and diligence.
The phrase in italics in the above extract accounts for much of the delay in fully exploring the northern Pacific coast of America, for the viceroys of Mexico were strikingly similar to the office-holders of to-day in their manner of carrying out enterprises that were to be executed at their own expense. Writing half a century later Venegas gives the following for the anxiety of Spain to learn more of the coast. It was the fear
PACIFIC COAST. 29
That in the meantime the English should find out the so-much-desired passage to the South Sea, by the north of America and above California, which passage is not universally denied, and one day may be found; that they may fortify themselves on both sides of this passage, and thus extend the English dominion from the north to the south of America, so as to border on our possessions. Should English colonies and garrisons be established along the coast of America on the South Sea beyond Cape Mendocino, or lower down on California itself, England would then, without control, reign mistress of the sea and its commerce, and be able to threaten by land and sea the territories of Spain; invade them on occasion from the E., W., N. and S., hem them in and press them on all sides.
In compliance with his sovereign's mandate, the viceroy dispatched three vessels from Acapulco in the spring of 1596, under the command of Sebastian Viscaino. Beyond an attempt to plant two colonies, both of which were unsuccessful because of the sterility of the country and the savage hostility of the natives, nothing was accomplished by this feeble pretense of obeying instructions. The viceroy was not permitted to thus shirk the expense of making a proper survey of the coast; for though he was respited for a time by the death of the king in 1598, one of the first acts of Philip III. after being securely seated upon the throne, was to command the viceroy to attend to this matter without further delay. Viscaino was, in consequence, again sent out, this time upon a genuine voyage of exploration. His two vessels and small fragata were furnished with all the necessaries of an extended cruise, and he was accompanied by pilots, draftsmen and priests, so that advantage could be taken of all discoveries and proper records and charts made of them.
The fleet sailed from Acapulco May 5, 1602, and began exploring the coast at the southern extremity of the peninsula of California. They were much baffled by a wind blowing almost constantly from the northwest, which Torquemada says was produced "by the foe of the human race, in order to prevent the advance of the ships, and to delay the discovery of those countries, and the conversion of their inhabitants to the Catholic faith." Added to this difficulty was the terrible malady, the scurvy, which made sad inroads upon the health of the crews. They continued up the coast in spite of these discouraging circumstances, entering the ports of San Quentin, San Diego and Monterey. Here it was found that sixteen of the seamen had died and that many others were incapacitated by disease from performing duty; and it was decided to send back the ship commanded by Toribio Gomez de Corvan with the invalids. Corvan reached Acapulco after a long and terrible journey with but few of the crew of his vessel alive.
A few days later, on the third of January, 1603, the two remaining vessels renewed the voyage, and were soon separated in a gale, from the fury of which the larger one took refuge in a bay spoken of in the record of the voyage as San Francisco, where search was made for a Spanish galleon which had been wrecked there in 1595. Torquemada says: "He anchored behind a point of rocks called La Punta de los Rayes, in the port of San Francisco." It seems impossible that this could have been San Francisco bay; for one of the chief objects of the voyage was to find a harbor of refuge and supply for vessels in the Manila trade, and yet upon his return Viscaino recommended San Diego and Monterey as being the only ones at all suitable for that purpose; yet it will be remembered that in later years, before any absolute record of the discovery of this bay was made, a chart upon which such a bay was indicated was found by an Englishman on a captured Manila galleon. The probabilities are, however,
30 PACIFIC COAST.
that the bay Viscaino entered was Drake's bay, just north of the Golden Gate, the place where Sir Francis Drake a few years before had enacted his farce of taking possesion of the country in the name of the queen of England. Viscaino resumed his journey and on the twentieth of January reached a point on the coast opposite a large white bluff, in latitude 42°, which he named Cape San Sebastian. The weather being cold and stormy, his crew being nearly all disabled by the scurvy, and being unable to discover any sign of the other vessel, Viscaino turned back at this point, and reached Mexico in March. The fragata proceeded north when separated from the ship off San Francisco bay, and encountering another severe storm took refuge near Cape Mendocino. Of the remainder of its explorations Torquemada says: "When the wind had became less violent they continued their journey close along the shore; and, on the nineteenth of January, the pilot, Antonio Flores, found that they were in the latitude of 43 degrees, where the land formed a cape or point, which was named Cape Blanco. From that point the coast begins to turn to the northwest; and near it was discovered a rapid and abundant river, with ash trees, willows, brambles, and other trees of Castile on its banks, which they endeavored to enter, but could not from the force of the current. Ensign Martin de Aguilar, the commander, and Antonio Flores, the pilot, seeing that they had already reached a higher latitude than was ordered by the viceroy in his instructions, that the Captaina [Viscaino's vessel] did not appear, and that the number of sick was great, agreed to return to Acapulco."
The fragata reached Acapulco soon after the larger vessel, the ravages of the scurvy having deprived it of its commander, pilot and the greater portion of the crew on the return voyage. This disease and its cause do not appear to have been well understood at that time. The suffering it caused was most terrible, and it is remarkable what fortitude the Spaniards displayed in continuing their voyages during the prevalence of such a horrible malady. In describing their sufferings, Torquemada says: ''Nor is the least ease to be expected from change of place, as the slightest motion is attended with such severe pains that they must be very fond of life who would not willingly lay it down on the first appearance of so terrible a distemper. This virulent humour makes such ravages in the body that it is entirely covered with ulcers, and the poor patients are unable to bear the least pressure; even the very clothes laid on them deprive them of life. Thus they lie groaning and incapable of any relief. For the greatest assistance possible to be given them, if I may be allowed the expression, is not to touch them, nor even the bed clothes. These effects, however melancholy, are not the only ones produced by this pestilential humour. In many, the gums, both of the upper and lower jaws, are pressed both within and without to such a degree, that the teeth cannot touch one another, and withal so loose and bare that they shake with the least motion of the head, and some of the patients spit their teeth out with their saliva. Thus they were unable to receive any food but liquid, as gruel, broth, milk of almonds and the like. This gradually brought on so great a weakness that they died while talking to their friends. * * * Some, by way of ease, made loud complaints, others lamented their sins with the deepest contrition, some died talking, some sleeping, some eating, some whilst sitting up in their beds."
The great river said to have been discovered by this expedition attracted much attention at the time. The historian quoted above said of it: "It is supposed that
PACIFIC COAST. 31
this river is the one leading to a great city, which was discovered by the Dutch when they were driven thither by storms, and that it is the Strait of Anian, through which the ship passed in sailing from the North sea to the South sea; and that the city called Quivira is in those parts; and that this is the region referred to in the account which his majesty read, and which induced him to order this expedition." No great river exists in latitude 43 degrees; but it is well known that the navigators of that period were seldom accurate in their observations, often varying as much as half a degree, and it is quite possible the stream referred to may have been the Umpqua. A few years later it was supposed that this stream was one end of a passage extending from the Gulf of California to Cape Blanco, making of California a huge island, and this idea was supported by the knowledge of the Colorado river, which had been explored many miles to the northward. Venegas, writing in the seventeenth century, speaks of California as an island, and it was so designated on all maps until the end of the century. After this was discovered to be a mistake, the river was laid down on some maps as a large stream flowing from the interior of the continent--such a stream as the Columbia-- or as the western end of a passage leading from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Very little was known of the width of the continent; and geographers supposed it was but a short distance between the South sea and North sea. They had no idea that a passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans would have been 4,000 miles in length. Upon his return to Mexico Viscaino strongly urged the viceroy to establish supply stations at San Diego and Monterey and to thus take possession of a country which he was satisfied, from what he learned by careful inquiry among the natives he encountered along the coast, was extremely fertile and rich in the precious metals; but the viceroy had too much consideration for his personal interests, since the expense of such an undertaking would have fallen solely upon himself, and neglected to utilize the information thus obtained. Viscaino, disgusted with the viceroy's inactivity, departed for Spain to present his views at court; and after long delay and persistent importuning secured a royal mandate to the viceroy, commanding him to establish a supply station for the India trade at Monterey. This order was issued in 1606, and with it Viscaino hastened to Mexico; but before the final preparations were completed he was taken sick and died, and the colonizing enterprise was abandoned. With no enthusiastic explorer to arouse him to action and with no hostile fleets in the Pacific to annoy him, the Spanish monarch apparently thought no more of the Pacific coast or the northwest passage, and a few years later there was enough to occupy his attention at home. He ordered no more voyages of exploration, and the viceroys were careful to undertake none upon their own responsibility, nor any other enterprise unless the immediate prospective profits were great. For a hundred and sixty years Spain made no further effort to extend her explorations of the coast, nor did she even attempt the establishment of colonies at San Diego or Monterey, either for the purpose of taking possession of the country or forming refuge and supply stations for vessels returning from India. With the exception of the annual galleon which reached the coast on its return voyage in the latitude of Cape Mendocino, no Spanish vessel visited our shores for a century and a half. Not even the mythical straits, the fabulous city of Quivira, the untold riches and many wonderful objects supposed to exist in this vast unknown territory, were potent to arouse Spain from her lethargy. She made a few feeble efforts to protect her commerce at times
32 PACIFIC COAST.
during this period when attacked by roving privateers, but her attempts at colonization in Lower California, which will be spoken of later on, met with little success". There seemed to be no new Cortes, Pizarro, De Leon, Balboa or De Soto. The spirit of adventure was dead. Spain had passed her zenith and was rapidly on the decline. Wars with the Netherlands, France and Portugal were most disastrous. Power, wealth and territory rapidly decreased, and in a century she declined from the foremost position in the world to that of a second rate power, and has never been able to regain her lost ground. With such disasters crowding upon her in the Old World, her apathy in the New was but a natural result,
Though Spain had ceased her voyages of exploration, such was not the case with her powerful European neighbors, who were indefatigable in their efforts to explore and colonize the Atlantic coast of America. The English, French and Dutch planted colonies on the coast, while their hardy navigators unremittingly explored its bays, rivers, straits and sounds. Uppermost in the minds of all was the northwest passage. The stories of its discovery which have already been related, and many others unworthy of repetition, kept the Straits of Anian constantly in the public mind. In 1608 Henry Hudson passed into and to a certain extent explored the bay upon which he bestowed his name; yet he was but following the route pursued by Cortereal more than a century before, whose theory that it connected with the Indian ocean had given rise to this universal belief in the mythical straits. In 1616 William Baffin penetrated into the bay that bears his name, lying between America and Greenland, and entered a passage extending westward near the 74th parallel, but was unable to proceed because of the vast quantities of ice. This voyage and others made into the extreme north, proved conclusively that no open passage could be possible in the 75th degree of latitude, where Maldonado had located his tortuous channel leading from the Atlantic to the North sea, and geographers became convinced that if such a passage and sea existed they were the straits and bay explored and named by Hudson. The belief was natural, then, that if found at all, the Straits of Anian should be looked for in some of the many unexplored arms of Hudson's bay. For a time, however, after Baffin's voyage, England was so engrossed in her own troubles that neither Royalists nor Commoners had time or inclination to prosecute foreign explorations.
The expeditions of the Dutch were chiefly to the southward, and in 1616 Lemaire and Van Schouten made a most important discovery. It was that in passing from the Atlantic to the Pacific, it was unnecessary to tempt the dangers of Magellan's straits, but that to the south of these there existed an open sea. Though the passage of Cape Horn, named by them in honor of the city in Holland from which they came, was still a tempestuous one, it served to remove the fear all seaman entertained of undertaking to cross from one ocean to the other through the narrow and rocky channel above Terra del Fuego. This discovery was nearly as disastrous to Spanish commerce in the Pacific as that of the much feared one from the North sea could possibly have been; for there now existed no obstacle to prevent hostile vessels from entering or leaving the Pacific at will, since the open sea was too large to be guarded even had Spain the necessary vessels of war for such a purpose.
Spain was now involved in European wars, and to the disasters that were showered upon her head at home were added others in America, English, French and Dutch
PACIFIC COAST. 33
buccaneers, and especially the latter during the war for independence by the Netherlands, ravaged the Spanish settlements on the Pacific coast. Dutch privateers frequented the Gulf of California, from which they preyed upon the Spanish commerce and enriched themselves with captured booty. By their victims they were known as Pichilingues, because the bay of Pichilingue, on the western side of the gulf, was made their chief point of rendezvous.
Spain made a few feeble and spasmodic efforts to dislodge these piratical pests and protect her plundered commerce, by sending out expeditions against them and by attempting to plant a colony on Lower California as a base of defensive operations. In 1631, 1644, 1664, 1667 and 1668 such efforts were made; but they were wholly fruitless, and in no instance were the enterprises conducted with the vigor and courage displayed by the Spanish adventurers of a century before. A final effort was made in 1683 by Don Isdro de Otondo, who headed an expedition of soldiers, settlers and Jesuit priests whom he established at various points, making La Paz the headquarters and chief settlement and building there a chapel for worship and to aid in the conversion of the natives. Father Kino was in charge of the religious part of the enterprise, and set about learning the Indian language, and soon translated into their tongue the creeds of the Catholic Church. The effort lasted about three years, during which time they were visited with an eighteen months' drought, and before they had recovered from the blow, received orders to put to sea, and bring into Acapulco safely the Spanish galleon, then in danger of capture by Dutch privateers lying in wait for her. This was successfully accomplished, the treasure-ship was conveyed safely in, but the act resulted in the abandonment of the colony; and a council of chief authorities in Mexico soon after decided that the reduction of California by such means was impracticable.
After Charles II. came to the throne of England, from which his father had been driven by the austere Cromwell, attention was again turned by that nation to explorations for the northwest passage. The belief that in Hudson's bay would be found the entrance to the mythical straits, led to the organization of the Hudson's Bay Company, to which the king granted, in 1669, the whole region whose waters flow into that great inland sea. The objects of "The company of adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay," as expressed in the charter, were those of trade and the discovery of a passage leading into the Pacific ocean. It was not long, however, before the company learned that its franchise for trading purposes was an exceedingly valuable one, and that the discovery of a passage through its dominions, which would of necessity invoke competition from other organizations, was highly undesirable. From that time it not only made no effort to discover the passage, but discouraged all such expeditions, even keeping as secret as possible all geographical knowledge acquired by its agents, which policy obtains even to the present day, and which has kept as a fur-bearing wilderness the whole northern half of the North American continent.
RUSSIA ENTERS THE PACIFIC.
Russia a New Factor in the Contest of Nations--Plans of Peter the Great--Behring's First Voyage Proves that Asia and America are Distinct Continents--Voyage of the St. Paul--Behring Reaches the American Coast and Expires on the Return Voyage--Terrible Suffering of the Crew--Beginning of the Pacific Fur Trade--Result of Russian Explorations.
Though France confined her attention to inland explorations from her Canadian colonies, England to fostering her colonies in America and exploring the north Atlantic coast, and Holland to the founding of New Amsterdam and the plundering of the Spanish commerce and settlements in the south Pacific; yet the North Pacific coast was not wholly neglected during the first half of the eighteenth century. A new and almost unexpected factor made itself felt in the Pacific, and this was the powerful and autocratic monarch of Russia. Peter the Great had redeemed Russia from a state of almost utter barbarity and set it on the highway to civilization and national power. In the arts of war and peace he had patiently instructed his people, had cemented their national union, had awakened a national pride and love of power within their bosoms, had extended his domain and increased the number of his subjects, and had made of a people formerly scarcely thought of when the affairs of Europe were discussed, one of the most influential nations of the world. It was his constant aim and the legacy he left to his successors, to extend the power of Russia on all sides, to build up the nation and make it the foremost on the globe, and the czars have never relaxed their efforts to accomplish this mighty purpose. Gradually the dominion of the czar was pushed eastward until his authority extended across the whole of Siberia to the Pacific at the peninsula of Kamtchatka. The rich furs of that region became a source of revenue to the government which Peter was desirous of increasing. He wanted to extend his power still further east to the American settlements of the English, Spanish and French, though how far that was neither he nor anyone else had the least conception. To this desire is due the discovery and exploration of the northern Pacific coasts of both Asia and America. Peter commanded vessels to be built at Kamtchatka, and at Archangel on the White sea, that they might endeavor, the one in the Arctic and the other in the Pacific, to find the long-sought northwest passage, or as they viewed it a northeast passage. It was Peter's idea that vessels could sail from the Atlantic through the Arctic ocean and enter the Pacific by the way of this passage, provided America did not prove to be simply an eastern extension of Asia; but Peter died before his project was executed, and the scheme lay dormant for a few years.
In 1728 the great Catherine determined to carry out her husband's plans for Pacific exploration, and agreeably to his former instructions she ordered an expedition to be prepared on the northeast coast of Kamtchatka, which she placed under the com-
PACIFIC COAST. 35
mand of a Danish navigator of skill and courage, Vitus Behring, who had been designated by Peter for that position before his death. He sailed on the the fourteenth of July in a small vessel, and followed along the coast of Asia east and north until in latitude 67° 18' he found it steadily trending westward, and was satisfied he was then in the Arctic and following the northern coast to the west. Convinced that he had fulfilled his instructions and demonstrated the fact that Asia and America were separate continents, and being unprepared for a winter voyage, he returned to Kamtchatka. How far America lay to the eastward of Asia he knew not, for no land had been observed in that direction, and he was totally ignorant of the fact that he had, both in going and returning, passed through the narrow channel separating the two continents and been within a few miles of the American shore. This was made evident a few years later, and Behring's name was bestowed upon the straits. The elusive northwest passage had been found, though it took many years to discover that as a means of communication between the Atlantic and Pacific it was absolutely impracticable. That Behring's passage meets the requirements of the Straits of Anian as depicted by Maldonado, both in latitude and general features, cannot be denied, but to navigate the North sea as described by him and to pass through the tortuous straits he locates in the 75th parallel into the Atlantic is utterly impossible; and, therefore, Behring's straits cannot be looked upon as lending any support to the romance with which the unscrupulous Maldonado regaled the Council of the Indies.
The next year Behring undertook to reach America by sailing directly eastward, but adverse winds forced him into the Gulf of Okotsk, and he abandoned the undertaking and proceeded to St. Petersburg. During the next few years many other expeditions by land and sea, one of which was driven upon the coast of Alaska in 1732, more clearly defined the Asiatic coast, and the nature of the passage between it and America. The Empress Anne prepared for another expedition, but dying before it was ready to sail, was succeeded by Elizabeth, who dispatched two vessels, the St. Peter and St. Paul, from the Bay of Avatscha on the fourth of June. The former was commanded by Behring and the latter by Alexei Tchirikof, who had been his lieutenant on the former voyage. The vessels were soon separated in a gale and were not again united. Tchirikof returned on the eighth of October, having reached a group of islands on the coast in latitude 56 degrees, where sixteen of his men were slaughtered by the natives, and having lost twenty-one of his crew by scurvy, including the distinguished French naturalist Delile de Crayere.
Of the discoveries made by Behring and the sufferings endured by the crew of the St. Peter, the only record is that of a journal kept by Steller, the German surgeon and naturalist, which was first published in full in 1795, though its tenor and leading features were known at a much earlier date. Its nautical and geographical details are not as definite as could be desired. It seems that Behring sailed south-easterly as far as the 46th parallel without encountering land and then steered to the northeast as far as the 60th degree, when he discovered an immense snow-covered mountain which he named St. Elias because it was first seen on the eighteenth of July, the day assigned to that saint in the Russian calender. Entering a narrow passage between an island and the mainland a strong current of discolored water was observed, indicating the pres-
36 PACIFIC COAST.
ence of a large river whose size proved the land through which it flowed to be of continental proportions. The conclusion was at once reached that America had been found; but Behring, who was ill, refused to explore the coast to the southeast in the direction of the Spanish possessions, and set out upon the return voyage. Delayed and baffled by violent winds and the many islands of the Aleutian group, but slow progress was made. For two months they wandered or were driven about by furious winds in the open sea to the south of the archipelago, famine and disease claiming their victims almost daily. "The general distress and mortality," says the journal of the surgeon, "increased so fast that not only the sick died, but those who pretended to be healthy when released from their posts fainted and fell down dead; of which the scantiness of water, the want of biscuits and brandy, cold, wet, nakedness, vermin, and terror, were not the least causes." On the fifth of November they landed upon an island with the purpose of spending the winter there, and constructed huts from the wreck of their vessel which was dashed by the waves upon the beach soon after the landing was effected. Behring died on the eighth of December, and during the winter thirty of the crew followed him. The survivors, having lived upon sea and land animals killed on the island, constructed a small vessel from pieces of the wreck, and succeeded in reaching the Bay of Avatscha the following August. The little island where they had spent the winter and where were buried their commander and so many of their comrades, they named Behring's Isle; it lies about eighty miles from the Kamtchatkan coast, and consists of granite peaks thrust up from mid ocean, against which the waves dash with ceaseless fury.
No disposition was manifested by the rulers of Russia to prosecute further discoveries for more than twenty years. Individual enterprise, however accomplished something. The returning survivors of Behring's ill-fated expedition took with them the skins of animals which had served them as food during that terrible winter, and sold them at high prices. This led to short voyages eastward in quest of furs, the beginning of that enormous fur trade in the Pacific which was for years a bone of contention between nations and which led to the first settlement and occupation of Oregon. It is thus described by Greenhow:
"The trade thus commenced was, for a time, carried on by individual adventurers, each of whom was alternately a seaman, a hunter, and a merchant; at length, however, some capitalists in Siberia employed their funds in the pursuit, and expeditions to the islands were, in consequence, made on a more extensive scale, and with greater regularity and efficiency. Trading stations were established at particular points, where the furs were collected by persons left for that object; and vessels were sent, at stated periods, from the ports of Asiatic Russia, to carry the articles required for the use of the agents and hunters, or for barter with the natives, and to bring away the skins collected.
"The vessels employed in this commerce were, in all respects, wretched and insecure, the planks being merely attached together, without iron, by leathern thongs; and, as no instruments were used by the traders for determining latitudes and longitudes at sea, their ideas of the relative positions of the places which they visited were vague and incorrect. Their navigation was, indeed, performed in the most simple and unscientific manner possible. A vessel sailing from the Bay of Avatscha, or from Cape
PACIFIC COAST. 37
Lopatka, the southern extremity of Kamtchatka, could not have gone far eastward, without falling in with one of the Aleutian islands, which would serve as a mark for her course to another; and thus she might go on from point to point throughout the whole chain. In like manner she would return to Asia, and if her course and rate of sailing were observed with tolerable care, there could seldom be any uncertainty as to whether she were north or south of the line of the islands. Many vessels were, nevertheless, annually lost, in consequence of this want of knowledge of the coasts, and want of means to ascertain positions at sea; and a large number of those engaged in the trade, moreover, fell victims to cold, starvation and scurvy, and to the enmity of the bold natives of the islands. Even as late as 1806, it was calculated that one-third of these vessels were lost in each year. The history of the Russian trade and establishments on the north Pacific, is a series of details of dreadful disasters and sufferings; and, whatever opinion may be entertained as to the humanity of the adventurers, or the morality of their proceedings, the courage and perseverance displayed by them, in struggling against such appalling difficulties, must command universal admiration.
"The furs collected by these means, at Avatscha and Ochotsk, the principal fur-trading points, were carried to Irkutsk, the capital of Eastern Siberia, whence some of them were taken to Europe; the greater portion were, however, sent to Kiakta, a small town just within the Russian frontier, close to the Chinese town of Maimatchin, through which places all the commerce between these two empires passed, agreeably to a treaty concluded at Kiakta in 1728. In return for the furs, which brought higher prices in China than anywhere else, teas, tobacco, rice, porcelain, and silk and cotton goods, were brought to Irkutsk, where all the most valuable of these articles were sent to Europe. These transportations were effected by land, except in some places where the rivers were used as the channel of conveyance, no commercial exportation having been made from Eastern Russia by sea before 1779; and when the immense distances between some of the points above mentioned are considered (Irkutsk to Pekin, 1,300 miles; to Bay of Avatscha, 3,450 miles; to St. Petersburg, 3,760 miles), it becomes evident that none but objects of great value, in comparison with their bulk, at the place of their consumption, could have been thus transported with profit to those engaged in the trade, and that a large portion of the price paid by the consumer must have been absorbed by the expense of transportation. A skin was, in fact, worth at Kiakta three times as much as it cost at Ochotsk."
Such was the crude beginning of that enormous trade in furs which in a few years sprang up in the Pacific, and for which English, American and Russian traders competed. China was then, and is to-day, the greatest consumer of furs, which were for years taken to Pekin overland, as described above; but in 1771 a cargo of peltries was taken direct to Canton under peculiar circumstances. In the month of May a few Polish exiles, sent to that bleak and inhospitable wilderness for political reasons, succeeded in escaping to sea in a small vessel from a harbor on the southwest coast of Kamtchatka, being led by Count Maurice de Benyowsky, a Hungarian. They entered the Pacific and after being driven hither and thither among the islands, stopping frequently to procure furs, they finally arrived at Canton, the first vessel from the North Pacific to reach any ports frequented by ships of other nations, demonstrating the fact that the icy waters about Kamtchatka and Alaska belong to the same great ocean as
38 PACIFIC COAST.
those of the South sea that lashed the rocky bluffs of Cape Horn, or lapped the sands of the Philippines.
Other Russian voyages of exploration were made to the eastward of Kamtchatka in 1766 and 1769; and in 1774 an official account of these voyages was published in St. Petersburg, entitled "Description of the Newly Discovered Islands in the Sea between Asia and America." This was accompanied by a map which embodied the ideas of Pacific coast geography which then prevailed. By it the American coast north of California was made to run northwesterly to the 70th parallel. Between this point and the coast of Asia was represented a broad open sea dotted with islands, many of which bore the same names and were identical with the larger ones of the Atlantic group, though by no means properly located. Alaska, or Aliaska, was represented as a great island with Asia on one side and America on the other, separated from Asia by the narrow channel of Behring's straits, and it was many years before it was known that Alaska was a portion of the main land of America.
SPANISH MISSIONS AND SETTLEMENTS IN CALIFORNIA.
Spain Appeals to the Jesuits for Aid--The Society of Jesus--Plan of Father Kino--The Mission of Our Lady of Loretto Founded by Father Tierra--Attack upon the Mission--Method of Conducting Missionary Work--Expulsion of the Jesuits--The Pearl of Our Lady of Loretto--The Franciscans Invade Alta California--San Diego Founded by Father Junipero Serra--Discovery of San Francisco Bay--The Mission at San Diego Saved from Abandonment by the timely Arrival of Supplies--Founding of Missions at Monterey and San Antonia de Padua--The Growth and Downfall of the Mission System.
For a century and a half after Cortes planted the first colony on the peninsula of California, the viceroys of Mexico, in an indissolute manner, had undertaken to carry out the will of their sovereigns that colonies be established and maintained on the coast of California, but without success. When the Mexican authorities decided that such an undertaking was impossible of accomplishment, the government appealed to the powerful Society of Jesus to undertake the task, hoping thus to win by the cross what could not be conquered with the sword; but an offer of $40,000 annually from the royal treasury to aid them in establishing missions was refused by the Jesuits, and the crown abandoned the hope of accomplishing anything whatever.
At that time the Society of Jesus was the most wealthy and by reason of its secrecy and perfect discipline and the intelligence, devotion and influence of its members, the most powerful organization which has ever existed. It had its ramifications in every land where was the symbol of the cross, and its faithful subjects hesitated not to plunge into the unknown wildernesses of the New World to carry the light of Christianity to the "nations sitting in darkness" far beyond the confines of civilization.
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Their lives weighed as nothing against the glory of their Heavenly Master and the extension of Christ's kingdom upon earth. It mattered not to what nation they belonged, for the French priests in Canada and Louisiana displayed the same zeal as did the Spaniards in Mexico and California. They were imbued with the same spirit and sought the same end--the extension of the kingdom of Jesus and the power of the order which bore his name. Though the government subsidy was declined from motives of policy, the conversion of these heathen nations was determined upon, to be accomplished by the society with its own resources.
With the unsuccessful expedition of Admiral Otondo was a monk who had voluntarily abandoned a lucrative and honorable position to become an emissary of the cross. While lying at the point of death he had made a vow to his patron Saint, Francis Xavier, that if he should recover, he would devote the remaining years of his life to following the noble example of his patron. He recovered, resigned his professorship, and crossed the sea to Mexico, and eventually became a missionary and one of the most zealous members of the Society of Jesus. He was a German by birth, and his name in his native land was Kuhn, but the Spaniards have recorded it as Father Eusebio Francisco Kino. He had become strongly impressed in his visit to the country with the feasibility of a plan by which the land might be taken possession of and held. His object was not alone the conquest of a kingdom, but the conversion of its inhabitants, and the saving of souls. His plan was to go into the country and teach the Indians the principles of the Catholic faith, educate them to support themselves by tilling the soil, and improvement through the experience of the advantages to be obtained by industry; the end of all being to raise up a Catholic province for the Spanish crown, and people Paradise with the souls of converted heathen. The means to be employed in accomplishing this, were the priests of the Society of Jesuits, protected by a small garrison of soldiers and sustained by contributions from those friendly to the enterprise. The mode of applying the means was, to first occupy some favorable place in the country, where a storehouse and a church could be erected that would render the fathers' maintenance and life comparatively secure. This would give them an opportunity to win the confidence of the Indians, by a patient, long-continued, uniform system of affectionate intercourse and just dealing, and then use their appetites as the means by which to convert their souls. These establishments were to be gradually extended northward until Spain had control of the whole coast.
With no hope of reward, except beyond the grave, but with a prospect of defeat and a probability of martyrdom, Father Kino started, on the twentieth of October, 1686, to travel over Mexico, and, by preaching, urge his views and hopes of the enterprise. He soon met on the way a congenial spirit, Father Juan Maria Salva Tierra; and then another, Father Juan Ugarte, added his great executive ability to the cause. Their united efforts resulted in obtaining sufficient funds by subscription. Then they procured a warrant from the king for the order of Jesuits to enter upon the conquest of California at their own expense, for the benefit of the crown. The order was given February 5, 1697, and it had required eleven years of constant urging to procure it. October tenth, of the same year, Salva Tierra sailed from the coast of Mexico to put in operation Kino's long-cherished scheme of conquest. The expedition consisted of one small vessel and a long-boat, in which were provisions, the necessary
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ornaments and furniture for fitting up a rude church, and Father Tierra, accompanied by six soldiers and three Indians. Father Tierra, afterwards visitadore general of the missions of California, was born in Milan, of Spanish ancestry and noble parentage. Having completed his education he joined the Society of Jesus and went to Mexico as a missionary in 1675, where he had labored twenty-two years among the various native tribes. He was robust in health, exceedingly handsome in person, talented, firm and resolute, and filled to overflowing with that religious zeal which shrinks from no form of martyrdom. His associate, Father Juan Ugarte, was equally zealous and possessed of much skill in handling the stubborn and unreasoning natives.
On the nineteenth of October, 1697, they reached the point selected on the east coast of the peninsula, and says Venegas: "The provisions and animals were landed, together with the baggage; the Father, though the head of the expedition, being the first to load his shoulders. The barracks for the little garrison were now built, and a line of circumvallation thrown up. In the center a tent was pitched for a temporary chapel; before it was erected a crucifix, with a garland of flowers. * * * The image of our Lady of Loretto, as patroness of the conquest, was brought in procession from the boat, and placed with proper solemnity. Immediately Father Tierra initiated the plan of conversion. He called together the Indians, explained to them the catechism, prayed over the rosary, and then distributed among them a half bushel of boiled corn. The corn was a success, but the prayers and catechism were "bad medicine." They wanted more corn and less prayers, and helped themselves from the sacks. This was stopped by excluding them from the fort, and they were kindly informed that corn would be forthcoming only as a reward for attendance and attention at devotions. This created immediate hostility, and the natives formed a conspiracy to murder the garrison and possess themselves of the corn without restrictions. Happily the design was discovered and frustrated. A general league was then entered into among several tribes, and a descent was made upon the fort by about five hundred Indians. The priest rushed upon the fortifications and warned them to desist, begging them to go away, telling them that they would be killed if they did not; but his solicitude for their safety was responded to by a number of arrows from the natives, when he came down and the battle began in earnest. The assailants went down like grass before the scythe, as the little garrison opened with their fire-arms in volleys upon the unprotected mass, and they immediately beat a hasty retreat, and sent in one of their number to beg for peace, who, says Venegas: "With tears assured our men that it was those of the neighboring rancheria under him who had first formed the plot, and on account of the paucity of their numbers, had spirited up the other nations; adding, that those being irritated by the death of their companions were for revenging them, but that both the one and the other sincerely repented of their attempt. A little while after came the women with their children, mediating a peace, as is the custom of the country. They sat down weeping at the gate of the camp, with a thousand promises of amendment, and offering to give up their children as hostages for the performance. Father Salva Tierra heard them with his usual mildness, showing them the wickedness of the procedure, and if their husbands would behave better, promised them peace, an amnesty, and forgetfulness of all that was past; he also distributed among them several little presents, and to remove any mistrust they might have he
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took one of the children in hostage, and thus they returned in high spirits to the rancherias." The soldiers' guns had taught them respect, and the sacks of corn enticed them back for the priests to teach them the Catholic faith.
The manner in which these indefatigable missionaries overcame the indolence, viciousness and ignorance of the natives was practically the same as that pursued in all the missions afterwards established, and is thus described by Venegas:
In the morning, after saying mass, at which he (Father Ugarte) obliged them to attend with order and respect, he gave a breakfast of pozoli to those who were to work, set them about building the church and houses for themselves and his Indians, clearing ground for cultivation, making trenches for conveyance of water, holes for planting trees, or digging and preparing the ground for sowing. In the building part, Father Ugarte was master, overseer, carpenter, bricklayer and laborer. For the Indians, though animated by his example, could neither by gifts nor kind speeches be prevailed upon to shake off their innate sloth, and were sure to slacken if they did not see the father work harder than any of them; so he was the first in fetching stones, treading the clay, mixing the sand, cutting, carrying and barking the timber; removing the earth and fixing materials. He was equally laborious in the other tasks, sometimes felling the trees with his axe, sometimes with his spade in his hand digging up the earth, sometimes with an iron crow splitting rocks, sometimes disposing the water-trenches, sometimes leading the beasts and cattle, which he had procured for his mission, to pasture and water; thus by his own example, teaching the several kinds of labor. The Indians, whose narrow ideas and dullness could not at first enter into the utility of these fatigues, which at the same time deprived them of their customary freedom of roving among the forests, on a thousand occasions sufficiently tried his patience--coming late, not caring to stir, running away, jeering him and sometimes even forming combinations, and threatening death and destruction; all this was to be borne with unwearied patience, having no other recourse than affability and kindness, sometimes intermixed with gravity to strike respect; also taking care not to tire them, and suit himself to their weakness. In the evening the father led them a second time in their devotions; in which the rosary was prayed over, and the catechism explained; and the services was followed by the distribution of some provisions. At first they were very troublesome all the time of the sermon, jesting and sneering at what was said. This the father bore with for a while, and then proceeded to reprove them; but finding they were not to be kept in order, he make a very dangerous experiment of what could be done by fear. Near him stood an Indian in high reputation for strength, and who, presuming on his advantage, the only quality esteemed by them, took upon himself to be more rude than the others. Father Ugarte, who was a large man, and of uncommon strength, observing the Indian to be in the height of his laughter, and making signs of mockery to the others, seized him by the hair and lifting him up swung him to and fro; at this the rest ran away in the utmost terror. They soon returned, one after another, and the father so far succeeded to intimidate them that they behaved more regularly in the future.
Of the same priest and his labors in starting another mission he says:
He endeavored, by little presents and caresses, to gain the affections of his Indians; not so much that they should assist him in the building as that they might take a liking to the catechism, which he explained to them as well as he could, by the help of some Indians of Loretto, while he was perfecting himself in their language. But his kindness was lost on the adults, who, from their invincible sloth, could not be brought to help him in any one thing, though they partook of, and used to be very urgent with him for pozoli and other eatables. He was now obliged to have recourse to the assistance of the boys, who, being allured by the father with sweetmeats and presents, accompanied him wherever he would have them; and to habituate these to any work it was necessary to make use of artifice. Sometimes he laid a wager with them who should soonest pluck up the mesquites and small trees; sometimes he offered reward to those who took away most earth; and it suffices to say that in forming the bricks he made himself a boy with boys, challenged them to play with the earth, and dance upon the clay. The father used to take off his sandals and tread it, in which he was followed by the boys skipping and dancing on the clay and the father with them. The boys sang, and were highly delighted; the father also sang, and thus they continued dancing
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and treading the clay in different parts till meal-time. This enabled him to erect his poor dwelling and church, and at the dedication of which the other fathers assisted. He made use of several such contrivances in order to learn their language; first teaching the boys several Spanish words, that they might afterwards teach him their language. When, by the help of these masters, the interpreters of Loretto, and his own observation and discourse with the adults, he had attained a sufficient knowledge of it, he began to catechise these poor gentiles, using a thousand endearing ways, that they should come to the catechism. He likewise made use of his boys for carrying on their instruction. Thus, with invincible patience and firmness under excessive labors, he went on humanizing the savages who lived on the spot, those of the neighboring rancherias, and others, whom he sought among woods, breaches and caverns; going about everywhere, that he at length administered baptism to many adults, and brought this new settlement into some form.
This plan of subduing the natives and obtaining spiritual and temporal control over them was adhered to for seventy years. The expense of this great undertaking can be gathered from the record of the first eight years, during which $58,000 were expended in establishing six missions and $1,225,000 in supporting the indolent savages dependent upon them.
On the second of April, 1767, all members of the Society of Jesus in the Spanish dominions were arrested and thrown into prison upon the order of Charles III, against whose life they were charged with conspiring. Nearly six thousand were subjected to that decree, including the Jesuit missionaries in California and other dependencies of Spain. The execution of the decree in California fell to the lot of Don Gaspar Portala, governor of the province, who assembled the pious Fathers at Loretto on Christmas eve and imparted to them the sad news of which they had till then been entirely ignorant. When the time came for them to take their final departure from the scene of seventy years of labor and self-abnegation a most pathetic scene was enacted. With loud cries and lamentations the people broke through the line of soldiers stationed to hold them back, and rushed upon the Fathers to kiss their hands and bid them farewell. "Adieu, dear Indians; adieu, California; adieu, land of our adoption; fiat voluntas Dei," was the brief and eloquent farewell of those fifteen holy men, as they turned their backs upon the scene of their long labors and became wanderers and outcasts, under the ban of the sovereign whose power they had established where he had sought in vain to plant it for a century and a half. They left behind them the record of having become the pioneers in the culture of the grape and in the making of wine on this coast, having sent to Mexico their vintage as early as 1706. They were the pioneer manufacturers, having taught the Indians the use of the loom in the manufacture of cloth as early as 1707. They built, in 1719, the first vessel ever launched from the soil of California, calling it the Triumph of the Cross. Two of their number suffered martyrdom at the hands of the Indians, and the living were rewarded for those years of toil, privation and self-sacrifice, by banishment from the land they had subdued; leaving, for their successors, sixteen flourishing missions, and thirty-six villages, as testimonials of the justice and wisdom of their rule.
The historic village of Loretto, where was established the initial mission of California, is situated on the margin of the gulf, in the center of St. Dyonissius cove. Some of the buildings are now a mass of ruins, while others are fast going to decay, many being destroyed by the great storm of 1827. The church built by the Jesuits in 1742 is still standing, and among the relics of its former greatness are eighty-six oil paintings, some of them by Murillo, and though more than a century old still in a good
PACIFIC COAST. 43
state of preservation. It was a former custom of the pearl divers to devote the product of certain days to "Our Lady of Loretto" and on one occasion there fell to her lot a magnificent pearl as large as a pigeon's egg and wonderfully pure and brilliant. This the Fathers thought proper to present to the Queen of Spain, who in return sent to our Lady of Loretto an elegant new gown; but as this could not be worn by the virgin in the spirit land and was not of the style of garment most in fashion at Loretto, it was of no practical utility, and there is reason to believe that her majesty had the better of the transaction.
Upon the Brotherhood of St Francis the king bestowed the missions and accumulated wealth of the Jesuits in California; but soon after possession was taken by them the Dominicans laid claim to a portion. The controversy ended in the surrender by the Franciscans of all rights granted them in Lower California upon the condition that they be granted full authority in Alta California to found missions and take possession of the country in the name of the Catholic sovereign of Spain. They hoped thus to become possessed of a land where legend and imagination had located the rich mines of gold and silver from which had come the vast treasures of which Cortes had despoiled the Aztecs; and in thus gaining wealth for their order they would also spread the story of the cross and bring within the pale of the Holy Catholic Church thousands of souls then groping in the darkness of heathenism.
Father Francis Junipero Serra, at the head of the Franciscan order in Mexico, was a man cast in no common mould. He was educated from his youth to the church, was possessed of great eloquence, enthusiasm and magnetic power, and had gained reputation and experience in the missions of Mexico. Peculiarly fitted for the work before him, he entered upon it with a zeal that admitted not of failure or defeat. It was his plan to establish missions at San Diego, Monterey and some intermediate point immediately, and extend them gradually as circumstances should dictate. In pursuance of this programme an expedition was dispatched in 1769 to settle and take possession of California, with the purpose, as Joseph DeGalvez states it, "to establish the Catholic religion among a numerous heathen people, submerged in the obscure darkness of paganism; to extend the dominion of the King, our Lord; and to protect the peninsula from the ambitious rulers of foreign nations." This was to be done by the Franciscans, according to the royal decree, at their own expense, though the benefits were to inure chiefly to the crown of Spain, whose dominion was to be largely increased and a greater measure of protection afforded the American possessions and commerce.
It was deemed advisable to divide the expedition, and send a portion of it by sea in their three vessels, leaving the remainder to go from Mexico overland by way of the most northerly of the old missions. Accordingly, on the ninth of January, 1769, the ship San Carlos sailed from La Paz, followed on the fifteenth of February by the San Antonio. The last to sail was the San Joseph, on the sixteenth of June, and she was never heard from afterwards. The vessels were all loaded with provisions, numerous seeds, grain to sow, farming utensils, church ornaments, furniture and passengers, their destination being the port of San Diego. The first to reach that place was the San Antonio, which arrived on the eleventh of April, after losing eight of her crew by the scurvy. Twenty days later the San Carlos made her laborious way into port,
44 PACIFIC COAST.
with only the captain, the cook and one seaman left of her crew, the others having fallen victims to that terrible scourge of the early navigators.
The overland party was also divided into two companies; one, under command of Fernanda Revera Moncada, was to assemble at the northern limit of the peninsula, where was located the most northerly mission, and take two hundred head of black cattle over the country to San Diego, the point where all were to meet in the new land to be subdued. Revera set out on the twenty-fourth of March, and was the first European to cross the southern deserts, guarding approaches from that direction to the upper coast. He reached the point of general rendezvous on the fourteenth of May, after having spent fifty-one days in the journey. The governor of California, Gaspar de Portala, took command of the remaining part of the land expedition, and started May fifteenth, from the same place on the frontier that had been Revera's point of departure, He was accompanied by the projector of the enterprise, Father Junipero Serra himself, and arrived at San Diego on the first of July, where this, the last company to reach the rendezvous, was received with great demonstrations of joy by those who had arrived by sea and land many long weeks before.
The members of the several divisions, with the exception of those who died at sea, were now all on the ground at San Diego, and Father Junipero was not a man to waste time. In looking over his resources for accomplishing the work before him, he found that he had, including converted Indians who had accompanied him, about two hundred and fifty souls, and everything necessary for the founding of the three missions, the cultivation of the soil, grazing the land and exploring the coast, except sailors and provisions. So many of the former having died on the voyage, it was deemed advisable for those who remained to sail on the San Antonio for San Blas, to procure more seamen and supplies. They accordingly put to sea for that purpose on the ninth of July, and nine of the crew died before the port was reached. The next thing in order was to found a mission at San Diego, and it will be interesting to know what was the ceremony which constituted the founding of a mission. Father Francis Palou, the historian of the Franciscans, thus describes it: "They immediately set about taking possession of the soil in the name of our Catholic monarch, and thus laid the foundation of the mission. The sailors, muleteers and servants set about clearing away a place, which was to serve as temporary church, hanging the bells (on the limb of a tree, possibly) and forming a grand cross. * * * The venerable father president blessed the holy water, and with this the rite of the church and then the holy cross; which, being adorned as usual, was planted in front of the church. Then its patron saint was named, and having chanted the first mass, the venerable president pronounced a most fervent discourse on the coming of the Holy Spirit and the establishment of the mission. The sacrifice of the mass being concluded, the Veni Creator was then sung; the want of an organ and other musical instruments being supplied by the continued discharge of firearms during the ceremony, and the want of incense, of which they had none, by the smoke of the muskets."
This ceremony was performed on the sixteenth day of July, 1769. Two days prior to that Governor Portala had started northward with the greater portion of the force to re-discover the port of Monterey. For three and one-half months he pursued his slow, tortuous way up the coast, passing Monterey without recognizing it. On the
PACIFIC COAST. 45
thirtieth of October they came upon a bay which Father Crespi; who accompanied the expedition, says "they at once recognized." What caused them to recognize it? Had they ever heard of it before? This is the first unquestioned record of the discovery of the San Francisco harbor. In all the annals of history there is no evidence of its ever having been seen before, except that sailing chart previously mentioned. Yet the exception is evidence strong as holy writ, that in 1740 the bay had been found but had received no recorded name. Portala and his followers believed a miracle had been performed, that the discovery was due to the hand of Providence, and that St. Francis had led them to the place. When they saw this land-locked bay in all its slumbering grandeur, they remembered that, before leaving Mexico, Father Junipero had been grieved because the vistadore general had not placed their patron saint upon the list of names for the missions to be founded in the new country, and when reminded of the omission by the sorrowing priest, he had replied solemnly, as from matured reflection: "If St. Francis wants a mission, let him show you a good port, and we will put one there." "A good port" had been found--one where the fleets of the world could ride in safety, and they said "St. Francis has led us to his harbor," and they called it "San Francisco Bay."
Portala returned to San Diego, arriving January 24, 1770, where he found a very discouraging condition of affairs. The small band left at San Diego had passed through perils and difficulties of which it is unnecessary to speak in detail; but the stubborn bravery and uniform kindness of the missionaries had brought them safely through. There now threatened a danger that unless averted would disastrously terminate the expedition. Portala took an inventory of supplies and found there remained only enough to last the expedition until March; and he dicided [=decided] that if none arrived by sea before the twentieth of that month, to abandon the enterprise and return to Mexico. The day came, and with it, in the offing, in plain view of all, a vessel. Preparations had been completed for the abandonment, but it was postponed because of the appearance of the outlying ship. The next day it was gone, and the colony believed then that a miracle had been performed, and their patron saint had permitted the sight of the vessel that they might know that help was coming. In a few days the San Antonio sailed into the harbor with abundant stores, and they learned that the vision they had looked upon was the vessel herself; she having been forced by adverse winds to put to sea again, after coming in sight of land.
Upon the arrival of the San Antonio, two other expeditions set out, in search of Monterey harbor, one by sea and another by land, the latter in charge of Governor Portala. The party by sea was accompanied by the father president himself, who writes of that voyage, and its results, as follows: "On the thirty-first day of May, by the favor of God, after a rather painful voyage of a month and a half, this packet, San Antonio, arrived and anchored in this horrible port of Monterey, which is unaltered in any degree from what it was when visited by the expedition of Don Sebastian Viscaino, in the year 1603." He goes on to state that he found the governor awaiting him, having reached the place eight days earlier. He then describes the manner of taking possession of the land for the crown on the third day of August. This ceremony was attended by salutes from the battery on board ship, and discharges of musketry by the soldiers, until the Indians in the vicinity were so thoroughly fright-
46 PACIFIC COAST.
ened at the noise as to cause a stampede among them for the interior, from whence they were afterwards enticed with difficulty. This was soon followed by the founding of the mission of San Antonio de Padua.
Governor Portala then returned to Mexico, bearing the welcome intelligence that Monterey had been re-discovered, that a much finer bay had also been found farther north which they had named after St. Francis, and that three missions had been established in the new land. Upon receipt of the news, the excitement in Mexico was intense. Guns were fired, bells were rung, congratulatory speeches were made, and all New Spain was happy, because of the final success of the long struggle to gain a footing north of the peninsula.
It is needless to follow in detail the record of the Franciscans in California, their labors, privations and success. A brief summary of their rise, growth and downfall will be sufficient to enable the reader to understand all allusions to them in the subsequent pages.
By the same methods the Jesuits had practiced in Lower California, did the Franciscans seek to establish their missions on a firmer footing, suffering frequently from the hostility of the natives, but gradually overcoming all obstacles and creating populous and prosperous missions and towns. The mission of San Diego was founded July 16, 1769; San Carlos, at Monterey, August 3, 1770; San Antonio de Padua July 14, 1771; San Gabriel, near Los Angeles, September 8, 1771; San Luis Obispo, in September, 1772. Father Serra then went to Mexico for reinforcements and supplies, and returned the next spring by sea, having sent Captain Juan Bautista Anza with some soldiers to open an overland route by which more rapid and certain communication could be maintained with the home country. In 1774 Captain Anza returned to Mexico for more soldiers, priests and supplies, and after the arrival of these it was determined to enlarge the field of operations to the northward. The San Carlos was dispatched to see if the Bay of San Francisco could be entered from the ocean, and in June, 1775, the little vessel sailed safely through the Golden Gate and cast anchor where so many thousand vessels have since been securely sheltered. On the seventeenth of September, 1776, the presidio (fort) was established at San Francisco, and on the tenth of October the mission of Dolores was founded, followed in quick succession by those of San Juan Capistrano and Santa Clara.
From this time the missions grew rapidly in power and wealth, and pueblos (towns) sprang up, occupied chiefly by the families of soldiers who had served their terms in the army and preferred to remain in California. Gradually population increased, until in 1802 Humboldt estimated it at 1,300, to which he added 15,562 converted Indians, taking no account of the wild or unsubdued tribes, which we know from other sources largely outnumbered those brought within the influence of the missions. By 1822, the year Mexico declared her independence of Spain, twenty-one missions had been founded and were in a prosperous condition. Two years later Mexico adopted a republican form of government, and from that time dates the downfall of the missionary system. The Franciscans had complete control of the land claiming it as trustees for the benefit of converted natives, and discouraged all attempts at colonization as calculated to weaken their power and frustrate their designs. When, therefore, in 1824, the Mexican congress passed a colonization act, giving the
PACIFIC COAST. 47
governor of California power to make grants of land to actual settlers, it was considered a direct and fatal blow at the mission monopoly. From this time the missions were a leading element in Mexican politics, and they gradually declined before the encroachments of the civil power until, in 1845, the property which had survived the pillage and decay of the previous ten years was sold at auction, and the missions were at an end. A year later the inauguration of the Bear Flag war by Fremont was followed by the conquest of the country from Mexico, and California, redeemed from anarchy misrule and revolution, became a portion of the United States.
DISCOVERIES WESTWARD FROM THE ATLANTIC.
Foreign claims in America--Florida, Mexico, California, Alaska, Louisiana, Canada, and the English Colonies-- Treaty of Ryswick--Treaty of Utrecht--Sale of Louisiana to Spain--Carver's Explorations on the Mississippi --Oregon, the River of the West--Origin of the Name--Journey of Samuel Hearne to the Arctic Ocean-- England offers a Reward for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage.
To understand in their full significance the motives and acts of the various nations contending for dominion in the Pacific, the status of their claims throughout America must be kept carefully in view. England had colonies along the Atlantic coast from Maine to Carolina and had full possession of the vast region about Hudson's bay. France held possession of Louisiana, extending from the mouth of the Mississippi indefinitely northward and westward, and of the St. Lawrence and the great region lying to the westward embraced under the general title of Canada, and by exploring to the west along and beyond the great lakes and north along the Mississippi, had thus united Canada and Louisiana and rendered the Alleghanies the extreme western limit of England's Atlantic colonies. Spain had undisputed possession of Central America. Mexico, California and Florida; while Russia claimed Alaska and the adjacent islands, The boundary line between these various possessions was extremely uncertain and continued to be for years a fruitful source of trouble and a theme for diplomatic controversy.
In 1697 the treaty of Ryswick was concluded, which was intended to define, as clearly as the knowledge of American geography would permit, the boundaries of these various possessions. Spanish Florida was then limited on the north by the Carolina colonies, while its western limit was left exceedingly indefinite, conflicting severely with the French claim to Louisiana. North of Florida and west of the Alleghanies France claimed the entire country, either as a portion of Louisiana or Canada, including Hudson's bay, the latter claim being based upon the explorations of Labrador by Cortereal. At the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, following a disastrous struggle with
48 PACIFIC COAST.
Great Britain, France relinquished her claim to Hudson's bay, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. During the next quarter of a century the energetic Frenchmen established a chain of forts and settlements from Quebec to New Orleans, taking absolute and actual possession of the country and cutting off the westward extension of Florida on the one hand and the northeastern limits of Mexico and California on the other.
Thus matters stood until the disastrous war between England and France involved the American colonies in bloody strife and turned over the exposed settlements to the tender mercies of the Indian tomahawk and scalping knife. Worsted in the strife, France, after her colonial star was stricken from the sky by the gallant Wolfe on the Plains of Abraham, but before the final seal to her defeat was affixed by the treaty of Paris, secretly conveyed to Spain her province of Louisiana, and thus robbed her victorious enemy of one of the greatest fruits of her conquest. The terms of the conveyance, made in 1762, defined the western and southern limit of Louisiana and the eastern and northern boundary of Mexico and California, to follow the course of the Sabine river from its mouth to latitude 32 degrees, thence north to the Red river, and following that stream to longitude 23 degrees, thence north to the Arkansas and up that river to latitude 42 degrees, which line it followed to the Pacific. It was thus that even after the acquisition of Canada, England found her possessions bounded on the west by the great "Father of Waters." This was the situation in America when the Russians opened the Alaskan fur trade and Spain perfected her claim to California by planting there the missions of St. Francis.
It was now a century since the Hudson's Bay Company was chartered, and it had not yet discovered the northwest passage, though that was the leading object stated in the charter; nor, indeed, had the company made any earnest effort so to do. The belief still obtained that the Straits of Anian existed, or, at least, that some great river, such a stream, possibly, as the Rio de los Reyes, could be found flowing into the Pacific, which was navigable eastward to within a few miles of some harbor accessible to vessels from the Atlantic. If either of these existed, they were naturally to be looked for in the region dominated by the great fur monopoly. The discovery of such a means of communication was earnestly desired by the English crown, yet the company was sufficiently powerful to prevent or at least render fruitless all efforts to explore its dominions. All explorations that gave any new geographical light were conducted beyond the company's domain and contrary to its desires.
It has been shown how the headwaters of the Mississippi had been visited by French missionaries and explorers, both from Canada and Louisiana, who had established a fur trade with the natives of considerable value. Immediately after Canada fell into the hands of the English, an expedition was made into that region by Captain Jonathan Carver, a native of Connecticut, who had served with distinction in the war against France so recently brought to a successful termination. He left Boston in 1766, and traveling by the way of Detroit and Fort Michilimacinac, reached the headwaters of the Mississippi. The object of his journey, as stated in his account, was, "after gaining a knowledge of the manners, customs, languages, soil and natural productions of the different nations that inhabit the back of the Mississippi, to ascertain the breadth of the vast continent which extends from the Atlantic to the Pacific ocean, in its broadest part, between the 43d and 46th degrees of north latitude. Had
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I been able to accomplish this, I intended to have proposed to the government to establish a post in some of those parts, about the Straits of Anian, which, having been discovered by Sir Francis Drake, of course belongs to the English. This I am convinced, would greatly facilitate the discovery of a northwest passage, or communication between Hudson's bay and the Pacific ocean." His idea that the Straits of Anian, or any other passage inland from the Pacific, had been discovered by Drake was an exceedingly erroneous one.
Just how far west Carver penetrated is uncertain, and his claim of a residence of five months in that region is a doubtful one, since the accounts of the manners and customs of the natives given in his narrative (published twenty-five years later in London at the suggestion of a number of gentlemen who hoped the proceeds of its sale would be sufficient to relieve the author's necessities; he died in 1780, in penury), are but translations into English of the writings of Hennepin, Lahontan, Charlevoix and other French explorers. To him, however, must be credited the first use of the name "Oregon," which is given in the following connection: "From these natives, together with my own observations, I have learned that the four most capital rivers on the continent of North America--viz., the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, the River Bourbon (Red River of the North), and the Oregon, or River of the West--have their sources in the same neighborhood. The waters of the three former are within thirty miles of each other; [This is practically correct, and this point, somewhere in Western Minnesota, is probably the limit of his westward journey.] the latter, however, is rather further west. This shows that these parts are the highest in North America; and it is an instance not to be paralleled in the other three quarters of the world, that four rivers of such magnitude should take their rise together, and each, after running separate courses, discharge their waters into different oceans, at the distance of two thousand miles from their sources, for in their passage from this spot to the Bay of St. Lawrence, east, to the Bay of Mexico, south, to Hudson's Bay, north, and to the bay at the Straits of Anian, west, each of these traverse upwards of two thousand miles."
It will be observed that Carver lays no claim to having visited even the headwaters of the "Oregon, or River of the West," and the probability is that all he knew of it was gathered from the same works of the French explorers which had supplied the other leading features of his book, though, possibly, like them, he may have heard such a stream spoken of by the Indians. In many of these French narratives to which he had access, a belief is asserted in the existence of a large stream flowing westward from the vicinity of the headwaters of the Mississippi into the Pacific, founded upon information given by the natives; and on many maps of the eighteenth century such a stream was indicated, bearing variously the names "River of the West," "River Thegayo" " Rio de los Reyes," and "River of Aguilar" (the one whose mouth Aguilar reported having seen in latitude 43 degrees in the year 1603.) All that was new in Carver's account was the name "Oregon," and of that he fails to give us any idea of its meaning or origin. Many theories have been advanced, plausible and even possible, but none of them susceptible of proof, and the probabilities are that the word is one of Carver's own invention. The fact that he stands sponsor for the name of this great region, is all that entitles Carver and his plagiarisms to any notice
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in this volume whatever. The first definite account of the River of the West was one given by a Yazoo Indian to Lepagn Dupratz, a French traveler, many years before Carver's journey. The Indian asserted that he had ascended the Missouri northwesterly to its source, and that beyond this he encountered another great river flowing towards the setting sun, down which he passed until his progress was arrested by hostilities existing between the tribes living along the stream. He participated in the war, and in a certain battle his party captured a woman of a tribe living further west, from whom he learned that the river entered a great water where ships had been seen sailing and in them were men with beards and white faces. There is nothing improbable in this narrative, in the light of ascertained geographical facts, unless it be the portion relating to ships; even that is possible, or may, perhaps, be simply an embellishment of the story by the Indian or Dupratz. Several maps published about fifteen years prior to Carver's journey, on the authority of this narrative, had marked upon them such a stream with the name "Great River of the West" attached to it. This fully accounts for the valiant captain's knowledge of such a stream, though it clears up none of the darkness surrounding the title "Oregon."
In 1771 the Hudson's Bay Company sent Samuel Hearne on a tour of exploration of the regions lying to the westward of the bay, for the purpose of finding a rich mine of copper which the Indians had frequently spoken of and whose name translated into English, was The Far-off Metal River. He was also instructed to determine the question of a passage westward from Hudson's bay, in whose existence the directors had now no faith whatever, and in consequence were anxious to make a showing of great zeal in searching for it. Hearne discovered Great Slave lake and its connecting rivers and lakes, finally reaching the Coppermine river and following the stream to its point of discharge into the Arctic ocean. This body of water he conceived and reported to be a great inland sea of a character similar to Hudson's bay, between which two bodies of water there was evidently no connecting passage. He also learned from the natives that the land extended a great distance further west, beyond high mountains. The result of his journey, since it tended to prove that no passage to the Pacific from Hudson's bay could be possible, was quickly communicated to the British Admiralty by the company, though the journal kept by Hearne was not published for the benefit of the public till twenty years later.
The Admiralty were now satisfied that a further search for a strait leading westward from Hudson's bay would be futile; but still hoped that a navigable passage could be found leading from Baffin's bay into the sea discovered by Hearne and still another one from this new ocean into the Pacific. Parliament had in 1845 offered a reward of £20,000 to anyone discovering a passage from Hudson's bay, which the company had carefully rendered nugatory, and now Parliament, in 1776, again passed an act offering a like reward to any English vessel entering and passing through any strait, or in any direction, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific, north of latitude 52 degrees, which was about the southern limit of Hudson's bay. This led to a series of voyages by English navigators in the Pacific ocean, stimulated especially by the reports which about that time reached England of voyages and settlements made by representatives of Spain. The era of positive discoveries in Oregon was coming on apace.
EXPLORATIONS BY LAND AND SEA.
Struggle Between England and Spain for Dominion on the Pacific Coast--Juan Perez Discovers Port San Lorenzo or Nootka Sound--Martinez Claims to Have Seen the Straits of Fuca--Spanish Explorers Take Possession of the Country at the Bay of Trinidad--Fruitless Search for the Straits of Fuca--Heceta Discovers the Mouth of the Columbia and Names it San Roque Inlet--Bodega takes Formal Possession on George III.'s Archipelago and Searches for the Rio de los Reyes--He also takes Possession on Prince of Wales Island--Vain Search for Aguilar's River on the Coast of Oregon--Discovery of Bodega Bay--Practical Result of these Voyages and England's Solicitude--Voyage of Captain James Cook--Discovery of Hawaiian Islands--Cook at Nootka Sound--He Passes Through Behring's Straits into the Arctic Ocean--Death of Cook--Return of the Expedition -Arteaga and Bodega Follow Cook's Route.
The proceedings of the Spanish nation which had aroused England to such unusual activity in exploring the northwest, were the colonization of California by the Franciscans which has already been spoken of, and several voyages and efforts to take possession of the coast still further to the north which were made soon afterwards. The struggle between England and Spain for dominion in the unexplored portion of the New World had begun in earnest, and was embittered by the chagrin of the latter at the manner in which Louisiana had slipped from her clutch when France sold it to Spain just as it was about to be snatched from her grasp.
The first of these voyages, and it must be remembered the first voyage of exploration undertaken by Spain along the northern coast for one hundred and seventy-one years, was that of Juan Perez, who was instructed to sail as far north as the 60th parallel, and to then explore the coast southward, landing at all convenient places to take possession of the country in the name of the king of Spain. On the twenty-fifth of January, 1774, Perez sailed from San Blas in the corvette Santiago, piloted by Estivan Martinez, and stopped both at San Diego and Monterey, sailing from the latter port on the sixteenth of June. Thirty-two days later he espied the first land seen since leaving Monterey, in latitude 54 degrees, probably the west coast of Queen Charlotte's island. Simptoms of scurvy beginning to be observed among the crew, and being but poorly supplied with the requisites for a long voyage, Perez decided not to attempt further progress north in his little vessel, and so coasted along to the southward. He proceeded about a hundred miles, encountering a number of natives in their canoes, with whom he drove a profitable trade in furs, and was then driven to sea by a storm. He again discovered land on the ninth of August, casting anchor at the entrance of a deep bay in latitude 49 degrees and 30 minutes upon which, following the custom which has plastered the map of the Pacific coast with "Sans" and "Santas," he bestowed, the name Port San Lorenzo, because it was discovered upon the day specially devoted to that saint in the Roman calendar. It was beyond doubt the harbor on the west coast of Vancouver island now known as King George's or Nootka sound. Hav-
52 PACIFIC COAST.
ing enjoyed a profitable trade with the natives, who are represented as being of a much lighter complexion than other native Americans, Perez weighed anchor and sailed again to the southward. In latitude 47 degrees and 47 minutes a lofty, snow-crowned peak was observed, which was christened Sierra de Santa Rosalia, being, probably, the one subsequently named Mount Olympus by English explorers. On the twenty-first of August Perez arrived off Cape Mendocino, whose exact latitude he then determined, and a week later dropped anchor in the harbor of Monterey. This voyage added but little to the geographical knowledge of the coast, since no thorough explorations were made and land was observed only in a few places. In the journal of the voyage nothing is said of the Straits of Juan de Fuca, and yet, many years later and long after the strait had been entered by the English and Puget sound explored, the pilot of the Santiago, Martinez, asserted that he had observed a wide opening in the land between latitudes 48 and 49 degrees, and that he had honored the point of land on the south side of the entrance with his own name. Upon the strength of this long-delayed assertion, Spanish geographers entered upon their charts as Cape Martinez the point of land now universally known as Cape Flattery.
The return of Perez with the information that America extended at least as far north as the latitude 54 degrees, determined the Mexican viceroy to dispatch another expedition in quest of still further discoveries as far as the 65th parallel. The Santiago, commanded by Bruno Heceta and piloted by Perez, and the Sonora, a small schooner under the command of Juan de Ayala and having Antonio Manrelle for a pilot, sailed from San Blas March 15, 1775, being supplied with the latest chart of the Pacific, in which the reports of the various voyages were woven together by the fertile imagination of Bellin, a French geographer. They were accompanied as far as Monterey by the San Carlos, to which vessel Ayala was transferred before reaching that port, and the command of the Sonora devolved upon Lieutenant Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra.
Sailing from Monterey to the northward, the two vessels doubled Cape Mendocino and anchored on the tenth of June in a roadstead, which was named Port Trinidad, for the usual reason that the day was the one devoted to the Trinity on the calendar, that fertile source of Spanish nomenclature. Nine days later the voyage up the coast was resumed, though not until the Spaniards had landed and with proper solemnity and religious ceremonies taken possession of the country in the name of their sovereign, including the planting of a cross with appropriate inscriptions as a testimonial monument of their visit. They described the harbor as being safe, spacious and a valuable one to commerce, and the contiguous country agreeable in climate and having a fruitful soil; and this discovery was considered by Spanish authorities to be an exceedingly valuable one.
Having kept out to sea for three weeks, they again sighted land in latitude 48 degrees and 27 minutes, just south of the Straits of Fuca. Since the Greek pilot had located his passage between latitudes 47 and 48 degrees, as will be remembered, in which locality it was indicated on their chart, the explorers naturally coasted to the southward in searching for it, thus sailing directly away from its entrance. A careful examination of the coast revealed no such passage, and, satisfied that it had no existence, they cast anchor near a small island off the coast in latitude 47 degrees and 20
PACIFIC COAST. 53
minutes. Here seven of the Sonora's crew, who were sent to the mainland to procure water in the only boat the vessel carried, were killed by the natives; and the island was christened Isla de Dolores, or Island of Sorrows, being the same one afterwards called Destruction Island by an English captain, because of a similar fate which befel a portion of his crew.
Disheartened by this disaster and observing alarming symptoms of scurvy among his crews, Heceta desired to return, but at the urgent solicitation of the other officers reluctantly consented to continue the voyage northward. A few days later a severe storm parted the vessels, and Heceta then abandoned the enterprise and started to return with the Santiago to Monterey. He soon observed land on the ocean side of Vancouver island, in latitude 50 degrees, and passing by Port San Lorenzo and the entrance to Juan de Fuca straits without observing them, he again saw the coast in the 48th parallel, south of which he once more searched for the passage he had so carelessly overlooked. On the fifteenth of August, 1775, he came opposite an opening in the land in latitude 46 degrees and 17 minutes, through which poured a stream of water so forcibly as to prevent him from entering. Satisfied that he was at the outlet to a great river, or, possibly, the Straits of Fuca, though too far south for this according to his chart, Heceta waited a day with the hope of effecting an entrance; but in this he was doomed to disappointment, and abandoning the effort he continued his voyage to Monterey, carefully observing the intervening coast, of which his journal contains extremely accurate descriptions. The Catholic calendar was again brought into requisition to supply a name for this new discovery, and since the fifteenth of August was the day of the Assumption, Heceta called it Enseñada de Asuncion (Assumption inlet); the sixteenth being set apart to Saint Roc, he called the northern promontory Cape San Roque, while to the low land on the south side of the entrance he gave the name Cape Frondoso (Leafy cape). Beyond question this was the first discovery of the mouth of the mighty Columbia, and Mexican charts, published soon after the return of Heceta, had indicated upon them an entrance to the land at that point, variously denominated Enseñada de Heceta, and Rio de San Roque.
In the meantime Bodega and Maurelle were persevering in their attempt to carry out the original plan of the expedition, and were still endeavoring to reach the 65th parallel in the little Sonora. On the sixteenth of August they suddenly came in sight of land both to the north and east of them, being then, according to their observations, north of latitude 56 degrees, and at a point which their chart told them was 135 leagues distant from the American shore. This proved to be the large island known as King George III's Archipelago, though supposed by the Spaniards to be a portion of the main land. A large mountain rising from a jutting headland and draped in snow, was called by them San Jacinto, though it was a few years later named Mount Edgecumb by Captain Cook. The Spaniards landed to take formal possession of the country for the Spanish crown and to procure a supply of fish and water, to both of which proceedings the natives fiercely objected, compelling the intruders to pay liberally for the fish, and the water as well, and derisively tearing up and destroying the cross and other symbolic monuments the would-be possessors of their land had erected. The voyage northward was resumed, but upon reaching lati-
54 PACIFIC COAST.
tude 58 degrees Bodega deemed it imprudent to advance farther and turned again to the southward. From that point to the 54th parallel the coast was closely scrutinized for the Rio de los Reyes of Admiral Fontè, but as the romancing admiral had located his mythical river a degree farther south their search would have proven in vain even had the stream an existence beyond its creator's fancy, and therefore their assertion that no such river existed north of latitude 54 degrees was valueless to prove Fontè's great water route from the Pacific to the Atlantic to be a myth. On the twenty-fourth of August they again landed to take possession of the country, this time at Port Bucareli, named in honor of the viceroy under whose authority the expedition was dispatched, on the west coast of Prince of Wales Island. From this place they casually observed the coast at various points until they reached the Oregon coast in latitude 45 degrees and 27 minutes, when they began a careful search for the great river Martin de Aguilar claimed to have discovered in 1603. Though they noticed currents of water setting out from the land in various places, nothing was observed indicating a stream of the magnitude described by Aguilar, and they became satisfied that none such existed in that locality; yet they observed a headland which was recognized as answering the description of Cape Blanco, being, no doubt, the one called later Cape Orford by Captain Vancouver. On the third of October the Sonora entered a bay supposed to be that of San Francisco, but which proved to be a much smaller one a short distance north of that great harbor, and was therefore named Bodega bay by the discoverer in his own honor.
By the voyages of Perez, Heceta and Bodega, and especially the latter, which was conducted under the most disadvantageous conditions, through stormy and unknown seas, in a small vessel which had lost its only boat, and with a crew afflicted with that terrible scourge of the early mariners, the scurvy, Spain justly laid claim to the first exploration of the Pacific coast from which even an approximately correct chart could be made; especially was this true of our immediate coast, for prior to these explorations the coast between Cape Mendocino and Mount San Jacinto, or Edgecumb, was so practically unknown that in regard to it the most utterly erroneous ideas prevailed.
Condensed reports of these voyages, containing the leading features, soon reached England, together with the accounts of the progress Spain was making in her scheme of colonizing California, and caused much anxiety to the government. With her Florida and Louisiana possessions extending indefinitely westward, with her California colonies already established and the possibility of her making additional settlements at some or all of the favorable localities on the northern coast where her representatives had already performed the ceremony of taking formal possession in the name of the king, the prospect of Spain soon obtaining control of the whole Pacific of America south of the 56th parallel, the limit to which Russian explorations formed a foundation for a claim by the czar, was imminent. With the zeal which England would exercise under the same circumstances, the claim of Spain would be perfected in ten years, and England be confined in North America to Canada and the possessions of her fur monopoly around Hudson's bay. The prospect was far from pleasing, and nothing but the indolence of Spain saved England from entire exclusion from Pacific North America. Yet for England to establish colonies in opposition to those of Spain was practically impossible. She had no Mexico to form a base of operation and supplies, but could
PACIFIC COAST. 55
hold communication with them only by means of a long and hazardous voyage of eight or ten months around Cape Horn or by the way of the Cape of Good Hope.
Under this condition of affairs England looked upon the discovery of a northern passage from ocean to ocean as absolutely necessary to further her interests on the Pacific coast. It was this idea of the situation which led Parliament to renew the offered reward spoken of at the close of the last chapter, and which stimulated English explorers into that great activity which resulted in revealing so much of our geography during the next fifteen years, laid the foundation for the claim to Oregon which Great Britain so strenuously asserted, and gave her title to the immense territory she now possesses on the Pacific coast.
About this time Captain James Cook returned from his great voyage of exploration in the South sea and Indian ocean, having established the fact that no habitable land existed in the vicinity of the Antarctic circle and made a voyage so extensive and important that he was universally recognized as the leading explorer of the century. To him England turned in her hour of anxiety. Here was the man above all others to whom could be entrusted the search for that passage so vitally important to British interests in the Pacific, with the assurance that whatever skill, diligence and the most thorough acquaintance with the geographical knowledge and theories of the day could accomplish would certainly be achieved. This task Cook at once undertook, and sailed upon his new quest with high hopes of winning laurels greater than those which already encircled his brow.
The instructions given to Cook by the Admiralty were very minute and particular. He was directed to proceed by way of the Cape of Good Hope, New Zealand and Otaheite and endeavor to reach the coast of New Albion in the latitude 45 degrees. To the name New Albion the English government had tenaciously clung since the time Sir Francis Drake so christened the California coast and ceremoniously took possession in the name of the queen. To England there was much in a simple name, since her adherence to it showed her resolution to claim to the last all the benefit which could possibly be derived from the voyage of that adventurous marauder; and this name was only changed for another when the basis upon which the English claim to Oregon rested was also altered. Though resolved to abate not one whit of her discovery rights, England was careful not to commit the least overt act of hostility against any rival claimants whatever. Serious trouble had commenced with her Atlantic colonies; the battle of Bunker Hill had been fought and the evacuation of Boston compelled; the whole coast from Massachusetts to Georgia was in a state of armed rebellion, encouraged by both France and Spain, who appeared upon the verge of offering substantial aid. The times were not propitious for England to assert her rights in the Pacific in a manner bordering in the least upon arrogance. Under the circumstances an extremely modest demeanor was considered exceedingly becoming, and Cook was "strictly enjoined, on his way thither, not to touch upon any part of the Spanish dominions on the western continent of America, unless driven to it by some unavoidable accident; in which case he was to stay no longer than should be absolutely necessary, and to be very careful not to give any umbrage or offence to any of the inhabitants or subjects of his Catholic majesty. And if, in his farther progress northward, he should find any subjects of any European prince or state, upon any part of the
56 PACIFIC COAST.
coast which he might think proper to visit, he was not to disturb them or give them any just cause of offence, but, on the contrary, to treat them with civility and friendship." The last charge referred especially to the Russian settlements in the extreme north.
But little positive knowledge was possessed in England of the geography of the coast north of Cape Mendocino. To be sure it was the reports of Spanish settlements in California and of several important voyages of exploration recently made by representatives of that nation, which had created such anxiety and infused such zeal into the English Admiralty; but the particulars of those voyages were not yet received. All that was really known of the northwest coast was what could be learned from the records of Viscaino's voyage nearly two centuries before, from the indefinite and contradictory accounts of Russian discoveries in Alaskan waters, and the recent report by Samuel Hearne that the continent extended many miles westward from the Coppermine river. Between Viscaino's most northern limit, latitude 45 degrees, and the extreme southern point reached by Tchirikof in the 56th parallel, there was a vast stretch of coast line absolutely unknown. Cook was consequently instructed to proceed along the coast and, "with the consent of the natives, to take possession in the name of the King of Great Britain of convenient stations in such countries as he might discover that had not been already discovered or visited by any other European power, and to distribute among the inhabitants such things as will remain as traces of his having been there; but, if he should find the countries so discovered to be uninhabited he was to take possession of them for his sovereign, by setting up proper marks and descriptions, as first discoverers and possessors." This was exactly what Heceta and Bodega had done for Spain the year before, though of this fact England was ignorant. Cook was directed to coast along to the 65th parallel, before reaching which he was expected to find it trending sharply towards the northeast in the direction of the Coppermine river, the Admiralty being of the opinion that the great North sea visited by Hearne was identical with the Pacific. From that point he was to explore carefully "such rivers or inlets as might appear to be of considerable extent and pointing towards Hudson's or Baffin's bays," and endeavor to sail through all such passages, either in his vessels or in smaller ones to be constructed on the spot from materials taken with him for that especial purpose. In case he became satisfied from the configuration of the coast that no such passage existed and that the Pacific ocean and North sea were not identical, he was then to repair to the Russian settlements at Kamtchatka, and from that point explore the seas to the northward "in further search of a northeast or northwest passage from the Pacific ocean into the Atlantic or the North sea."
To carry out these minute and exhaustive instructions, Cook sailed from Plymouth July 12, 1776, in the Resolution, the vessel he had just taken around the world, accompanied by Capt. Charles Clerke in the Discovery. The crews and officers were men selected carefully for this expedition, and the vessels were supplied with every nautical and scientific instrument which could in any possibility be needed, as well as the most accurate charts at the command of the government. After passing the Cape of Good Hope, Cook spent nearly a year making examinations about Van Dieman's Land, New Zealand, and the Friendly and Society islands. On the eighteenth of January, 1778, he discovered the Hawaiian islands, that most important station in the
PACIFIC COAST. 57
Pacific, which he called Sandwich islands in honor of the first lord of the Admiralty under whose orders he was sailing. On the seventh of the following March he was delighted with a glimpse of the Oregon coast, or New Albion, near the 44th parallel, in the vicinity of the Umpqua. Contrary winds forced him as far south as the mouth of Rogue river, when, the wind becoming fair, he took a course almost due north and did not again see land until just above the 48th degree of latitude, when he descried a bold headland which he christened Cape Flattery to show his appreciation of the flattering condition of his prospects.
It was now that Cook fell into the same error which had so sorely baffled and defeated Heceta and Bodega two years before. Like them, having reached the very southern edge of the Straits of Fuca, he turned away and searched for them to the southward, because in Lock's narrative they had been located between latitudes 47 and 48 degrees. Finding the coast line unbroken, Cook pronounced the passage a myth, and abandoning the search sailed northward, passing heedlessly by the straits for which he had been so diligently looking. He soon dropped anchor in a safe and spacious harbor in latitude 49½ degrees, which he called King George's sound, but later substituted Nootka when he learned that such was its Indian title. This was, beyond doubt, the Port Lorenzo entered by Perez in 1774, and like the Spaniard, Cook reports the natives to be of a very light complexion and to possess ornaments of copper and weapons of iron and brass. This, united with the fact that one of them had suspended about his greasy neck two silver spoons of Spanish manufacture, and because they manifested no surprise and but little curiosity about the ships, and seemed not to be frightened at the report of guns, and were eager to barter furs for a valuable consideration, especially metals of all kinds, led Cook to the opinion that they had held intercourse with civilized nations in former times. Their supposed familiarity with firearms was soon found to be erroneous, for "one day, upon endeavoring to prove to us that arrows and spears would not penetrate their war-dresses, a gentleman of our company shot a musket-ball through one of them folded six times. At this they were so much staggered, that their ignorance of fire-arms was plainly seen. This was afterwards confirmed when we used them to shoot birds, the manner of which confounded them." This discovery and other facts elicited by a closer observation caused Cook to change his opinion about their previous intercourse with white people. In speculating on this subject he says that though "some account of a Spanish voyage to this coast in 1774 or 1775 had reached England before I sailed, it was evident that iron was too common here, was in too many hands, and the use of it too well known, for them to have had the first knowledge of it so very lately, or, indeed, at any earlier period, by an accidental supply from a ship. Doubtless, from the general use they make of this metal, it might be supposed to come from some constant source, by way of traffic, and that not of a very late date; for they are as dexterous in using their tools as the longest practice can make them. The most probable way, therefore, by which we can suppose that they get their iron, is by trading for it with other Indian tribes, who either have immediate communication with European settlements upon the continent, or receive it, perhaps, through several intermediate nations; the same might be said of the brass and copper found amongst them." The indifference of the natives to the ships, in regard to which their lack of curiosity was noticeable and had been one of
58 PACIFIC COAST.
the causes which at first led him to suppose they were familiar with such objects, he attributed "to their natural indolence of temper and want of curiosity." Cook's ignorance of the vast extent of the American continent and the degree of civilization attained by the various aboriginal nations occupying it, must be his excuse for supposing that such a commodity as iron could have been transported from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, passing from hand to hand through numerous tribes of Indians, many of them engaged in unceasing and unrelenting warfare. That such could not have been the case, even aside from these objections, we are well assured by the fact that the inland tribes through whose hands the metal must have passed knew nothing of iron or its uses, and employed flint and bones for knives, spear-heads and arrow-tips. In the region then visited by the English for the first time exist vast quantities of iron ore, and in the mountains of the mainland copper ledges abound, and though no traces have as yet been observed of the ancient working of these mines, it is more than probable that the iron and copper possessed by the natives of Vancouver island, who were the most civilized and intelligent found on the Pacific coast, were produced from the crude ore by their possessors themselves. This supposition is supported by the fact that the natives forged iron in an ingenious manner, making harpoons, weapons and ornaments, thus showing how well they understood the nature of the substance and demonstrating their ability to produce it from the native ore. The comparatively limited amount in their possession indicated that they only utilized surface croppings, and this fully explains the absence of any signs of former mining operations on the ledges. When Captain Meares visited the same locality a few years later, he was equally astonished at their familiarity with these metals. He tells us that the Indians manufactured tools of the iron obtained from him in trading; and that it was seldom they could be prevailed upon to use European tools or utensils in preference to their own, with the exception of the saw, the utility and labor-saving value of which they at once recognized. They made a tool for the purpose of hollowing out large trees, which answered the purpose better than any instrument possessed by the ship's carpenter. For an anvil they employed a flat stone and a round one did duty as a sledge; and with these implements they fashioned the red hot iron at will, attaching to the tools or weapons when desired a wooden handle, fastened securely with cords of sinew. What little brass they possessed may have been procured from the Spanish vessels which had visited them a few years before. In this connection the legend related to Meares, explaining the origin of their knowledge of copper, will be interesting. The fact that there existed a legend on the subject is sufficient evidence of the length of time the use of copper had been familiar to them. Meares says: "On expressing our wish to be informed by what means they became acquainted with copper, and why it was such a peculiar object of their admiration, a son of Hannapa, one of the Nootkan chiefs, a youth of uncommon sagacity, informed us of all he knew on the subject, and we found, to our surprise, that his story involved a little sketch of their religion. He first placed a certain number of sticks upon the ground, at small distances from each other, to which he gave separate names. Thus, he called the first his father, the next his grandfather; he then took what remained and threw them all into confusion together, as much as to say that they were the general heap of his ancestors, whom he could not individually reckon. He then, pointing to this bundle, said, when they
PACIFIC COAST. 59
lived an old man entered the sound in a copper canoe, with copper paddles, and everything else in his possession of the same metal; that he paddled along the shore, on which all the people were assembled to contemplate so strange a sight, and that, having thrown one of his copper paddles on shore, he himself landed. The extraordinary stranger then told the natives that he came from the sky, to which the boy pointed with his hand; that their country would one day be destroyed, when they would all be killed, and rise again to live in the place from whence he came. Our young interpreter explained this circumstance of his narrative by lying down as if he were dead, and then, rising up suddenly, he imitated the action as if he were soaring through the air. He continued to inform us that the people killed the old man and took his canoe, from which event they derived their fondness for copper, and he added that the images in their houses were intended to represent the form, and perpetuate the mission, of this supernatural person who came from the sky."
Cook's vessels lay in Nootka sound nearly a month, repairing the casualties of the long voyage, laying in a supply of wood and water, and permitting the seamen to recruit their impaired health. They were constantly surrounded by a fleet of canoes, whose occupants came from many miles along the coast for the purpose of trading with the strangers. They had for barter "skins of various animals, such as wolves, foxes, bears, deer, raccoons, polecats, martins, and, in particular, of the sea-otters, which are found at the islands east of Kamtchatka;" and, he might have added, in great numbers about the Straits of Fuca. "Besides the skins in their native shape, they also brought garments made of the bark of a tree or some plant like hemp; weapons, such as bows and arrows, and spears; fish-hooks and instruments of various kinds; wooden visors of many monstrous figures; a sort of woolen stuff or blanketing; bags filled with red ochre; pieces of carved rock; beads and several other little ornaments of thin brass and iron, shaped like a horseshoe, which they hung at their noses; and several chisels, or pieces of iron fixed to handles. * * Their eagerness to possess iron and brass, and, indeed, any kind of metal, was so great that few of them could resist the temptation to steal it whenever an opportunity offered."
About the last of April Cook sailed out of Nootka sound and resumed his explorations northward. His next object was to look for the Rio de los Reyes of Admiral Fontè, but a violent wind drove him to sea and prevented him from viewing the coast about the 53d parallel. "For my own part," he says, "I gave no credit to such vague and improbable stories, that convey their own confutation along with them; nevertheless, I was very desirous of keeping the American coast aboard, in order to clear up this point beyond dispute." He next saw land near the 55th parallel on the first of May, and soon after passed the beautiful mountain called San Jacinto by Bodega, but upon which lie bestowed the title Mount Edgecumb; and a little later he observed and named Mount Fairweather, on the mainland. Cook had now entered the region explored by the Russians, with whose voyages he was somewhat familiar, and consequently it was no surprise to him, but an expected gratification, when his eyes rested upon a giant, snow-mantled peak which he at once recognized as the Mount St. Elias described by Behring. This icy monarch is upwards of 17,000 feet in altitude, the highest and grandest peak of the North American continent
60 PACIFIC COAST.
Mount St. Elias was seen on the fourth of May, 1778; and from its base the shore line was seen to trend sharply to the west; which fact induced Cook to begin at that point his search for the Straits of Anian, hoping soon to find a passage which would lead him eastward into Hudson's bay or Baffin's bay, or northward into the great North sea spoken of by Maldonado and seen by Hearne. Russian maps of this region, copies of which he possessed, showed the whole space between Kamtchatka and Mount St. Elias to be an ocean thickly strewn with islands, the largest of which was called Aliaska, so that he had good authority for his belief in a passage into the North sea. He sailed westward, and then southwestward to the latitude 54½ degrees, minutely examining all the bays, inlets and islands encountered, especially Prince William's sound and Cook's inlet, the latter of which he probably conceived to be the entrance to a river since he named it Cook's river. Nowhere could he observe an opening through the white chain of mountains, and he became satisfied that the American continent "extended much further to the west than, from the modern most reputable charts, he had reason to expect," and that the Russians were erroneous in their idea that the region west and northwest of Mount St. Elias was but a sea of islands. The result was that he abandoned the hope of finding a passage into either Hudson's or Baffin's bay, and resolved to see how far west the continent extended and to sail into the North sea through the passage discovered by Behring just fifty years before. He therefore sailed southwesterly, and on the nineteenth of June fell in with a number of islands which he recognized as the Schumagim group, and where he saw the first evidences of the presence of Russians at any time in those waters, in the form of a piece of paper in the possession of the natives, upon which was written something in a foreign language which he supposed to be Russian. He soon after passed the extremity of the Alaskan peninsula and the islands which seemed an extension of it, and doubling this turned again eastward, soon reaching the large island of Ounalaska, which Russian accounts had frequently mentioned as an important station in their fur trade.
At Ounalaska Cook remained five days, and on the second of July sailed northward along the coast, searching faithfully for a passage eastward. On the ninth of August he reached a point which he correctly believed to be the utmost extremity of the continent, and upon it he bestowed the name of Cape Prince of Wales. The various names and titles of that worthy prince appear to have been as liberally scattered about by the loyal English explorers as were the saints of the Roman calendar by the devout subjects of Spain. Cook crossed Behring's strait from this point, finding it but fifty miles in width, and landed upon the coast of Asia. He explored the Asiatic coast of the Arctic ocean northwestward to Cape North in latitude 68 degrees and 56 minutes, and the American coast northeastward as far as Icy Cape, in latitude 70 degrees and 29 minutes, and being prevented by ice from progressing further returned to Ounalaska, where he fell in with some Russian traders, who soon convinced him that they knew far less of the geography of the North Pacific than he did. He then proceeded to the Sandwich islands to spend the winter, and was slain in an unfortunate affray with the natives on the island of Hawaii on the sixteenth of February, 1779. The death of this renowned explorer, though a sad blow to the enterprise, did not terminate it altogether; yet the results accomplished thereafter were by no means as
PACIFIC COAST. 61
great as they would have been had operations been directed by the great executive ability and geographical knowledge possessed by Cook. Captain Charles Clerke succeeded to the command, and in March, 1779, sailed from the Sandwich islands, with the purpose of passing into the Arctic sea and thence, if possible, into the Atlantic. He headed northward and on the twenty-ninth of April entered the harbor of Petropaulovski in the Bay of Avatscha, the chief military station of Russia in Kamtchatka, where he was received with great courtesy by the officials of the czar. Clerke then sailed into Behring's strait, but was prevented from advancing even as far as the year before by the vast quantities of ice, having arrived too early in the season. Being in ill health and discouraged by his want of success, Captain Clerke returned to Petropaulovski, and died near that port on the twenty-second of August. Lieutenant John Gore succeeded to the command, but deeming the vessels in too battered a condition to endure another season in that rigorous climate, he sailed at once for his native land by the way of Canton, where he had learned, through the Russians, would be found a good market for the furs he had on board.
The vessels arrived in Canton early in December, bearing the first cargo of furs taken from America proper to China, and with the exception of the cargo taken there by Benyowsky and the Polish refugees in 1770, the first to be conveyed into the Celestial Kingdom by sea. This was a very important circumstance, since it was one of the greatest factors that led to the development of the American coast north of California, The furs had been purchased from the natives at Nootka sound, Prince William's sound and other points visited, the seamen exchanging for them the merest trifles in their possession. No care was taken to buy only valuable kinds since they were not purchased upon speculation; nor was any thought taken of their preservation, many of them being ruined as an article of merchandise by being used for beds and clothing. It was only when they reached Petropaulovski and saw how eager the Russians were to purchase them and ship them overland to China that the officers realized how valuable a cargo they possessed. They pursuaded the seamen to cling to their furs until they arrived in Canton, where they assured them much better prices would be realized. The outcome was that what was aboard the two vessels was sold for more than $10,000, and the result so excited the cupidity of the crew, that, though their voyage had already been extended over a space of three years and a half, they became "possessed with a rage to return to the northern coasts, and, by another cargo of skins, to make their fortunes, which was, at one time, not far short of mutiny." The insubordinate tendencies of the crew were repressed, and the Resolution and Discovery sailed homeward from Canton, passed around the Cape of Good Hope, and arrived in England early in October, 1880, having been absent four years and three months, during which time no tidings of them had been received at home, and having lost their gallant commander in battle and his able associate by the hand of disease.
England was at that time engaged in war with both Spain and France, while the patriotic struggle of her American colonies for independence was causing her to put forth her utmost energy to uphold her authority in regions already under her dominion; she had neither time nor means to attempt anything more in foreign countries until her present troubles were overcome, consequently the lords of admiralty withheld, from publication the official record of the voyage until after the conclusion of peace,
62 PACIFIC COAST.
and it was not made public until during the winter of 1884-5. By comparison of voyages it will be seen that Cook saw no portion of America not previously visited by the Spaniards, who had formally taken possession, or by Russian explorers; but his explorations had been so careful, his observations so thorough and his records so accurately kept, that he revolutionized the ideas of Pacific geography.
There remains yet to be recorded a voyage made by the Spaniards contemporaneously with that of Cook, though each was conducted in ignorance of the other. The discoveries of Heceta and Bodega were considered highly important by the authorities of Spain, and they ordered another expedition to be fitted out to make a more thorough examination of the coast, which was not ready for sea for three years. The Princesa and Favorita, the former under the command of Captain Ignacio Arteaga, leader of the expedition, and the latter commanded by Bodega and Maurelle, sailed from San Blas February 7, 1779, only nine days prior to the death of Cook on the island of Hawaii. They visited only such places as had been seen before by Heceta and Bodega, following closely the course pursued the previous year by Captain Cook. Mount St. Elias having been reached and the coast line being observed to run steadily to the west, they were lead, as had been Cook, to look carefully for the Straits of Anian, but, like him, were disappointed. Arteaga was not gifted with the qualities that make a successful pioneer, and becoming discouraged at his want of success and by the symptoms of scurvy observed among the crew, he ordered both vessels to return to San Blas, where they arrived late in November. The observations, records and charts made during this voyage were very inaccurate and of but little value, and the expedition was productive of no benefit to Spain, nor did it reflect any glory upon the nation; yet the officers were rewarded by promotion for their good conduct. Spain had, in the meantime, become involved in war with England and was neither in the condition nor mood to pursue further investigations north of her settlements in California until peace was restored.
BEGINNING OF THE FUR TRADE ON THE PACIFIC COAST.
Cook's Return to England Produces great Results--Russian American Trading Company--Undertaking of John Ledyard--Voyage of the French Explorer LaPerouse--The East India, South Sea, and King George's Sound Companies--Meares Spends a Horrible Winter in the Arctic Regions--Berkeley Discovers the Straits of Fuca --Second Voyage of Captain Meares--He Explores the Straits of Fuca and Attempts to Enter the Columbia.
The lords of admiralty could pigeon-hole the log books of the Resolution and Discovery, but they could not so easily seal the lips of their excited crews, whose tales of the lands visited, wonderful objects and strange races of people seen, and, above all, of the ease with which fortunes could be made, by buying furs on the American coast for a song and trading them in China for valuable cargoes of silks, porcelain and tea, aroused a universal interest in the Pacific, which only the existing state of hostilities in Europe and America was potent to hold in check. The Russians, also, had learned much through the contact of their traders with the English explorers, both on the island of Ounalaska and at the port of Petropaulovski; and, being unhampered by wars, were the first to take advantage of the discoveries of Cook and reap from them substantial results. An association called the Russian American Trading Company was organized in 1781, and in 1783 an expedition of three vessels was sent to the American coast to examine it and plant colonies on the islands and continent as far east as Prince William's sound. The expedition was absent three years and successfully accomplished its mission. These settlements and the power of the Russian American Trading Company were gradually extended until through them Russia obtained complete control of the Alaskan coast as far south as latitude 54 degrees and 40 minutes, and exerted great influence in the Pacific, even establishing in later years a settlement in California, which will be referred to again in these pages.
Several unsuccessful efforts were made to open up a trade between the American coast and China, especially by John Ledyard, an American seaman who had been one of the crew of Cook's vessel. He sought both in America and France to interest capitalists, but was unsuccessful in his efforts to secure backing in his enterprise. He then undertook to cross Russia and Siberia to Kamtchatka, sail thence to Nootka sound, and then traverse the American continent to the Atlantic. In furtherance of this scheme he secured a passport from the empress of Russia, and had advanced as far as Irkutsk, when he was arrested, conducted to the Polish frontier of Russia, and released with the injunction not to again enter the empire. This action was probably instigated by the Russian American Trading Company, which did not relish the idea of a foreigner becoming so familiar with a region which it proposed to monopolize for its own benefit.
King Louis XVI., of France, dispatched an expedition under the command of a most competent and scientific navigator named LaPèrouse, in 1785, immediately after
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the publication of Cook's journal had verified the tales of his seamen and infused into
the commercial world a spirit of adventure in the Pacific. LaPèrouse was instructed to "explore the parts of the northwest coasts of America which had not been examined by Cook, and of which the Russian accounts gave no idea, in order to obtain information respecting the fur trade, and also to learn whether, in those unknown parts, some river or internal sea might not be found communicating with Hudson's bay or Baffin's bay." LaPèrouse reached the coast in the vicinity of Mount Fairweather June 23, 1786, where he remained at anchor several weeks, and then sailed southward, examining the coast and discovering that many points formerly considered portions of the mainland were, in reality, but parts of islands. Though the first to ascertain this fact he received no credit for it, since his vessels were wrecked in the New Hebrides and his journal was not published until 1797, several years after other explorers had discovered and made known the same facts.
England's anxiety to further her interests in the Pacific led her to adopt a policy which, so far as the American coast was concerned, had the effect of hampering her efforts to secure a foothold on the coast. Notwithstanding the fact that the Hudson's Bay Company had been instrumental in checking the general progress of the nation on the Atlantic coast, and had headed off or rendered futile all explorations of its territory, Great Britain seems not to have learned a lesson from experience and was ready to repeat the experiment. To the great East India Company she had granted chartered rights which have been so well improved that a vast territory, an enormous commerce, millions of subjects, in fact a new empire, have been added to the British crown, and the queen of England now subscribes herself empress of the Indies. To this company was granted the privilege of trading with the Asiatic coast and adjacent islands of the Pacific to the complete exclusion of all other British subjects whatever. To a new association called the South Sea Company a like exclusive privilege of all the commerce of the American coast of the Pacific was given. Thus all independent English traders were shut out from the Pacific entirely, and Great Britain was compelled to rely upon these two companies for the advancement of her interests in this quarter of the globe; since no vessels but those of the East India Company could carry the English flag around the Cape of Good Hope and none but those of its rival could enter the Pacific by the way of Cape Horn. But it was soon found that the interests of these two companies were antagonistic and their granted privileges conflicting, when applied to the practical demands of trade. The South Sea Company could load its ships with furs at Nootka and Prince William's sound, but it could not dispose of them in China; on the other hand its powerful rival which controlled the Chinese market was debarred from sending its vessels to trade for furs on the American coast.
The first successful voyage was that of James Hanna, an Englishman, who sailed from Macao in 1785, and procured a cargo of furs at Nootka sound, which he sold in China for $20,000. He repeated the trip the following year, but encountered so much opposition from other traders who were then on the coast, and found so poor a market in China, which had been glutted with furs, that nothing was realized from the speculation. In 1785 the King George's Sound Company was organized in England and procured special permits from the South Sea Company and the East India Company,
PACIFIC COAST. 65
which enabled it to trade in the Pacific waters. The King George and Queen Charlotte were dispatched to the American coast under the command of Captains Portlock and Dixon, and traded two years without paying expenses because of the competition and overstocked market. Two other vessels were sent by the company, which arrived in 1787 just before Portlock and Dixon took their departure; but the new discoveries made by all these traders were confined to ascertaining that the coast above the 49th parallel was fringed by hundreds of large and small islands, and that it was only these islands which had been visited by the earlier explorers.
This led to the idea that the whole northwestern continent was in fact but an immense archipelago of islands, through which it would be possible to reach the Atlantic. This was the opinion formed by Captain Meares in 1789, who assigned as one of his reasons for holding that belief, that "the channels of this archipelago were found to be wide and capacious, with near two hundred fathoms deep of water, and huge promontories stretching out into the sea, where whales and sea-otters were seen in incredible abundance. In some of these channels there are islands of ice, which we may venture to say could never have formed on the western side of America, which possesses a mild and moderate climate; so that their existence cannot be reconciled to any other idea, than that they received their formation in the eastern seas, and have been drifted by the tides and currents through the passage for whose existence we are contending." The intelligent mariner seems to have forgotten the ice encountered by Cook in Behring's strait and the terrible winter he himself spent on the Alaskan coast.
Captain Meares was a lieutenant of the British navy, off duty and on half pay. In 1787 the great East India Company fitted out two vessels to trade between Nootka sound and China, assigning the Nootka to the command of Meares and the Sea-Otter to Lieutenant Walter Tipping. This was the second venture of the company in this direction, as two small vessels had been dispatched the year before, which had enjoyed a reasonable measure of success.
The Sea-Otter is known to have reached Prince William's sound, but her voyage from that port is hidden in mystery while her ultimate fate is unknown. It is probable that she and her crew went to the bottom of the sea, for if wrecked upon the coast and her crew murdered by the natives, it would seem almost impossible that no trace of them should ever have been discovered. The Nootka, also, followed the course of the Japan current, crossed the Aleutian group between Ounamak and Ounalaska islands, and finally came to anchor in Prince William's sound, with the purpose of spending the winter there and resuming the voyage in the spring. During October, November and December their stay in the sound was quite endurable, but the horrors of an Arctic winter, with which English seamen were entirely unfamiliar, then began to crowd upon them. Ice hemmed in the vessel, snow covered it in drifts, all fowl and animal life deserted the sound, including the migratory natives who had been living there when they arrived. The sickly sun peeped over the horizon's rim but a few moments at noon, and then the almost perpetually-falling snow obscured it from view, "tremendous mountains forbade almost a sight of the sky, and cast their nocturnal shadows over the ship in the midst of day," scurvy, that horrible scourge of the sea, began its ravages among the crew, and horrors were "heaped on horror's head." From January to May twenty-three of the men died and the remainder were rendered unfit
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to perform any labor whatever. In May the birds and animals returned, the ice disappeared, the natives once more greeted their stricken visitors, the vessel was released from its icy chains, and in June Meares sailed to the Sandwich islands and from there to China, having achieved but the honor of being the first English navigator to spend the winter on the Alaskan coast. The East India Company were satisfied with these two disastrous voyages, but not so Captain Meares, who began making preparations for another visit to the American coast.
The entrance to the Straits of Fuca were seen for the first time since they were entered by the old Greek pilot by Captain Berkeley, an Englishman, though in command of a ship belonging to the Austrian East India Company. In sailing south from the coast of Vancouver island in his vessel the Imperial Eagle, Captain Berkeley noticed a broad opening between latitudes 48 and 49 degrees and just north of Cape Flattery, south of which Cook, Bodega and Heceta had made such careful search for the reputed passage. Noting the discovery upon his chart but making no effort to explore the opening, Berkeley continued south along the coast and at the Isla de los Dolores lost a boat's crew at the hands of Indians almost at the same spot where Bodega's men had been murdered; and for this reason he called the unfortunate place Destruction island.
The next voyage of importance was that of the second visit to our coast by Captain Meares. In China the Portuguese were given special privileges and exemptions, and in order to reap the advantage of this two vessels were fitted out at the Portuguese port of Macao, near Canton, having nominal captains of that nation and receiving permission from the governor to carry the Portuguese flag. Their actual commanders were Captain Meares of the ship Felice, and William Douglas of the brig Iphigenia, though those gentlemen appear upon the papers simply in the capacity of supercargoes. Nor was this alone the object of the use of Portugal's flag, since by so doing the act of Parliament excluding all British vessels from the Pacific except those of the East India and South Sea companies could be evaded. Greenhow endeavors to prove that these two vessels were actually the property of Juan Cavallo, the Portuguese whose name appears as owner in the ship's papers, and that the Portuguese captains were the bona fide commanders of the vessels; and he so far succeeds in his effort as to raise a strong presumption that, if such was not the case, these Portuguese were at least something more than mere figureheads in the enterprise. The plan of the voyage was for the Felice to go to Nootka sound and coast up and down from that harbor exploring the coast and trading with the natives; the Iphigenia was to proceed at once to Cook's inlet and trade southward to Nootka, where one of the vessels was to load all the furs and return to Macao, the other to remain there or at the Sandwich islands until spring.
In pursuance of this plan of operations the Felice sailed for Nootka sound in the winter of 1787-8, and immediately upon her arrival the construction of a small schooner was begun by her crew, to be used for trading along the coast. While this work was progressing Meares made a short voyage southward; but before going he secured from Maquinna, the chief, the privilege of erecting a house for the abode and protection of the working party left behind. The consideration for this favor was a brace of pistols and the free gift of the house and its contents when he took his final
PACIFIC COAST. 67
departure. This shows conclusively that the house was only for temporary occupancy, yet Meares, afterwards, in view of subsequent events, laid claim to having made a permanent settlement in the name of the king of England; though how he could have done so while acting, even nominally, in the capacity of supercargo of a Portuguese vessel, he fails to explain.
Having built his house, and surrounded it with a rampart of earth surmounted with a small cannon for the protection of its inmates, Meares sailed south along the coast in search of the passage which had been discovered the previous year by Berkeley. On the twenty-ninth of June, 1788, in latitude 48 degrees and 39 minutes, he observed a broad inlet, and in his narrative lays claim to its first discovery, by claiming that "the fact of the coast along which we were now sailing had not been seen by Captain Cook, and we know no other navigator, said to have been this way, except Maurelle," though in the introduction to the narrative he mentions the fact of Berkeley's discovery the year before. He says: "From the masthead, it was observed to stretch to the east by the north, and a clear and unbounded horizon was seen in this direction as far as the eye could reach. The strongest curiosity impelled us to enter this strait, which we shall call by the name of its original discoverer, John de Fuca." Duffin, mate of the Felice, was sent up the strait with a boat's crew of thirteen men and provisions for a month. They returned in a week, every one of them suffering from wounds received in a conflict with the natives. The boat had proceeded only ten miles up the strait, [Meares claimed thirty, but Duffin's statement places it at ten], and had been attacked with great ferocity and bravery by the savages who seemed not to care for the destruction caused by the fire arms nor to be frightened by the noise they made. They used their bows and arrows, clubs, stone bludgeons, spears and slings with great skill and effect, so much so that had it not been for the protection afforded by the awning of the boat few of the crew would have escaped with their lives.
Meares then sailed south in search of the Rio de San Roque of Heceta. On the fifth of July he observed a headland which he called Cape Shoalwater and on approaching nearer the coast the next day saw beyond this a promontory which he conceived to be one side of Heceta's inlet. He says: "After we had rounded the promontory a large bay, as we had imagined, opened to our view, that bore a very promising appearance, and into it we steered with every encouraging expectation. The high land that formed the boundaries of the bay was at a great distance, and a flat, level country occupied the intervening space; the bay itself took rather a westerly direction. As we steered in the water shoaled to nine, eight and seven fathoms, when breakers were seen from the deck right ahead, and, from the masthead, they were observed to extend across the bay; we therefore hauled out, and directed our course to the opposite shore, to see if there was any channel or if we could discover any point. The name of Cape Disappointment was given to the promontory (Cape Hancock), and the bay obtained the title of Deception bay. * * * * We can now with safety assert that there is no such river as that of St. Roc exists, as laid down in the Spanish charts. To those of Maurelle [Bodega's pilot] we made continual reference, but without deriving any information or assistance from them. We now reached the opposite side of the bay, where disappointment continued to accompany us, and, being almost certain that there we should obtain no place of shelter for the ship, we bore for a distant headland, keep-
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ing our course within two miles of the shore." The distant headland he named Cape Lookout, it being the one called Cape Falcon by the Spaniards and now known as Tillamook head.
Having now "traced every part of the coast which unfavorable weather had prevented Captain Cook from approaching," Meares returned to Nootka sound, where he was soon joined by the Iphigenia, which had been very successful in its traffic with the northern natives. The little schooner was then launched, the first vessel constructed on the Northern Pacific coast, and the very appropriate title of Northwest America was bestowed upon her. Leaving orders for the schooner and the Iphigenia to winter at Hawaii, Meares sailed in the Felice for China, taking with him all the accumulated furs.
Before Meares quitted Nootka sound, two American vessels entered it, bearing the happily-chosen names of Columbia and Washington, the former being a ship and the latter a sloop. The commerce of the colonies had been entirely destroyed during the long struggle for independence, but immediately after the treaty of Ghent the citizens of the new republic began to make their presence felt in every commercial mart. The seal and whale fishing around Cape Horn was resumed, and as early as 1784 an American vessel entered the harbor of Canton, while in 1787 no less than five were engaged in the trade with China. Being unencumbered with restrictions such as England had imposed upon all British vessels except those of her chartered monopolies, they could embark in the fur trade with every prospect of success, and it was as a venture in this direction that the Columbia and Washington were fitted out in Boston and dispatched to the Pacific, with an ample supply of such goods and trinkets as were the most highly prized by the Indians. John Kendrick was the commander of the Columbia and leader of the expedition, while the Washington was under the command of Robert Gray.
Soon after entering the Pacific around Cape Horn, in January, 1788, the two vessels were separated by a severe gale and were not again united until the following October in Nootka sound. The Washington kept her course northward, and in August reached the Oregon coast near the 46th parallel, where she ran aground while attempting to enter an opening in the land which was probably the mouth of the Columbia. After repelling an attack of the natives, during which the mate was wounded and one of the men killed, the Washington succeeded in again floating into deep water. She then went directly to Nootka sound, where were found the Felice, Iphigenia and Northwest America, her appearance there being an unexpected surprise to Captain Meares and his associates. A few days later the Columbia also entered the sound to join her consort, having been compelled after the storm near Cape Horn to enter the harbor of the Island of Juan Fernandez for repairs, where Captain Kendrick had been most courteously treated by the commandant of the Spanish forces stationed there. Meares soon sailed to China in the Felice, and the Iphigenia and Northwest America proceeded to the Sandwich islands to spend the winter, the two American vessels lying at anchor in Nootka sound until the following spring.
CONFLICT OF AUTHORITY AT NOOTKA SOUND.
Anxiety of Spain lest her Claims in the Pacific be Overthrown--Voyage of Martinez and Haro--Alarming Encroachments of the Russians--Spain Dispatches Martinez and Haro to Nootka Sound to Take Possession --New Venture of Captain Meares--High-Handed Conduct of Martinez at Nootka--Captains Colnett and Hodson Sent to San Blas as Prisoners--Gray Explores the Straits of Fuca--Release of Colnett--Diplomatic Controversy Between England and Spain.
The uneasiness felt by England in 1776 when reports reached the kingdom that Spain was diligently exploring and colonizing the Pacific coast of America, was now experienced in even a greater degree by Spain herself, who saw vessels of foreign nations, and especially those of her dreaded rival, entering the Pacific from both the east and the west. She had not receded in the least degree from the extreme position taken by her in the sixteenth century, and not only claimed dominion over all the Pacific coast of America, but a complete monopoly of its trade to the exclusion of the vessels of all other nations whatever.
In pursuance of this policy Don Blas Gonzales, the commandant at Juan Fernandez, was recalled and cashiered by the captain general of Chili for his hospitable treatment of Captain Kendrick, and this action was endorsed by the viceroy of Peru. The delinquent officer was informed that he should have enforced the royal ordinance of 1692, which decreed that all foreign vessels of any nation, no matter on how friendly terms they might be with Spain, should be seized whenever found in Pacific waters, unless they could exhibit a license from the Spanish court. The authorities in all ports were then specially instructed to seize all foreign vessels, since no nation had a right to any territory in America which made a passage of Cape Horn necessary in order to reach it; and the Spanish viceroy even went so far as to dispatch a cruiser from Callao in search of the Columbia, with instructions to capture her if possible.
The Spanish authorities now realized that something must be done to establish settlements north of California, their utmost limit at that time being the mission at San Francisco. Beyond that, though claiming exclusive authority and dominion, they actually knew less of the geography of the coast than either the English or Russians. An expedition was accordingly fitted out in Mexico in 1788, to be sent on a voyage of inquiry, for the double purpose of learning the extent of Russian settlements in the north, and selecting suitable locations for a number of proposed Spanish colonies. The fleet consisted of the Princesa, commanded by Estivan Martinez, former pilot of Juan Perez, and the San Carlos under command of Lieutenant Gonzalo Haro.
The two consorts sailed from San Blas March 8, 1788, and reached Prince William's sound on the twenty-fifth of May, where they lay nearly a month without making any attempt at exploration. There was a marked and radical difference
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between the English and Spanish methods of conducting operations of this character; for while the latter seemed, either from lack of energy or want of the true spirit of the explorer, to be satisfied with an occasional visit to the coast here and there, making a few almost valueless notes of what they saw, the English, on the contrary, seemed imbued with enthusiasm, exploring the shore carefully, taking continual observations, noting every peculiarity, and keeping a record of much geographical and scientific value. One of these careful English voyages was worth to the world a dozen such skimmings as the Spaniards indulged in.
About the end of June Haro sailed southwest with the San Carlos and fell in with the Island of Kodiak, upon which was a Russian trading post. From the official in charge, a Greek named Delaref, he received minute information as to the character, number and location of all Russian establishments in America. He returned to Prince William's sound to join Martinez, who had been amusing himself meanwhile by making a few cursory explorations, and the two then sailed for Ounalaska, where they remained nearly a month enjoying the hospitality of the Russian traders. With the first signs of coming winter they bade adieu to Alaska and returned to San Blas to report to the viceroy.
According to the statement given by them and forwarded to Madrid, there were eight Russian settlements on the coast, all situated west of Prince William's sound, while one was then being established in that locality; and these were occupied by 252 subjects of the empress, chiefly natives of Siberia and Kamtchatka. It was also reported that information had been received of two vessels which had been dispatched to Nootka sound to effect a settlement, and of two others then being constructed at Ochotsk for a similar purpose. The court of Spain was much agitated by this information. It revealed a state of affairs highly prejudicial to the interests of Spain on our coast. Already Russia had made settlements such as gave her title to the Alaskan regions and was developing alarming symptoms of a purpose to establish herself still further to the southward. Though the presence of English and American traders on the coast was annoying in the extreme, the conduct of Russia was positively alarming, and Spain realized that nothing but heroic remedies instantly applied would be at all effective to ward off the impending danger.
A communication was at once forwarded to the empress of Russia, remonstrating against the encroachments of her subjects upon the dominions of Spain, to which was replied that Russian subjects in America were acting under instructions not to invade the territory of other nations; but as neither the remonstrance nor the reply defined the limit claimed for their respective dominions, nothing definite was settled by the correspondence between the two powers. While this piece of diplomacy was being indulged in by the home government, the viceroy in Mexico was applying the heroic remedy. Early in 1789 he dispatched Martinez and Haro in their two vessels to take possession of Nootka sound, instructing them to treat all foreigners with courtesy, but to maintain the authority of Spain and her right of dominion at all hazards. Meanwhile other vessels were headed for Nootka sound. The Iphigenia and Northwest America, having spent the winter at Hawaii, and still sailing under the Portuguese flag and license, reaching the port in April in a most deplorable condition, so much so that they had to procure supplies and means for continuing their trade
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with the natives from the two American vessels still lying there. Meares had upon his return to China formed a trading arrangement with the representatives of the King George's Sound Company, and in the spring dispatched the Argonaut and Princess Royal to Nootka, remaining himself in China to conduct the company's affairs there in person. Since these vessels were provided with licences from both the East India and the South Sea companies, the Portuguese flag was dispensed with, and they sailed under the British colors.
On the sixth of May, 1789, the Princesa anchored at Nootka, finding there the Columbia and Iphigenia, the other two being absent on a trading voyage along the coast. Martinez at once notified Captains Douglas and Kendrick of his intention to take possession in the name of the king of Spain, examined their papers, and then landed and began the erection of a fort in a commanding position on a small island in the bay. No objection was made to these proceedings and the utmost cordial relations existed for sometime between the representatives of the three great nations. Douglas still preserved the Portuguese character of the Iphigenia, displayed that flag at her masthead, and even paid Martinez for supplies furnished by him in bills drawn upon Juan Cavallo, the reputed Portuguese owner of the vessel, ignorant of the fact that the Macao merchant had become bankrupt and that Meares had transferred the whole expedition into English hands and discarded the Portuguese feature.
A week later, on the fourteenth of May, Captain Haro arrived in the San Carlos, and the next day Captain Viana and Supercargo Douglas were invited by Martinez to visit his ship. When the guests entered the cabin of the Princesa they were told to consider themselves prisoners, while at the same time the brig was taken possession of by the Spaniards. On the twenty-sixth of May the Iphigenia, was released upon the signing by her officers of a paper certifying that they had been kindly treated and not interfered with by the Spaniards. The Iphigenia then sailed up the coast, procured a valuable cargo of furs, and returned to China, where Douglas severed his connection with the vessel. From this circumstance and the fact that she continued to sail under the Portuguese flag it would seem evident that she was in reality a genuine Portuguese vessel, and had not been included by Meares in his new arrangement with the King George's Sound Company. This being the case it is evident that upon her actions, or those of her two consorts the previous year, no claim could be founded by England, yet such was done and persistently adhered to, on the ground that the vessels were actually British though nominally Portuguese in their character.
On the eighth of June, subsequent to the release and departure of the Iphigenia, the little Northwest America sailed into port, carrying the Portuguese flag, and was immediately seized by the Spanish commandant. A few days later the Princess Royal arrived from Macao, with the British ensign displayed at her masthead. When Martinez learned from Captain Hodson that Cavallo had failed, he declared that he would hold the little schooner for what was due him on the bills drawn by Douglas, and releasing the crew from custody and permitting them to place the greater quantity of their furs on board the Princess Royal, he dispatched the schooner on a trading-voyage under the command of one the mates of the Columbia.
The Princess Royal sailed from Nootka on the second of July, and the same day the Argonaut, commanded by Captain Colnett, entered, though not till the captain was as-
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sured by Martinez that it was perfectly safe for him to do so, his timidity being caused by information imparted to him of the conduct of Martinez in relation to the Iphigenia and Northwest America. Having entered the bay and anchored between the Princesa and San Carlos, Captain Colnett arrayed himself in full uniform and boarded the Princesa in acceptance of an invitation from Martinez to pay him a visit and exhibit his papers. He descended into the cabin and a most stormy interview ensued between him and the Spanish commandant. Colnett informed Martinez that it was his purpose and intention to occupy Nootka sound in the name of King George of England, and to erect suitable fortifications for its defense; and was in turn notified that such action on his part would not be tolerated, since Spain had already taken possession. The English captain became angry and asserted his intention to carry out his purpose in the face of all opposition, whereupon Martinez sent for a file of marines and made him a prisoner; at the same time a detachment boarded the Argonaut and took possession of her in the name of the king of Spain, making prisoners of the entire crew. A few days later the Princess Royal appeared at the entrance to the sound, and was instantly boarded by the Spaniards and brought into port as a prize. On the thirteenth of July Colnett, with all his officers and the greater portion of the captured crews, was placed on board the Argonaut and sent as a prisoner to San Blas. The other ship was supplied with a complement of officers and men from the Spanish vessels, and was employed for two years in the service of Spain. The officers and crew of the Northwest America, together with some of the seamen on board the other vessels, were sent to China in the Columbia, the American captain receiving a portion of the furs captured with the Princess Royal in payment of their passage.
During all these troubles the two American vessels were unmolested, their commanders mediating frequently between the contending parties, though generally to little purpose. The Columbia remained continuously at Nootka, while her smaller consort traded and explored up and down the coast and collected a valuable cargo of furs. Captain Gray sailed in the Washington through the straits between Queen Charlotte island and the main land, and called the former Washington island, though the name seems to have lacked adhesive properties. He also sailed up the Straits of Fuca a distance of fifty miles, the Washington being the first vessel to actually enter and explore that great outlet of Puget sound. Early in the fall Captains Kendrick and Gray exchanged vessels, the latter sailing in the Columbia for China with a large cargo of furs and the passengers sent by Martinez, while Kendrick remained on the coast with the Washington to prosecute the business of collecting peltry from the natives. In September Martinez and Haro took their departure in obedience to instructions received from the viceroy, and Nootka was left without a claimant.
The Argonaut with its load of English prisoners reached San Blas on the sixteenth of August. The commandant at that port, who was Bodega y Quadra, the explorer, treated Captain Colnett with great courtesy and soon afterwards sent him to Mexico, where the merits of his case were inquired into officially by the viceroy. It was finally decided that Martinez, though simply carrying out the letter of his instructions, had acted somewhat injudiciously, and that the prisoners should be released and the captured vessels restored. Consequently Captain Colnett sailed in the Argonaut for Nootka sound in the spring of 1790, and failing to find the Princess Royal set out in
PACIFIC COAST. 73
search of her, and did not succeed in obtaining possession until a year later at the Sandwich islands.
The release of Colnett and the restoration of his damaged vessels was by no means the end of the Nootka affair. England and Spain engaged in a diplomatic controversy in regard to it, which seriously threatened to involve Europe in a general war, and that dreadful result was only avoided by the mutual dislike of both nations to precipitate such a bloody conflict. France, Spain and England had not yet recovered from their recent struggle, and none of them were anxious to renew the contest. The Columbia arrived in China with intelligence of the Nootka seizures late in the fall of 1789, and Meares, arming himself with statements and depositions in regard to the affair, hastened to England, to seek redress for his wrongs and losses. He arrived in April and found negotiations already in progress. Spain had undertaken to assert at home the same ideas of universal supremacy in the Pacific that had been the sole cause of trouble at Nootka, and had sent a communication to the king of England on the tenth of February, notifying him that certain of his subjects had been infringing upon her exclusive rights on the American coast, that in consequence the ship Argonaut had been seized as a prize and her crew imprisoned, and strongly protesting against his majesty permitting any of his subjects to either make settlements or engage in fishing or trade on the American coast of the Pacific, and demanding punishment of all such offenders. England's reply to this haughty demand was characteristic of that nation, which has always kept a protecting arm around its citizens in every quarter of the globe. It was brief and to the point, notifying the court of Madrid that since it was evident from the Spanish protest that English subjects had been imprisoned and their property confiscated, proper satisfaction for the insult and reparation of the injury must be made before the merits of the controversy would be inquired into. The tone of the reply was so belligerent that Spain at once began to prepare for war, but to avoid this if possible concluded to modify her demands, and notified England that if his majesty would in future keep his subjects out of the Spanish dominions, she would let the matter drop where it was.
Soon after this Meares arrived in England with his version of the affair, which placed it in entirely a new light. Two large fleets were ordered to be fitted for war, and a statement of the affair together with the correspondence with Spain was submitted to parliament, which voted ample supplies and endorsed the most vigorous measures for upholding the rights and maintaining the honor of England. A demand was made upon Spain for satisfaction. Much controversy followed--messages flying backwards and forwards for three months, during which Europe was kept in a high state of excitement. England made full preparations for a descent upon the Spanish settlements in America, and assembled the greatest armament the nation had ever put forth. She formed an alliance with Sweden and the Netherlands in anticipation of the union of Spain and France against her, since it was a well-known fact that a family compact for mutual aid existed between the members of the Bourbon family occupying the thrones of those two kingdoms. The king of Spain formally called upon Louis XVI. of France, for the promised aid, but the nation was even then tottering on the brink of that horrible abyss of revolution into which it soon plunged, and the
doomed monarch was powerless. The national assembly investigated the treaty, sug-
74 PACIFIC COAST.
gested that a new and more definite one be made, and ordered an increase of the navy, but offered Spain no encouragement that assistance would be given her. England's northern allies were in no condition to render her material aid, her exchequer was exhausted by her great preparations for war, serious trouble was brewing in the East Indies, and the threatening aspect of affairs in France warned her that to form a protective alliance with Spain would be far wiser than to go to war. All these considerations caused Great Britain to recede from her bellicose position and secretly seek the mediation of France. After much negotiation the treaty of Nootka was signed October 28,1790, and the threatened war was averted.
The treaty stipulated that all buildings and tracts of land on the northwest coast of America of which Spanish officers had dispossessed any British subjects should be restored; that just reparation should be made by both parties to the agreement for any acts of violence committed by the subjects of either of them upon the subjects of the other; that any property seized should be restored or compensated for; that subjects of Great Britain should not approach within ten leagues of any part of the coast already occupied by Spain; that north of that point both parties should have equal rights, as well as south of the limits of Spanish settlements in South America. These were the general features of the convention between the two nations, and were very distasteful to a large party in parliament, who opposed the treaty on the ground that England gained nothing and lost much; that formerly British subjects claimed and fully exercised the right of settlement and trade in the Pacific, whereas England had now restricted herself to limits and conditions exceedingly detrimental to her commerce and general interests. The treaty, however, was sustained by the administration majority in Parliament.
DISCOVERY OF PUGET SOUND AND THE COLUMBIA.
England Sends Vancouver to the Pacific--Kendrick Sails Around Vancouver Island in the "Washington"--Spain Again Takes Possession of Nootka and Explores the Coast--Lieutenant Quimper Explores the Entrance to Puget Sound--Malaspina Searches for the Straits of Anian--Second Voyage of the "Columbia"--Gray Builds the "Adventure" at Cloyoquot--Spain Investigates the Desirability of Holding Nootka-- Arrival of Vancouver--His Opinion that no such Stream as the Columbia Could Exist--Captain Gray Enters the Columbia--Vancouver Explores and Names Puget Sound--Negotiations at Nootka--Broughton Explores the Columbia--Vancouver in 1793 and 1794-- Northwest Company Organized--Mackenzie's Journey to the Pacific.
Commissioners were appointed by England and Spain to proceed to Nootka and execute that portion of the treaty referring to the restoration of property. Captain George Vancouver was selected by Great Britain for that service, and given instructions to explore the coast thoroughly, and especially to "examine the supposed Strait of Juan de Fuca, said to be situated between the 48th and 49th degrees of north latitude, and to lead to an opening through which the sloop Washington is reported to
PACIFIC COAST. 75
have passed in 1789, and to have come out again to the northward of Nootka." In March, 1791, Vancouver sailed in the sloop of war Discovery accompanied by Lieutenant W. R. Broughton in the armed tender Chatham, both vessels being armed for war and equipped for a long voyage, and did not reach Nootka until a year later.
In the fall of 1789, subsequent to the departure of Gray in the Columbia, Captain Kendrick passed with the Washington entirely through the Straits of Fuca and between Vancouver island and the mainland of British Columbia, the American flag being thus the first to wave over the waters of that great inland sea. It was this passage of the Washington which is referred to in the extract given above of the instructions of the lords of admiralty to Captain Vancouver.
In the spring of 1790 the Mexican viceroy dispatched a fleet to again take possession of Nootka, under the command of Captain Francisco Elisa, the fiery Martinez having been removed. Nootka was, therefore, in full possession, of the Spaniards during the time England and Spain were conducting their negotiations. Upon resuming possession of Nootka, Spain began a series of short voyages of exploration, more particularly to ascertain what settlements were being made by the Russians or other foreigners than to accomplish anything of geographical value. The most important of these was that of Lieutenant Quimper, who sailed from Nootka in the summer of 1790, in the Princess Royal, which had not yet been restored to Captain Colnett, and entered the Straits of Fuca a distance of 100 miles, carefully examining both shores of the passage. He penetrated into the entrance of Puget sound, but was prevented by lack of time from exploring the numerous arms which he observed branching off in all directions, many of them evidently extending inland to a great distance. Upon some of these he bestowed names, none of which are now used except Canal de Guemes and Canal de Haro.
The next most important was that of Captains Malaspina and Bustamente in the Descubierta and Atrevida. During the controversy over the Nootka seizures, the romance of Maldonado about the Straits of Anian was rescued from the obscurity into which it had long since passed, and received the endorsement of many able persons. In consequence of this the expedition was fitted out by Spain to ascertain the truth of the narrative, and was dispatched to the coast in the summer of 1791. Malaspina carefully explored the shore line in the region of the 60th parallel, where Maldonado located the passage, and became convinced that there could be no strait leading through the chain of mountains which bordered the coast. He then proceeded to Nootka, where he arrived in August.
During this time the coast was visited by one French, nine English and seven American trading vessels. As their objects were purely commercial, little was accomplished by any of them in the line of new discoveries of importance, though each added a little to the fast-growing knowledge of the coast. There was one, however, an American vessel, which made the greatest discovery on the coast, and added to the territories of the United States the vast region which, sneered at and reviled for years, now has unstinted praise showered upon it from the four corners of the globe, and like the stone the builders rejected at the temple of the magnificent Solomon, seems about to be made the corner stone and crowning glory of the Union. This vessel was the Columbia, commanded by Captain Robert Gray. Passing over the voyages of
76 PACIFIC COAST.
other traders and all immaterial details, we proceed directly to the valuable discoveries made by Gray.
The Columbia sailed from Boston on her second visit to the Pacific on the twenty-eighth of September, 1790, reached the coast in June, and traded and explored among the islands and inlets about Queen Charlotte's island until September. She then sailed down the coast to Cloyoquot, north of the entrance to the Straits of Fuca, where a landing was effected and the winter passed in a fortified structure which was called Fort Defiance. During the winter Gray constructed at Cloyoquot a small vessel which he named the Adventure, to be used in collecting furs from the natives. This was the second vessel built on the Northern Pacific coast, the first being the Northwest America, constructed by Meares at Nootka in 1788. In the spring the Adventure was dispatched on a trading expedition to the north, while Gray sailed southward along the coast on a voyage of exploration.
Early in the spring of 1792 the viceroy of Mexico took energetic steps to determine the question of whether the settlement at Nootka was worth contending for, in view of the expected arrival of Captain Vancouver. If there was a navigable northwest passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, then a station at that point would be invaluable to the interests of Spain, but if the continent was continuous, so that all vessels would be compelled to enter the Pacific from the south, an establishment in so high an altitude would not be of sufficient importance to make a contest for its possession advisable. To ascertain these facts a vessel was dispatched to search for the Rio de los Reyes in the latitude of 53 degrees, two others were to explore and ascertain the exact nature of the Straits of Juan de Fuca, while a fourth was instructed to seek along the coast of the mainland further to the southward for a suitable location to which to remove in case the settlement at Nootka should be abandoned. At the same time Captain Bodega y Quadra proceeded to Nootka as commissioner to meet Captain Vancouver and fulfill the terms of the treaty, with instructions to abandon Nootka if he deemed it necessary and remove all Spanish subjects to the new location further south. In April the Discovery and Chatham arrived off the coast in the vicinity of Cape Mendocino, and sailed slowly northward, careful observations being taken and a strict examination being made of the shore for the discovery of harbors or navigable rivers and especially the river of Martin de Aguilar. A point which he conceived to be the Cape Blanco indicated on the Spanish charts, Vancouver marked down upon his own chart as Cape Orford. The next instance worthy of note was his passage of the mouth of the Columbia, which was indicated on the Spanish charts he carried as Heceta inlet or the entrance to the Rio de San Roque, while on his English map it was noted as the Deception bay of Captain Meares. On the twenty-seventh of April he recorded in his journal: "Noon brought us up with a conspicuous point of land composed of a cluster of hummocks, moderately high and projecting into the sea. On the south side of this promontory was the appearance of an inlet, or small river, the land not indicating it to be of any great extent, nor did it seem to be accessible to vessels of our burthen, as the breakers extended from the above point two or three miles into the ocean, until they joined those on the beach nearly four leagues further south. On reference to Mr. Meares's description of the coast south of this promontory, I was at first induced to believe it to be Cape Shoalwater, but on ascertaining its latitude, I pre-
PACIFIC COAST. 77
sumed it to be that which he calls Cape Disappointment; and the opening to the south of it Deception bay. This cape was found to be in latitude 46° 19', longitude 236° 6' [He reckoned east from Greenwich.] The sea now changed from its natural to river coloured water; the probable consequence of some streams falling into the bay, or into the ocean to the north of it, through the low land. Not considering this opening worthy of more attention, I continued our pursuit to the N. W., being desirous to embrace the advantages of the prevailing breeze and pleasant weather, so favorable to our examination of the coast."
Vancouver rounded Cape Disappointment and continued up the shore. He says: "The country before us presented a most luxuriant landscape, and was probably not a little heightened in value by the weather that prevailed. The more interior parts were somewhat elevated, and agreeably diversified with hills, from which it gradually descended from the shore, and terminated in a sandy beach. The whole had the appearance of a continued forest extending north as far as the eye could reach, which made me very solicitous to find a port in the vicinity of a country presenting so delightful a prospect of fertility; our attention was therefore earnestly directed to this object." At one time he was of the opinion that Shoalwater bay presented a suitable harbor, but renounced the belief upon attempting to enter the bay and failing because of the presence of an unbroken line of breakers. They passed Gray's harbor in the night, and after noting the position of Destruction island and observing Mount Olympus, "the most remarkable mountain we had seen on the coast of New Albion," fell in with the Columbia a few miles south of the Straits of Fuca.
Vancouver sent an officer to the American vessel to glean information from its commander, who hesitated not to tell all he knew of the coast. Among other things the English captain, notes in his journal: "He likewise informed them of his having been off the mouth of a river in the latitude 46° 10', where the outset, or reflux, was so strong as to prevent his entering for nine days. This was probably the opening passed by us on the forenoon of the twenty-seventh; and was, apparently, inaccessible, not from the current, but from the breakers which extended across it." That Gray must have made this effort to enter the Columbia sometime the previous year is evident from the fact that Vancouver states that he was "now commencing his summer's trade along the coast to the southward." The above remarks show plainly that Vancouver had no faith in the existence of such a stream as Aguilar's river, Rio de San Roque, Oregon, or River of the West, and this is rendered more certain by an entry in his journal made upon reaching Cape Flattery, that there "was not the least appearance of a safe or secure harbour, either in that latitude, or from it southward to Cape Mendocino; notwithstanding that, in that space, geographers had thought it expedient to furnish many. * * * So minutely had this extensive coast been inspected, that the surf had been constantly seen to break upon its shores from the masthead; and it was but in a few small intervals only, where our distance precluded its being visible from the deck. Whenever the weather prevented our making free with the shore, or on our hauling off for the night, the return of fine weather and of daylight uniformly brought us, if not to the identical spot we had departed from, at least within a few miles of it, and never beyond the northern limits of the coast which we had previously seen. An examination so directed, and circumstances happily concurring
78 PACIFIC COAST.
to permit its being so executed, afforded the most complete opportunity of determining its various turnings and windings. * * * It must be considered as a very singular circumstance that, in so great an extent of sea coast, we should not until now [He was in the Straits of Fuca] have seen the appearance of any opening in its shores which presented any certain prospect of affording shelter; the whole coast forming one compact, solid, and nearly straight barrier against the sea. The river Mr. Gray mentioned should, from the latitude he assigned to it, have existence in the bay, south of Cape Disappointment. This we passed on the forenoon of the twenty-seventh; and, as I then observed, if any inlet or river should be found, it must be a very intricate one, and inaccessible to vessels of our burthen, owing to the reefs and broken water which then appeared in its neighborhood. Mr. Gray stated that he had been several days attempting to enter it, which at length he was unable to effect, in consequence of a very strong outset. This is a phenomenon difficult to account for, as, in most cases where there are outsets of such strength on a sea coast, there are corresponding tides setting in. Be that however as it may, I was thoroughly convinced, as were also most persons of observation on board, that we could not possibly have passed any safe navigable opening, harbour, or place of security for shipping on this coast, from Cape Mendocino to the promontory of Classet (Cape Flattery); nor had we any reason to alter our opinions." Such was the deliberate conclusion of this distinguished navigator after a thorough and searching examination of the coast, and yet within the limits he thus declares to be barren of harbors or navigable rivers are to be found the harbors of Humboldt bay, Trinidad bay, Crescent City, Port Orford, Coquille river, Coos bay, Yaquina bay, Columbia river, Shoalwater bay and Gray's harbor.
Had it not been for the persevering zeal of an American, the Columbia might have listened solely to "his own dashings" for many years to come, since such a decided statement from so competent an officer of his majesty's navy would have been received as finally settling the question of the existence of such a stream and have put an end to all search for one in that locality. Gray had his own ideas on the subject, and proposed to carry them out in spite of the adverse opinion of the British captain. He continued his voyage down the coast, and on the seventh of May entered a bay in latitude 46 degrees and 48 minutes, where he lay at anchor three days. This he christened Bulfinch's harbor, in honor of one of the owners of the Columbia, but it was called Gray's harbor by Captain Vancouver in memory of the discoverer, and retains that honorable title to the present day.
Gray rounded Cape Disappointment early on the morning of the eleventh of May, and the weather being favorable, set all sail and stood boldly in among the high rolling breakers whose threatening aspect had intimidated both Meares and Vancouver and caused them to assert that they were impassable. With great nautical skill and superb judgment, he followed accurately the channel of the stream, and at one o'clock anchored "in a large river of fresh water," at a distance of ten miles from the guarding line of breakers. Here he spent three days in filling his casks with fresh water and in trading with the natives who swarmed about the vessel in canoes, the Chinook village being close by on the river bank. He then sailed up stream "upwards of twelve or fifteen miles," but having unfortunately missed the main channel was unable to proceed further,
PACIFIC COAST. 79
and dropped down again to the mouth of the river. Having executed some much-needed repairs on the vessel, he took advantage of a favorable breeze on the twentieth and crossed over the bar to the open sea. To this great stream which he entered May 11, 1792, Gray gave the name borne by his vessel, Columbia, while the bluffy point to the north of the entrance, which had been named Cape San Roque by Heceta and Cape Disappointment by Meares, he called Cape Hancock in honor of that revered patriot whose bold signature was the first on the declaration of independence. The name of Adams, the patriotic statesman of Massachusetts and vice president of the republic, he bestowed upon the low point to the south which had been designated by Heceta as Cape Frondoso.
The Columbia sailed northward to the east coast of Queen Charlotte island, where she ran upon a sunken ledge of rocks and barely escaped total destruction. She managed, however, to reach Nootka sound in a badly damaged condition, where she was again made tight and seaworthy by her carpenters. To Captain Bodega y Quadra the Spanish commissioner who was awaiting the arrival of Vancouver, Gray gave a chart showing the entrance to Bulfinch's harbor and the Columbia, and in conjunction with Joseph Ingraham who had been mate of the Columbia during the Nootka difficulties and who was now captain of the Hope then lying in the harbor, made a statement of the difficulty between Colnett and Martinez, which Bodega retained for the inspection of Vancouver. Gray and Ingraham then sailed for home by the way of Canton.
Meanwhile Vancouver had been making many important explorations. With his two vessels he entered the Straits of Fuca on the twenty-ninth of April and proceeded slowly inward, making a careful examination as he progressed. In his explorations of the straits and Puget sound, so named in honor of one of the officers of his vessel, he consumed two months, carefully examining every inlet and arm of the great inland sea. Many of the familiar names of that region were bestowed by him; such as New Dungeness, from a fancied resemblance to Dungeness in the British channel; Port Discovery, in honor of his own vessel; Port Townsend, as a compliment to "the noble Marquis of that name;" Mount Baker; Mount Rainier, in honor of Rear Admiral Rainier; Hood's channel, after Lord Hood; Port Orchard, the name of the officer who discovered it; Admiralty inlet; Vashon island, after Captain Vashon of the navy; Possession sound, where he landed on the fourth of June and took possession in the name of King George of England; Whidbey island, after one of his lieutenants; Deception pass; Burrard's channel, in compliment to Sir Harry Burrard; Bellingham bay; Bute's channel. To the whole body of water to which access was had by way of the Straits of Fuca he gave the name of Gulf of Georgia, in honor of his sovereign, while the main land surrounding it and reaching south to the 45th parallel, or New Albion, was distinguished by the title of New Georgia.
As he emerged from Puget sound to proceed northward through the upper portion of the Gulf of Georgia, he fell in with the two Spanish vessels that had been dispatched early in the spring by the viceroy to explore the Straits of Fuca. Between the commanders of these rival vessels many courtesies were exchanged, and, being on the same errand, they for a time pursued their explorations together. After parting company with the Spaniards, Vancouver proceeded northward, exploring the coast of the mainland, until he reached Queen Charlotte island, near which both the Dis-
80 PACIFIC COAST.
covery and Chatham grounded on the rocks. They were skillfully extricated from their perilous position and taken to Nootka sound.
Upon his arrival there, whither the two Spanish vessels had preceded him, Vancouver opened negotiations with Bodega y Quadra in regard to restoration of lands provided for in the treaty. The only houses and lands which British subjects had ever possessed in any form, were the temporary structure Meares had erected for his men while engaged in building the Northwest America, and the small tract of land upon which it stood. Though all vestige of this habitation had disappeared before Martinez had taken possession in 1789, still Quadra expressed his willingness to surrender the tract of land to Vancouver, but the English commissioner demanded possession of the whole of Nootka sound and Cloyoquot. This Quadra refused to give, and Vancouver refused to compromise his government by receiving less, and sent an officer to England by the way of China with information of the condition of affairs. Between Vancouver and Quadra personally the utmost cordial relations existed, and since the land upon which Nootka stood had been found to be an island, they agreed to have the "honors easy" in naming it. It was therefore entered upon the explorer's chart as the Island of Quadra and Vancouver, but is now and has been for years known only as Vancouver island.
The Daedalus having arrived from England with supplies, Vancouver sailed from Nootka with the three vessels to explore Gray's harbor and the Columbia, having received from Quadra the description of those places left with him by Captain Gray. On the eighteenth of October, 1792, the Daedalus, commanded by Lieutenant Whidbey, entered Gray's harbor, while the two consorts continued to the Columbia. On the morning of the nineteenth the Chatham and Discovery attempted the passage of the bar, the former crossing safely, but the latter hauling off for fear there was not a sufficient depth of water. This circumstance led Vancouver to record in his journal that his "former opinion of this port being inaccessible to vessels of our burthen was now fully confirmed, with this exception, that in very fine weather, with moderate winds, and a smooth sea, vessels not exceeding four hundred tons might, so far as we were enabled to judge, gain admittance." It was while lying at anchor off the bar that he gained a view of a "high, round snow mountain" far up the stream, which he named Mount St. Helens, in honor of his Britanic majesty's ambassador at the court of Madrid.
The first sound that saluted the commander of the Chatham upon crossing the bar was the report of a cannon, which was answered in a similar manner by Lieutenant Broughton. It came from a Bristol brig called the Jenny, lying in a sheltered bay within the mouth of the stream, which has ever since been known as Baker's bay in honor of the captain of that little craft. This made the second vessel to enter the river before the representatives of Great Britain undertook to explore it. The Chatham lay in the river several days, during which time Broughton ascended the stream in a boat some 120 miles, as far as a point which he named in honor of the commander of the expedition, being the same upon which Fort Vancouver was afterwards built by the Hudson's Bay Company. During his stay he formally "took possession of the river and the country in its vicinity in his Britanic majesty's name, having every reason to believe that the subjects of no other civilized nation or state had ever entered
PACIFIC COAST. 81
this river before." The closing portion of this sentence sounds strangely from one who had in his possession at the time he penned it the rough chart made by Gray, which had been the cause of his being there at all. It is explained by saying that he affected to consider the broad estuary near the mouth of the stream as no portion of the river, and that in consequence Gray had not entered the river proper. This strained construction England maintained in the after controversy with the United States about the rights of discovery.
Vancouver remained in the Pacific two years longer, spending the summers of 1793 and 1794 in carefully exploring the coast of the mainland above Queen Charlotte island, searching every cove and inlet for a passage to the Atlantic, until he became as thoroughly convinced that there was no such passage as he had been that no such river as the Columbia existed. Meanwhile negotiations were carried on between England and Spain in regard to Nootka, and those two nations having allied themselves against France, the Nootka affair was dropped. In the spring of 1795 the Spaniards abandoned Nootka sound forever, the question of possession never having been settled, and thus the whole affair ended.
When the independence of her American colonies was granted by England, that nation was left without any representative in North America by whom her dominion could be extended westward, except the Hudson's Bay Company, which organization was more deeply interested in maintaining the vast region to the west and north as a fur-beating wilderness than in adding new jewels to the British crown. It was only when a rival to the great monopoly grew up and threatened to carry on successful opposition that the old company adopted a more aggressive policy.
As early as 1775 a few Montreal traders had pushed as far west as the Saskatchewan and Athabaska rivers, and opened up a successful trade, which was carried on for some years by independent traders. At last, in 1784, because of inability to contend and compete with the monopoly as individuals, these traders combined together as the Northwest Company of Montreal. This company operated in a most practical manner, its agents all being interested partners, and soon became an organization of much wealth and power. The company steadily pushed its agents and stations westward, and energetically extended the limits of its operations. In 1778 a station had been established on Athabaska river, some 1200 miles northwest of Lake Superior, but in 1788 this was abandoned and Fort Chipewyan built on Lake Athabaska, which became the base of the company's operations in the extreme west. Traders extended their operations westward to the Rocky mountains, called by them Shining mountains or Mountains of Bright Stones.
In 1789 Alexander Mackenzie, the gentleman in charge of Fort Chipewyan, discovered the Mackenzie river where it issues from Great Slave lake, and followed down its whole course to the Arctic ocean. The same gentleman started in October, 1792, to cross the continent to the Pacific. He passed up Peace river and camped until spring at the base of the Rocky mountains, engaging in trade. In June, 1793, he crossed the mountains, and descended in canoes a large river a distance of 250 miles. This he called the Tacoutchee-Tassee, and after the discovery of the Columbia was announced it was supposed to be identical with that great stream, until in 1812 Simon Fraser traced it to the ocean and called it Fraser's river. Upon leaving this stream Mac-
82 PACIFIC COAST.
kenzie continued westward some 200 miles and caught sight of the ocean July 22, 1793, being the first Caucasian, and possibly the first human being, to cross America overland from the Atlantic to the Pacific north of Mexico. The place at which he reached the ocean was in latitude 52 degrees and 20 minutes, and had been explored and named Cascade canal but a few weeks before by Vancouver.
The two journeys of this energetic trader, the careful explorations of Cook and Vancouver, and discovery of the Columbia by Gray, served to enlighten all interested nations in regard to the nature of the American continent, and to prove conclusively that neither the Straits of Anian nor the Rio de los Reyes had any other existence than in the fancy of those who, centuries before, had proclaimed them. The Northwest Company pushed its agents down to the headwaters of the Missouri, while French and Spanish traders ascended that stream from St. Louis, and engaged in trade with the natives and trapped the streams for beaver. Because of the Spanish claim to Louisiana, American traders were much confined in the limits of their operations, and were also restricted by the holding back of posts in the region of the great lakes which Great Britain should have surrendered under the terms of the treaty of 1783. These were surrendered in 1794 by special treaty, which instrument also provided that subjects of Great Britain and the United States should have unrestricted intercourse and rights of trade. From this time American fur traders extended their operations further westward and increased the volume of their trade. This was the condition of affairs in America at the close of the eighteenth century. | <urn:uuid:3946c389-ccb4-42f8-a92b-603d6ab84faa> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://talentfriends.org/walling/pacific_coast.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783391634.7/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154951-00037-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981246 | 55,057 | 2.875 | 3 |
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity will apparently perform no follow-up studies of a Red Planet rock that resembles a rodent, dealing a blow to the nascent field of Martian mammalogy.
The so-called "Mars rat" has generated a lot of Internet interest lately, with some UFO buffs claiming that it may be an indigenous Red Planet lifeform or an Earth rodent Curiosity carried to Mars as part of a secret experiment.
But Curiosity scientists are pretty sure that the Mars rat — which was spotted in a zoomed-in portion of a photo taken by the rover in September 2012 — is just a rock. ['Mars Rat' Photographed by Curiosity Rover (Video)]
"Clearly, it results from, you know, a lot of things like wind erosion and mechanical abrasion and breakdown chemical weathering of the rocks, as to why they get these weird shapes," Curiosity deputy project scientist Joy Crisp, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told reporters Wednesday (June 5).
So there doesn't seem to be a lot of motivation among mission scientists to investigate the Mars rat further. And the window to do so will last just a few more weeks, as the Curiosity rover is set to begin an epic drive that will take it far away from the petrified rodent.
The 1-ton robot is gearing up to embark for the base of Mount Sharp, a mysterious mountain that rises 3.4 miles (5.5 kilometers) into the Red Planet sky. The trek will cover about 5 miles (8 km) of straight-line distance and will likely take about a year, mission managers said.
Curiosity will begin the epic journey after it wraps up three tasks near its current location, none of which involve the Mars rat. The rover will search for differences in hydrogen abundance across two different types of bedrock, and it will investigate intriguing nearby outcrops called Point Lake and Shaler, researchers said.
Curiosity scientists tend to be amused when people see rodents, lizards and other recognizable shapes in the rocks photographed by the rover, Crisp said.
But such claims — the result of a psychological phenomenon called pareidolia, which refers to the human brain's tendency to spot familiar things in random images — are not necessarily a bad thing, she added.
"It's fun in a way, too, in that it will attract a lot of the public to look at the images and learn a little bit about Mars by pulling them in this way," Crisp said. | <urn:uuid:ba7e02ea-c98c-4f84-a198-1eb26721a6c8> | CC-MAIN-2016-26 | http://www.space.com/21455-mars-rat-curiosity-rover-drive.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2016-26/segments/1466783396949.33/warc/CC-MAIN-20160624154956-00044-ip-10-164-35-72.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94028 | 507 | 3.65625 | 4 |
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