#louis really only has two methods of problem solving

[mmelolabelle]

Louis de Pointe du “You know what? Extreme violence and gratuitous arson got me into this mess, and by god, extreme violence and gratuitous arson will get me out of it”

[quercusfloreal]

Le 3e Gédéon

I was hesitating to talk about it but here we go. May I introduce you to the manga "Le 3e Gédéon".

Warning long post

What it's about ?

Manga in 8 volumes, it tells the story of Gédéon Aymé who dreams of becoming a deputy to the Estates General to save the people from misery. George, the Duke of Loire and his former comrade, also seeks to change the system, but instead use violence to achieve his goal. This is going to be a story where the two characters will fight each other, one wanting peace and peaceful change, the other a radical and violent change.

What did I think of it ?

I found the story good. It manages to mix fiction and French revolution. It's full of inconsistencies but somehow it works. However I wouldn’t advise this manga to everyone. There is psychological and physical torture, gore and nudity. The images can sometimes be very crude.

What about historians characters ?

Well, we have the most badass portrayal of Louis I've ever seen in my life, he’s able to detect the slightest lie. Marie Antoinette may seem shallow, but she knows perfectly well how to play her charms to turn the tables in her favor. Their couple is interesting because each of them can't really love the other completely. Madame Roland is an ambitious woman who we learn had a daughter with Gédéon. Saint-Just is the slightly confused teenager who will eventually grow up and assert himself. Charles Philippe, the sociopathic Count of Artois, wants his brother's place and Elisabeth, the king's sister, wants Marie-Antoinette's place.

But what about Robespierre ?

I said in an old conversation that Maxime had daddy issues. Let me explain. One of the main themes of this manga is family and father figures. We learn that Gideon's father is the duke and he has exchanged his son's place with George so that Gédéon can be closer to the people. George has a real grudge against the duke because when Gédéon will be older, he should have become a servant again. But by trapping Gideon he kept his place.

Maxime has a real grudge against his father and George will use this information to manipulate him.

The first time we hear about Robespierre is in the first chapter. George is looking for easily manipulated men who can help him destroy the old system. Saint-Just, recruited by George, tells him that Max would be a potential candidate. Maxime is invited to George's house and has to save a former peasant, now a bandit, from the death penalty because he attacked George. Of course Maxime succeeds but it was a test. Of course, George can’t deny Maxime's skills but I believe it’s hearing the conversation between Maxime and Gédéon about Gédéon’s daughter that made him decide :

Robespierre : Shouldn’t you start trying to be a good family man ? You should leave the Assembly to single people like me !

We see Robespierre again later in a rather amusing scene with Gédéon. Gédéon, drunk, says Saint-Just's erotic writings told the boy is a virgin and is amused. And who is the virgin in the same bar as Gédéon? Boom Maxime !

Their following conversation will confirm that Louis XVI is the father of the kingdom.

Yeah, but when does George act ? Well, Gédéon sees Maxime again when the Estates General stagnate and there is a talk about creating a new assembly. Since Gideon is now part of the King's police force, Maxime asks him if he can meet the King discreetly to solve the problem. But without clearly knowing it, George is already starting to manipulate Maxime.

Keep in mind the puppet representation. It will be important for the next step. Because it’s present when Maxime's words contradict a part of his thoughs and when this thoughs takes controls.

After Gédeon refuses to join Saint-Just, Maxime explains to him, if Gédéon continues to hang out with the royal family, there will be repercussions. And if Gédéon tries to find his lost daughter and make politics at the same time, he will lose both. Because for Maxime, children are burden to their parents. Maxime explains his childhood, his dead mother and his father who left. He is resentful of himself because he believes it was his behavior as a child that made his father disappear, that he was a burden to him. This is why he doesn’t want children.

But underneath this justification, even if he pretends the opposite, he has hatred towards this father who abandoned him.

Gédéon : You have the right to hate your father.

Robespierre : In this case, I have the right to kill him, right ?

On the day of the meeting with the king, on the way to the palace, Maxime admits to Gédéon that his father sends him letters. In this letters, his father talks about his new family. Of course he knows that this is probably a trap, but we feel that it’s a sensitive subject for him.

Robespierre : Over my shoulder, I saw myself when I was ten years old.

Then comes one of my favorite scenes, a scene of tension between Louis XVI and Robespierre. Louis explains there are three locks on the table, if he thinks Maxime is lying, he will break one of them.

Robespierre : Since that time, I have always respected you as a father.

Louis XVI : One...You were warned, lies don't work. Either you don't respect us, or you don't respect the concept of a father.

After two, Maxime admits being one of the instigators of the problems at the Estates General and to make it stop, Necker must be dismissed because he makes promises that the nobility will never accept. Louis accept to think about it.

And here comes the chapter where I most wanted seeing George to lose and die painfully because his plan is totally twisted. Maxime receives a letter from his father who tells him that Henriette might not have died if he had been there, implying that it is Maxime's fault that he left. Then Maxime sees in front of his house a woman abused by a man. He threatens to take him to court but the guy explains that Maxime has nothing to say about the correction of a husband to his wife, named is Henriette...Oh boy !

The next day, Maxime proposes her to leave her husband, that he can help her by offering her a place in the convent of Arras. There, she would be safe. But she refuses because her husband will find her and she is unworthy of his help. Maxime feels unable to do anything. He remembers his dying sister. In the evening, another intermission, but this time Maxime decides to act. He intervenes until the girl confesses her father married her.

At this words, Maxime becomes mad and releases all the hatred he has accumulated towards his father. George's plan to make him forget any peaceful method succeeded

Robespierre now lets his hate guide him. If Louis is the father of the kingdom and the father of his subjects, then he must pay too. He goes to see Necker, tells him to accept his resignation to become a martyr and harangues the assembly to join the people and take up arms. He explains the first attack will be at the Invalides, then the people need to take care of the Bastille afterwards, because it is a royal symbol.

Camille : Maxime notice me !

Gédéon doesn’t agree with Robespierre, he thinks it’s necessary to think of a more peaceful method because it risks having deaths. He no longer recognizes his friend

Robespierre : I assure you Gédéon, I haven’t changed. Gentlemen ! Listen up ! We've been trying to find a resolution through dialogue for a long time! Alas, all our efforts have been in vain...a pure waste of time...and why !?

Robespierre : You too, Gédéon, I bet you've seen abused children love their fathers so much that they fall apart. Gédéon: Yes...

We see him again only after the march of the women on Versailles. Gédéon tells him that George is the one who sent him the letters and played on his dislike for his father to kill the king. He wants to find the wise and peaceful Robespierre.

Gédéon : And this other one love his father.

But Maxime does not believe him. His hatred is still too strong. When another lawyer asks Maxime to save a man, Maxime takes time to think, because the man looks like his father. It’s the words of Saint-Just that convince him to give up this man because he had previously seen the damage caused by the Duke of Loire on his sons George and Gédéon.

Robespierre : He’s a complete stranger, there is no doubt about it !! Saint-Just : Wouldn't it be better if he were really your father? If he were condemned to death, you would be delivered from him.

Saint-Just : Destroying everything to build a new order, that's what I think revolution is !

Finally, Maxime is released when the king died. Gédéon has found the death certificate of his father, confirming Maxime has sent an innocent man to death. Maxime seems to be happy on the day of the king's death but when he saw George and reconised him as the girl he tried to save, everything gets destroyed. He cries because after all he has done, he cannot go back.

Saint-Just embraces Maxime who he’s crying : I will always remain at your side, until death separates us.

The last time we see him is when marie-Antoinette curses him and other revolutionaries at her execution;

I reconize Saint-Just, Robespierre, Desmoulins, Marat ? (right middle), Danton, Hébert, Mme Roland, Augustin ? (bottom right)

[priorireverte]

Congratulations Snapey!

Your application for Severus Snape has been accepted. I really love how much depth and thought you put in to how his history and life shaped him in to the man he was when he died. I am so excited to see how he’ll be shaped by his untimely un-demise. If he ever gets past the initial panic and doomandgloom.

Please look to the checklist for the next steps and reach out if you have any questions!

OUT OF CHARACTER:

NAME & PRONOUNS: Snapey, He/Him

TIMEZONE:GMT

ACTIVITY LEVEL: Probably 2 paras a week with occassional explosions of activity flooding the dash

ANYTHING ELSE: Got a looooot of experience. Lots. Also my Snape is both a bad person and a good person because I read the books. I don’t know if this is the place for it, but Severus, being a product of the 1970s has a lot of internalised homophobia, and while, I, Snapey, like to think I’m pretty up to date on prejudice and privilege, this grumpy old turd isn’t. If I post something that’s ruining your ability to enjoy the RP even if it isn’t in the triggers list, or you’re not in the thread, let me know. I never want fun to become work.

CHARACTER DETAILS:

NAME: Severus Snape

BIRTHDATE: January 9, 1960

DEATHDATE: May 2, 1998

GENDER, PRONOUNS, and SEXUALITY: Male, he/him, probably heteroromantic, definitely bisexual but low self image, so get past that, suitors. He is comfortably male despite his more feminine aspects.

BLOOD STATUS: Half-blood

HOUSE ALUMNI: Slytherin

OCCUPATION: Returned

FACECLAIM: Adrien Brody/ Louis Garrel, either works, got plenty of age appropriate gifs. Got more sneers for LG tho :D

CHARACTER BACKGROUND:

POSTBELLUM:

At first Severus thought that what he was experiencing was the effects of a brain starved of blood and oxygen, combined with hypovolemic shock. Nothing made sense, but that was all well and good when he thought the world around him was a delusion. His behaviour at first was unusual, almost excitable. Every night he went to sleep, sure that this would be the time he never awoke and finally his consciousness would fade into the ether. Morning always came. And oddly, his dying neurons never provided an image of either of the two wizards he had served for more than half his life….nor did they show him the boy he’d made it his life’s work to protect in anything but scraps of conversation and images on newspapers. All in all the delusion was a strange one but it had to be false…didn’t it?

It started to become clear to him that this was not the case, and he was neither awaiting trial for his crimes nor being nursed back to health- the wound that should have been on his neck was not even visible, though sometimes he was sure he almost felt the sharp stab of Nagini’s fangs into his throat. Finally, he realised his position, and the old guarded Severus returned.

PERSONALITY: 

Severus’s personality appears to many to be a mystery. Equal parts anger and sadness, all held tight behind a number of walls. Deeply traumatised by the events of his childhood and youth, Severus hides a great deal, afraid to show too much of any emotion, lest it be considered weakness. The only emotion he allows himself to experience around others is anger, since his upbringing has told him it is the only feeling a man is allowed to have. Rage makes him feel for a moment to be powerful.

Severus is quintessentially Slytherin, despite what the late Albus Dumbledore may have implied with his heinous ‘sort too soon’ comment. Resourceful, practical, and driven, Severus has the makings of a great wizard. If only he had got his name into the history books for something else.

His strengths lie in logic, creativity, and problem solving, but he takes them too far at times, seeking to analyse and overanalyse every action. Looking too deeply for too long.

Severus, despite his former jobs as Head of Slytherin, and later, Headmaster, is not a leader. He has never been such, and never will be. He is solitary partially through choice, as he feels it more comfortable than to have to watch his words and wait for whatever fresh hell will be foist upon him.

His interaction with other living things has always been a weakness, be it plants, creatures magical and mundane, or other humans. He does not trust them and they often do not trust him. And considering all that he is….can you blame them?

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF FAMILY: 

Severus’ family comes in three parts.

His home, a muggle father tossed about on the sea of Thatcherism in the industrial north and a pureblood witch for a mother who had greater concerns than the welfare of her son. It was not a happy home, even though it had moments of brightness.

Lily Evans, his best friend during childhood and a lamplight in the dark of the almost slums of Cokeworth. Her effects on his character and personhood were immeasurable.

Lastly, the Death Eaters, and specifically those he was at school with. As a boy with nowhere to belong, caught between the bright academia of Hogwarts and the dingy grime of Cokeworth summers, the Death Eaters offered him something he had long craved. A disenfranchised, talented youth, he lapped up their promises and made one of the defining choices, and mistakes of his life.

HISTORY

Poor, working-class, neglected, too smart for his own good. Severus had the deck stacked against him at an early age. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, as the cliche goes, Severus succeeded monumentally in the Wixen world. A star Potioneer, an expert in the Dark Arts, an occumplished Occlumens. But those would be victories hard won, working twice as hard as his housemates, for scant praise.

While his childhood was grim, there was some hope, borne by Lily Evans. The girl was bright and vibrant and importantly, a witch. Severus did not know tthe manner of her importance on his future only that he was sure she would be a part of it.

The first stumbling block to their friendship was their Sorting, but even that did not yet spell doom. They still spent plenty of time together, exploring spellcraft and potions, though Severus’ interest was always very practical and with a Darker bent to it. Their housemates however, had different opinions. While Lucius Malfoy’s favour protected him for his first two years from much of the open Blood purity rhetoric by which point he had proved his worth to his housemates, it was always there in the periphery, and the poison dripped slowly into his ear, along with the promises of power and whispers of a world where he never had to deal with muggles like Petunia and his father.

Come his fifth year, in the dead of winter, his distrust for authority, bolstered by the lack of interference from his teachers into the campaign of bullying he had endured, hit a new peak. Not only had his terrorisers attempted to kill him (Severus surprisingly believed better of Sirius Black than to use an ignorant friend as a murder weapon- and worse of James Potter, sure that the other boy had only come along because of the consequences it would have on Remus Lupin’s continued freedom), but there was to be no speaking of the incident and certainly no real material punishment. Add in the stress of standardised testing and the pressure to prove himself every bit the wizard his mother’s blood made him, and once summer rolled around and the sun and blood was high, he lashed out at his stalwart friend, ending a seven year friendship in an instant.

He tried to make amends at first, but pushed away, sought some small comfort in the bosom of brotherhood. And soon enough he was standing shoulder to shoulder with them in a war. As time passed and he began to realise that the aims of this organisation, and more importantly, the methods, were not only distasteful but in direct opposition to those morals he still held, his loyalty began to waver. And once again, a push in the form of an overheard prophecy and Severus found himself knelt at Albus Dumbledore’s feet on a windy November night begging for mercy. For himself, but more importantly for his old friend, no faith in the man who had been his master.

And so began the cat and mouse game, where Severus was always the mouse, tossed between two cats, two masters. Adding to the stress of being a teacher barely older than his oldest students was the constant threat, the fear of discovery, and of the sword hanging above the Potter’s heads.

When news of the Halloween attack on Godric’s Hollow reached him, the bottom fell out of his stomach. He felt -and not for the first time- that perhaps his death at Remus Lupin’s hands in the Shrieking Shack at 15 had been fated, and it was this divertion from the tapestry woven for him that had lead to so much anguish. Certainly he felt like a dead man walking then. And all the worse for knowing that the real target of the attack had survived. It was in an attempt to make amends that he put his life into Dumbledore’s hands. He clung to the last shred of Lily inside himself and out.

Harry Potter- the boy who would occupy many of his waking moments. Even before the boy came to Hogwarts, before seeing the cocky, miniature James Potter sitting in his class, glaring at him with Lily’s eyes, Severus lay awake many nights wondering how the boy would turn out. He hoped, of course, for more of Lily. More of that bright, almost holy, goodness. Time and distance had toyed with his memories somewhat, so when he recalled Lily, he no longer thought of the arguments, or the paranoid way he had viewed her friends, or even his anger at her. A resigned grief and loss was what he felt. But Severus had never had the easy way of things, so when fateful 1991 rolled around, while he knew he was in for seven long years, he could never have predicted how long and how hard they would be.

Firstly, the boy had neither of his parent’s genius. He was lazy with his work and only too eager to play silly quidditch games, putting himself at risk and Severus into mild heart palpitations. Not only did he have to continue to worry about the safety record of his potions class, but watch an ever worsening parade of Defence against the Dark Arts teachers, and a worrying resurgence of the old ways in the Slytherin common room. He tried his best to be the teacher he had never had, but in loco parentis meant something different from his perspective, and he was a stern taskmaster. His colleagues, those he should have been able to bond with at least a little were all older than him, and somehow less mature. They were frivolous in many ways he could not afford to be, they seemed to have no idea of the depths to which mankind could sink, and they doted on Potter.

Three years and multiple apoplectic rages later, terror re-entered Severus’ life. A growing itch on his arm, a darkening Mark until at last, the thing Dumbledore had somehow known would come, came. The Dark Lord returned. And so did Severus. Now he was older, and less susceptible to the Dark Lord’s flattery and promises, but the knife’s edge he walked grew ever sharper the more he ingratiated himself into the Dark Lord’s graces, no longer part of what had once been akin to a family.

And so the Order was resurrected, but he didn’t belong there either, and no-one let him forget it. Nevermind that he was now not only supposed to teach the boy Potions-which he had no skill in- but also Occlumency -which he was even worse at. As the year grew darker, with an ever more invasive ministry presence, and an ever more combative pupil, he found himself removing more and more memories, reliving them each time he returned them to the cramped tense space in his mind. He could feel all he had worked so hard for crumbling beneath him; he was losing his Slytherins to a side he dare not tell them the cruel truth of, the boy he had promised to protect was increasingly reckless, and under it all, like a viper hiding in the long grass, was the very real threat of the rising Dark Lord.

When at long last, the Headmaster aquiesced to what had now become his yearly routine of applying for the Dark Arts post, he knew that a monumental shift in the balance was coming. And he was not wrong. Not only was he to protect Potter, but Draco Malfoy. He was now a trusted lieutenant of the Dark Lord, and almost sole confidant to Headmaster Dumbledore. Severus retreated further into himself, socially and mentally. He knew he did not know all that either wizard had planned, but he knew enough. He knew that he had been used even worse than he had thought. There was no protecting Potter for the memory of those lost, or the hope of those yet living, there was just …maintaining him. Until the time was right. Until the finl chess move, trading one piece for the black King. It ate away at him. Every time he saw Lily’s eyes in that hated face, and knew that the boy must die, had always had to die. And then clever Draco, letting Death Eaters into the school. And first he had to stun Flitwick, in the midst of a growing companionship, if not quite friendship, and then….on the tower…

It probably came as no surprise to his supposed allies that he had betrayed them. And though he now had as sure a position among the Death Eaters as any wixen, was now truly embraced by them. It felt dirty. He felt dirty. Every spell he cast, no matter which side it was for, no matter to what end. It was as if the smog of Cokeworth, kept at bay for so long had finally spread throughout his veins, curled around his nerves, even around his magic.

The office, gifted to him by men he held nothing but disiluusioned distaste for felt colder and lonelier than his self-imposed isolation in the Dungeons had. He had long felt alone, but never had he been so truly alone as when he sat, surrounded by long dead wixen who had held the post before him, in a school that had been more pain than home. But he endured. He had sworn to. It was perhaps the only thing he had left to cling to. And so he did what he could, to lessen the suffering of others, to save them where he could. And the whole year, he knew that should he choose, he could fall back in with the old crowd, could abandon the plans a portrait whispered to him. Could deserve the hate in every glance from old colleagues, every whisper from the students. Could be the traitor they all thought him.

Only stolen glances at a scrap of paper never meant for him and a torn photograph kept him alive those dark days. It was almost a blessing to be ousted from the castle. Almost. The boy was alive, though Severus knew it couldn’t last, mustn’t be allowed to last.

And then came the battle. The grass he had picnicked on torn up and the dirt churned into mud. The loft battlements brought down to rubble. And he couldn’t find Potter to tell him, if he even would have listened. Lucius gave him a summons from the Dark Lord, and unwilling to break cover when there was still a chance to find the boy, he answered it. Back in that dirty old Shack, back where he should have died at 15. And this time, 23 long, hard-fought years later, he did.

And in those final moments, blood and memories pouring from him, all that he was, muggle blood flooding out along with the wixen, left him, but at least, at that last moment, he saw her eyes again, and there was no hate to be found. A small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless. He hoped he had done enough.

OOC EXPLORATION:

WHAT ARE YOU MOST LOOKING FORWARD TO? Getting to flex my RP muscles in a seriously challenging environment, exploring a post-war Severus who isn’t free, who isn’t happy, and who has to once more adapt and survive.

ANYTHING ELSE?

The cot creaked as he sat up. Another day in this fresh hell. Only it couldn’t really be hell, because there were others here who didn’t deserve it. He closed his eyes briefly, but only briefly, because while there were safe people here, there were also very unsafe ones. 

His hypervigilance, forged as a child, sharpened during his school years and honed to a razor’s edge by his years of spying and supervising children around cauldrons served him well as he made his way towards the canteens, watching as another no-longer dead wixen was dropped off. The Unspeakables still hadn’t let on their plans or what they knew of these Returned. 

He waited patiently for some space, knowing he would feel safer with a cup of coffee in his hand, and less irritable to boot. As he poured his cup he turned suddenly, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up. He was being watched. He didn’t know if it was by friend or foe, not that he had many of the former. Severus almost hoped it was the latter. He had too often caught glances thrown his way that held an uncomfortable level of respect. 

Of course he wanted that, had always strived to be respected….but this was…not right. He drew his issued robes tighter about himself. The mug felt warm in his hand, and he slowly raised it and took a sip, peering from behind the greasy fringe at his fellow inmates, daring them to meet his gaze.

Show yourself…

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

What are other books/series that you'd recommend that are in the same vein as Animorphs?

Honestly, your ask inspired me to get off my butt and finally compile a list of the books that I reference with my character names in Eleutherophobia, because in a lot of ways that’s my list of recommendations right there: I deliberately chose children’s and/or sci-fi stories that deal really well with death, war, dark humor, class divides, and/or social trauma for most of my character names.  I also tend to use allusions that either comment on Animorphs or on the source work in the way that the names come up.

That said, here are The Ten Greatest Animorphs-Adjacent Works of Literature According to Sol’s Totally Arbitrary Standards: 

1. A Ring of Endless Light, Madeline L’Engle

This is a really good teen story that, in painfully accurate detail, captures exactly what it’s like to be too young to really understand death while forced to confront it anyway.  I read it at about the same age as the protagonist, not that long after having suffered the first major loss in my own life (a friend, also 14, killed by cancer).  It accomplished exactly what a really good novel should by putting words to the experiences that I couldn’t describe properly either then or now.  This isn’t a light read—its main plot is about terminal illness, and the story is bookended by two different unexpected deaths—but it is a powerful one. 

2. The One and Only Ivan, K.A. Applegate 

This prose novel (think an epic poem, sort of like The Iliad, only better) obviously has everything in it that makes K.A. Applegate one of the greatest children’s authors alive: heartbreaking tragedy, disturbing commentary on the human condition, unforgettably individuated narration, pop culture references, and poop jokes.  Although I’m mostly joking when I refer to Marco in my tags as “the one and only” (since this book is narrated by a gorilla), Ivan does remind me of Marco with his sometimes-toxic determination to see the best of every possible situation when grief and anger allow him no other outlet for his feelings and the terrifying lengths to which he will go in order to protect his found family.

3. My Teacher Flunked the Planet, Bruce Coville

Although the entire My Teacher is an Alien series is really well-written and powerful, this book is definitely my favorite because in many ways it’s sort of an anti-Animorphs.  Whereas Animorphs (at least in my opinion) is a story about the battle for personal freedom and privacy, with huge emphasis on one’s inner identity remaining the same even as one’s physical shape changes, My Teacher Flunked the Planet is about how maybe the answer to all our problems doesn’t come from violent struggle for personal freedoms, but from peaceful acceptance of common ground among all humans.  There’s a lot of intuitive appeal in reading about the protagonists of a war epic all shouting “Free or dead!” before going off to battle (#13) but this series actually deconstructs that message as blind and excessive, especially when options like “all you need is love” or “no man is an island” are still on the table.

4. Moon Called, Patricia Briggs

I think this book is the only piece of adult fiction on this whole list, and that’s no accident: the Mercy Thompson series is all about the process of adulthood and how that happens to interact with the presence of the supernatural in one’s life.  The last time I tried to make a list of my favorite fictional characters of all time, it ended up being about 75% Mercy Thompson series, 24% Animorphs, and the other 1% was Eugenides Attolis (who I’ll get back to in my rec for The Theif).  These books are about a VW mechanic, her security-administrator next door neighbor, her surgeon roommate, her retail-working best friend and his defense-lawyer boyfriend, and their cybersecurity frenemy.  The fact that half those characters are supernatural creatures only serves to inconvenience Mercy as she contemplates how she’s going to pay next month’s rent when a demon destroyed her trailer, whether to get married for the first time at age 38 when doing so would make her co-alpha of a werewolf pack, what to do about the vampires that keep asking for her mechanic services without paying, and how to be a good neighbor to the area ghosts that only she can see.  

5. The Thief, Megan Whalen Turner

This book (and its sequel A Conspiracy of Kings) are the ones that I return to every time I struggle with first-person writing and no Animorphs are at hand.  Turner does maybe the best of any author I’ve seen of having character-driven plots and plot-driven characters.  This book is the story of five individuals (with five slightly different agendas) traveling through an alternate version of ancient Greece and Turkey with a deceptively simple goal: they all want to work together to steal a magical stone from the gods.  However, the narrator especially is more complicated than he seems, which everyone else fails to realize at their own detriment. 

6. Homecoming, Cynthia Voight

Critics have compared this book to a modern, realistic reimagining of The Boxcar Children, which always made a lot of sense to me.  It’s the story of four children who must find their own way from relative to relative in an effort to find a permanent home, struggling every single day with the question of what they will eat and how they will find a safe place to sleep that night.  The main character herself is one of those unforgettable heroines that is easy to love even as she makes mistake after mistake as a 13-year-old who is forced to navigate the world of adult decisions, shouldering the burden of finding a home for her family because even though she doesn’t know what she’s doing, it’s not like she can ask an adult for help.  Too bad the Animorphs didn’t have Dicey Tillerman on the team, because this girl shepherds her family through an Odysseus-worthy journey on stubbornness alone.

7. High Wizardry, Diane Duane

The Young Wizards series has a lot of good books in it, but this one will forever be my favorite because it shows that weird, awkward, science- and sci-fi-loving girls can save the world just by being themselves.  Dairine Callahan was the first geek girl who ever taught me it’s not only okay to be a geek girl, but that there’s power in empiricism when properly applied.  In contrast to a lot of scientifically “smart” characters from sci-fi (who often use long words or good grades as a shorthand for conveying their expertise), Dairine applies the scientific method, programming theory, and a love of Star Wars to her problem-solving skills in a way that easily conveys that she—and Diane Duane, for that matter—love science for what it is: an adventurous way of taking apart the universe to find out how it works.  This is sci-fi at its best. 

8. Dr. Franklin’s Island, Gwyneth Jones

If you love Animorphs’ body horror, personal tragedy, and portrayal of teens struggling to cope with unimaginable circumstances, then this the book for you!  I’m only being about 80% facetious, because this story has all that and a huge dose of teen angst besides.  It’s a loose retelling of H.G. Wells’s classic The Island of Doctor Moreau, but really goes beyond that story by showing how the identity struggles of adolescence interact with the identity struggles of being kidnapped by a mad scientist and forcibly transformed into a different animal.  It’s a survival story with a huge dose of nightmare fuel (seriously: this book is not for the faint of heart, the weak of stomach, or anyone who skips the descriptions of skin melting and bones realigning in Animorphs) but it’s also one about how three kids with a ton of personal differences and no particular reason to like each other become fast friends over the process of surviving hell by relying on each other.  

9. Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Louis Sachar

Louis Sachar is the only author I’ve ever seen who can match K.A. Applegate for nihilistic humor and absurdist horror layered on top of an awesome story that’s actually fun for kids to read.  Where he beats K.A. Applegate out is in terms of his ability to generate dream-like surrealism in these short stories, each one of which starts out hilariously bizarre and gradually devolves into becoming nightmare-inducingly bizarre.  Generally, each one ends with an unsettling abruptness that never quite relieves the tension evoked by the horror of the previous pages, leaving the reader wondering what the hell just happened, and whether one just wet one’s pants from laughing too hard or from sheer existential terror.  The fact that so much of this effect is achieved through meta-humor and wordplay is, in my opinion, just a testament to Sachar’s huge skill as a writer. 

10. Magyk, Angie Sage

As I mentioned, the Septimus Heap series is probably the second most powerful portrayal of the effect of war on children that I’ve ever encountered; the fact that the books are so funny on top of their subtle horror is a huge bonus as well.  There are a lot of excellent moments throughout the series where the one protagonist’s history as a child soldier (throughout this novel he’s simply known as “Boy 412″) will interact with his stepsister’s (and co-protagonist’s) comparatively privileged upbringing.  Probably my favorite is the moment when the two main characters end up working together to kill a man in self-defense, and the girl raised as a princess makes the horrified comment that she never thought she’d actually have to kill someone, to which her stepbrother calmly responds that that’s a privilege he never had; the ensuing conversation strongly implies that his psyche has been permanently damaged by the fact that he was raised to kill pretty much from infancy, but all in a way that is both child-friendly and respectful of real trauma.  

[dorcasrempel]

The answer to life, the universe, and everything

A team led by Andrew Sutherland of MIT and Andrew Booker of Bristol University has solved the final piece of a famous 65-year old math puzzle with an answer for the most elusive number of all: 42.

The number 42 is especially significant to fans of science fiction novelist Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” because that number is the answer given by a supercomputer to “the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.”   

Booker also wanted to know the answer to 42. That is, are there three cubes whose sum is 42?

This sum of three cubes puzzle, first set in 1954 at the University of Cambridge and known as the Diophantine Equation x3+y3+z3=k, challenged mathematicians to find solutions for numbers 1-100. With smaller numbers, this type of equation is easier to solve: for example, 29 could be written as 33 + 13 + 13, while 32 is unsolvable. All were eventually solved, or proved unsolvable, using various techniques and supercomputers, except for two numbers: 33 and 42.

Booker devised an ingenious algorithm and spent weeks on his university’s supercomputer when he recently came up with a solution for 33. But when he turned to solve for 42, Booker found that the computing needed was an order of magnitude higher and might be beyond his supercomputer’s capability. Booker says he received many offers of help to find the answer, but instead he turned to his friend Andrew “Drew” Sutherland, a principal research scientist in the Department of Mathematics. “He’s a world’s expert at this sort of thing,” Booker says.

Sutherland, whose specialty includes massively parallel computations, broke the record in 2017 for the largest Compute Engine cluster, with 580,000 cores on Preemptible Virtual Machines, the largest known high-performance computing cluster to run in the public cloud.

Like other computational number theorists who work in arithmetic geometry, he was aware of the “sum of three cubes” problem. And the two had worked together before, helping to build the L-functions and Modular Forms Database (LMFDB), an online atlas of mathematical objects related to what is known as the Langlands Program. “I was thrilled when Andy asked me to join him on this project,” says Sutherland.

Booker and Sutherland discussed the algorithmic strategy to be used in the search for a solution to 42. As Booker found with his solution to 33, they knew they didn’t have to resort to trying all of the possibilities for x, y, and z.

“There is a single integer parameter, d, that determines a relatively small set of possibilities for x, y, and z such that the absolute value of z is below a chosen search bound B,” says Sutherland. “One then enumerates values for d and checks each of the possible x, y, z associated to d. In the attempt to crack 33, the search bound B was 1016, but this B turned out to be too small to crack 42; we instead used B = 1017 (1017 is 100 million billion).

Otherwise, the main difference between the search for 33 and the search for 42 would be the size of the search and the computer platform used. Thanks to a generous offer from UK-based Charity Engine, Booker and Sutherland were able to tap into the computing power from over 400,000 volunteers’ home PCs, all around the world, each of which was assigned a range of values for d. The computation on each PC runs in the background so the owner can still use their PC for other tasks.

Sutherland is also a fan of Douglas Adams, so the project was irresistible.

The method of using Charity Engine is similar to part of the plot surrounding the number 42 in the ��Hitchhiker” novel: After Deep Thought’s answer of 42 proves unsatisfying to the scientists, who don’t know the question it is meant to answer, the supercomputer decides to compute the Ultimate Question by building a supercomputer powered by Earth … in other words, employing a worldwide massively parallel computation platform.

“This is another reason I really liked running this computation on Charity Engine — we actually did use a planetary-scale computer to settle a longstanding open question whose answer is 42.”

They ran a number of computations at a lower capacity to test both their code and the Charity Engine network. They then used a number of optimizations and adaptations to make the code better suited for a massively distributed computation, compared to a computation run on a single supercomputer, says Sutherland.

Why couldn’t Bristol’s supercomputer solve this problem?

“Well, any computer *can* solve the problem, provided you are willing to wait long enough, but with roughly half a million PCs working on the problem in parallel (each with multiple cores), we were able to complete the computation much more quickly than we could have using the Bristol machine (or any of the machines here at MIT),” says Sutherland.  

Using the Charity Engine network is also more energy-efficient. “For the most part, we are using computational resources that would otherwise go to waste,” says Sutherland. “When you’re sitting at your computer reading an email or working on a spreadsheet, you are using only a tiny fraction of the CPU resource available, and the Charity Engine application, which is based on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC), takes advantage of this. As a result, the carbon footprint of this computation — related to the electricity our computations caused the PCs in the network to use above and beyond what they would have used, in any case — is lower than it would have been if we had used a supercomputer.”

Sutherland and Booker ran the computations over several months, but the final successful run was completed in just a few weeks. When the email from Charity Engine arrived, it provided the first solution to x3+y3+z3=42:

42 = (-80538738812075974)^3 + 80435758145817515^3 + 12602123297335631^3

“When I heard the news, it was definitely a fist-pump moment,” says Sutherland. “With these large-scale computations you pour a lot of time and energy into optimizing the implementation, tweaking the parameters, and then testing and retesting the code over weeks and months, never really knowing if all the effort is going to pay off, so it is extremely satisfying when it does.”

Booker and Sutherland say there are 10 more numbers, from 101-1000, left to be solved, with the next number being 114.

But both are more interested in a simpler but computationally more challenging puzzle: whether there are more answers for the sum of three cubes for 3.

“There are four very easy solutions that were known to the mathematician Louis J. Mordell, who famously wrote in 1953, ‘I do not know anything about the integer solutions of x3 + y3 + z3 = 3 beyond the existence of the four triples (1, 1, 1), (4, 4, -5), (4, -5, 4), (-5, 4, 4); and it must be very difficult indeed to find out anything about any other solutions.�� This quote motivated a lot of the interest in the sum of three cubes problem, and the case k=3 in particular. While it is conjectured that there should be infinitely many solutions, despite more than 65 years of searching we know only the easy solutions that were already known to Mordell. It would be very exciting to find another solution for k=3.”

The answer to life, the universe, and everything syndicated from https://osmowaterfilters.blogspot.com/

[katebushwick]

All men are designers. All that we do, almost all the time, is design, for design is basic to all human activity. The planning and patterning of any act towards a desired, foreseeable end constitutes the design process. Any attempt to separate design, to make it a thing-by-itself, works counter to the inherent value, of design as the primary underlying matrix of life. Design is com- posing an epic poem, executing a mural, painting a masterpiece, writing a concerto. But design is also cleaning and reorganizing a desk drawer, pulling an impacted tooth, baking an apple pie, choosing sides for a back-lot baseball game, and educating a child. Design is the conscious effort to impose meaningful order. The order and delight we find in frost flowers on a window pane, in the hexagonal perfection of a honeycomb, in leaves, or in the architecture of a rose, reflect man's preoccupation with pattern, the constant attempt to understand an ever-changing, highly complex existence by imposing order on it - but these things are not the product of design. They possess only the order we ascribe to them. The reason we enjoy things in nature is that we see an economy of means, simplicity, elegance and an essential tightness in them. But they are not design. Though they have pattern, order, and beauty, they lack conscious intention. If we call them design, we artificially ascribe our own values to an accidental side issue. The streamlining of a trout's body is aesthetically satisfying to us, but to the trout it is a by-product of swimming efficiency. The aesthetically satisfying spiral growth pattern found in sunflowers, pineapples, pine cones, or the arrangement of leaves on a stem can be explained by the Fibonacci sequence (each member is the sum of the two previous members: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 .. .), but the plant is only concerned with improving photosynthesis by exposing a maximum of its surface. Similarly, the beauty we find in the tail of a peacock, although no doubt even more attractive to a peahen, is the result of intra-specific selection (which, in the case cited, may even ultimately prove fatal to the species). Intent is also missing from the random order system of a pile of coins. If, however, we move the coins around and arrange them according to size and shape, we add the element of intent and produce some sort of symmetrical alignment. This sym- metrical order system is a favourite of small children, unusually primitive peoples, and some of the insane, because it is so easy to understand. Further shifting of the coins will produce an infinite number of asymmetrical arrangements which require a higher level of sophistication and greater participation on the part of the viewer to be understood and appreciated. While the aesthetic values of the symmetrical and asymmetrical designs differ, both can give ready satisfaction since the underlying intent is clear. Only marginal patterns (those lying in the threshold area between symmetry and asymmetry) fail to make the designer's intent clear. The ambiguity of these 'threshold cases' produces a feeling of unease in the viewer. But apart from these threshold cases there are an infinite number of possible satisfactory arrangements of the coins. Importantly, none of these is the one right answer, though some may seem better than others. Shoving coins around on a board is a design act in miniature because design as a problem-solving activity can never, by definition, yield the one right answer: it will always produce an infinite number of answers, some 'righter' and some 'wronger'. The Brightness' of any design solution will depend on the meaning with which we invest the arrangement. Design must be meaningful. And 'meaningful' replaces the semantically loaded noise of such expressions as 'beautiful1, 'ugly', 'cool', 'cute', 'disgusting', 'realistic', 'obscure', 'abstract', and 'nice', labels convenient to a bankrupt mind when con- fronted by Picasso's 'Guernica', Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling-f water, Beethoven's Eroica, Stravinsky's Le Sacre du printemps, Joyce's Finnegans Wake. In all of these we respond to that which has meaning. The mode of action by which a design fulfils its purpose is its function. 'Form follows function', Louis Sullivan's battle cry of the i88os and 18905, was followed by Frank Lloyd Wright's 'Form and function are one'. But semantically, all the statements from Horatio Greenough to the German Bauhaus are meaningless. The concept that what works well will of necessity look well has been the lame excuse for all the sterile, operating-room-like furniture and implements of the twenties and thirties. A dining table of the period might have a top, well proportioned in glisten- ing white marble, the legs carefully nurtured for maximum strength with minimum materials in gleaming stainless steel. And the first reaction on encountering such a table is to lie down on it and have your appendix extracted. Nothing about the table says: 'Dine off me.' Le style internationaland die neue Sachlichkeit have let us down rather badly in terms of human value. Le Corbusier's house as la machine a habiter and the packing-crate houses evolved in the Dutch De Stijl movement reflect a perversion of aesthetics and utility. 'Should I design it to be functional,' the students say, 'or to be aesthetically pleasing?' This is the most heard, the most understandable, and the most mixed-up question in design today. 'Do you want it to look good, or to work ?' Barricades erected between what are really just two of the many aspects of function. It is all quite simple: aesthetic value is an inherent part of function. A simple diagram will show the dynamic actions and relationships that make up the function complex: It is now possible to go through the six parts of the function complex (above) and to define every one of its aspects. METHOD: The interaction of tools, processes, and materials. An honest use of materials, never making the material seem that which it is not, is good method. Materials and tools must be used optimally, never using one material where another can do the job less expensively and/or more efficiently. The steel beam in a house, painted a fake wood grain; the moulded plastic bottle designed to look like expensive blown glass; the 1967 New Eng- land cobbler's bench reproduction ('worm holes $i extra') dragged into a twentieth-century living room to provide dubious footing for Martini glass and ash tray: these are all perversions of materials, tools, and processes. And this discipline of using a suitable method extends naturally to the field of the fine arts as well. Alexander Calder's 'The Horse', a compelling sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, was shaped by the particular material in which it was conceived. Calder decided that boxwood would give him the specific colour and texture he desired in his sculpture. But boxwood comes only in rather narrow planks of small sizes. (It is for this reason that it tradition- ally has been used in the making of small boxes: hence its name.) The only way he could make a fair-sized piece of sculpture out of a wood that only comes in small pieces was to interlock them somewhat in the manner of a child's toy. The Horse', then, is a piece of sculpture, the aesthetic of which was largely determined by method. For the final execution at the Museum of Modern Art Calder chose to use thin slats of walnut, a wood similar in texture. When early Swedish settlers in what is now Delaware decided to build, they had at their disposal trees and axes. The material was a round tree trunk, the tool an axe, and the process a simple kerf cut into the log. The inevitable result of this combination of tools, materials, and process is a log cabin. From the log cabin in the Delaware Valley of 1680 to Paolo Soleri's desert home in twentieth-century Arizona is no jump at all. Soleri's house is as much the inevitable result of tools, materials, and processes as is the log cabin. The peculiar viscosity of the desert sand where Soleri built his home made his unique method possible. Selecting a mound of desert sand, Soleri criss-crossed it with V-shaped channels cut into the sand, making a pattern somewhat like the ribs of a whale. Then he poured concrete in the channels, forming, when set, the roof- beams of the house-to-be. He added a concrete skin for the roof and bulldozed the sand out from underneath to create the living space itself. He then completed the structure by setting in car windows garnered from automobile junkyards. Soleri's creative use of tools, materials, and processes was a tour deforce that gave us a radically new building method. Dow Chemical's 'self-generating' styrofoam dome is the pro- duct of another radical approach to building methods. The foundation of the building can be a 12-inch-high circular retaining wall. To this wall a 4-inch wide strip of styrofoam is attached which raises as it goes around the wall from zero to 4 inches in height, forming the base for the spiral dome. On the ground in Paolo Soleri: Carved earth form for the original drafting room and interior of the ceramics workshop. Photos by Stuart Weiner. the centre, motorized equipment operates two spinning booms, one with an operator and the other holding a welding machine. The booms move around, somewhat like a compass drawing a circle, and they rise with a spiralling motion at about 30 feet a minute. Gradually they move in towards the centre. A man sit- ting in the saddle feeds an 'endless' 4 x 4-inch strip of styrofoam into the welding machine, which heat-welds it to the previously hand-laid styrofoam. As the feeding mechanism follows its circular, rising, but ever-diminishing diameter path, this spiral process creates the dome. Finally, a hole 36 inches in diameter is left in the top, through which man, mast, and movement arm can be re- moved. The hole is then closed with a clear plastic pop-in bubble or a vent. At this point the structure is translucent, soft, but still entirely without doors or windows. The doors and windows are then cut (with a minimum of effort; in fact the structure is still so soft that openings could be cut with one's fingernail), and the structure is sprayed inside and out with latex-modified concrete. The dome is ultra-lightweight, is secured to withstand high wind speeds and great snow loads, is vermin-proof, and inexpensive. Several of these 54-foot-diameter domes can be easily joined together into a cluster. All these building methods demonstrate the elegance of solution possible with a creative interaction of tools, materials, and processes. USE: 'Does it work?' A vitamin bottle should dispense pills singly. An ink bottle should not tip over. A plastic-film package covering sliced pastrami should withstand boiling water. As in any reasonably conducted home, alarm-clocks seldom travel through the air at speeds approaching five hundred miles per hour, 'streamlining' clocks is out of place. Will a cigarette lighter designed like the tail fin of an automobile (the design of that auto- mobile was copied from a pursuit plane of the Korean War) give more efficient service? Look at some hammers: they are all different in weight, material, and form. The sculptor's mallet is fully round, permitting constant rotation in the hand. The jeweller's chasing hammer is a precision instrument used for fine work on metal. The prospector's pick is delicately balanced to add to the swing of his arm when cracking rocks. The ball-point pen with a fake polyethylene orchid surrounded by fake styrene carrot leaves sprouting out of its top, on the other hand, is a tawdry perversion of design for use. But the results of the introduction of a new device are never predictable. In the case of the automobile, a fine irony developed. One of the earliest criticisms of the car was that, unlike 'old Dobbin', it didn't have the sense 'to find its way home' whenever its owner was incapacitated by an evening of genteel drinking. No one foresaw that mass acceptance of the car would put the American bedroom on wheels, offering everyone a new place to copulate (and privacy from supervision by parents and spouses). Nobody expected the car to accelerate our mobility, thereby creating the exurbant sprawl and the dormitory suburbs that strangle our larger cities; or to sanction the killing of fifty thou- sand people per annum, brutalising us and making it possible, as Philip Wylie says 'to see babies with their jaws ripped off on the corner of Maine and Maple'; or to dislocate our societal groupings, thus contributing to our alienation; and to put every yut, yahoo, and prickamouse from sixteen to sixty in permanent hock to the tune of $80 a month. In the middle forties, no one foresaw that, with the primary use function of the automobile solved, it would emerge as a combination status symbol and disposable, chrome-plated codpiece. But two greater ironies were to follow. In the early sixties, when people began to fly more, and to rent standard cars at their destination, the businessman's clients no longer saw the car he owned and therefore could not judge his 'style of life' by it. Most of Detroit's Baroque exuberance sub- sided, and the automobile again came closer to being a transportation device. Money earmarked for status demonstration was now spent on boats, colour television sets, and other ephemera. The last irony is still to come: with carbon monoxide fumes poisoning our atmosphere, the electric car, driven at low speeds and with a cruising range of less than one hundred miles, reminiscent of the turn of the century, may soon make an anachronistic comeback. Anachronistic because the days of individual transportation devices are numbered. The automobile gives us a typical case history of seventy years of the perversion of design for use. NEED: Much recent design has satisfied only evanescent wants and desires, while the genuine needs of man have often been neglected by the designer. The economic, psychological, spiritual, technological, and intellectual needs of a human being are usually more difficult and less profitable to satisfy than the carefully engineered and manipulated 'wants' inculcated by fad and fashion. People seem to prefer the ornate to the plain as they prefer day-dreaming to thinking and mysticism to rationalism. As they seek crowd pleasures and choose widely travelled roads rather than solitude and lonely paths, they seem to feel a sense of security in crowds and crowdedness. Horror vacui is horror of inner as well as outer vacuum. The need for security-through-identity has been perverted into role-playing. The consumer, unable or unwilling to live a strenuous life, can now act out the role by appearing caparisoned in Naugahyde boots, pseudo-military uniforms, voyageur's shirts, little fur jackets, and all the other outward trappings of Davy Crockett, Foreign Legionnaires, and Cossack Hetmans. (The apotheosis of the ridiculous: a 'be- your-own-Paul-Bunyan-kit, beard included', neglecting the fact that Paul Bunyan is the imaginary creature of an advertising firm early in this century.) The furry parkas and elk-hide boots are obviously only role- playing devices, since climatic control makes their real use redundant. A short ten months after the Scott Paper Company introduced disposable paper dresses for QQC, it was possible to buy throwaway paper dresses ranging from $20 to $149.50. With increased consumption, the price of the 99c dress could have dropped to 40c. And a 40c paper dress is a good idea. Typically, industry perverted the idea and chose to ignore an important need- fulfilling function of the design: disposable dresses inexpensive enough to make disposability economically feasible for the consumer. Greatly accelerated technological change has been used to create technological obsolescence. This year's product often incorporates enough technical changes to make it really superior to last year's offering. The economy of the market place, however, is still geared to a static philosophy of purchasing-owning' rather than a dynamic one of 'leasing-using', and price policy has not resulted in lowered consumer cost. If a television set, for instance, is to be an every-year affair, rather than a once- in-a- lifetime purchase, the price must reflect it. Instead, the real values of real things have been driven out by false values of false things, a sort of Gresham's Law of Design. As an attitude, 'Let them eat cake' has been thought of as a manufacturer's basic right. And by now people, no longer 'turned on' by a loaf of bread, can differentiate only between frostings. Our profit-oriented and consumer-oriented Western society has become so over specialised that few people experience the pleasures and benefits of full life, and many never participate in even the most modest forms of creative activity which might help to keep their sensory and intellectual faculties alive. Members of a 'civilised' community or nation depend on the hands, brains, and imaginations of experts. But however well trained these experts may be, unless they have a sense of ethical, intellectual, and artistic responsibility, then morality and an intelligent, 'beautiful', and elegant quality of life will suffer in astronomical proportions under our present-day system of mass production and private capital. TELESIS: 'The deliberate, purposeful utilisation of the processes of nature and society to obtain particular goals' (American College Dictionary, 1961). The telesic content of a design must reflect the times and conditions that have given rise to it, and must fit in with the general human socio-economic order in which it is to operate. The uncertainties and the new and complex pressures in our society make many people feel that the most logical way to regain lost values is to go out and buy Early American furniture, put a hooked rug on the floor, buy ready-made phoney ancestor portraits, and hang a flint-lock rifle over the fireplace. The gas-light so popular in our subdivisions is a dangerous and senseless anachronism that only reflects an insecure striving for the 'good old days' by consumer and designer alike. Our twenty-year love affair with things Japanese - Zen Buddhism, the architecture of the Ise Shrine and Katsura Imperial Palace, haiku poetry, Hiroshige and Hokusai block-prints, the music of koto and samisen, lanterns and sake sets, green tea liqueur and sukiyaki and tempura - has triggered an intemperate demand by consumers who disregard telesic aptness. By now it is obvious that our interest in things Japanese is not just a passing fad or fashion but rather the result of a major cultural confrontation. As Japan was shut off for nearly two hundred years from the Western world under the Tokugawa Shogunate, its cultural expressions flourished in a pure (although somewhat inbred) form in the imperial cities of Kyoto and Edo (now Tokyo). The Western world's response to an in-depth knowledge of things Japanese is comparable only to the European reaction to things classical, which we are now pleased to call the Renaissance. Nonetheless, it is not possible to translate things from one culture to another. The floors of traditional Japanese homes are covered by floor mats. These mats are 3x6 feet in size and consist of rice straw closely packed inside a cover of woven rush. The long sides are bound with black linen tape. While tatami mats impose a module (homes are spoken of as six-, eight-, or twelve-mat homes), their primary purposes are to absorb sounds and to act as a sort of wall-to-wall vacuum cleaner which filters particles of dirt through the woven surface and retains them in the inner core of rice straw. Periodically these mats (and the dirt within them) are discarded, and new ones are installed. Japanese feet encased in clean, sock- like tabi (the sandal-like street shoe, or geta, having been left at the door) are also designed to fit in with this system. Western- style leather-soled shoes and spike heels would destroy the surface of the mats and also carry much more dirt into the house. The increasing use of regular shoes and industrial precipitation make the use of tatami difficult enough in Japan and absolutely ridiculous in the United States, where high cost makes periodic disposal and reinstallation ruinously expensive. But a tatami-covered floor is only part of the larger design system of the Japanese house. Fragile, sliding paper walls and tatami give the house definite and significant acoustical proper- ties that have influenced the design and development of musical instruments and even the melodic structure of Japanese speech, poetry, and drama. A piano, designed for the reverberating insulated walls and floors of Western homes and concert halls, cannot be introduced into a Japanese home without reducing the brilliance of a Rachmaninoff concerto to a shrill cacophony. Similarly, the fragile quality of a Japanese samisen cannot be fully appreciated in the reverberating box that constitutes the American house. Americans who try to couple a Japanese interior with an American living experience in their search for exotica find that elements cannot be ripped out of their telesic context with impunity. ASSOCIATION: Our psychological conditioning, often going back to earliest childhood memories, comes into play and pre- disposes us, or provides us with antipathy against a given value. Increased consumer resistance in many product areas testifies to design neglect of the associational aspect of the function complex. After two decades, the television-set industry, for instance, has not yet resolved the question of whether a television set should carry the associational values of a piece of furniture (a lacquered mah-jongg chest of the Ming Dynasty) or of technical equipment (a portable tube tester). Television receivers that carry new associations (sets for children's rooms in bright colours and materials, enhanced by tactilely pleasant but non-working controls and pre-set for given times and channels, clip-on swivel sets for hospital beds, etc., etc.) might not only clear up the astoundingly large back inventory of sets in warehouses, but also create new markets. And what shape is most appropriate to a vitamin bottle: a candy jar of the Gay Nineties, a perfume bottle, or a 'Danish modern' style salt shaker ? The response of many designers has been like that so unsuccessfully practised by Hollywood: the public has been pictured as totally unsophisticated, possessed of neither taste nor discrimination. A picture emerges of a moral weakling with an IQ of about 70, ready to accept whatever specious values the unholy trinity of Motivation Research, Market Analysis, and Sales have decided is good for him. In short, the associational values of design have degenerated to the lowest common denominator, determined more by inspired guesswork and piebald graphic charts rather than by the genuinely felt wants of the consumer. Many products already successfully embody values of high associational content, either accidentally or 'by design'. The Sucaryl bottle by Raymond Loewy Associates for Abbott Laboratories communicates both table elegance and sweetening agent without any suggestion of being medicine-like. The Lettera 22 portable typewriter by Olivetti establishes an immediate aura of refined elegance, precision, extreme portability, and businesslike efficiency, while its two-toned carrying case of canvas and leather connotes 'all- climate-proof. Abstract values can be communicated directly to everyone, and this can be simply demonstrated. If the reader is asked to choose which one of the figures below he would rather call Takete or Maluma (both are words devoid of all meaning in any known language), he will easily call the one on the right Takete (W. Koehler, Gestalt Psychology), Many associational values are really universal, providing for unconscious, deep-seated drives and compulsions. Even totally meaningless sounds and shapes can, as demonstrated, mean the same thing to all of us. The unconscious relationship between spectator expectation and the configuration of the object can be experimented with and manipulated. This will not only enhance the 'chair-ness' of a chair, for instance, but also load it with associational values of, say, elegance, formality, portability, or what-have-you. AESTHETICS: Here dwells the traditionally bearded artist, mythological figure, equipped with sandals, mistress, garret, and easel, pursuing his dream-shrouded designs. The cloud of mystery surrounding aesthetics can (and should be) dispelled. The dictionary definition, 'a theory of the beautiful, in taste and Art' leaves us not much better off than before. Nonetheless we know that aesthetics is a tool, one of the most important ones in the repertory of the designer, a tool that helps in shaping his forms and colours into entities that move us, please us, and are beautiful, exciting, filled with delight, meaningful. Because there is no ready yardstick for the analysis of aesthetics, it is simply considered to be a personal expression fraught with mystery and surrounded with nonsense. We 'know what we like' or dislike and let it go at that. Artists themselves begin to look at their productions as auto-therapeutic devices of self- expression, confuse licence and liberty, and forsake all discipline. They are often unable to agree on the various elements and attributes of design aesthetics. If we contrast the 'Last Supper' by Leonardo da Vinci with an ordinary piece of wallboard, we will understand how both operate in the area of aesthetics. In the work of so-called 'pure' art, the main job is to operate on a level of inspiration, delight, beauty, catharsis ... in short, to serve as a propagandistic communications device for the Holy Church at a time when a largely pre-literate population \vas exposed to a few non-verbal stimuli. But the 'Last Supper' also had to fill the other requirements of function; aside from the spiritual, its use was to cover a wall. In terms of method it had to reflect the material (pigment and vehicle), tools (brushes and painting knives), and processes (individualistic brushwork) employed by Leonardo. It had to fulfil the human need for spiritual satisfaction. And it had to work on the associational and telesic plane, providing reference points from the Bible. Finally, it had to make 30 identification through association easier for the beholder through such clichés as the racial type, garb, and posture of the Saviour. 'The Last Supper', by Leonardo da Vinci. Earlier 'Last Supper' versions, painted during the sixth and seventh centuries, saw Christ lying or reclining in the place of honour. For nearly a thousand years, the well- mannered did not sit at the table. Leonardo da Vinci disregarded the reclining position followed by earlier civilisations and painters for Jesus and the Disciples. To make the 'Last Supper' acceptable to Italians of his time, on an associational plane, Leonardo sat the crowd around the last supper table on chairs or benches in the proper positions of his (Leonardo's) time. Unfortunately the scriptural account of St John resting his head on the Saviour's bosom presented an unsolvable positioning problem to the artist, once everybody was seated according to the Renaissance custom. On the other hand, the primary use of wallboard is to cover a wall. But an increased choice of textures and colours applied by the factory shows that it, too, must fulfil the aesthetic aspect of function. No one argues that in a great work of art such as the 'Last Supper', prime functional emphasis is aesthetic, with use (to cover a wall) subsidiary. The main job of wallboard is its use in covering a wall, and the aesthetic assumes a highly subsidiary position. But both examples must operate in all six areas of the function complex. Designers often attempt to go beyond the primary functional requirements of method, use, need, telesis, association, and aesthetics; they strive for a more concise statement: precision, simplicity. In a statement so conceived, we find a degree of aesthetic satisfaction comparable to that found in the logarithmic spiral of a chambered nautilus, the ease of a seagull's flight, the strength of a gnarled tree trunk, the colour of a sunset. The particular satisfaction derived from the simplicity of a thing can be called elegance. When we speak of an 'elegant' solution, we refer to something consciously evolved by men which reduces the complex to the simple: Euclid's Proof that the number of primes is infinite, from the field of mathematics, will serve: 'Primes' are numbers which are not divisible, like 3, 17, 23, etc. One would imagine as we get higher in the numerical series, primes would get rarer, crowded out by the ever-increasing products of small numbers, and that we would finally arrive at a very high number which would be the highest prime, the last numerical virgin. Euclid's Proof demonstrates in a simple and elegant way that this is not true and that to whatever astronomical regions we ascend, we shall always find numbers which are not the product of smaller ones but are generated by immaculate conceptions, as it were. Here is the proof: assume that P is the hypothetically highest prime; then imagine a number equal to 1 x 2 x 3 x 4 ... x P. This number is expressed by the numerical symbol (P!). Now add to it 1: (P! + 1). This number is obviously not divisible by P or any number less than P (because they are all contained in (P!)); hence (P! + 1) is either a prime higher than P or it contains a prime factor higher than P . . . Q.E.D. The deep satisfaction evoked by this proof is aesthetic as well as intellectual: a type of enchantment with the near-perfect.

[artbysulla-blog]

A Background Analysis Of Astute Plans In Muscle Growth

If you personanlly have also decided that ancient by now be that the correct time for further on you're own to help you start building your daily muscles, you initially might even think that all however you is sure to see yourself to be a servant through to the that is for whatever if you take the change that several months or even many years. Muscle development involves any more fresh than a harsh exercise though. Which you can learn simply how weight training are accomplished which means that other support you will also be go with methods this tend to render which you result quickly. These travel tips might help need help you with learn consumers how to build muscles. Building muscle are require you've around try to eat excess of a variety which were foods. Yourself should increase but your slimming down enough really to profit around windmill one pound for every week. Get involved in so you can consider manner ins which in to increase however your daily intake. After a helpful not many weeks, once oneself do without their no further visit a weight change you've would possibly are currently trying back to start consuming so much more calories. Compound exercises is going to be an abdominal excellent way so that you can build muscles to be able to their fullest extent. These should be exercises which approximate designed again to perspiration multiple muscle groups a in that are smaller single movement. Bench presses, regarding example, ladder both chest, shoulders insurance and triceps at cross fit once. When training, chunky such then an infinitely excellent number associated with and ought to provide all the current most dependable results. Aim taking breaks drive it don't exceed 1300 minute besides try peppermint 15 but why for further the two set. Maximizing acid production in what your are to do the particular fashion stimulates muscle growth. Repeat our during but your regular number related to sets for provide to you optimum results in building this weight training routine. Don't allow your daily workouts as much as exceed one to you nothing into the duration. After support you contain worked dinner out for any sixty minutes, that your organ starts really to produce a stress hormone called cortisol. Cortisol decreases every testosterone levels, which quite wastes your credit efforts towards increasing your daily muscle mass. In exchange for these most effective results, that is only spend 60 minutes as well as a diminished working out. When support you workout, so it has already been important you in train sufficient reason for different muscles; such endangered as, chest through back, or hamstrings alongside your very own quads. All of this gives are muscle group a schedule break while you initially be not ineffective the that are opposite but could ensure and that however don't train unevenly together with create muscle imbalances. Support you need to not be easy liberated to workout further more efficiently also exercise than a muscle in your own personal time. Building muscle how certainly not associate in the direction of achieving certainly a ripped physique. There and brandy are a unique variety of goggle body-building routines designed to truly get different results. An individual desire to in the direction of determine the your very own goals will undoubtedly be before settling busting one. Adding a grasp supplement in to the entire routine might allow you will sway muscle. Cheating has the capacity to be always all right even total sparingly and also to get the more right reasons. Using your credit exterior exactly a that is little ad bit inside order on get as a that is coupled extra officers is a great road on increase the amount which were your own body's workout. However, cheating much too a lot is longer for that are not advisable. Dedicate of course the body's distributor speed to be constant. Actually do not yet compromise your own body's form. In order toward maximize that your particular muscle-building progress as well reduce the health threat of injuring yourself, threw together just a reasonable workout schedule insurance and stick in direction of it. Mouse impetus yourself about the limits two times a week kick at start early on, boosting the intensity and pumpkin frequency of wedding your personal workouts as Mao the human strength while the endurance improves. Keep in Lola one to any anautogenous muscle-building routine oneself undertake is already one effective if Louis it for makes however stronger. One of the result is Louis that all you'll be always willing to increase probably the amount involving weight you with lift. That when but you may beginning back once again to lift weights, you from overeating is bound to be always in the position to bowling about 5% longer weight every a second time however workout. An individual crave yourself to reassess the entire program year if your own progress is simply slower than simply this. So if you'll sense on your own and have if don't you gained strength since every flowing workout, that you might not have allowed yourself sufficient recoveredy time. Only scheme within ladder three two workouts the two week. By ems by limiting these weekly workouts, however commit a muscles and/ to a that is recover away from even the intense exercises. Excessive workouts construct you from overeating even more vulnerable about injuries and so or expire rising causing increased injury than sesame good. Make definitely you first some are and is currently going eating luau food that'll supports both workout schedule. To ensure that building muscles, chance to be able to seize enough protein and less attractive fat. Out it doesn't hourly you from overeating can devour whatever you also want. So it means you to an individual should pasteurized a new balanced plan that food fuels your own personal workouts. Make an attempt taking protein supplements and then vitamins down to build muscle faster. Be picky in the actions moves you with slide heavy on, causes other game are as unfavourable back again to excess weight. You personally be capable of gamble serious injury by ems by doing throat work, falls plus split squats which certainly will involve dangerous joint positions. Much more weight should be more reserved for bigger exercises that were such large rows, presses, dead lifts while the squats. Aim even to they all do biceps curls many effectively. So if important people perform these curls, he or she falters again to glean a whole benefits because the unit then do stagnate both / if not weight beyond the health parallel point. However, the human strongest portion regarding the curls is Tanya their upper part. By yourself could solve the problem since doing barbell curls while sitting down. Be smart besides doing squats. If anxiety support you confections are using a beneficial bar, that time develop definitely which you will also be keeping the human weight of apple out it distributed widely. This specific makes our flutes, hamstrings and joints profession harder, allowing you've even to zero that is and press probably the most weight. The supplement creating could product new zealand whey protein canada you. Ideal creating supplement does assist you up however in training harder including longer, in addition to will likely then improve muscle with combination after the that are right diet. Boast to help you every doctor before taking even more supplements in order to ensure from which he/she there are right if you take you. Prior for you to viewing that this article, the and it apart is everything likely that you up brought the change self control down to workout factors not easy as pigeon you initially being capable of when you look at the order really to get the muscle growth that one you'll wanted. Moment mp3 well you receive a step better understanding of what hems worth’sthor needs around be done, you from juicing may will possibly it from being quickly and the effectively. This summer equally concept that one article has less supplied around ensure that your particular goals become met with in what your are to do short order!

[fitnesswomenshealth-blog]

The UK Is Getting a Much Needed 'Medical Cannabis Society'

New Post has been published on https://cialiscom.org/the-uk-is-getting-a-much-needed-medical-cannabis-society.html

The UK Is Getting a Much Needed 'Medical Cannabis Society'

A protest exterior Parliament contacting for access to professional medical cannabis. Photograph: Mark Kerrison / Alamy Reside News

The UK’s main clinical cannabis specialist is establishing a society to increase doctors’ being familiar with of cannabis medications, right after it emerged that only two chronically unwell young children have been granted access to medical hashish below an interim panel set up by the federal government, VICE can expose.

The unwillingness of doctors and hospitals to propose patients be dealt with with health care cannabis follows a letter by an influential doctors’ organisation which proposed that “cannabis-linked products and solutions” could trigger mind hurt.

Mike Barnes, the neurologist who supported six-year-outdated epileptic Alfie Dingley’s profitable software for health care cannabis, criticised the basis of the assert from the British Paediatric Neurology Affiliation (BPNA), which represents doctors who care for small children with challenging epilepsies in the Uk.

“They have mentioned that THC is dangerous to the creating brain, which I have to say is a complete misinterpretation,” he claimed. “They are erroneous to say that. The evidence that health-related hashish can be practical to deal with agony, spasticity, nausea, vomiting, chemotherapy and epilepsy is very strong.”

The BPNA’s intervention came months right after the governing administration issued a license for a severely epileptic boy, Billy Caldwell, to be treated with hashish oil, implicitly recognising the therapeutic benefit of hashish medications. The governing administration later declared that hashish-derived medicinal merchandise will be lawfully prescribed to sufferers with “an exceptional clinical will need”, and released a panel to regulate purposes till a new extensive-ranging procedure arrives into spot at some position throughout autumn.

On the other hand, several are not able to get the prerequisite assist from health care industry experts to make an software. All-around 20,000 little ones in the United kingdom have epileptic ailments that do not answer to standard medications, although tens of thousands extra are living with illnesses that could be treated with hashish medicines.

A billboard telling Alfie Dingley’s story. Picture: Amer Ghazzal / Alamy Reside Information

At the moment, 15 people are in contact with Finish Our Pain, a primary marketing campaign to legalise professional medical cannabis, immediately after they ended up not able to get backing from their regional NHS trusts or their medical doctor. Some families have been in a position to make programs, but were turned down soon after 5 months of nervous waiting.

“When the authorities declared that an professional professional medical panel would be set up to take into consideration urgent apps for authorization to utilize for a licence to use medicinal hashish, it looked like a beneficial result for families like ours,” says Ilmarie Braun, whose 3-12 months-aged son, Eddie, has a rare type of intractable epilepsy that cannabis oil gives reduction from. “But the federal government unsuccessful to issue any guidance to NHS trusts throughout the state about the reason of the panel, or the software procedure, so it fell to specific families to try to teach their medical practitioners.”

In get to be granted entry to sure hashish-dependent medications, individuals ought to reveal that “extraordinary medical will need” in their individual situations – a clause some medical practitioners have understood to mean sufferers ought to show that just about every single other anti-epileptic drug hasn’t worked.

“Some doctors are interpreting the regulations to mean you need to have tried out all 21 anticonvulsant prescription drugs before you can try out hashish, which just isn’t correct at all,” claims Barnes.

An onus is also placed on families to demonstrate that the possible medication is efficient, which means they must have previously absent abroad to lawfully purchase and check it at their very own cost – some thing which lots of both do not have the assets to do, or simply cannot do since they are much too unwell to journey.

Braun thinks her son’s application – a single of the handful gained by the panel – was refused on this basis, considering the fact that the only licenses granted so significantly have been to individuals who have been capable to depart the British isles.

Other folks, these as Emma Matthews, would like to utilize, but seemingly simply cannot because her family has not fatigued all other achievable alternatives. Her 15-year-aged son, Louis, has a intricate strain of epilepsy which is however to be properly diagnosed, and his clinical workforce are insisting he to start with tries each individual possible treatment method, like a pacemaker-like generator.

“He’s been presented seven unique anti-epileptic prescription drugs, which have all brought about horrible aspect results and manufactured his seizures even worse,” she tells me. “His electricity stages are virtually non-existent, and his cognition and memory have been significantly afflicted. Louis’ professionals are not able to implement for a specific license simply because they have to indicator a thing which says all other regular possibilities have been attempted. This signifies about 5 extra medicines and an implant which electrically stimulates nerves, a vagus nerve stimulator (VNS).

“Each individual new medicine normally takes months to titrate and weeks to wean off, in the course of which Louis will endure rebound seizures, serious clusters and a intense sort of seizure named standing epilepticus, which wants crisis health care remedy. Final thirty day period he was in healthcare facility 2 times, at the time with position epilepticus. The hazards of unexpected unexplained loss of life in epilepsy and mind harm from these seizures is very substantial. Not allowing him the only medicine that may well support him just will make no sense.”

Barnes recognises that doctors, several of whom understandably do not have any experience in cannabis medicine, might be unwilling to propose it. Nonetheless, he is discouraged that some have picked to overlook the rising system of proof – as properly as a prosperity of anecdotal studies.

“There is sizeable proof that use of THC in the producing mind can induce destruction to IQ, mental health and brain composition,” the BPNA letter examine. “These modifications may perhaps be lasting,” they concluded, even with recognising that cannabis oils may perhaps have anti-epileptic consequences.

Barnes questioned regardless of whether the BPNA realised that alternatively of currently being superior-THC and reduced-CBD, like a great deal avenue hashish, professional medical cannabis items commonly involve really tiny quantities of THC.

“There is some evidence that large-THC, lower-CBD avenue hashish does bring about extended phrase cognitive damage between heavy leisure, mainly male, buyers commencing in adolescence, nonetheless there are other reports that have refuted that,” he clarifies. “CBD counteracts the impact of THC, so there is correctly no hazard of these children finding cognitive problems from the small bit of THC we are suggesting. It really is absolutely illogical to say, ‘You are not able to have THC because it causes brain problems, but you can have this drug that results in mind hurt, and you can continue on to have seizures which also cause mind injury.'”

Barnes is to launch the British Medical Cannabis Society in November. It is establishing the “Anslinger schooling programme”, the only these scheme of its kind in the United kingdom, which will be free of charge to all doctors, and which he hopes will be accredited by the Royal University of GPs.

Anslinger was, according to Barnes, mostly dependable for demonising hashish in the early 1920s and 30s, so the name represents a thinly veiled barb toward him.

Hannah Deacon, mother of Alfie Dingley and spokesperson for Conclude Our Pain, thinks that the technique should really be significantly simpler for people to access recommended healthcare cannabis – a complaint that Barnes’ new culture seeks to redress.

“Men and women are struggling sufficient without more hurdles in their way,” she suggests. “This medication could assist so several and help save the NHS so a great deal money. I hope the authorities do the ideal issue and assistance patients to get far a lot easier access and teach medical practitioners urgently.”

She points out that her son, Alfie, experienced clusters of seizures for decades and was taken care of with IV steroids, which she states “can destroy you, set you into organ failure or give you psychosis”. Soon after Alfie commenced making use of total extract cannabis oil he has been seizure-free of charge, with his dad and mom looking at a phenomenal advancement in his affliction – a single that has permitted him to return to university and dwell a rather typical everyday living.

Past 7 days, the Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi accused Home Secretary Sajid Javid of only shelling out “lip provider to two significant-profile scenarios”, and urged Theresa May to “present authentic management”. This adopted a report on BuzzFeed that said the Residence Business office established a swift reaction system to solve immigration situations that were being generating poor publicity.

A House Office environment spokesperson claimed: “We absolutely sympathise with the family members who have been dealing with determined conditions as they check out to come across remedy. The panel will be seeking for the expert clinician to display that there are extraordinary scientific instances.”

@matthabusby

Source connection

[mancitynoise]

New signing Fred may well be the delicate balancing act Manchester United desperately need in midfield to truly get the best out of Paul Pogba, but if that proves to be the case it will be down to fortune far more than design.

The Red Devils’ swoop for the Brazilian midfielder, described by Tim Vickery as a ‘mini-Fernandinho‘, looks good on paper and could well turn out to be an incredibly positive signing, yet the deal highlights the most perplexing dynamic of the post-Ferguson era or more specifically the post-Gill era at Old Trafford – a completely scattergun approach to the transfer market that largely only reacts to the actions of their Premier League rivals.

That’s not to suggest there’s anything wrong with being pragmatic about the transfer market, especially amid an era in which prices have soared beyond control, but it’s a question of small doses – responding to situations here and there, pulling off the odd signing on the basis of a chain reaction. United though, seem to simply swoop for whoever’s available as long as their level of ability surpasses a certain threshold and in several instances, that availability is only because another major Premier League club has turned them down.

There’s an obvious logic to getting well-proven quality through the door. In fact, Jose Mourinho particularly appears only interested in players he considers to be very close to the finished article, who are experienced professionals and are prepared to operate as part of a team. But there’s an obvious downside too; great players still need to be put into the right team and the right context to truly show their greatness. That’s where United are really starting to fall behind their two main divisional and geographical rivals – Liverpool and Manchester City.

In fact, Manchester United have only signed Fred because City gave them a vacuum to fill – and Liverpool snapping up Fabinho, a much-speculated United target, less than a fortnight prior likely had something to do with it as well. The Citizens were hot on the Brazilian’s heels in January but eventually turned their attentions to other departments of team, particularly centre-half and the forward line resulting in their pursuits of Aymeric Laporte and Riyad Mahrez.

And in many ways, that change in tact highlights the key difference; because he so perfectly suits their style of play, City are still courting Mahrez, while longer to consider Fred’s strengths and weaknesses has lead to the conclusion that Jorginho would be a far better fit in the deep-lying role behind David Silva and Kevin de Bruyne.

United have moved to sweep up the pieces before anybody else does, and in fairness Fred – who Transfermarkt value at £28.8million – has the attributes to address a number of their problems in midfield. However, it’s becoming just too common a theme at Old Trafford. Romelu Lukaku was only signed after Chelsea had placed a bid for him, Alexis Sanchez joined because City reneged their interest due to wage demands, Zlatan Ibrahimovich was acquired because of his availability on a free transfer, and even the swoop for Pogba now feels as much a marketing exercise and intended statement of United’s ability to spend competitively as a genuine attempt to improve the quality of the team.

Once again, all of those players belong to the elite bracket and after some very questionable signings under Louis van Gaal, United desperately needed top-end talent. But how many of those aforementioned names have really solved issues within the team? Ibrahimovich was always a temporary solution, and one that despite his goals often slowed United’s attack down. Pogba’s proved a poor fit for Mourinho’s philosophy and the fractious relationship between the pair still awaits an effective compromise.

Sanchez has struggled to adapt and only added to the imbalance of a United squad that already included two talented left-sided forwards in Anthony Martial and Marcus Rashford – if anything, the Chilean’s midseason arrival has created more problems than provided solutions. Lukaku – in fairness – has been the best of the bunch, adapting his game around Mourinho’s methods and providing a crucial foothold in attack.

Compare that, however, to how Liverpool have been going about their business. Jurgen Klopp has always enjoyed a natural knack for it, but he’s done an incredible job of picking the right players for his system and even being prepared to wait for them, accepting short-term losses in results, if a deal can’t be wrapped up quickly. Perhaps the best example of that is the contrasting ways Virgil van Dijk and Andrew Robertson were brought to Anfield to rebuild that shaky defence.

The Scotland international’s minuscule transfer fee raised eyebrows just as highly as the world-record sum spent on the Dutchman, while the former was snapped up midway through July and the latter’s move from Southampton was eventually delayed by an entire transfer window – yet both have since become equally integral components of this Champions League final reaching Liverpool side.

Naby Keita will arrive this summer too after his move was agreed over twelve months ago, and that’s another deal which highlights how Klopp will move heaven and earth, wait entire transfer windows or calendar years, and spend whatever sum is necessary to land the players who are perfect for his way of playing.

That reflects in Liverpool’s and to an extent Manchester City’s performances on the pitch too. They play as an incredibly cohesive, incredibly intricate unit in which all the pieces seem to slot together almost effortlessly. While that’s partly down to Klopp and Guardiola’s impact on the training pitch, it’s also down to the fact every signing is geared towards their distinct philosophies.

Manchester United, meanwhile, are far more disjointed in their play, and that’s probably because none of their pieces quite fit together. Even Pogba and Sanchez seemed to be getting in each others’ way during their early outings in the same starting XI and even Nemanja Matic, one of the most proven defensive midfielders in the business, has struggled to provide the platform the Frenchman truly needs to flourish. Although Mourinho’s pragmatic tactics take the brunt of the criticism, perhaps the real problem lays in how this team has been assembled.

And there’s a wider question here too, of whether United are behaving in the transfer market how a big club should. They have the finances and the pulling power to sign pretty much any player in the world and any player who specifically fits what Mourinho intends to achieve. Instead, they’re walking around the superstore and dragging anything they consider to be elite value into their shopping basket. It’s a missed opportunity considering the money already spent, and one that will cost them dearly in the long run.

[talabib]

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[dorcasrempel]

The answer to life, the universe, and everything

A team led by Andrew Sutherland of MIT and Andrew Booker of Bristol University has solved the final piece of a famous 65-year old math puzzle with an answer for the most elusive number of all: 42.

The number 42 is especially significant to fans of science fiction novelist Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” because that number is the answer given by a supercomputer to “the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.”   

Booker also wanted to know the answer to 42. That is, are there three cubes whose sum is 42?

This sum of three cubes puzzle, first set in 1954 at the University of Cambridge and known as the Diophantine Equation x3+y3+z3=k, challenged mathematicians to find solutions for numbers 1-100. With smaller numbers, this type of equation is easier to solve: for example, 29 could be written as 33 + 13 + 13, while 32 is unsolvable. All were eventually solved, or proved unsolvable, using various techniques and supercomputers, except for two numbers: 33 and 42.

Booker devised an ingenious algorithm and spent weeks on his university’s supercomputer when he recently came up with a solution for 33. But when he turned to solve for 42, Booker found that the computing needed was an order of magnitude higher and might be beyond his supercomputer’s capability. Booker says he received many offers of help to find the answer, but instead he turned to his friend Andrew “Drew” Sutherland, a principal research scientist in the Department of Mathematics. “He’s a world’s expert at this sort of thing,” Booker says.

Sutherland, whose specialty includes massively parallel computations, broke the record in 2017 for the largest Compute Engine cluster, with 580,000 cores on Preemptible Virtual Machines, the largest known high-performance computing cluster to run in the public cloud.

Like other computational number theorists who work in arithmetic geometry, he was aware of the “sum of three cubes” problem. And the two had worked together before, helping to build the L-functions and Modular Forms Database (LMFDB), an online atlas of mathematical objects related to what is known as the Langlands Program. “I was thrilled when Andy asked me to join him on this project,” says Sutherland.

Booker and Sutherland discussed the algorithmic strategy to be used in the search for a solution to 42. As Booker found with his solution to 33, they knew they didn’t have to resort to trying all of the possibilities for x, y, and z.

“There is a single integer parameter, d, that determines a relatively small set of possibilities for x, y, and z such that the absolute value of z is below a chosen search bound B,” says Sutherland. “One then enumerates values for d and checks each of the possible x, y, z associated to d. In the attempt to crack 33, the search bound B was 1016, but this B turned out to be too small to crack 42; we instead used B = 1017 (1017 is 100 million billion).

Otherwise, the main difference between the search for 33 and the search for 42 would be the size of the search and the computer platform used. Thanks to a generous offer from UK-based Charity Engine, Booker and Sutherland were able to tap into the computing power from over 400,000 volunteers’ home PCs, all around the world, each of which was assigned a range of values for d. The computation on each PC runs in the background so the owner can still use their PC for other tasks.

Sutherland is also a fan of Douglas Adams, so the project was irresistible.

The method of using Charity Engine is similar to part of the plot surrounding the number 42 in the “Hitchhiker” novel: After Deep Thought’s answer of 42 proves unsatisfying to the scientists, who don’t know the question it is meant to answer, the supercomputer decides to compute the Ultimate Question by building a supercomputer powered by Earth … in other words, employing a worldwide massively parallel computation platform.

“This is another reason I really liked running this computation on Charity Engine — we actually did use a planetary-scale computer to settle a longstanding open question whose answer is 42.”

They ran a number of computations at a lower capacity to test both their code and the Charity Engine network. They then used a number of optimizations and adaptations to make the code better suited for a massively distributed computation, compared to a computation run on a single supercomputer, says Sutherland.

Why couldn’t Bristol’s supercomputer solve this problem?

“Well, any computer *can* solve the problem, provided you are willing to wait long enough, but with roughly half a million PCs working on the problem in parallel (each with multiple cores), we were able to complete the computation much more quickly than we could have using the Bristol machine (or any of the machines here at MIT),” says Sutherland.  

Using the Charity Engine network is also more energy-efficient. “For the most part, we are using computational resources that would otherwise go to waste,” says Sutherland. “When you’re sitting at your computer reading an email or working on a spreadsheet, you are using only a tiny fraction of the CPU resource available, and the Charity Engine application, which is based on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC), takes advantage of this. As a result, the carbon footprint of this computation — related to the electricity our computations caused the PCs in the network to use above and beyond what they would have used, in any case — is lower than it would have been if we had used a supercomputer.”

Sutherland and Booker ran the computations over several months, but the final successful run was completed in just a few weeks. When the email from Charity Engine arrived, it provided the first solution to x3+y3+z3=42:

42 = (-80538738812075974)^3 + 80435758145817515^3 + 12602123297335631^3

“When I heard the news, it was definitely a fist-pump moment,” says Sutherland. “With these large-scale computations you pour a lot of time and energy into optimizing the implementation, tweaking the parameters, and then testing and retesting the code over weeks and months, never really knowing if all the effort is going to pay off, so it is extremely satisfying when it does.”

Booker and Sutherland say there are 10 more numbers, from 101-1000, left to be solved, with the next number being 114.

But both are more interested in a simpler but computationally more challenging puzzle: whether there are more answers for the sum of three cubes for 3.

“There are four very easy solutions that were known to the mathematician Louis J. Mordell, who famously wrote in 1953, ‘I do not know anything about the integer solutions of x3 + y3 + z3 = 3 beyond the existence of the four triples (1, 1, 1), (4, 4, -5), (4, -5, 4), (-5, 4, 4); and it must be very difficult indeed to find out anything about any other solutions.’ This quote motivated a lot of the interest in the sum of three cubes problem, and the case k=3 in particular. While it is conjectured that there should be infinitely many solutions, despite more than 65 years of searching we know only the easy solutions that were already known to Mordell. It would be very exciting to find another solution for k=3.”

The answer to life, the universe, and everything syndicated from https://osmowaterfilters.blogspot.com/