Protection Bill? Really? I don't think it means what you think it means


The signing of this bill doesn't seem like it's a step in the direction of equality and justice and liberty for all Americans,” said Press Secretary Josh Earnest, noting that the administration’s view was shared by the Republican mayor of Indianapolis and a “whole host of nonprofit and private-sector companies who have legitimate concerns about the impact of this legislation.

The impact of this legislation? Impact -- is the perfect word. And the answer is 'Tectonic'

Only about a fifth of you are going to be able to understand and accept this -- that's how propaganda works. It is nearly impossible to remove false information completely. We aren't spreadsheets. We don't delete and replace information. I wish I was skilled enough to help further.

Clarity v Propaganda (?)


On the Forbes website there is an article titled “Moral Clarity Is Needed In Countering Anti-Western Propaganda” -- which is well written and means well, but shows the level of misunderstanding about the effects and grit propaganda possess I find frequently displayed.  I like the author and enjoy her articles but on this one she missed. Again though, the misconception of how harsh the propaganda used today really is on its the victims is about normal

This is what I wrote in response.

The one thing I believe we don't have is a "moral clarity." How would we gather this? From the verbiage or the actions? We have right now a man running for president which is in fact a propaganda campaign. We have churches whose ministers are swearing that they will "Raise an army for the Republican's 2016" even though that is strictly against the 501(c)(3) mandates...and he had no problem with posing for the picture on the NY Times. So, first you would have to figure out, whose morality to use, and then you'll have to figure out how to keep it clear from those who you didn't pick, because in our current political environment the running law is "if we didn't say it, then it is wrong" -- and that's about as bipartisan as we get these days.

But I've personally never seen "clarity" battle propaganda with any success. An easy example is Common Core. A better one is the AP History thing that flared up last Oct. The propaganda stated that the College Board was leaving our History's Heroes out of the US History Course. This line ran so hard and so fast that even members of Congress were on the News Media denouncing the AP Course and the College Board. Another line was that the course was Far Left and taught the US History in dark terms and showed our worst points.

The facts were -- none of that was close to being true. In fact, there was nothing in the AP Course. No, I mean... "nothing". It was a framework. It was up to the teacher of the course to put in the curriculum. This fact was printed on page 2 of the AP History Manual It was also the first thing you read on the AP History Web Page. This was pointed out again and again by several people, including myself ( http://l.h4s.club/aphistory ) Hours, and weeks and days we spent trying to get people to open up a web link or read the source -- propaganda won out every time -- for months. In fact they were still going in February of this year -- well after the teachers were fully into the course and were using their own curriculum -- and people continued to believe this propaganda.

So, even if we did have this "moral clarity" and we all agreed on it (even though we can't even agree on a definition of Democracy) I don't believe it would do much good.

To truly go up against propaganda you have to be willing to use tactics that most people are not willing to do - because you are messing with memories and minds and there is no way to target or limit the effects. Those effects are going to be long lasting too.




Joanne Harris Says it well to Clean Reader
Count me in on any legal action


I was going to write something on this but Joanne Harris says it better. I would like Clean Reader to know that I feel exactly the way she does and I will support any legal action against this product on the grounds of copyright infringement. Because altering what is read, is altering the content of the book. I don't give a damn if the ebook's file content is unchanged, or if the file is unmarred. Who cares about that? You are displaying words I did not write inside the context of my work, to the reader of my novel - while making a profit off this editing of my work. That is illegal. It misrepresents my intention, my meaning and my beliefs. That is libel, and also illegal

Here is Jonne's Take..

An e-mail from Clean Reader

After my blog post the other day, I got this e-mail from the official Clean Reader site. Rather than give out e-mail addresses and identities, I’m copying and posting it here, along with my reply.
Dear Joanne,

I wanted to reach out to you given your recent comments regarding Clean Reader.  I want to reassure you we are not selling edited copies of your books.  The books we offer are word-for-word the exact same as how you wrote them.  And if it wasn’t clear, our unique “Clean Reader” function can be turned OFF with the click of a button if the reader decides they don’t want/need any of the words hidden.

Our initial release of this app has stirred up WAY more emotion than we ever anticipated.  We are certainly not interested in engaging in a battle with authors.  We respect your talents and rights to write whatever you feel compelled to write.  You should use whichever words you feel are best suited for the character, situation, naration, etc.   Our hope is to simply provide a tool for some people to use who love great books but are equally opposed to reading profanity.  Many of the people who we’ve heard from that are using Clean Reader say they’re willing to miss out on a little bit of context in order to avoid reading some profanity.  Ideally our app will open the door to more readers/customers to consume a more diverse selection of books.

If you have any constructive ideas of changes you’d reccomend to our app that would make it less offensive to you as an author please feel free to send them to me and we’ll certainly consider working them into a future release of the app.

Highest regards,
J….. 

Dear J….
Thank you for your mail.I appreciate your attempt to involve authors in the debate, and wish I could be more conciliatory. However, my objections to Clean Reader go far beyond whether or not my work is being edited, or my copyright infringed.If you have read my blog post, you’ll see that my problems with this app are threefold.
1. Artistic: Writers of fiction choose their words (including what you refer to as profanities) very carefully. We generally don’t write “for context”, but to create an effect. By allowing words to be replaced or blanked out, this effect is reduced to a clumsy translation, or negated completely. To enable a writer’s work to be modified without permission, then for you claim that nothing much has been altered, is to completely misunderstand the nature of fiction writing. Worse still, you are enabling us to be judged and misrepresented on the basis of words that your app has put into our mouths.

Read the rest on Joanne's Blog -->

The Message of the ... tabernacle
and some stuff about angels



Until Haley said on Facebook, in response to this meme of mine:

Haley M~~~:   I don't...I don't even understand what point they're trying to make...

I really didn't understand the others who have give me similar responses. I thought they were pointing out the ludicrous logic of this "Tabernacle's" message. I like Haley, and I understood that she was truly baffled by this, and so I wrote out an answer for her, which after I posted it and recalled the others, I'm repeating here.

Glenn Hefley: Well, they are attempting to put Women's Equality in-line with Satanism. It is said that Satan (Lucifer really - Satan in the Old Testament is not a devil or even a bad angel.. it is actually the name of an office, which is why it is always "The Satan" not just Satan. The Hebrews believed this angel to be something like a Prosecuting attorney,.. but I digress) -- as modern Christianity's mythos goes, Satan rose up to attempt to take God's place, which could be thought of as an attempt to be equal with God... which is actually not accurate either -- God decreed that the angels were to serve man, his creation, and Lucifer said he would not, that he would only serve God.-- anyway... Satan rose up against God in the Modern Christianity view of things -- instead of "staying in his place"


Glenn Hefley: What I'm pointing out in this meme is that angels are equal. for example, Michael is only an Arch angel, not even a Seraphim, and he was given command of all the armies of God.-- and also the war between the angels lasted forever, with neither side getting an upper hand on the other -- until God came into the fray and then it ended rather quickly. Michael did fight one of the stronger ones (which in the old testament was said to be their leader) in a duel and won (that would be Beelzebub or Beelzebul depending on which translation you are reading) -- so they were more or less equal in just about every way, even though they did have groupings called 'choirs'. There was also a kind of angel which were the barer of God's Chariot.. which were very vicious if their description has any truth to it, but they were not said to be higher or lower than anyone else.


Further, it is written that all are equal in Jesus Christ – and where it says that a woman must never turn her husband away if he wants sex, the next paragraph says the same of the husband if she desires.


That’s the background Haley, but what it really means, is that there are people out there, who claim to be Christian, and have sworn themselves to the church, yet  they are happily willing to commit the gravest of sins, if it means seeing that you and other women are not allowed to have the inalienable rights of being human.  They are willing to burn in their hell and take their congregation with them to meddle and militate against your basic right to exist. That is the level of their hate. Strife so vile it is like acid on the soul, and they will smile and smile and smile and be a villain.
Never underestimate these beings -- never think of them as humorous or ignorant – for they are neither. They know exactly what the Bible says, perhaps even better than I do, and I know it very well. They don’t care what it says – if it says anything against what they want this world to be. In their churches and their homes, Jesus is flatly ignored,  and God is only given an airing when he is affronted by abomination – and only if those abominations serve their purpose. 


So, what that sign means Haley, is there is a creature serving that church as minister, which you should be wary of.


There are, according to modern Christianity nine choirs of angels, who are more or less described as the following.

Seraphim

These are the highest order or choir of angels. They are the angels who are attendants or guardians before God's throne. They praise God, calling, "Holy Holy Holy is the Lord of Hosts". the only Bible reference is Isaiah 6:1-7. One of them touched Isaiah's lips with a live coal from the altar, cleansing him from sin. Seraphim have six wings, two cover their faces, two cover their feet, and two are for flying.

Cherubim

There is a great deal of confusion with the Cherubim. The Catholic tradition says on their website that the Cherubim rank after the seraphim and are the second highest in the nine hierarchies or choirs of angels. They posture that -- "The Old Testament does not reveal any evidence that the Jews considered them as intercessors or helpers of God. They were closely linked in God's glory. They are manlike in appearance and double-winged and were guardians of God's glory. They symbolized then, God's power and mobility. In the New Testament, they are alluded to as celestial attendants in the Apocalypse (Rv 4-6). Catholic tradition describes them as angels who have an intimate knowledge of God and continually praise Him."

However, the only one who actually was in the presence of the Cherubim is the prophet Ezekiel, who -- it is assumed after this encounter -- gives us the most confusing passages in the scriptures - or anywhere else for that matter.


We need to give Ezekiel a little slack however, because this encounter is Ezekiel coming face to face with God, who arrives before him on his Chariot, which is held and carried by four Cherubim. Ezekiel describes a lot of fire, and thunder coming from these four, who are 10 cubits in height (about 15 feet tall), and their wings are like swords. He then describes as follows.

Exe 10:10 And as for their appearances, they four had one likeness, as if a wheel had been in the midst of a wheel.
 Eze 10:11
When they went, they went upon their four sides; they turned not as they went, but to the place whither the head looked they followed it; they turned not as they went.
 Eze 10:12
And their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about, even the wheels that they four had.
 Eze 10:13
As for the wheels, it was cried unto them in my hearing, O wheel.
 Eze 10:14
And every one had four faces: the first face was the face of a cherub, and the second face was the face of a man, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle.
 Eze 10:15
And the cherubims were lifted up. This is the living creature that I saw by the river of Chebar.
 Eze 10:16
And when the cherubims went, the wheels went by them: and when the cherubims lifted up their wings to mount up from the earth, the same wheels also turned not from beside them.
 Eze 10:17
When they stood, these stood; and when they were lifted up, these lifted up themselves also: for the spirit of the living creature was in them.
 Eze 10:18
Then the glory of the LORD departed from off the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubims.
 Eze 10:19
And the cherubims lifted up their wings, and mounted up from the earth in my sight: when they went out, the wheels also were beside them, and every one stood at the door of the east gate of the LORD'S house; and the glory of the God of Israel was over them above.
 Eze 10:20
This is the living creature that I saw under the God of Israel by the river of Chebar; and I knew that they were the cherubims.
 Eze 10:21
Every one had four faces apiece, and every one four wings; and the likeness of the hands of a man was under their wings.
 Eze 10:22
And the likeness of their faces was the same faces which I saw by the river of Chebar, their appearances and themselves: they went every one straight forward.
---


Yeah.. so... that's  Cherub. Not sure where the cute little babies came into the picture, but these... aren't them. Cherubs are also the figures used for the Arc which allowed the Hebrews to talk to God.

Thrones

Thrones are the Angels of pure Humility, Peace and Submission. They reside in the area of the cosmos where material form begins to take shape. Modern Catholic tradition says that the lower Choir of Angels need the Thrones to access God -- which is odd since Micheal, Gabriel, and five others are the "seven who stand before God," and they are all from the "lower" choirs. It should be mentioned as well that this business of lower and higher is all from medieval Catholic literature and not part of the Biblical text at all -- these are also the same people who were burning people alive.

Something to be said about the Thrones, Dominions, Virtues and Powers. These choirs are not mentioned in Hebrew scripture at all, and are only mentioned once in the New Testament and I've never thought that the passage they are mentioned in was talking about angelic choirs. These were first described by the medieval Catholic church -- and once the Catholic church says something like "these are choirs of angels", it is unlikely that they will admit to a misunderstanding later -- especially if it is the Pope at the time who was the one declaring the existence and description.

The passage is in Colossians 1 which is an Epistle written by Paul and Timothy (both have a hand in the writing):

For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:

An Epistle is a very formal letter -- it is the type of letter you write when you understand that what is written in the document is not going to be taken lightly or as personal correspondence. It is what you write when you understand that those reading it on the other end are going to take it as "this is what it is to be Christian", and everything you say is going to be taken literally... and you aren't going to be around to correct any misunderstandings for close to a decade.

The two of them are writing this document to the Church in Colossae, a small Phrygian city near Laodicea. This church sprang up on its own and is basically "winging it".   Members of the congregation at Colosse had incorporated pagan elements into their practice, including worship of elemental spirits. The Epistle to the Colossians declares Christ's supremacy over the entire created universe and exhorts Christians to lead godly lives. The letter consists of two parts: first a doctrinal section, then a second regarding conduct. In both sections, false teachers who have been spreading error in the congregation are opposed.

Warning to Guard against the False Teachers (2:8-15)
Pleas to Reject the False Teachers (2:16-19)
An Analysis of the Heresy (2:20-23)

Now let's continue with the Catholic Modern Christianity's view on things.

Dominions

Dominions are Angels of Leadership. They regulate the duties of the angels, making known the commands of God.

Virtues

Virtues are known as the Spirits of Motion and control the elements. They are sometimes referred to as "the shining ones." They govern all nature. They have control over seasons, stars, moon; even the sun is subject to their command. They are also in charge of miracles and provide courage, grace, and valor.  (again, there is not a single source which describes them in this manner... this is purely Catholic tradition)

Powers

Powers are Warrior Angels against evil defending the cosmos and humans. They are known as potentates. They fight against evil spirits who attempt to wreak chaos through human beings. The chief is said to be either Samael or Camael, both angels of darkness.---  Samael is also the Head/Leader/General/King Angel of the Tenth Level of Heaven -- so there is a dynamic with the angels which is not readily understood with simple views of 'good' and 'evil'.

Archangels

Archangels are generally taken to mean "chief or leading angel" ( Jude 9; 1 Thes 4:16), they are the most frequently mentioned throughout the Bible.  The Archangels have a unique role as God's messenger to the people at critical times in history and salvation (Tb 12:6, 15; Jn 5:4; Rv 12:7-9) as in The Annunciation and Apocalypse. A feast day celebrating the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael is celebrated throughout the Church Sep 29. A special part of the Byzantine Liturgy invokes the "Cherubic Hymn" which celebrates these archangels and the guardian angels particularly.

The Angel of Death is said to be
Gabriel in many traditions though
three others are given this office as
well - it is clear however that most
of the time it is an Archangel holding
this important office
Of special significance is St. Michael as he has been invoked as patron and protector by the Church from the time of the Apostles. The Eastern Rite and many others place him over all the angels, as Prince of the Seraphim. He is described as the "chief of princes" and as the leader of the forces of heaven in their triumph over Satan and his followers. The angel Gabriel first appeared in the Old Testament in the prophesies of  Daniel, he announced the prophecy of 70 weeks (Dn 9:21-27). He appeared to Zechariah to announce the birth of St. John the Baptist (Lk 1:11). It was also Gabriel which proclaimed the Annunciation of Mary to be the mother of our Lord and Saviour. (Lk 1:26) The angel Raphael first appeared in the book of Tobit (Tobias)Tb 3:25, 5:5-28, 6-12). He announces "I am the Angel Raphael, one of the seven who stand before the throne of God." (Tb 12:15)

Principalities

In the New Testament Principalities refers to one type of spiritual (metaphysical) being which are now quite hostile to God and human beings. (Rom 8:38; 1 Cor 15:24; Eph 1:21; 3:10; 6:12; Col 1:16; 2:10, 15) Along with the principalities are the powers (Rom 8:38; 1 Cor 15:24; Eph 1:21; 1 Pt 3:22; 2 Thes 1:7); and cosmological powers (1 Cor 15:24; Eph 1:21; 3:10; Col 2:15);Dominions (Eph 1:21; Col 1:16) and thrones (Col1:16). The clarity of the New Testament witness helps see that these beings were created through Christ and for Him (Col 1:16). Given their hostility to God and humans due to sin, Christ's ultimate rule over them (ibid) expresses the reign of the Lord over all in the cosmos. This is the Lordship of Christ, which reveals God's tremendous salvation in conquering sin and death at the cross, and now takes place in the Church. (Eph 3:10)

Angels

These angels are closest to the material world and human begins. They deliver the prayers to God and God's answers and other messages to humans. Angels have the capacity to access any and all other Angels at any time. They are the most caring and social to assist those who ask for help.


Metatron

bath meaning daughter + qol meaning voice)

Metatron (Hebrew מטטרון) or Mattatron is an archangel in Judaism and in Christian folklore as well as the Chancellor of Heaven (effectively making Adramelech his infernal counterpart). According to Jewish medieval apocrypha, he is Enoch, ancestor of Noah, transformed into an angel. There are no references to Metatron as an angel in the Jewish or Christian scriptures; however, Genesis 5:24 is often cited as evidence of Enoch's bodily ascension into heaven —"And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him."

Adramelech, which means, "the glorious one is king", was a god worshiped through human sacrifice by the Sepharvites in II Kings 19

Although he is mentioned in a few brief passages in the Talmud, Metatron appears primarily in Jewish mystical texts and other post-scriptural esoteric sources, such as the Books of Enoch: 1 Enoch: Book of Parables, 2 Enoch, and 3 Enoch. In Rabbinic tradition, he is the highest of the angels and serves as the celestial scribe. -- so again we have an Arch angle, not a seraph who is in a lofty position -- showing anyone can be anything and that equality among the angels is the norm and rule, not the exception.

In Judaism and Christianity, the voice of God (Hebrew: בּת קול, bat kol or bath ḳōl, literally daughter of a voice; Latin: vox dei; Persian: ندا, Neda) is a "heavenly or divine voice which proclaims God's will or judgment." It is "identified with the Holy Spirit or those who speak as the medium of the Holy Spirit."

Understanding the "female" aspect of God's Voice is much clearer when you understand the Hebrew tradition of the Old Testament as the Hebrews did and not the Catholics. What the Catholics name "Holy Spirit" the Hebrews -- or rather the closest personage the Hebrews have to that office -- named Asherah, who it could be argued was God's girlfriend -- and in the "temple" where the arc resided, Asherah was always represented and reverenced as the one who "cleansed" the area for God's arrival. Asherah is not referred to in any tradition as being an angel of any choir -- there are early Catholic text which name Asherah as the Holy Spirit, but those lost favor and were "removed" before the year 500. (personally I give her credit for lasting that long). She is not completely gone however. If you walk around the Vatican and look at some of the doorways and frames, you'll find her -- there, but not mentioned.

In the period of the Tannaim (circa 100 BCE-200 CE) the term bath ḳōl was in very frequent use and was understood to signify not the direct voice of God, which was held to be supersensible, but the echo of the voice. The rabbis held that bath ḳōl had been an occasional means of divine communication throughout the whole history of Israel and that since the cessation of the prophetic gift it was the sole means of Divine revelation. It is noteworthy that the rabbinical conception of bath ḳōl sprang up in the period of the decline of Old Testament prophecy and flourished in the period of extreme traditionalism. Where the gift of prophecy was believed to be lacking – perhaps even because of this lack – there grew up an inordinate desire for special divine manifestations. Often a voice from heaven was looked for to clear up matters of doubt and even to decide between conflicting interpretations of the law. So strong had this tendency become that Rabbi Joshua (c. 100 CE) felt it to be necessary to oppose it and to insist upon the supremacy and the sufficiency of the written law.

Shortly after this, Jerusalem was razed by the Romans after the Hebrew attempt to take the city back from Rome. The Romans destroyed the city so completely -- eradicating every sign of the Temple -- that still to this day we really can't tell where the temple was, where it stood or what any part of the original city might have been. Many texts of that time and for centuries after have strongly pointed out that the Hebrews ceased to be when they decided that Asherah should not be heard.




Versions of a Fox

Waterfox

Mozilla doesn’t provide official builds of Firefox compiled for 64-bit systems yet. Waterfox takes Firefox’s code and compiles it for 64-bit Windows, without adding additional features or making other changes. Many plugins, including Adobe Flash, now have 64-bit versions, so using a 64-bit browser for day-to-day browsing is very possible. If you’ve already got Flash installed, you may need to download its installer to get the 64-bit version, too. The current installers come with both 32 and 64-bit plugins.


Waterfox uses the same profile data Firefox does, so switching to Waterfox is easy. If you decide to uninstall it, don’t select the “Remove my personal data” option unless you also want to delete your Firefox data.

Pale Moon

Pale Moon is another “optimized” build of Firefox for Windows, but it also has a 32-bit version. Pale Moon diverges from Firefox in removing accessibility and parental control options, while modifying the default interface settings to be similar to earlier versions of Firefox — it has a bookmark toolbar and status bar by default. It also uses its own configuration directory, unlike Waterfox.


SeaMonkey

SeaMonkey isn’t technically based on Firefox, but it’s closely related. Firefox was the evolution of the “Mozilla Application Suite,” which also contained email, IRC chat, HTML-editing, and newsgroup capabilities. These features were ripped out of Firefox to make it a more focused, speedy Web browser. If you long for the days of Mozilla, you can use SeaMonkey, the successor to the full Mozilla suite. It’s also got an integrated feed reader.


Iceweasel

If you’re using Debian Linux, you probably have Iceweasel installed instead of Firefox. Mozilla won’t allow Debian to package and tweak their own version of Firefox without calling it something different, so Iceweasel was born. Iceweasel is functionally identical to Firefox; it just has a different name and logo.

IceCat

IceCat is the GNU version of Firefox for Linux and other free operating systems. Mozilla Firefox is free software, but it recommends non-free, closed-source software such as the Adobe Flash plugin. The Free Software Foundation didn’t like this, so they released their own version of Firefox, which doesn’t recommend installing non-free plugins. IceCat is identical to Firefox beyond not recommending proprietary software and changing the branding, although it also includes an extension that makes a few privacy tweaks.


Wyzo

Wyzo is optimized for downloads and online media. It includes multi-source download capabilities and an integrated BitTorrent client. Its start page contains links to easily search torrents videos, TV shows, and music. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been updated in a while and is still based on Firefox 3.6.4. You can get many of its features in Firefox by installing extensions, such as FireDownload and FireTorrent — but these extensions also don’t support newer versions of Firefox, either. Still, it’s an interesting concept.




You may also have heard of SwiftFox, an optimized build of Mozilla Firefox for Linux. It hasn’t been updated since the Firefox 3.6 series, so it won’t offer you improved speed. Linux distributions package their own builds of Firefox, which are optimized for 64-bit operating systems.

Free Market Liberalism Sounds Good Does It ?


These four small children of Mr. and Mrs. Ray Califoux were in fact being advertised after the family fell on hard times in 1948. Jobless and with an eviction notice, a pregnant Lucille and Ray Califoux did not have enough money to feed their children.


It would be years before any of them saw each other again.

Neo-Libertarians
We call them Congress

by Elizabeth Martinez and Arnoldo Garcia, National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights


"Neo-liberalism" is a set of economic policies that have become widespread during the last 25 years
or so. Although the word is rarely heard in the United States, you can clearly see the effects of neo-liberalism here as the rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer.

"Liberalism" can refer to political, economic, or even religious ideas. In the U.S. political liberalism has been a strategy to prevent social conflict. It is presented to poor and working people as progressive compared to conservative or Rightwing. Economic liberalism is different. Conservative politicians who say they hate "liberals" -- meaning the political type -- have no real problem with economic liberalism, including neoliberalism.

"Neo" means we are talking about a new kind of liberalism...

A Must Have


I need this. I have places I need to go with this



Let's Do the Re-Tweet Thing

Ok  .. let's do the re-tweet thing. It's Fast It's fun, and it really gets attention.
Each tweet on the list is a person trying to be heard. At the bottom of the scroll there will be a very tiny "load more.." to click on So be sure to get down to the Original Twitters. You can only re-tweet once a message as you know. So, do as much as you can. Pop in to see if there are fresh ones. A couple of days is all we need to dedicate to this.

Let Lego know that we haven't forgotten about them, we're still very serious about our complaints, and that the next issue of their "Friends" magazine, should be "Child Friendly"  It's a great networking opportunity if you are into that sort of thing. For myself, my work is under the surface of things, so don't feel you now need to be subjected to my mad ramblings. After this, I'm back to my own ...

May I suggest #BadLego as an easy, short hash?

Let's do this. 


Putting words in the mouth of a Great Speaker

Not much of a post, I know -- it is more of an announcement -- or perhaps, fair warning. I've received several emails from various groups who are urging me to act in particular directions -- because the President is urging us to move in those directions. Not one of them are even close to what the President has been focused on for the last two months. I've reminded each of these parties that the President gives a weekly 'State of the Union' address which goes out on YouTube and can also be seen on the Whitehouse web site -- where he also keeps a running blog. It doesn't take much to find out what is on President Obama's mind.


The Latest Imperilment for Young Girls... LEGOs?

It was about 7AM when I saw the tweet. I was closing down my Twitter and Facebook to return to the seething build up that's going on -- and not looking forward to it this morning. My head ached, from lack of sleep, I was overly cranky -- for several related reasons -- and honestly I was in one of those, 'don't fu*&ing do it man' moods. Then I saw the tweet. A flash really as I closed down the Twitter. I caught two words, 'Nightmare' and 'LEGO'. I also recognized the source, so I knew the context. With a new click I brought the Twitter back up to find out what the full message was.

To be honest, I had already decided that I didn't like it, and that it was inline with several of the messages and campaigns I've been coming across. Reading the text I did exactly what I tell people never to do -- I didn't follow through or check the story. After the night I had and the sources I had read for the twelve hours before that -- I "knew" what was going on and responded in kind. Recognizing the sender account didn't help. It added an under tow of betrayal to the mix and just for future reference, that mix is never a good one to be making decisions on -- although I can't picture anyone not doing so -- there's nothing more stimulating to knee jerk response than justifiable anger. 

Two more relevant facts were in my mind as I reread the Tweet. One, is that LEGOs was practically the founder of non-gender specific marketing. They started this back in the late 70s. I recall it because my younger sister saw one of the ads and instantly wanted a full set of building blocks. At the time I wasn't that interested -- I had a new set of JARTS -- I still can't believe that my parents thought that what a seven year old needed was a set of iron javelins. It never crossed my mind at the time that building blocks were "boy toys" or rather NOT girl toys. What Sandra did with those blocks was amazing to me. I never could get them to become what was in my head, and she created whatever she wanted to create with an ease that was disturbing  to me. I could throw those JARTS though, so it was all good -- except for the neighbor's 1967 Corvette it was all good...

Aftermath is on the way

I'm hoping that by the cover you can tell that Aftermath is a thriller. Aftermath is also the first novel I've been able to put out under my own name in a long time. For the last 5+ years I've been ghost writing 7-10 novels a year. They were all short, and none of them were ideas of my own, but they were fun to do and steady income. 

Aftermath is a thriller, and will be hitting Amazon and places beyond very soon now. Just basically reminding you that I'm primarily a writer (reminding myself of that as well) and that I'm still committed to creating stories to engage your darker imagination.

It is Pi Day .. Be good to Yourself



Is there anything better than pie?


Getting the most out of a Tweet

If you are going to bother sending out links to bring people to your blog, you might as well spend a little more time and get some information from the effort. And if you have Analytics from Google, then it really is an easy thing to set up. Check out this page on Google for the link tracking, bookmark, and then come back for a few tips. SEO isn't that hard and for the most part, you don't need much to get some serious information.


Opendata, Software, OpenEdu -- Life is good


Here's a list of some large datasets, and the kind of software that can handle these sets on a laptop.

I'll be back with more, there is some amazing stuff out here now.

Resources


1. Open Data

DBpedia - Querying Wikipedia Like a Database
DBpedia is a community effort to extract structured information from Wikipedia editions in over 90 languages and to make the resulting knowledge base available on the Web. The DBpedia knowledge base currently describes more than 3.5 million things, out of which 1.6 million are classified in a consistent ontology. It is one of the most comprehensive multi-lingual knowledge bases that currently exist and has developed into an interlinking hub for the Web of Data. The knowledge base is widely used by research projects as well as in industry. More information about the project is found on the DBpedia website.
Duration: Active since 2007
Project partners: Universität Leipzig, OpenLink Software, and a world-wide community of developers and mapping editors.
W3C Linking Open Data
W3C Linking Open Data community project supports and loosely coordinates the extension of the Web with a global data space by publishing open-license datasets as RDF and by setting data links between data items within different data sources. The project maintains the LOD dataset catalogue on CKAN as well as tool listings in the W3C ESW wiki. It regularly publishes statistics about the LOD data cloud and maintains the LOD cloud diagram. More information about the project is found on the LOD website.
Duration: Active since 2007
Project partners: Over 100 world-wide including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), DERI (Ireland), Talis (UK), University of Southampton (UK), Open University (UK), OpenLink Software (USA), BBC (UK), Geonames (USA). 
Web Data Commons
More and more websites embed structured data describing for instance products, people, organizations, places, events, resumes, and cooking recipes into their HTML pages using encoding standards such as Microformats, Microdatas and RDFa. The Web Data Commons project extracts all Microformat, Microdata and RDFa data from the Common Crawl web corpus, the largest and most up-to-data web corpus that is currently available to the public, and provide the extracted data for download in the form of RDF-quads and also in the form of CSV-tables for common entity types. More information about the project is found at WebDataCommons.org.
Duration: Active since March 2012
Project partner: Karlsruhe Institut of Technology (Germany)
Web Data Commons - Hyperlink Graph
The project provides a large hyperlink graph for public download and analyses the topology of the graph. The WDC Hyperlink Graph has been extracted from the Common Crawl 2012 web corpus and covers 3.5 billion web pages and 128 billion hyperlinks between these pages. To the best of our knowledge, this graph is the largest hyperlink graph that is available to the public outside companies such as Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. The graph and the results of the analysis are found at http://webdatacommons.org/hyperlinkgraph
 Duration: Active since November 2013
JudaicaLink
Scholarly reference works like encyclopediae, glossars, or catalogs function as guides to a scholarly domain and as anchor points and manifestations of scholarly work. On the web of Linked Data, they can take on a key function to interlink resources related to the described concepts. Within the context of JudaicaLink, we provide support to publish and interlink existing reference works of the Jewish culture and history as Linked Data. More information about the project is found at JudaicaLink.org.
Duration: Active since May 2013
Project partner: European Association  for Jewish Culture (France, UK)

2. Open Source Software

Silk - Link Discovery Framework
The Silk framework is a tool for discovering relationships between data items within different Linked Data sources. Data publishers can use Silk to set RDF links from their data sources to other data sources on the Web. Silk can also be used as an identity resolution component within Linked Data applications. Silk provides a declarative language for expressing identity resolution heuristics and implements a sophisticated blocking method (MultiBlock). There is a single machine and a Hadoop-based implementation available. More information about the project is found on the Silk website.
Duration: Active since 2009
RapidMiner Linked Open Data Extension
The RapidMiner Linked Open Data Extension is an extension to the open source data mining software RapidMiner. It allows using data from Linked Open Data both as an input for data mining as well as for enriching existing datasets with background knowledge. More information about the extension as well as its use cases are found on the project's website.
Duration: Active since 2013
D2RQ Plattform - Accessing Relational Databases as Virtual RDF Graphs
The D2RQ Platform is a system for accessing relational databases as virtual, read-only RDF graphs. It offers RDF-based access to the content of relational databases without having to replicate it into an RDF store. Using D2RQ you can Using D2RQ you can: 1. query a non-RDF database using SPARQL; 2. access the content of the database as Linked Data over the Web; 3. create custom dumps of the database in RDF formats for loading into an RDF store; 4. access information in a non-RDF database using the Apache Jena API.  The D2RQ Plattform has been downloaded over 15.000 times from Sourceforge. More information about the plattform is found on the D2RQ website.
Duration: Active since 2004
Project partners: DERI (Ireland)
OEM distributor: TopBraid (USA)
LDIF - Linked Data Integration Framework
The LDIF – Linked Data Integration Framework is a Hadoop-based framework for integrating and cleansing large amounts of web and enterprise data. LDIF provides an expressive mapping language, an identity resolution component, as well as data quality assessment and data fusion modules. More information about the project is found on the  LDIF website.
Duration: Active since June 2011
ALCOMO - Applying Logical Constraints to Match Ontologies
ALCOMO is a project that has been developed by Christian Meilicke in the context of his Phd. It is a debugging system that allows to transform incoherent alignments in coherent alignments by removing some correspondences from the alignment. The removed part of the alignment is called a diagnosis. It is complete in the sense that it detects any kind of incoherence in SHIN(D) ontologies. At the same time a computed diagnosis is always minimal in the sense that the tool never removes too much, i.e., the removed subset of the alignment is always a minimal hitting set over all conflicts.The system is availabe under MIT license and can be downloaded here.
 Duration: Available since 2012
Semtinel - Thesaurus analysis beyond numbers
Semtinel is a graphical thesaurus analysis and maintenance system developed mainly by Kai Eckert as part of his dissertation. It also formed the technical basis for several master theses and student research projects. The software is available at Semtinel.org.
Duration: Available since 2008
WDC - Extraction Framework
The Web Data Commons - Extraction Framework is used by the Web Data Commons project to extract Microdata, Microformats and RDFa data, Web graphs, and HTML tables from the web crawls provided by the Common Crawl Foundation. The framework provides an easy to use basis for the distributed processing of large web crawls using Amazon EC2 cloud services. The framework is published under the terms of the Apache license and can be simply customized to perform different data extraction tasks. More information and the download instructions can be found on the Web Data Commons website.
Duration: Available since July 2014

3. Benchmarks

Berlin SPARQL Benchmark (BSBM)
The SPARQL Query Language for RDF and the SPARQL Protocol for RDF are implemented by a growing number of storage systems. As SPARQL is taken up by the community there is a growing need for benchmarks to compare the performance of storage systems that expose SPARQL endpoints via the SPARQL protocol.   The Berlin SPARQL Benchmark (BSBM) defines a suite of benchmarks for comparing the performance of these systems across architectures. The benchmark is built around an e-commerce use case in which a set of products is offered by different vendors and consumers have posted reviews about products. The benchmark query mix illustrates the search and navigation pattern of a consumer looking for a product. More information about the benchmark is found on the BSBM website.
Duration: Active since 2008
OAEI Anatomy and Library Track
The Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative (OAEI) is a coordinated international initiative to assess strengths and weaknesses of alignment/matching systems and to compare the performance of techniques. Since 2006 we offered for the first time the Anatomy track. This track consists of finding alignments between the Adult Mouse Anatomy and a part of the NCI Thesaurus (describing the human anatomy). The task is placed in a domain where we find large, carefully designed ontologies that are described in technical terms. Since 2012 we are offering a second track, called the Library track. The Library track is a real-word task to match the STW and the TheSoz thesaurus. Both provide a vocabulary for economic resp. social science subjects and are used by libraries for indexation and retrieval. The latest versions of the datasets as well as the tools to process them are available viahttp://oaei.ontologymatching.org/2012/.
Duration: Since 2006 as part of the annual OAEI campaign















Where the Wild Things Are...

Chess is a Wild game I've only been playing for a short time, but I've gained enough understanding to realize that the angles of ...