“We begin in infancy by establishing correspondence of eyes with eyes.” ~ Robert Frost FRAGMENTARY BLUE by Robert Frost Why make so much of fragmentary blue In here and there a bird, or butterfly, Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue? Since earth is earth, … Continue reading baby’s got blue eyes (+ a giveaway)
In today's The Times, you can read in an article by David Pace O’Shea, that, in general, Maltese are a helpful people, generous, hardworking, humble, careful with their money, welcoming, peaceful and unaggressive and that they love their families and, especially, their children. In the Observer’s opinion, anyone who states that he or she has all those qualities also might add the words conceited and boastful. The word humble is not the first that comes to one’s mind when reading all the other characteristics Mr. O’Shea states that Maltese in general possess. Thank God (just an expression!) that most Maltese do not consider themselves to have all those qualities (and I do not know of any other country’s citizens that would claim all these good characteristics). Since the article is written by a convinced catholic believer it might be interesting to hear his humble view, from a moral and Christian standpoint, on prostitution in Malta. Every time one passes the area around the closed Empire Stadium one can see prostitutes hanging out from windows or standing on the street offering men their services. In Malta it is allowed to buy and sell sexual services; such services are forbidden in many other EU states. One can ask how this complies with the Maltese character as described in today’s Times. The Maltese government and the Church might not officially be in favor of prostitution but they certainly do not try hard to solve the problem. Prostitution is closely connected with criminality such as trafficking and drug related crimes. There is no reason whatsoever to let young women be treated like slaves in any country and especially not in a country like Malta, which is said to be one of the most Christian in the world. It is a shame for Malta!
When reading The Times one does not know if one should laugh or cry. Malta government seems more and more like a Donald Duck government, a joke, with government officials, sadly including members of the Judicial, being so dishonest that it is difficult to comprehend. The government officials seem so eager to be just bigwigs that they have forgotten who they are put to serve.The judicial system seems to be in a mess.
The Observer just wants to give a few examples from todays The Times.
Once more a new bribery probe is ongoing against Transport Malta officials.
This governmental body seems to be one of the most dishonest not only in Malta but in the whole EU. This time the bribery inquiry concerns three officials so far, but in 2010 another three officials and 230 other people were charged in connection with hundreds of driving licenses granted to people who had not even sat for a test. This proves that The Observer was absolutely right in the article “Traffic in Malta, a risky business” of Feb 14, although some of the licenses have been seized by the police. However, one thing was not correct; the driving licenses are not issued by Disney World or come with the cereal packages from Scotts, but are issued by Transport Malta against a monetary compensation. This way of giving out driving licenses must surely be promoting road safety in Malta.
Malta has a very old fashioned system for ensuring that people can show that they are entitled to vote in the coming council election. Policemen deliver the documents to every single voter in person. This means that the policemen knock doors for several weeks; no wonder that there are more policemen in Malta in relation to the size of the population than in most EU countries. In Sliema the police have failed to deliver documents to 58 % of the voters.
Since Sliema is said to be a PN stronghold one can wonder if this is one more situation in which bribes are occurring. A policeman who delivers documents in Sliema and is a convinced PL supporter can easily neglect to deliver in areas with strong support for PN. The Observer does not state that this is the case but has a time saving suggestion that also will exclude the possibility of bribes; Malta should modernize its system and this is very easily done. Malta has computerized lists of the population which easily can be sorted (if not this has been done already) by place of residence in voting lists. People then just have to show their ID cards when coming to the polls and be ticked off. The present system is just ridiculous.
The Observer just want to stress what is said in the article of Feb 15, “Reflections on the judicial system in Malta” by referring to the following articles in The Times of today. Here.
And do not forget to look into this one!
| PM in Marsascala during his tour for support |
Seven Sketches in Compositionality: An Invitation to Applied Category Theory
2018 by Brendan Fong and David I. Spivak
Category theory is becoming a central hub for all of pure mathematics. It is unmatched in its ability to organize and layer abstractions, to find commonalities between structures of all sorts, and to facilitate communication between different mathematical communities. But it has also been branching out into science, informatics, and industry. We believe that it has the potential to be a major cohesive force in the world, building rigorous bridges between disparate worlds, both theoretical and practical. The motto at MIT is mens et manus, Latin for mind and hand. We believe that category theory—and pure math in general—has stayed in the realm of mind for too long; it is ripe to be brought to hand.A very approachable but useful introduction to category theory. It avoids the Scylla and Charybdis of becoming incomprehensible after page 2 (as many academic texts do), and barely scratching the surface (as many popular texts do).
An enjoyable 25-minute introductory talk: YOW! Lambda Jam 2019 - Ken Scambler - Applied Category Theory (slides)
What do programming, quantum physics, chemistry, neuroscience, systems biology, natural language parsing, causality, network theory, game theory, dynamical systems and database theory have in common?
As functional programmers, we know how useful category theory can be for our work - or perhaps how abstruse and distant it can seem. What is less well known is that applying category theory to the real world is an exciting field of study that has really taken off in just the last few years. It turns out that we share something big with other fields and industries - we want to make big things out of little things without everything going to hell! The key is compositionality, the central idea of category theory.
Previously: Seven Sketches in Compositionality: An Invitation to Applied Category Theory.
(via Brian McKenna)
I thought back to the summer when I was eleven years old, after my father had discovered making money and had moved us “on up” from the dregs of Weehawken, New Jersey, situated on the ass end of the Lincoln Tunnel to the posh suburb, Englewood Cliffs just north of the George Washington Bridge.
| ISBN13 | Title | Author | Promo Type | Country | Start Date | End Date | Promo Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9781504025669 | The Iron Dragon's Daughter | Swanwick, Michael | ORM - Early Bird Books NL | US | 2020-03-23 | 2020-03-23 | $1.99 |
| 9781504025669 | The Iron Dragon's Daughter | Swanwick, Michael | ORM - Early Bird Books NL | CA | 2020-03-23 | 2020-03-23 | $1.99 |
| Newsletter | Link |
|---|---|
| Early Bird Books | Subscribe Now |
| The Lineup | Subscribe Now |
| The Portalist | Subscribe Now |
| Murder & Mayhem | Subscribe Now |
| A Love So True | Subscribe Now |
| The Archive | Subscribe Now |
| The Reader | Subscribe Now |
| ISBN13 | Title | Author | Promo Type | Country | Start Date | End Date | Promo Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9781504025669 | The Iron Dragon's Daughter | Swanwick, Michael | ORM - Early Bird Books NL | US | 2020-03-23 | 2020-03-23 | $1.99 |
| 9781504025669 | The Iron Dragon's Daughter | Swanwick, Michael | ORM - Early Bird Books NL | CA | 2020-03-23 | 2020-03-23 | $1.99 |
| Newsletter | Link |
|---|---|
| Early Bird Books | Subscribe Now |
| The Lineup | Subscribe Now |
| The Portalist | Subscribe Now |
| Murder & Mayhem | Subscribe Now |
| A Love So True | Subscribe Now |
| The Archive | Subscribe Now |
| The Reader | Subscribe Now |
My friends, you did it. You worked hard and chased the Darkness away. Special thanks to my friend Denver and Toki who wrote a really good poem/cheer. He is right, we have to stop the hacking – no more stealing passwords. I will be calling a Celebration Party. Everyone is welcome. Watch the What’s New […]
Look at enough blogs or websites and you’ve probably ran into a display on their homepage showing their viewers their Alexa and Google Page Rank. But what exactly do these ranks mean and what can they do to help get your site noticed on the web. Here’s a basic description of what these two tools do
Google keyword tool is a great free seo tool you can use to find keywords for your site. Without keywords or key phrases your site won’t be found by users, and you won’t be indexed by the search engines. It’s also important that you pick the right keywords that match your sites description. Often these are overlooked, leaving people frustrated that their sites aren’t getting the hits they would like. To use Google keyword tool to fink keywords, here’s what you do.
When it comes to SEO optimization for your website or blog Google provides many free seo tools and resources. And while many will argue about different techniques at building traffic, using these Google SEO tools listed below will help you analyze your site, fix problems, and help get your website the traffic it deserves.
If you’re new to creating websites you’ve probably heard of Google’s sandbox even though Google denies that it exists. What this means is that a site will site for an unknown length of time waiting to get indexed. Traditionally this can take weeks or even months. Frankly who the hell wants to wait up to 6 months to get indexed by Google, that’s far too long.
Google Keyword Tool and Google Traffic Estimator, both of which are free tools provided by Google to help you analyze and find keywords that you can use to help promote your website and drive targeted traffic to it. And while these tools are very similar (there pages look almost identical) there are some key differences between the two free tools.
When it comes to trying to get your site to rank well on search engines many focus on trying to rank for the most popular keywords, the ones with high volumes of traffic with the hope that hundreds or thousands of people every day visit their site. The reality is that chasing after the most popular keywords will be almost impossible to rank for. If your website or blog is brand new this will be a fight you can’t win, the large companies that rank number one for these types of keywords spend fortunes to dominate those positions.
Recently Google announced a new service called Google Plus 1. A new button that Google plans to rival against Facebook’s Like button. Plus 1 works in much the same manner as a like button in that it is a way to help determine a site’s popularity and relevancy to visitors. It will also be applied to Adsense ads as well, again similar to how Facebook uses it’s like button.
Recently the powers that be at Google launched Google Advisor essentially rolling all of it’s financial tools (this includes their mortgage, credit card, and bank comparison tools) into one product. The goal according to Google’s official blog is to have a site designed to help you quickly find relevant financial products from many providers and compare them side by side.
Google recently introduced their plus 1 button for website and blog owners to add to their sites. If you haven’t heard of this new feature it’s essentially Google’s answer to Facebooks like button and works in a similar way. It allows your viewers to “plus 1” your page or site, basically saying to the world “Hey I like this site come check it out”. It’s also currently available on Blogger and YouTube which have automatically added the new button.
It used to be that if you wanted to rank well you only had one search to target, which was the main search page. It didn’t matter if you were going to share content with Google or another search engine. If you wanted to rank for a specific keyword or phrase you cold only do this through SERP’s. Fortunately those days are long gone and site owners can promote their content through a number of different channels. The search engines are very hungry for this kind of content, especially Google which is…….well a total whore when it comes to vertical search content.
When people think of advertising on their website their minds usually thinks of Google Adsense. It’s the biggest and best known after all and extremely easy to put into your site. In my personnel experience Google Adsense has worked well, however they have an extremely strict set of rules. These rules mean that a lot of sites can’t use Adsense on their site by default. Google is also notorious for banning accounts with no warning. Just look online and you easily find story after story about people losing their Adsense accounts for no apparent reason. Like I said I use Adsene and haven’t had any problems or have any complaints about them…….so far................... But just because Google is the biggest player doesn’t mean their the only one. So if your account with Adsense was banned and you’re looking for a new source of online revenue. Or you can’t stand Google and don’t want to deal with them, here is a list of some alternatives to Google Adsense worth checking out.
To bug in or to bug out that is the question. Nobody can argue that being prepared in case of an emergency or disaster is a bad thing. If your like myself and live in an area that’s prone to natural disasters (in my case earthquakes) you would be very stupid not to have some level of preparation. For many this means having a bug out bag packed with all the survival goodies one could ever want and ready to go at all times. Again I think it’s a very smart idea and I have one myself. But just because you have a bug out bag, doesn’t mean bugging out is your only option when the SHTF...............
If you haven’t heard Google is set to launch a new social network, otherwise known as Google Plus or Google+ depending on who you talk to. Like the new Google plus 1 button, Google is trying to get into the social network scene currently dominated by Facebook. Google’s new social network will be available on all its products thanks to a completely re-designed navigation bar........... Google’s new social network will share some very similar features to its biggest rival with a similar notification system and its stream which will have a look and feel very close to Facebook’s news feed. This will allow its users to share photos, videos, and links to their contacts pretty much the same way, and with the recent plus 1 button you’ll be able to rate content much like you would “like” content on Facebook.
Google is ramping out their new social network Google Plus and allowing more invites. This is an attempt at Google to dominate the social networking scene currently controlled by Facebook. If you don’t have an invite to Google Plus yet and would like one, you’re in luck and I can hook you up.
The internet is buzzing with talk about Google plus. Go onto sites like Yahoo Answers and people are constantly asking for an invite onto this new social network. So it’s no surprise that there is a growing number of scammers looking to make a fast buck. There’s also a good deal of misinformation about Google plus. Hopefully this post will squash a few of them and give you a little better picture of this new site, and how to avoid some of the scams surrounding it..........
