Q&A: What is 'biomedical informatics' and why is it important?
The University of Nebraska at Omaha is at the cutting-edge of biomedical informatics, a field that basically looks at how to use all the medical data being collected from everything from clinical trials to electronic health records. The new UNO bioinformatics program, a subset of biomedical informatics, is one of only 14 undergraduate programs in the country; in this interview with NET News, the dean of UNO's College of Information Science and Technology sheds some light on why biomedical informatics is poised to become a vital field in American health care.
HILARY STOHS-KRAUSE, NET NEWS: What exactly is 'biomedical informatics' in layman’s terms?
HESHAM H. ALI, DEAN OF THE COLLEGE OF INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA AT OMAHA: Biomedical informatics (BMI) is the science underlying the acquisition, maintenance, retrieval, and application of biomedical knowledge and information to improve patient care, medical education, and health sciences research.
(BMI) specialists are uniquely positioned to advance research and practice in contemporary information and communication technologies that impact healthcare services, healthcare practice, public health care, and healthcare delivery in general. BMI is a discipline at the intersection of information science and technology, computer science, information systems and health care.
UNO’s College of Information Science and Technology offers an undergraduate degree (BS) in bioinformatics, a Master of Science in biomedical informatics and a PhD in Biomedical Informatics. In addition, Health Informatics is an area of specialization within the college’s Management Information Systems Master of Science degree program.
NET NEWS: Can you give me a few examples of real-life situations where biomedical informatics could be used?
DEAN ALI: Advances in medical science and technology are appearing faster than we can assimilate them into practice. It could be argued that the problem of employing IT in the medical domain is the most outstanding challenge of the coming decades.
Similarly, bioinformatics analysis of vast amounts of data produced by ongoing genomic DNA sequencing and mapping projects, such as the Human Genome Project, is expected to uncover hitherto unknown relationships between genes and diseases, have a profound impact on drug development and clinical trials, and affect medical diagnostics, pharmacogenomics and agricultural and industrial biotechnology.
NET NEWS: UNO is one of only 14 programs to offer an undergraduate degree in bioinformatics. What led to the development of UNO’s program? Why are there so few?
DEAN ALI: Our college started this program at a time when the application of computational techniques to biological data analysis was just in its infancy. Also, most researchers working in this area were either from computer science or biology who had retooled in the area they lacked. This led to the conclusion that the graduates of a bioinformatics program would fill the enormous need for individuals who have integrated training in the computer science and the biological sciences.
NET NEWS: As the use of electronic health records proliferates in the state – and the country – where do you see the biomedical informatics field in, say, 10 years?
workers short in this country, and yet there's a real bias in health care to not hire anybody who doesn't have health care experience. Even though you've been a project manager for 10 years, they may not hire you because you don't have exposure to health care."
And this (UNO program) will go all the way from the large databases, the genomics, etc., through the clinical area into public health. And that may begin to provide more practictioners for the rural instutitons in Nebraska. "
DEAN ALI: Another key area of BMI is “Health Informatics,” which focuses on the study of IT in healthcare in all its facets. With the recent changes in healthcare laws and processes, the demand for individuals who understand information management and its impact on the needs of the healthcare sector is already growing exponentially over the next decade.
Some authors argue that the explosive growth of biomedical complexity will also require a shift in the paradigm of medical decision making - from a focus on the power of an individual brain, to the collective power of systems of brains. This shift will alter professional roles and require biomedical informatics and information technology infrastructure. Embracing this collective and informatics-enhanced future of medicine will provide opportunities to advance education, patient care, and biomedical science. All this is of course good news for UNO since we are well established to be a leader in the area of BMI education, training and research.
NET NEWS: What kind of changes are necessary in educational institutions to ensure future healthcare workers are prepared for ongoing technological changes in their field?
DEAN ALI: Being nimble and innovative is important for any institution to be effective at training the next generation of healthcare professionals. We believe that every healthcare worker will need some information technology training; it is imperative that this training be integrated into their educational programs. The good news is that at UNO, we have already accepted this impending trend and include computer science fundamentals and six other IT-oriented classes as an optional course for satisfying general education requirement for undergraduate students on campus. In addition, at the graduate level, there are many options for students to take IT courses from our college as electives regardless of their major area of interest.
NET NEWS: Is there anything you'd like to add?


On the face of it, the premise seems ridiculous: Robin van Persie was undisputedly one of the best strikers in the world last year – this site named him Premier League player of the season in May – so, initially, Arsenal losing him and Man United gaining him is an immediate negative for the former and a positive for the latter. A more detailed examination reveals a different interpretation however.
Cesc Fabregas’ move to Barcelona was far from surprising, dragging on for several years until he finally moved last year, but Samir Nasri’s transfer was less expected, and their only replacement was the last minute acquisition of Mikel Arteta – adequate but not equal. Arsenal looked in trouble, yet Van Persie saved them. For the first time in years, he was able to get through the season uninjured, so Arsenal didn’t lose their only real goal threat. Credit must go to Arsene Wenger for shifting him from a floating false nine-esque role to a more standard striking role, but equally credit must go to Van Persie for providing such a potent threat in what could have been a calamitous season for the North London side.
What differentiates this year from the last is that Arsenal are fair better prepared for the loss of their star man. Supposedly Olivier Giroud was made aware that Arsenal would only make a move for him if Van Persie’s contract talks stalled, which, if true, shows Arsenal planned their pre-season brilliantly. Rather than continue to look for goals from one hugely talented player, Wenger has looked to spread responsibility with his additions. In Lukas Podolski he has a direct threat capable of playing on the wings – his lack of success at club level does raise question marks, but there’s little doubting his ability when he gets going; Giroud, although obviously a step down from Van Persie, is perfectly capable of replacing him as the man to lead the line; and Santi Cazorla, albeit overhyped by some, should fit in perfectly with Arsenal’s style, adding even more creativity to the team.
Arsenal may have lost their star player, but, for all his talents, it’s not unfair to suggest Â£24 million for an injury-prone player heading into the final year of his contract and the twilight of his career is a good deal. The deal, however, is equally good for Man United. Â£24 million for one of the best strikers in the world isn’t a bad price – certainly good enough for Sir Alex Ferguson to break his recent pattern of only going for young players, which raises a different question: has Ferguson only bought Van Persie because of the value of the transfer?
Breaking his apparent rules, the opportunity seems simply too good for Ferguson to pass up, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. Frankly, United don’t need Van Persie. He plays a similar role to Wayne Rooney, and in Danny Welbeck and Javier Hernandez, they have two capable young strikers who will more than likely have their growth stunted by having Van Persie playing instead of them. There’s the possibility he was bought to play in one of the wide areas of a 4-3-3, but that still doesn’t help matters when Ashley Young, Antonio Valencia and Nani are fighting it out for those spots too. Depending on the formation, United now have seven players fighting it out for a maximum of four spots.
Their attack was the only area of the pitch that didn’t need improving – it was the four goals they conceded against Everton which gave the title to City rather than the lack of a fifth of their own. Â£24 million may be a better bang for their buck than the Â£15 million Everton are rumoured to want for Leighton Baines, but with Patrice Evra fading fast at left-back, it might have been the superior investment. Shinji Kagawa is a welcome and desperately-needed addition to the midfield, yet the return of Tom Cleverley creates another selection headache, with a Kagawa-Cleverley partnership too lightweight and most of the alternatives reaching retirement age. A 4-3-3 with Michael Carrick holding would seem the best bet, providing defensive stability and Carrick the energy around him he needs, but that means limiting the attacking slots further, leaving just three for the seven vying for them. Van Persie, although a very good problem, builds on an already existing dilemma. Decisions, decisions.
Ultimately, we will have to wait and see. Arsenal seem to have made the right moves in the transfer market, but there’s no guarantee those players will adapt and, even if they do, they still might not match the impressive scoring of Van Persie, despite being part of a more well-rounded unit. Meanwhile, Ferguson may have already plotted the perfect formula to deal with his selection woes. One thing’s for certain: on Â£225,000 a week, Robin van Persie benefits from his move regardless.
Great article. I think the bigger loss would be song leaving, they have no one to replace him and would have to work quickly to buy another CM. Hopefully they can keep him, as they seem to have a good squad ready. Also it seems chamack might have a bigger role to play this season.
Yeah you’re right, If United don’t buy a CM they will do badly in Europe again as they’ll struggle to control games. Chelsea will also have big problems if Lampard gets injured.


I'm currently looking into buying an affordable and decent quality guitar, but I'm wondering what to look for? I noticed that there are 6-string guitars and 12-string guitars, which is best for a beginner?
I have been playing piano for four years and I want to play another instrument, I have learned up to a decent level of theory (level 7).
What should I look for when buying a guitar for beginners?
Yamaha are a reputable company who make musical instruments of almost every sort,in all price ranges. But it sponds as if you're a long way from knowing enough about guitars to make a sensible choice. Take your first lesson before choosing an instrument. Ask the teacher's advice.
You definitely don’t want to start off with a 12 string, which requires a lot more finger strength and dexterity. My thoughts would be to just go to your local guitar shop and buy something cheap. That’s why I did anyway, 2 years later and I’m still playing on my crappy $120 steel string. You can also check out pawn shops. Gear doesn’t matter much as a beginner.
Yamaha do make some decent acoustics but I have found their very cheap ones aren't great, as they're mass produced in a factory which makes various other things, so as you can imagine they're not subject to the same quality control or craftsmanship as other companies are.
I've heard good things about Freshman guitars - they're very well trusted, as are a lot of Epiphones and Tanglewood guitars.
Some other things I'd want in a good acoustic - although this is arguably a matter of taste - is guitars with a satin finish on the neck. Some guitar necks have a lot of polycellulose lacquer on them which can make them sticky. You'll find it easier to play if you're not trying to work against friction from a highly polished neck.
As a user mentioned above, you definitely want to start with a 6 string, and not a 12, as they require some extra finger strength to press those extra strings and a slightly different playing style is required to play them successfully.
The entry level and bottom of the line guitars are junk, unless you know what you are doing. It's worth spending $250-400 on your first guitar to get something that sounds decent, has a relatively nice fretboard action, etc.
Seagull and Washburn are some possibilities. For a little more money, Blueridge makes a nice entry level guitar. I don't have any experience with Yamaha guitars. But, I've played their keyboards, and they have a very nice action. Yamaha makes a wide range of musical instruments, and is well-known in the music business.
It's a LOT easier learning on a nicer instrument. The guitar will be easier to play, and it's less likely that you will get discouraged, and quit.
You definitely want to purchase a 6-string guitar.
Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged acoustic-guitar beginner equipment or ask your own question.
What thickness pick should I get for lead guitar?
As a beginner, what should I look for in a 22 string harp?


I was going to do my normal to describe what this show is about first then talk about it but this is just one show I can't do that with. So instead, I will just mix the two together in the one review. Here's the reason why I won't do that and mainly can't do that style, the show is just too large of a show to do that for. Dallas is a show that originally started in the late 70's and all the way until 1991 as the prime time soap opera show. Like normal soaps, Dallas was a show with a very large cast that revolves around one central family, the Ewings, a oil and cattle ranching family that is always having family issues. After years of being off the air, TNT brought the show back on with a lot of the original cast, even J.R. (played by the late Larry Hagman), his brother Bobby (played by Patrick Duffy), as well as Pamela Barnes Ewing (played by Victoria Principal), and Sue Ellen (played by Linda Gray). Along with having the original cast being on the show, TNT also had the show keep with the huge plot lines, the drama filled episodes, and all the craziness that makes Dallas stand out not only among the day time soaps but with the regular prime time shows.
Though I have seen some of the original episodes of Dallas that aired in the past, season 3 was my first adventure into watching this new version of the show. My first impression was wow how time has flown by because though the actors where older when the show was first on, they are now much older than I remembered them being. Not that it matters, in fact if I had been more into this style of show, by having the original cast on it would be enough to at least draw me in to watch it. Which when the series first started again I almost did watch it because of the cast being back, especially J.R., and of course for that opening theme, what a great theme song this show has. But now that I'm older, I work in a job that is full of real life drama, watching a show that's driven by nothing else but drama is not my thing anymore. And boy ol'boy does Dallas have the drama.
I can't say that I didn't like the show nor can I say that I fully liked it. Being that I am jumping in so far into the series where I have no clue what has happened up to this point, I was just lost through the whole season. I got the gist of most of the plots going on, like the family still fighting over places to drill for oil, there are revenge plots being worked out, Sue Ellen is in rehab so the family still has that black sheep, and of course the fight for control of the company and where it's going to go. It's been awhile since I've watched this kind of show but in the time that I missed the plots remain the same. Drama, romance, revenge, hidden agendas, and huge family issues but then again the family is also huge. As for the acting on this show it's a 50/50 of being good and bad. Some of the actors are good, not only have they given life to their characters but they play them as if they are real. On the flip side there are also some that are just over doing the drama and have made their characters ones that I just wanted off the screen. I got to say though, if you were a fan of the original show I think you will like this new version of it, which is to say that it's new because it's coming out with new episodes being filmed now and has new casting, but they didn't try to change it where it's a reboot. This continues with the Ewing family where it just picks back up with the family years after it had ended. So the show has it's good points, just with not being up to date with what's going on in the series and it still being a drama filled show, I couldn't fully enjoy or get involved with it but it's also still a show with decent elements.


Paul Pogba's acrimonious departure from Manchester United is linked to Paul Scholes's decision to come out of retirement in January 2012, according to the former England midfielder.
Scholes made a surprise U-turn over his career just six months on from confirming his retirement, playing for another 18 months before leaving the sport for a second time at the end of the 2012-13 season.
But the timing of Scholes's return came amid the emergence of Pogba at Old Trafford, and saw the Frenchman limited to just seven appearances in the 2011-12 campaign and eventually led to his departure to Juventus in the summer.
United allowed Pogba to leave for a nominal fee after the club baulked at his wage demands but with the player now regarded as one of the best midfielders in Europe, the 20-time English league champions are being made to regret their mistake.
And though the financial requests of Pogba's agent were at the time unprecedented for a player with little first-team experience, Scholes partly blames himself for the 22-year-old's head being turned.
"Paul Pogba was a bright young lad who made his debut for United at the end of January that year in a game I played in against Stoke City," he told The Independent.
"He left the following summer after many genuine attempts by the club to persuade him to stay, went to Juventus on a deal that was only worth a training compensation payment to United and now is one of the hottest properties in European football.
"I have heard his value put at anything up to £70m. He is undoubtedly a very talented boy and there is no question that, given the choice, and on the right terms, United would rather have kept him than not. Would it have been any different if I had not come back for that last 18 months? I think my return to the team, and the game time Paul got, was a small part of it."
Scholes added: "I should say that Sir Alex Ferguson wanted to keep Paul. We all knew there was a very good player in the making. Little details about young footballers catch your eye when you have been around a big club for a long time.
"They wanted first-team money for a player who was not in the first team at that stage. United felt that was not right and stuck to their principles."
Pogba is being linked with a move back to United this summer but with a £58m ($89m) asking price attached, Scholes has warned his former club off such a substantial investment.
"As for United, I don't feel they should go back to sign Pogba for the sums being talked about having lost him for the compensation payment," he said.


"Positively No Dancing." At Twin Anchors those three words are hard to miss. They are printed on the back of the shirts worn by the servers, they are on signs posted around the room, they are printed on the menu. What's the big deal about "Positively No Dancing"? If you could see the way the good times roll here on a typical Friday or Saturday night, you would understand.
The history of the "no dancing" caveat goes something like this: When the jukebox, which features some of the swingingest songs Frank Sinatra ever recorded, cuts loose and people are stacked three deep at the bar waiting for a table, and the mood is as upbeat as the music, the urge to dance sweeps through the room (hey, better than fighting) like a restless wind. One couple might start the ball rolling, then another couple might join in, then another, and before you know it the bar area at Twin Anchors has turned into the Aragon Ballroom, circa 1950. It got to be a bit too much (especially for the waitresses trying to wade through with a tray of food), so this is a "Positively No Dancing" zone.
Dancing or not, Twin Anchors is still a trip to tavernsville in a time warp. During Prohibition there was a speakeasy here, and in 1932, a year before Prohibition ended, the Twin Anchors sign went up.
And while on the subject of math, the Twin Anchors answers the call regarding letters I receive asking for places that serve a good meal for $ 20 or less. No problem here. Even if you added a house salad or a dessert to the highest-priced entree (ribs), the tab will be under 20 bucks before tax and tip.
The big draw is and has been for as long as I can remember the ribs. "Our Famous Ribs" is one of the first headlines you will see on the menu, and below that you will read: "the world famous Twin Anchor baby back ribs, slow cooked, meaty and tender, basted with your choices of sauces. Try our popular zesty sauce or our original mild barbecue sauce $ 15.50."
Yes, these are good ribs. Are they the best around? No. But I would put Twin Anchors on my top-five-rib list. The meat is tender and sweet, falling just a bit away from the bone. I find the mild sauce a bit too mild, so my recommendation is to go with the zesty option, which packs a decent wallop. Rib dinner comes with a choice of potato (french fries are quite good) or onion rings (big, fat rings with good flavor).
All is not ribs alone at Twin Anchors, however. Another meat that works a bit of magic is the New York strip steak. A 12-ounce affair that is charbroiled (though a little too much on this occasion, when the kitchen took it from a requested medium-rare to medium) and, on request, served with garlic butter.
I have tucked away some fine chicken here. The chicken can be ordered fried or fried and then broiled and basted with barbecue sauce. Which way to go is a tough call, as they are both good, but I would have to declare the chicken basted with the zesty barbecue sauce the winner. Good bird, moist and tender, and just enough sauce to add a kick of zip.
The right side of the menu is totally a sandwich situation. I have tried four of six choices in the last year, and all were good (and priced right, coming in around the $ 5.50-$ 6 range), but the two I favor the most are the Cheese Anchor Burger, a weighty half-pounder that never seems to drift in quality, and the barbecue pork sandwich a rugged pile of pulled pork laced with the Anchor's zesty barbecue sauce. Yummy stuff. Sandwiches come with choice of potato or onion rings and cole slaw.
Dessert. Yes, singular. To paraphrase Henry Ford, you can have any dessert you want as long as it's cheesecake. It's there if you want it.
TIPS: The atmosphere is pure neighborhood tavern. A fine bar and some booths in the front room; tables in the back room. More than a few pictures of Frank Sinatra adorn the walls. Beer seems to be the drink of choice, but the hard stuff and wine are available. Servers are friendly, feisty and super-efficient. A limited number of reservations are taken for parties of six or more. This is a residential parking permit area, so valet service is recommended. Good for children.
IN A BITE: A friendly tavern that has been around for 66 years. It's mostly the ribs that tickle the fancy of customers and keep them coming back.


I have hundreds of ASCII log files that I captured from our hardware's serial port using CoolTerm during hardware development.
I now have a third-party utility that can monitor the device via the serial port to analyze ASCII data in a realtime environment using a GUI.
In addition to connecting the hardware and analyzing realtime data with the 3rd party utility, I would also like to "replay" the ASCII data that I have previously captured as text files, out to a serial port.
I believe that this is as simple as using 'Send Text File'.
Q: Can this be done without physical serial connections if both CoolTerm and the 3rd Party Utility reside on the same machine?
There is a way to connect two serial terminals (or other serial port apps) on the same machine with virtual serial port emulators (e.g. https://freevirtualserialports.com). There seem to be several different options available, depending on your platform (Mac, Windows, Linux). I don't have a particular recommendation as I haven't really tested any of them.
For a platform-independent option, there are dual-serial port adapters (e.g. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004ETETZK/) and null-modem adapters (e.g. https://www.amazon.com/female-slimline- ... 075XGRLXW/) to connect the two ports. Not exactly a "non-physical" solution, but I one I know to be working flawlessly.
Thanks, I was able to accomplish using two FTDI adaptors.
I was trying to pull this off without using physical hardware connections.


This dense, crusty loaf calls for flaxseeds in three different forms: soaked, ground, and whole (raw) for decorating the top.
1. Place 1/2 cup flaxseeds in bowl, and cover with 3 inches water. Let soak overnight.
2. Combine sugar, yeast, and 2 cups warm water in measuring cup. Let stand 5 minutes, or until liquid is cloudy and smells yeasty.
3. Grind remaining 1/2 cup plus 1 Tbs. flaxseeds in coffee grinder. Stir together all-purpose flour, whole-wheat flour, and salt in large bowl. Drain soaked flaxseeds, and stir into flour mixture. Add yeast/water mixture, and stir until smooth dough forms, adding up to 1/4 cup more water, if necessary.
4. Transfer dough to well-floured work surface. Knead 7 to 10 minutes, or until dough is smooth and no longer sticks to your fingers, adding flour as needed. Shape into ball, and place in large bowl coated with oil. Cover, and let rise in warm place 1 to 1 1/2 hours, or until doubled in size. Punch down, reshape into ball, and let rise 1 hour more.
5. Preheat oven to 400°F, and coat large baking sheet with oil or cooking spray. Shape dough into tight ball, and place on prepared baking sheet. Brush dough ball with water, and sprinkle with flaxseeds. Cut a tic-tac-toe crisscross in top of loaf. Bake 45 minutes to an hour, or until loaf is dark brown and sounds hollow when tapped. Cool on wire rack at least 15 minutes before slicing.


Sen. John McCain John Sidney McCainWhy did Mueller allow his investigation to continue for two years? If you don't think illegal immigrants are voting for president, think again 10 factors making Russia election interference the most enduring scandal of the Obama era MORE (R-Ariz.) hit back Tuesday at the Obama administration's refusal to call the deal over Iran's nuclear program a "treaty."
Deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said earlier this month that the administration is negotiating an agreement, not a treaty, which would have to be approved by Congress.
"We’re negotiating an agreement that has a specific duration on it. We’re not negotiating a permanent treaty, and we never have been," Rhodes said during an interview on the "Charlie Rose Show."
The Arizona Republican, however, suggested that the administration can call the deal what it wants, but it's a treaty.
"This is clearly a treaty," McCain, who’s chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said, speaking to a group of reporters. "They can call it a banana, but it's a treaty."
McCain and 46 other Republicans sent a letter this week to Iranian leadership suggesting that any deal on Iran's nuclear program could be overturned after Obama leaves office in 2017.
Democrats have slammed the letter, suggesting that Republicans are undermining Obama and the other negotiators.


There were a quite a few framedrops during battles, so i stopped the game, lowered the resolution to 2x and it just wouldn't load. Sooner or later, it did load. But all I saw was a really zoomed in version of the title screen.
I thought that it might've been a bug with the build i used, so I updated to the build 5.0-4889, with the same settings, and it just crashed the emulator by instant.
I tried to disable the textures, and then the game worked again. I also tried to enable custom textures again, but this time with Direct3D and OpenGL, and both worked.
I thought that it might've something to do with the ram, but i couldn't prove it like this, I thought, so I went all the way back to the stable release of dolphin 5.0, trying Direct3D 12, and I checked the ram usage from the task manager, and it went up to 6 GB on dolphin alone before the emu noticed me that it failed to load the textures(The textures are ~1.35GB btw). I tried to load the game once more on the build 5.0-4889 again with the same settings as I originally had, except for that i used 2x resolution intstead. The ram went up to ~1.7GB before it crashed or "stopped working" as windows likes to call it.
TL;DR: Xenoblade + Vulcan + Custom textures + Prefetch Textures = crash on load using the latest build, for me.
Btw using prefetch textures all the time except for those times i told that i disabled custom textures.


Selena Gomez has finally talked about her new single called 'Bad Liar' -- could it be true that it was inspired by her ex-boyfriend, Justin Bieber?
It seems like Jelena fans are still holding onto their dream to see Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez reunite. However, Gomez and Bieber have already moved on from their past relationship. The "Kill 'Em With Kindness" singer is already in love with her new boyfriend, The Weeknd. But many people still think that Gomez is still writing and singing about her ex-boyfriend, Bieber, especially when she dropped her new song, "Bad Liar."
According to new reports, Selena Gomez has still not moved on from Justin Bieber.
Rumors are making rounds that Gomez is still singing about her failed relationship with the "Cold Water" hitmaker. Gomez recently released her new song called, "Bad Liar" which immediately sparked rumors.
Gomez dropped the new song last week and fans thought the song was about the ex-couple's relationship. However, the song does not refer to Bieber at all and his name was not mentioned in the song. Despite the fact that Gomez is already in a new relationship, people still do not quit as they still think she has not yet moved on from Bieber at all.
Recently, she was a guest on the hit radio show, Power 96.5 FM. Gomez admitted that she started working on the song back in 2016 and before she started dating. For Gomez, the song sings about being in love and how it can be difficult for someone to be suave when they are obsessed with a person.
Reports claimed that Gomez checked herself into rehab because of her failed relationship with the "Sorry" singer. It can be remembered that Gomez underwent rehab after realizing that she had been suffering from anxiety, depression and panic attacks last year.
She even admitted the hardships she went through in life during her acceptance speech at the American Music Awards last year.
In line with this, reports stated that Gomez's mother, Mandy, reached out to Bieber and asked him to ease off Gomez. Mandy has reportedly asked Bieber not to communicate with the "Heart Wants What It Wants" hitmaker because he has affected her life in a negative way. Mandy even thinks that Bieber is the only person who has changed her daughter, which is not good for her daughter at all.
Selena Gomez has yet to comment on the rumors that she has not yet moved on from Justin Bieber despite being in a relationship with The Weeknd. Gomez's new song, "Bad Liar," is available for viewing on YouTube.


Do statisticians have anything to offer Six Sigma practitioners?
Do Six Sigma BBs have anything to offer statisticians?
1. Up-to-date research. Practitioners seek solutions to specific problems. Researchers explore the best ways to solve problems. As a follow-up to any real project you face, consider investigating what the latest research says about how you might solve a similar problem in the future. ASQ journals as well as many intended for statisticians (for example, The American Statistician) include both expository and technical articles on new and improved statistical methods.
I would recommend scanning the titles and abstracts in each issue. If an article appears to address a problem that you face in practice, read the introduction and any examples.
2. Software for implementing the latest methods. Such software is often mentioned in research articles and may be available from the author. Unfortunately, this software is not always in a user-friendly form, so be prepared to invest time in learning how to use it.
3. Informal advice. If you have a good relationship with a statistician in your company, a former teacher or a statistician you met at professional meetings, this person may provide informal advice about unusual problems.
4. Training and resources for more advanced statistical techniques. W.H. Woodall, editor of Journal of Quality Technology, makes this point very clearly, including several recommendations, in the February issue of Six Sigma Forum Magazine.
1. Special nonstatistical skills. BB training includes problem solving skills beyond those taught in statistics courses. Statisticians do not necessarily have formal training in communication skills, managing projects, developing teams or assessing progress. Statisticians can benefit from partnerships with Six Sigma practitioners in the projects they face.
2. Improvements in the training of applied statisticians. Some of the nonstatistical material that is part of BB training might be incorporated into the training of applied statisticians in academia. If these skills make statisticians more effective and more attractive to industry, then academic programs are doing their students a service by providing training in these skills.
3. Sources of research problems. Some of the best research is motivated by real problems. However, academic statisticians often have little or no experience with real problems. By sharing case studies, Six Sigma practitioners provide re-searchers with problems that can serve as motivation for new and more effective statistical methods.
4. Case studies for teaching. The teaching of statistics at all levels is enhanced by good case studies. Descriptions of interesting projects will be useful to statistics teachers.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of ways in which statisticians and Six Sigma practitioners can benefit from one another. My point is to encourage cooperation, not competition, between statistics and the Six Sigma initiative. I welcome your feedback.


Guess who came first - the art or artist?
Kochi: Film director Aashiq Abu and his wife and actor Rima Kallingal on Friday jointly launched a mobile app which will make the entire range of information about Kochi-Muziris Biennale'14 available to visitors literally at their fingertips.
Launching the app, which is a first-of-its-kind, Aashiq Abu said: "Artists like us were very much excited to watch the first edition of the biennale. The second edition seems more innovative and this application is one such innovation." He said he was so impressed with the idea of such an app which brings information about each exhibit even as one views it.
Rima Kallingal congratulated Biennale president Bose Krishnamachari and programmes director Riyas Komu for their relentless efforts to make the event better with innovative ideas. She said the biennale is an exception to Keralites' habit of frowning at changes.
KMB'14 curator Jitish Kallat said that the application gets relevance as smartphones have become common. "It is like carrying a catalogue on the biennale with you. You can accumulate information and send it to your friends and people can get updates on the event even after the biennale is over," he said.
The app will democratise the biennale which is already known as a people's biennale, programmes director Riyas Komu said.
Kochi Biennale Foundation trustee and former RAW chief Hormis Tharakan was present at the function.
Designed by Sinergia Media Labs, the free app can be downloaded from the biennale website (kochimuzirisbiennale.org), iTunes or Google Play Store, and is available on iOS and Android.


Rio de Janeiro: Star US swimmer Ryan Lochte apologised to Brazil on Friday for inventing a story that he and three teammates were mugged during the Olympics, as one of them paid $10,800 to avoid charges.
The US gold medal-winning swimmers hoped to draw a line under the scandal that erupted when Lochte went public with a shocking report of how the four were mugged on their way back from a party in Rio de Janeiro.
The claim that a man posing as a police officer held them up at gunpoint early Sunday and forced them to the ground sparked a media frenzy and pushed Brazilian Olympic authorities into an embarrassed apology.
But after police declared the story was fabricated -- saying all that happened was that the swimmers were subdued by security after getting drunk and vandalizing a gas station bathroom -- the now discredited Lochte finally came clean.
"I should have been much more responsible in how I handled myself and for that am sorry to my teammates, my fans, my fellow competitors, my sponsors and the hosts of this great event," Lochte said in a statement.
Late Thursday, US Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun also apologised "to our hosts in Rio and the people of Brazil for this distracting ordeal in the midst of what should rightly be a celebration of excellence."
Angry Brazilian authorities turned the tables on the swimmers this week as it became clear that the mugging drama did not hold up.
A judge ordered the athletes' passports to be confiscated so that they could not leave the country. Lochte had already left, but the other three -- Gunnar Bentz, Jack Conger and Jimmy Feigen -- were forced to undergo questioning in Rio police stations.
On Thursday, police provided CCTV footage and other evidence about what really happened.
The athletes, who appeared to be intoxicated, stopped in a taxi at a gas station to use the bathroom during the early hours of the morning.
Lochte and the others then vandalized the area near the bathroom and, according to the manager there, urinated on the walls.
After paying about $50 in compensation for the damage to the station, they left unharmed and returned to the athletes' Village.
"There was no robbery of the kind reported by the athletes," Rio de Janeiro's police chief Fernando Veloso said. "The images do not show any kind of violence against them."
The three swimmers kept in Brazil retracted the mugging story in interviews with police on Thursday.
Bentz and Conger were then given back their passports and left immediately. Feigen was brought before a judge and ordered first to pay 35,000 reais ($10,800) to a charitable institution in order to be freed, police confirmed Friday.
"The swimmer accepted the proposal," police said in a statement.
The swimmers will now have to face Olympic team leaders back home.
"While we are thankful our athletes are safe, we do not condone the lapse in judgment and conduct that led us to this point," USA Swimming executive director Chuck Wielgus said.
"It is not representative of what is expected as Olympians, as Americans, as swimmers and as individuals."
Blackmun also called the swimmers' conduct "not acceptable."
"We will further review the matter, and any potential consequences for the athletes, when we return to the United States," he said.
Rio is plagued by violent crime and Brazil has deployed 85,000 police and soldiers to secure the Olympics. Numerous athletes -- including a British team member on Tuesday night -- have been mugged.
But given Lochte's high profile, his mugging claim and the reported involvement of someone with police identification caused huge embarrassment, overshadowing sporting action in the second week of South America's first Olympics.
Brazilian media has covered the US athletes' subsequent humiliation in exhaustive detail. The powerful Globo television network broadcasting leaked police evidence, shredding the swimmers' story, far before the authorities made any public statement.
In the United States, Lochte came in for some serious scorn, with comments in the media and on the Internet almost universally scathing.
In his apology Friday, Lochte, who has won 12 Olympic medals and is 32, said the gas station confrontation had been scary.
"It's traumatic to be out late with your friends in a foreign country -- with a language barrier -- and have a stranger point a gun at you and demand money to let you leave," he said.
But he said: "I accept my responsibility for my role in this happening and have learned some valuable lessons."


EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- The Jason Kidd era is over in New Jersey.
New Jersey and Dallas on Tuesday completed a trade sending the All-Star to the Mavericks, who now have one of the NBA's best point guards as they look toward the playoffs. This will be Kidd's second stint with Dallas.
The eight-player deal, in the making since before the All-Star break, sends Kidd, forward Malik Allen and guard Antoine Wright to Dallas for point guard Devin Harris, center DeSagana Diop and swingman Maurice Ager, plus retired forward Keith Van Horn and Trenton Hassell. New Jersey also gets two first-round draft picks and $3 million.
Van Horn and Hassell replaced Jerry Stackhouse and Devean George in an original trade proposal. Stackhouse's presence in the deal was muddled by plans to get him back to Dallas -- within the rules, although in a way the league frowned upon -- and George used his veto power to block his involvement.
In a career that bridged two sports and several leagues, Howsam's guiding principle was that the fans came first, his son said.
• NFL -- San Francisco waived linebacker Derek Smith, cutting ties with its longtime leading tackler whose role was assumed last season by rookie Patrick Willis.
Smith, an 11-year pro who signed a three-year contract extension before the 2006 season, was due to make $3.28 million in base salary next season despite his dwindling role on the San Francisco defense. Willis, the NFL's defensive rookie of the year, took over Smith's role as the 49ers' defensive leader and top tackler.
• Houston receiver and kick returner Jerome Mathis was arrested and charged with choking his pregnant common-law wife.
Deputies went to Mathis's home in Manvel, about 25 miles south of Houston, after getting a 911 call. Erica Smith told deputies the player had pushed her onto a bed and started choking her. The 26-year-old woman refused medical treatment but said she is six months pregnant.
• COLLEGE BASKETBALL -- Dickey Nutt resigned after 13 seasons as Arkansas State's basketball coach and he will step down immediately.
Nutt announced his departure at a news conference in Jonesboro.
Arkansas State (9-17, 4-11 Sun Belt) has lost seven consecutive games.
Assistants Shawn Forrest and Al Grushkin will take over as co-interim head coaches. The Indians have three games remaining in the regular season, starting Thursday night at Arkansas-Little Rock.


Most people are smart enough to gauge how welcome teen suicide can be as an artistic subject matter. Taken seriously, it can be acclaimed, if controversial, as proven by Netflix's Thirteen Reasons Why. Treated as a carefree satire, as Daniel Waters and Michael Lehmann did with Heathers in 1989, and box office failure is the price of a cultish fanbase. In short, there is little room for irreverence.
But what about taking teen suicide as something potentially life-affirming, and even going so far as to make it a musical? Dear Evan Hansen has taken these theoretically calamitous creative choices and been rewarded with the best new musical trophy at the Tony Awards on Sunday night along with five other statuettes, including best score, book and top actor honours for Ben Platt.
Evan Hansen’s life could be better: his extreme social anxiety permeates a high school career low in friends and high in unrequited love. Domestically, he is at odds with his divorced mother Heidi and there is little money available for college. To make matters worse, his arm is broken.
When fellow student Connor Murphy dies by suicide, it presents Hansen with a peculiar opportunity. Through lucky coincidences and his own inarticulacy, Evan finds the chance to live how he has yearned to when he is mistaken for a friend and confidant of the deceased. He gains viral internet fame and the acceptance of Connor’s family, not least Zoe, Connor’s sister (and Evan’s longtime crush). It comes at a price as Hansen struggles to maintain his mistaken identity.
The show’s music and lyrics were written by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, better known as songwriting duo Pasek and Paul. Before Dear Evan Hansen, they won an Oscar for writing the lyrics of La La Land’s Oscar-winning song City of Stars.
The idea for Dear Evan Hansen came from Pasek’s own high school experience. After a fellow student died, he noticed the way that some of his classmates were capitalising on the death and pretending to have been on familiar terms with the deceased.
Work began on the story in 2010 but it was not until 2014 that first readings were held. In this time, the story was restructured and streamlined, and once-central ideas were altered or removed completely. Pasek and Paul made swifter progress with casting, though: seven of the main cast members have been with the show since its 2015 premiere in Washington.
What do the critics think?
The New York Times’ review says that Dear Evan Hansen “has grown in emotional potency” during its progression to a Broadway run, crediting this majorly to 23-year old actor Ben Platt’s work in the title role and saying that it is “not likely to be bettered” soon.
Varietyhas praise for (among many other things) the “stunning” set design choices, where screens and surfaces are decorated with social network feeds. They also highlight the “gentle” introspection and lack of sentimentality of the score, lyrics and dialogue.
The New Yorker's review gives Dear Evan Hansen more qualified praise, suggesting that the second act is “formulaic” and that the protagonist’s darker side has space left to explore; however, these flaws are a “smudge” more than a true “diminishmen” of the musical.
What’s next for the show?
The producers plan to begin a US tour in October 2018. It’s unknown whether it will open in the UK or if any film adaptation rights are in discussion.


- Person in charge day of inspection was unable to calibrate the food thermometer.
- Inspectors found eggs stored above celery and carrots.
- Raw shrimp holding at 50 degrees, raw beef 48 and raw chicken 46.
- An accumulation of food soil on the slicer blade.
- Turkey holding at 45 degrees, chicken between 43-45, and both pork and cheese 44.


Find answers to the most common questions about ATMdesk keys and engineer accounts.
My ATMdesk key is broken. What should I do?
If your ATMdesk key is defective and you purchased it less than one year ago, it is covered by our one-year warranty. Contact your supplier, and send the defective key back to receive a free replacement key.
If your ATMdesk key was purchased more than one year ago or it is physically damaged, it is out of warranty. Contact your supplier, and send the defective key back. You must purchase a replacement key separately.
In any case, the remaining license that was on your defective key is moved to the replacement key free of charge.
My ATMdesk key is lost or stolen. What should I do?
If your ATMdesk key is missing and its check-in period of three months is not yet expired, your license is covered by our free replacement policy. Contact our support team to report the serial number of both the lost key and the new replacement key. If you do not have a replacement key, please order one.
The remaining license that was on your lost key is moved to the replacement key free of charge. Time licenses are covered in full; ticket licenses are covered up to a maximum of 20 tickets per key.
If your missing ATMdesk key was checked-in more than three months ago, your license is no longer eligible for free replacement. Contact our support team to report the serial number of the lost key. You must purchase a new key and new license separately.
What happens if I forget to check-in my ATMdesk key in time?
Nothing happens to your key or its license. You can come back any time, log into your account, and check-in your key for the next three months.
However, as long as your key check-in period is expired, the key cannot be accepted by ATMdesk software until you check it in online again.
If your key is missing and its check-in period has expired, your license is no longer eligible for free replacement.
What if I have dozens (or hundreds) of engineers all over the country?
You do not have to check-in all your keys by yourself. You can create several subaccounts (one per engineer) and let your engineers log into their own subaccounts to check in their keys on their own.
Do I have to create one account for every engineer?
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If an engineer loses their key, and you need to report its serial number, you can immediately access that number.
I entered the wrong PIN three times, and my key is locked. What should I do?
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If you are an engineer, you cannot change the PIN by yourself. Please contact the person in your organization who has access rights to the main account so they can change the PIN for you.


Patriots quarterback Tom Brady's four-game suspension for his role in using underinflated footballs during the AFC Championship Game was upheld Tuesday by commissioner Roger Goodell.
In announcing the decision, Goodell cited new evidence that emerged: On or shortly before March 6 -- the day Brady was interviewed by Ted Wells and his investigative team -- Brady instructed his assistant to destroy the cellphone he had been using since early November 2014, a period that included the AFC title game against the Colts and the initial weeks of the subsequent investigation.
The NFL said in Tuesday's statement that Brady destroyed the phone even though he was aware that investigators had requested access to text messages and other electronic information that had been stored on the phone.
According to the NFL, during the four months the cellphone was in use, Brady sent and received nearly 10,000 text messages, none of which can now be retrieved. At the time he arranged for its destruction, Brady knew that Wells and his team had asked for information from the cellphone.
Despite repeated requests for information from the phone, the fact that Brady destroyed the phone was not disclosed to the NFL until June 18 and was not confirmed until the day of Brady's appeal hearing on June 23.
During his appeal hearing, the NFL says Brady said it was his practice to destroy his cellphone and SIM cards when he gets a new cellphone.
Goodell said in the league's statement that Brady "went beyond a mere failure to cooperate in the investigation and supported a finding that he had sought to hide evidence of his own participation in the scheme." Based on Wells' report and the evidence presented at that hearing, Goodell also said that Brady was aware of, and took steps to support, the actions of other team employees to deflate game footballs below the levels allowed under NFL rules.
During settlement talks, the union requested that the record of Brady's appeal be sealed so that, in the NFL's opinion, the information that Brady destroyed his cellphone would not become public, a league official tells ESPN. The NFL declined to do so.
The league and Brady's representatives had engaged in settlement talks but couldn't find common ground, which wasn't a surprise.
The NFL told Brady that if he acknowledged that two Patriots equipment men were doing something illegal, and if he acknowledged that he didn't cooperate with the league, the NFL would be willing to reduce his suspension to two or maybe even one game, a source told ESPN's Adam Schefter. Brady declined to agree to the offer, which as one source said, "tells you how Tom feels about this case."
Brady, according to sources, remains adamant that he will fight a suspension for as long as he can, and that any punishment must specify that it's for failing to cooperate with an NFL investigation and not for breaking rules with footballs.
"The Commissioner's decision is deeply disappointing, but not surprising because the appeal process was thoroughly lacking in procedural fairness," Brady's agent, Don Yee, said Tuesday. "Most importantly, neither Tom nor the Patriots did anything wrong. And the NFL has no evidence that anything inappropriate occurred. The appeal process was a sham, resulting in the Commissioner rubber-stamping his own decision."
The NFL, meanwhile, filed suit in Manhattan on Tuesday to confirm Brady's suspension, but a source told Schefter that the matter of procedure is "no big deal."
The NFL Players Association's position is that the filing won't affect anything, the source said. "What it really does is show how scared [the NFL is] of the case and know how weak they are legally," the source said.
Brady, as he regularly does at this time of year, arrived early for training camp at Gillette Stadium on Monday. While Patriots veterans don't report until Wednesday, NFL rules state that quarterbacks and players returning from injuries can be required to report earlier.
Coach Bill Belichick met with the media on Wednesday. All other Patriots players are supposed to report to camp by Thursday.
On Tuesday afternoon the Patriots issued a statement expressing their displeasure with Tuesday's ruling while continuing to support Brady.
"We are extremely disappointed in today's ruling by Commissioner Goodell," the team said in the statement. "We cannot comprehend the league's position in this matter. Most would agree that the penalties levied originally were excessive and unprecedented, especially in light of the fact that the league has no hard evidence of wrongdoing. We continue to unequivocally believe in and support Tom Brady. We also believe that the laws of science continue to underscore the folly of this entire ordeal. Given all of this, it is incomprehensible as to why the league is attempting to destroy the reputation of one of its greatest players and representatives."
Brady appealed his suspension on June 23 to Goodell, who served as arbitrator despite the objections of the NFLPA. Attorney Jeffrey Kessler, who has had success taking on the NFL in other high-profile cases, led Brady's defense and said, "I think we put in a very compelling case."
• The ball-deflation policy was incorrectly applied to him, as the rules were meant for club personnel and not players.
• The Wells report doesn't prove he did anything illegal.
• If it is determined that the ball-deflation policy applied to Brady, the league failed to give him notice of the penalty, in essence making up the punishment without precedent.
• The NFL doesn't have the proper techniques and standards for measuring deflation of footballs.
• Goodell was not a neutral arbitrator.
As for Goodell taking 35 days to determine Brady's appeal, sources told ESPN's Dan Graziano that the delay was rooted in the NFL's viewpoint that its decision had to be designed, vetted and written to withstand a court challenge. Thus, the delay was mostly about whether the league is comfortable in the legal presentation of the decision.
Brady, who turns 38 on Aug. 3, will miss the first four games this season unless the case goes to court. Jimmy Garoppolo, a second-round draft pick in 2014, would replace Brady.
New England hosts Pittsburgh on Sept. 10 to open the regular season. The Patriots then go to Buffalo, host Jacksonville, have a bye, and are at Dallas in the last game of Brady's suspension.
"The Commissioner's decision and discipline has no precedent in all of NFL history," Yee said. "His decision alters the competitive balance of the upcoming season. The decision is wrong and has no basis, and it diminishes the integrity of the game."
Brady was suspended on May 11 after Wells' investigation found that it was "more probable than not" that Patriots personnel deliberately deflated footballs during the AFC title game against the Colts and that Brady was "at least generally aware" of the rule violations. The Patriots were fined $1 million and stripped of a 2016 first-round draft choice and a 2017 fourth-round draft choice.
Scientific arguments were a major part of Brady's defense. Brady's lawyers tried to shoot down the findings of an independent firm hired to provide scientific analysis of the air pressure inside the footballs used by the Patriots and Colts. The firm was retained as part of Wells' investigation.


If I were to write a post about attending blog conferences, what sort of questions would you like to see answered?
Instead of answering the sort of questions which were posted in response, I'll answer the very questions which were posted.
I think so. That is, the ones I've paid to attend have been worth the money for me. You have to decide for yourself if it's worth it for you. I don't mean to be vague, but you know your money situation better than I do, so, you know: do what works for you. I feel like I should also include the phrases, "Make it work," and, "Pray about it."
I suppose what is good to do at each conference; is it better for learning, networking, freebies, etc.?
Different conferences cater to different audiences; there are conferences which focus on design, food, etc., and this is where 'knowing your niche' comes in to play. To find out what will be going on, read the conference's blog and agenda, but also ask around: what do past attendees of the conference think?
As for my own experience: If you want to learn, go to evo conference, which hosts world-class instructors and panelists on topics ranging from Food Photography to Apps, Gadgets, and Online Tools. Evo also caps their attendance, ensuring manageable (and therefore accessible) class sizes. For networking, any conference is good, I think, because networking is up to you: how are you reaching out, and to whom? BlogHer, because of its size (3600+ attendees in San Diego this year), is good for networking and for freebies, which leads me to: freebies. The more sponsors there are at a conference, the more likely there is free stuff to take home. Again, from the conference's site you can learn about which sponsors and companies will be in attendance.
How to get beyond the social awkwardness when you go alone.
Is going alone awkward? If you're more comfortable being in a group, make arrangements before you go (or while you're there) to meet up with people. Perhaps you'd be willing to share a hotel room with someone (or some two, or some three) -- instant buddy, someone with whom you can check in and compare schedules. Maybe there's someone who you've known online only (you comment on each others' blogs regularly, or chat on twitter) who will also be at the conference: this is the perfect time to be introduced face-to-face! Set up a lunch date, or arrange to go to a party together. We know each other because of the Social in Social Networking, and online can carry over easily to (what the kids are calling) IRL. Be proactive.
How much does it cost to go to one? Lodging/attendance/food etc.?
This depends on the conference.
Lodging for most conferences is available at a nearby hotel, which will usually offer a conference-related discount (often including free wifi during the conference). Remember that the cost will be lower for you if you share a room (do pay attention to occupancy in regards to rates), and if you're in need of a roommate, there are usually message board-type places linked on the conference's site to help you find what (in this case who) you're looking for.
For food, many conferences include meals and/or snack breaks, and there might be food in the form of appetizers (and more!) at parties. Check your conference's schedule. If you're visiting a different city, you may want to plan on spending money to dine at local (famous?) restaurants.
Speaking of Visiting A Different City, another cost is transportation. I like going to evo because it is in Park City, and while I do stay at The Canyons, I can drive, making it very affordable. Just like finding a roommate, consider carpooling to your conference's location (I know a few who drove from Utah to San Diego for BlogHer this year). If you do end up flying, perhaps the fates will be on your side and you'll get to fly with friends (like I did last year on the way to BlogHer). And if you fly, when you get there: will you rent a car? Take a cab (can you split the fare with a friend?)? Does your hotel offer a shuttle?
How do you get invited to the cool parties?
There are so many parties and events, and once you've registered for the conference you'll likely get email alerts about needing to send in your RSVP for this party or that event. Pay attention and reply quickly, though because those events fill up quickly.
The other answer? For the non-conference-affiliated parties? Honestly? By knowing cool people. This is a (harsh?) reality, and a lot of people get their feelings hurt by being excluded. If there aren't many parties on your schedule be prepared to hear about a party you didn't get invited to, and DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT BECAUSE YOU'RE HAVING FUN ANY WAY. Seriously. At BlogHer in New York last year, I was invited to quite a few cool parties, and it was all because of who I know, people who were kind enough to include me on their list(s). This year in San Diego, I did get invited to a couple of parties, but not nearly as many, and there were plenty of parties I wasn't invited to. Still? Fun time, and never without something to do.
How do you get companies to give you free stuff at them?
What benefit would there be for an unknown/introverted blogger to attend?
To have a good time. To get out of the house. To meet people you've only seen online. To spread the word about your blog. To visit a new city. To say you went. To take classes specific to being a blogger. To learn more about the industry. To connect with brands/companies. To get free stuff. To party. To go on vacation.
How do you even find out about them?
Listen (read) about what other people are saying about them, and then 'like' the conference on facebook or subscribe to their newsletter. You could even post a facebook status or send out a tweet which says something like, "Which blog conferences would you recommend and why?"
Is it bad to take as much free stuff as you can? I'm seeing bloggers say it's tacky, and yet it's all I want.
When people talk about tacky, they're talking about when people act tacky, as in: people get invited to a party, and instead of spending time there, attendees hear about The Great Swag, so they enter as soon as the doors open, make a mad dash for (and fight each other over) the gift bags, and then leave. (This may or may not have happened at a conference which I didn't attend.) (But I heard that it did.) You can get free stuff, but be (or at least act) gracious: thank the host/rep, ask questions about the company (or party host if applicable), don't just take the stuff and run. There's time to get all the stuff you want: take the stuff and then make conversation and THEN run. Just kidding. But you never know, by engaging after (or before) receiving The Stuff, you may establish a connection which would result in being able to host a giveaway, or partnering with a company on a campaign, or becoming the next face of Your Favorite Laundry Detergent. You just never know.
Yes. Absolutely. If you're going to a conference, invest in business cards. They don't have to be fancy; in fact, the ones I hate to receive have a piece of gum or whatever stapled to them, or are 'creatively' shaped. I just want a card I can put in my card holder with the rest of them. You can get cards at a reasonable price at vistaprint.com, or you could try your luck at any number of giveaways on stationery blogs and the like.
Include contact information, but be brief also (tricky). My card includes: a photo, my name, my commenting name (~j.), my blog url, email address, phone number, city & state (in case a company says, "I'd like to work with a Utah blogger for this project..."), twitter handle, and blog facebook page url. On the reverse side of my card, I have my blog header.
I'd say to order 200-500 cards. They're always good to have on hand (says me).
Is the point of attending one to promote your blog, or do you just go to have a good time?
Yes. (heh) If I'm being honest, the main reason I wanted to go to BlogHer last year, initially, was to be in New York City. Turns out, I was also at a great conference with awesome parties (in the best city in the world). You can go to promote your blog and you're likely to have a good time, and vice versa.
What do you learn there? What kind of classes are taught?
Many different kinds of classes are taught, like I mentioned above. Check the agenda to see if what the conference offers is your cup o' tea. As for what you learn . . . among other things you certainly learn a lot about people and the politics of blogging.
Do popular bloggers get offended when they introduce themselves and people have no idea who they are?
Did I ever tell you about the time I saw Ree Drummond? Yeah, The Pioneer Woman? (Man, you know what, this deserves its own post, so I'll just abbreviate the experience here.) It was at a party, she was standing in a circle with some of my friends, I entered the circle, and someone said, "Jenny, this is Ree." I looked at her face, looked at her name badge, looked back at her face and said, "Oh, yes. I've heard of you." *AHEM* Did I know she was the owner of her own empire? No, I did not. Her reaction? She smiled and went back to talking to my friends who, I am certain (now) were horrified and/or confused and/or embarrassed. She was classy. And doesn't even remember it, I Am So Sure.
I've also seen Not Classy, but for the most part, when bloggers throw fits because of not being recognized it's not because they're a Popular Blogger, but rather it's because they only think they are.
I hope that helps. If not, please clarify in the comments section. And, please join the conversation(s) on my blog's facebook page.
You know how I hate people? You know. But you make going to a conference sound really fun.
Great post! You've almost made me want to start up my blog again.
Can Used To Be Crappy Now Non Bloggers attend?
I could testify in a court of law that Formerly Phread makes a great conference roommate, if you're in the market for one.


Can running the air conditioner actually reduce your braking power?
TOM: Geez, what a terrible predicament for this lady's mother. On the one hand, she's ailing and would love to have a visit from her daughter. On the other hand, without AC in a heat wave, the daughter's going to arrive smelling like my brother's gym bag. Tough call.
RAY: Actually, this is a stumper, Caroll. I can't think of any way the air conditioner would hinder the operation of the brakes. So I'm going to have to assume that your friend and the dealer had a misunderstanding.
TOM: There are two possible ways the AC could affect the brakes in small ways. One is via the idle air control (IAC).
RAY: When a major accessory, like the air conditioner, is turned on, the car's computer signals the idle air control to boost up the idle speed. That's because the air conditioner takes a lot of power from the engine, and the boost in idle speed keeps the engine from stalling and running rough when you're stopped at idle.
TOM: Normally, the IAC just boosts the idle speed back up to where it was before you turned the air conditioner on, so you don't even notice it. But I suppose if it's malfunctioning, it could be boosting the idle speed too much. And that could make your lady friend FEEL like the car is harder to bring to a complete stop -- because the engine is running faster and trying to keep it moving.
RAY: But that would have absolutely no effect on the brakes themselves, and certainly no effect at highway speed.
TOM: The other possible explanation has to do with the fact that the air conditioner's compressor cycles on and off continuously. If you're stopped at a light with your foot planted on the brake pedal, you might feel the pedal drop a tiny bit when the compressor cycles off and increases the engine vacuum slightly.
RAY: But again, this is completely benign, and would have virtually no effect at all on the brakes' ability to stop the car.
TOM: So here's what you should do, Caroll. First, get her a case of Handi-Wipes and a 55-gallon drum of Secret antiperspirant. That should help her socially until the mechanical problem is addressed.
RAY: Then ask her to get some more information from the dealer. Or you might even want to talk to the mechanic yourself. Find out what he thinks she's experiencing. I'm guessing it's something benign, and that it wasn't explained well to her. I can't imagine a dealership diagnosing a dangerous brake problem and then letting a customer drive away in the car.
TOM: Once she understands that there's no danger, she'll relax and go back to using her air conditioning. But I'm guessing this was more a communication failure than a brake failure. Write back and let us know.


I do some work facilitating strategy with non-profit boards because it's important and it's complicated with a sprinkle of drama and a whole lot of varied interests. Have you ever sat on a non-profit board and just shook your head at how difficult it is to get everyone aligned to just make a decision and move on? Why is that the case? Well, many non-profit boards are grown organically, not intentionally. Organically may mean that people have come on over the years because they are passionate, want to commit funds, or have spare time. That doesn't mean they are the right board members for the strategy. Or maybe there is weak governance and no board term limits are set so that board members linger for way past their pull dates. Not a formula for success.
But non profit boards require the same level of discipline, rigor and responsibility applied to for profit organizations (not implying that for profit boards are always that functional either by the way). In fact, in many ways the job is much more important because there is such a variety of interests in a non-profit that a lack of a clear plan can create massive variability.
Recently a friend sent me a Harvard Business Review article titled the New Work of the Nonprofit Board, dated way back in the 20th century (1996). Well this article is absolutely timeless and highlighted some critical best practices for those of you on a nonprofit board or considering joining one. I put together the table below to summarize the key points in the article.
One of the cruel realities I have observed in board work is that some of the best minds come to a board meeting and they are totally useless. It is not them. It is the way that the board is being managed. Board members need to operate in their genius zones which is not about detailed operating issues. Too often the CEO brings operating details to the board meeting and expects the board to engage but they just shut down, feign interest, check their email and can't wait to leave. Give them something meaty like we need a new CEO, we're launching a capital campaign, or we have to re-imagine our future to avert a demise, and board members get fired up to help.
But it's not that the board members can just be passive recipients of information fed from a single source. No, board members that are good, source input externally and internally. They get a point of view. They are informed. They ask questions. They challenge the CEO. There are timelines and accountability. The boards are dynamic and shed the strict, boring nature of process and focus on purpose.
Many readers of my posts are entrepreneurs and business owners and probably sit on a nonprofit board or two. Try to re-imagine what the organization could achieve with a board that took ownership of the future and aligned with the CEO to create the type of impact that needs to be made in the world. The responsibility is great. There is no room for old board thinking in the new board order.
Helping high performance leaders realize their full potential in business and in life.


I'll return to this question in a moment, but first let me talk about the show itself. Each episode relates an untold "Behind the music-esq" story that is part of the larger history of a hitherto unrecognized genre of music known to its cult-like devotees as "smoooooth" rock. Although the show doesn't use the term "Adult Contemporary", most of the characters in the series are based on leading figures in the AC radio category exemplified by the emergence of VH1. I use the term "based" loosely, because the characters are named after the real musicians and songwriters whose songs are depicted in the episodes. For example, if the show has "lead characters" they would have to be the characters named "Kenny Loggins" and "Michael McDonald." Loggins begins his career as a defender of the genre, as in an early episode where he and Michael McDonald team up to defend the ethos of "Smooooth" against antagonistic east coast interlopers "Hall and Oates".
The Hall and Oates challenge culminates in a "sing off" that ends tragically, leading to a character arc involving McDonald and his emotional and philosophical connection to "Smooth Rock." In another episode Loggins finds himself tempted away from the "smoooth" by "hard rocker" Steve Perry of Journey, setting him in conflict with his old friend and conspirator McDonald. That conflict eventually intertwines the two with libidinous members of Toto, an angry Michael Jackson backed by possessed metal head Eddie Van Halen, and a slew of other well known and not so well known characters all of who exist in the show's smoggy circa 1980-'s Los Angeles parallel universe.
At this point I guess I can let the cat out of the bag, and telll you that the title of the show is (and was) "Yacht Rock." "Yacht Rock's" genius is that it is both a winking inside joke only truly appreciable to aficionados of 70's AM and 80's FM pop, and yet at the same time hilariously accessible thanks to the inclusion of many instantly recognizable songs which provide the launch points for each episode. Largely via word of mouth, "Yacht Rock" spread across the internet, finding favor with DJ's across the country who talked about it and linked to the website of its "network", Los Angeles based Channel101.com. Over the space of a year the show has become such an underground phenomenon, that the Title has become synonymous with an entire genre of music, and has been adopted by club DJ's for "Yacht Rock" theme nights.
Channel101.com is the brainchild of a couple of TV writer/producers named Dan Harmon and Rob Schrab. Their Ben Stiller directed pilot "Heat Vision and Jack" for Fox TV wasn't picked up, despite the fact that it starred two up and coming comedic actors named Jack Black and Owen Wilson. Licking their wounds after the experience, they began to make digital shorts, mostly as a way of amusing each other, which blossomed into screenings for friends, many of which are active in the LA improv comedy scene. The screenings metamorphosed into an informal festival, and eventually Channel101.com was born. As a way of separating the chaff from the wheat, Schrab came up with the idea of a fictitious network, capable of running at most, five series at a time. Episodes of each series are around five minutes in length. Anyone can submit a pilot, but only those deemed worthy by a panel comprised of current series creators gets an airing at the monthly screening. The audience votes for its favorites, and the five highest rated shows remain on the network.
Early series included Harmon's Computerman, co-starring Jack Black. Then a trio of young DV creaters made it onto the Channel101 primetime lineup with a series titled the 'Bu'. The same trio were hired by Saturday Night Live, and their Channel101 style digital shorts featuring the performing member of the Trio Andy Samberg, began to attract a lot of attention, in particular their Rap satires "Lazy Sunday" and "Hey Natalie". While Samberg is undoubtably Channel101's best known home grown alum, it was the controversy around another series that jump started Channel101 into the realm of viral trendsetter. The "House of Cosbys" was an animated series with an amusing premise involving a man who manages to clone a family of Bill Cosbys, each of which, not unlike the seven dwarves, is dominated by a singular character trait. After four popular episodes on Channel101, series creator Justin Roiland received a cease and desist from lawyers representing Cosby, and although the series clearly satirizes a public figure who has been satirized on mainstream TV repeatedly over the years, it's sad but understandable that Roiland didn't want to risk his financial well being in a legal battle with someone with the financial resources of Cosby. The battle over the House of Cosby episodes did however pave the way for the notoriety of "Yacht Rock" (and for trivia lovers, Roiland plays Christopher Cross in several episodes.) While many of the series on Channel101 are decidedly lowbrow, "Yacht Rock" is one of the few that was able to for the most part take the high road. It's pretty difficult to grab an audience's attention and make a comic impression in so little time and on a shoestring budget, and not resort to a few crude but effective jokes. It's fair to say that a significant portion of Channel101's episodes are unapologetically crude, befitting the anti-establishment origins of the network, it's DIY ethic, and the focus of its originators on the creation of shorts that are raw and unadulterated, and as antithetical as possible to the comedies that make it through the filters of the media conglomerates which control for the most part, what we see on TV and in Movie Theaters.
"The actions of Cosby's legal team are somewhat laughable, somewhat sad and ultimately symbolic of a quantum shift in the business of entertainment: The internet is breaking a zillion dollar pinata, free candy is flying everywhere and the candy companies are understandably upset. You can't control digital information the way you can control radios, television and movies. Lawyers threatening web sites, the FCC clamoring to regulate cable, record labels making speeches about mp3s: I hear it all as a death rattle. They have my sympathy but not my respect."
What the future holds is always an uncertain thing, but I'd be willing to bet that it won't be too long before we see someone launch the next hit sitcom entirely from the Internet. As networks begrudgingly partner with Itunes, it won't be long before we see a show that bypasses the broadcast networks entirely, as we become increasingly wired, and our televisions and computers continue to merge and interconnect. Channel101.com is certainly a pioneer, although there was an entire wave of failed companies that came before it, during the Internet Boom (I even worked for one). Unlike most of those companies, Channel101 is focused entirely on the creative possibilities. I have a feeling in five years time people will look back on "webseries" like "Yacht Rock" as a turning point. And don't be surprised to see people like Harmon, Schrab, JD Ryznar & Hunter Stair (Yacht Rock's creators), and Roiland emerge as commercial rainmakers in the new entertainment world order. Even now, Harmon and Schrab have an animated feature film coming out and a series in development with VH-1. And did I mention, after a year's worth of ten episodes, "Yacht Rock" was finally can cancelled? Roll with the changes guys, there's an audience out there who can't wait to see what you do next.


I don't have any stats on the morphology of Vietnamese words. I have argued that "words" (like phonemes) are artifacts of alphabetic orthographies that incorporate word division, the latter being a social convention that shapes one's internal representation of words as much as it reflects that representation. Since Vietnamese lacks this feature, measuring the percentage of mono- and multi-syllabic words would end up being pretty subjective.
I've seen experimental Vietnamese orthography that uses word division as a means of reducing the number of diacritics.
would find a vast majority of utterances were made up of monosyllables.
Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that one of the reasons why Vietnamese is a rather difficult languages for foreigners to learn well is the presence of a huge number of phonetically minimal pairs and this in turn reveals not only the incredibly low level redundancy of the language, but also underlines its high monosyllabicity quotient.
No linguist that I know of has ever produced a universally valid definition of a "word" in Vietnamese, one that could not be successfully attacked as an avatar of an Indo-European referent. So, unless somebody can cut that knot, we will not be able to furnish a scientifically satisfactory answer to your query.
However, my impression, having professionally dealt with Vietnamese for more than half a century [and with a couple of degrees in Chinese], is that it is much more nearly monosyllabic than Chinese. It is also interesting to note that, at least in comparison to standard Mandarin, a Vietnamese speaker is much more apt to pronounce all the tones in a spoken utterance, whereas the typical Mandarin speaker will pronounce a fair proportion of syllables with a "neutral" tone. This is, in my opinion, due to the fact that tone is much more necessary for aural comprehension in Vietnamese, due to the presence of so many minimal pairs, which underscores the much higher number of monosyllables in Vietnamese than in nearly every other language I know of.
A second question you pose is about graphically joining [hyphenating] "words" in Vietnamese. That was tried for a long time in printed works in the South. And it depended heavily on what any given writer thought constituted "a word" – it has since been almost totally dropped and, in any event, was not standard in the North at any time in the last 60 yrs or so.
Because Vietnamese basically has two sets of vocabulary, one indigenous and one taken from Chinese – the latter supplies many literary & technical terms while the former is the basis for most of what one might term "daily conversation" in the same way Teutonic terms are more common in spoken English than in written works where we find a lot of loans from Greek and Latin and Middle French, one could get the impression that bi-syllable "words" are numerous, but those "words" are quite often just Chinese loans.
There seems to be a trade-off among word division / spacing, diacritical marks, and inputting hardware and software.
In the final analysis, what is the value of the concept of word for natural language processing, lexicography, philosophy, and other areas of artificial intelligence and cognition?
As regards "phonemes", it is so refreshing to hear of anyone supporting such a position. I believe Peter Ladefoged referred to it as the "phonemic conspiracy". This is of course why the vowels, or rather any consonant-vowel distinctions, disappear in favor of the "syllable" whenever one reconstructs a proto-language at a deep enough level without any preconceived notions of what it should be like (Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Sino-Tibetan, whether Old Chinese or Proto-Tibeto-Burman, are prime examples).
As regards "words", I need more convincing. Surely the prosody of any spoken language is contingent on an innate knowledge of word boundaries that has nothing to do with alphabetic writing.
I can't speak for Vietnamese, but I was taught for Cantonese that a word was any minimal speech unit that could form a sentence all by itself. Whatever was left were called bound forms. Definitely not an English definition of a word.
How does English differ from Cantonese in that respect?
I am thinking about something: the tendency (especially in Vietnamese news media) to use syllable-level acronyms. Example: TNHH for Trách nhiệm Hữu hạn (limited liability, as in a company), UBND for Uỷ ban Nhân dân (People's Committee), etc. I've seen some amazing ones now and then – initials of 10 or more syllables all rammed together.
Tối 29/6, sau khi Sở GD&ĐT Hà Nội công bố điểm chuẩn vào lớp 10 công lập, trường ngoài công lập THCS và THPT Tạ Quang Bửu, Hà Nội, phát đi thông báo mức điểm chuẩn vào lớp 10 học 2018 – 2019 là 46 điểm.
Can this tell us anything about word structure? You can have a 2-, 3-, or 4-syllable acronym but I feel as if the most common are certainly in pairs.
All Vietnamese-Bulgarians I know insist on separating each morpheme/syllable. For example, it's always Viet Nam, not Vietnam. I don't know why exactly.
BTW, I've also been sceptical of the concept of a "word".
V — as we are discussing written Vietnamese rather than spoken, do your Vietnamese-Bulgarian informants actually write "Viet Nam" (as stated above) or do they in fact write "Việt Nam" ? I would use the latter but never the former, or the fully Anglicised "Vietnam" where more appropriate.
It's Виет Нам in Cyrillic, and "Việt Nam.
V — thank you, understood.
Incidentally, when it comes to the concept/meaning of "a word", I think that the (IMHO, much under-rated) French philosopher d'un Petit* summed it up perfectly when he wrote "When I use a word1, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less". In the original MS he adds a footnote, sadly lost in the printed editions — "1. including, of course, the word 'word'."
* Cited in Dodgson C L, Alice through the looking glass, Macmillan, London 1871, where he anglicises d'un Petit's name as "Humpty Dumpty", presumably fearing that his target audience might have had trouble reading d'un Petit's birth name "un Petit d'un Petit". Dodgson, a mathematician as well as an Anglican deacon, would have been well aware of the self-recursive definition of "word" that was clearly uppermost in d'un Petit's mind.
Surely the prosody of any spoken language is contingent on an innate knowledge of word boundaries that has nothing to do with alphabetic writing.
French doesn't seem to have phonological words. For instance, stress in French is prepausal – utterance-final, not word-final.
When Vietnamese, or another primarily monosyllabic language, is read or recited slowly, are any syllables grouped together, with less time between them? It might not indicate a word, but maybe give a clue about the multi-syllable units of meaning.
Which is part of what makes auditory comprehension so difficult for non-native speakers. When I moved from a jr. high school with American teachers for French to a high school with native speakers, my ability to understand spoken language took a great hit for awhile. It wasn't the different accent, but the lack of clarity of word boundaries.
Thanks for this post, it's a question I've been wondering about. I've read that there's no general definition of "word" that applies to all languages, and also that there are agglutinative languages where the categories of "word" and "sentence" aren't necessarily distinct. However, I had assumed that each language at least had its own concept of "word", even if imperfect (we do have disputes in English about whether certain compounds are one word or two), and Professor Mair seems to back this up in the "twin kle twin kle lit tle star" link: "So far as I know, all the languages of the world have words as well as syllables and morphemes". But Bill Hannas says words are "artifacts of alphabetic orthographies", which I can't wrap my head around; does this mean that unwritten languages can't be decomposed into words?
On the value of the concept of word: The first thing I can think of that doesn't depend on writing is metrical poetry. Words can't be broken across lines of poetry (unless you're deliberately going for an extremely silly effect), in any language I know. Is there metrical poetry in Vietnamese?
Jenny, could you explain how acronyms would give any insight into word structure? I'm struggling to see how syllable-based acronyms tell us any more than the fact that Vietnamese is generally written as syllables.
@Chris – sure, the notion is there. But in actual conversations, you're unlikely to hear the difference unless the speaker goes out of their way to emphasize it. You'd usually just know from context, which gives you an anticipatory framework for hearing what's meant.
@Matt_M: Utterance and sentence are not the same thing.
mh (not) in Cantonese is a bound-form, not a word, because you can't just say mh in response to a question.
What this really is is pronunciation so slow and clear that there's a pause between bords and durs, so that bords is an utterance of its own and gets to carry utterance-final stress, which in turn – if, again, the pronunciation is slow enough – causes the vowel lengthening before certain consonants that is transcribed here.
You're not going to hear any of that in a conversation, or even in a political speech except if it makes dramatic pauses.
…and dramatic pauses don't have to lie between morphological or lexical words either. They can lie between syllables.
My understanding (not being a specialist on French in particular) is that rising intonation in French does not have to be assigned in a somewhat similar way to how a possible pitch accent on a stressed syllable in English is often not realized. However, the crucial difference is that in English the "stress" (which should not be conflated with any tonal adjustment) still remains to assist in the breaking up of speech. In French, there is no "stress" comparable to English so the recourse is lengthening which similarly does not necessarily need to be tied to any tonal adjustment (hence "bords durs" [bɔːʁdyːːʁ] and "bordures" [bɔʁdyːːʁ] can both be treated as equivalent phrases without any pause in the former but with a clear division in terms of prosodic words). However, to mg's point, a subtle length distinction (which I would assume is often not even applied) renders it difficult to break speech up for a non-native speaker. A language like Spanish on the other hand does have "stress" like in English but does not reduce the vowels so compensates by not ignoring the possible pitch accents on syllables to quite the same degree as English. When Spanish does ignore the pitch accents, it can also become difficult to break up solely on the basis of subtle length distinctions.
I think @Matt_M was asking why "a word was any minimal speech unit that could form a sentence all by itself" doesn't work for English. For example: "the", "my", … there must be lots more little words that can't be a sentence (or utterance) by themselves. There are also many that can; here's an old Language Log about a sentence in the New Yorker that consists of "Z."
Well, both "the" and "my" can indeed be valid sentences in their own right if they are being used as metalanguage, as can any word. Teacher : "What does 't' 'h' 'e' spell ?" — Pupil : "The". "My" can be used as an interjection, particularly in <Am.E> (less so in <Br.E>). And many words (including "the") can be used in isolation when attempting to correct the speech of a non-native speaker.
Phonetically, there is. It's just distributed differently: in English, every phonological word has one, and its position within the word is phonemic; in French, it's completely predictably prepausal.
The definition of word as "a form which may be uttered alone (with meaning)" was given by Leonard Bloomfield. Presumably meta-language doesn't count, otherwise everything is a word! In a few minutes of searching I couldn't find out whether Bloomfield considered where "the" stands in his definition, but did find tons of linguists afterward pointing out the issue.
This American thought "my" as an interjection was more British than American — I may be wrong! Anyway, substitute "your" or "their" for "my".
As I said earlier, my personal (and perhaps minority) view is that it is a common mistake in the analysis of any language to conflate "stress" with changes in tone/pitch. Rather, "stress" is something which tends to attract such changes, but it does not have to attract them (i.e. the attraction can be ignored) nor does it necessarily bear an exclusive relationship with them. I suppose you would analyze French as having "prosodic stress" (for which I would prefer not to apply the term "stress" at all) but not "lexical stress" (which I would just call "stress").
I should probably add that "stress" in French that is comparable to English may be found in the role of schwa which, when pronounced as opposed to being dropped entirely (again comparable to degrees of reduction in English), cannot support any change in tone unless it is the sole unreduced vowel in a word.
I suppose you would analyze French as having "prosodic stress" (for which I would prefer not to apply the term "stress" at all) but not "lexical stress" (which I would just call "stress").
Oh, so all we disagree about is the terminology. Yes, French lacks lexical /phonemic stress, and English has it. I agree with your comparison of French stress to English schwa vs. syllabic resonants, which is likewise not phonemic.
…My point is that it does not. Prosody puts phonetic stress on the end of an utterance ( = before every pause), and often a high pitch on the beginning of an utterance. How that utterance can be divided into morphological, lexical or whatever words really is irrelevant.
so I'm still struggling to understand why they should be considered "artifacts of alphabetic orthographies".
This is really a claim only about phonological words; and even so, a majority of languages appears to have those independently of any orthographic conventions.
Oh, so all we disagree about is the terminology.
I think it’s more complicated than that. You’re putting me in the camp of people who then go on to make the claim that French does not have stress. However, it clearly does in the role of schwa not being able to attract tone changes just like the case in English.
I'm afraid I don’t see the relevance to the discussion at hand. Compare Vaissière’s example of "bords durs" and "bordures" with Wells’ example of “shellfish” and “selfish” where the speaker may also make a subtle length distinction (ignoring the slightly different onsets) which is similarly not contingent on any tone change. Although in English it is conditioned by different syllabification ("shell.fish" versus "self.ish") which does not pertain to the French example, the common thread is that in both languages speakers require an innate understanding of what constitutes a word.
Seems to me in English what we call a word is highly influenced by the writing system. Most of the time, what we refer to as a word is something written with no spaces. Of course, where we put spaces in our written language is historically related to something that is (was) part of spoken speech, and harder to define than defining a written word. And I can see how in a language where a word in the spoken language doesn't necessarily correspond to a unit in the written language it might be harder to grasp the concept of a word in the spoken language.
With abstract phonemes basically destroying the notion of intuitive syllables, it is no wonder that syllabic writing, rather than alphabetic, is far better at tapping into reader/speaker intuition. Hence there is no need for spaces since the aim is to reflect the continuous string of syllables as we speak. The alphabet destroys this notion of the syllable thereby rendering it difficult to read without spaces for which the logical place would then be between what are conceptualized as "words". Clearly defining what constitutes a "word" is fraught with difficulty, but accorded this primacy over the syllable solely as a result of the counter-intuitive orthography.
The Vietnamese word that would most commonly be used to describe a word in the English language is "từ".
The Vietnamese 'word' for "temporary" is "tạm thời".
The Vietnamese word that would most commonly be used to describe "tạm thời" (or any similar multi-element 'word') is "từ", the same word that is used to describe a (single) word in the English language.
The Vietnamese word that would be used to refer to either "tạm" or "thời" separately is "chữ" — "chữ" translates as both "character" and "syllable" in English.
Thus (in summary) a Vietnamese 'word' can be what we might think of as a phrase.