The student describes the problem, mentioning its relevance and investigates the problem, selecting information from some acknowledged sources and describes a way to test the product/solution against the design specification.
The student examines the problem, mentioning its relevance and investigates the problem, selecting information from some acknowledged sources and describes a way to test the product/solution against the design specification.
The student states the problem and investigates the problem.
The student states the problem and investigates the problem, collecting information from sources and lists some specifications.
The student describes the problem, mentioning its relevance and investigates the problem, selecting information from some acknowledged sources, and lists some specifications.
product/solution against the design specification.
The student generates one design, and makes some attempt to justify it.
The student generates a few designs, justifying the choice of one design and makes some attempt to justify it.
The student generates some designs, justifying the choice of one design and makes some attempt to justify this against the design specification.
The student generates a range of designs, justifying the choice of one design and evaluates it this against the design specification.
The student generates a range of feasible designs, justifying the choice of one design and evaluates it this against the design specification.
The student generates a range of feasible designs, each evaluated against the design specification. The student justifies the chosen design and evaluates it fully and critically against the design specification.
The student produces a plan that contains a few details of the steps and/or the resources required.
The student produces a plan that contains some details of the steps and includes resources and time.
The student produces a plan that contains a number of logical steps that describe the use of resources and time.
The student produces a plan that contains a number of logical steps that describe the use of resources and time, and makes some attempt to evaluate the plan.
The student produces a plan that contains a number of logical steps that describe the use of resources and time, evaluating the plan.
The student produces a plan that contains a number of detailed, logical steps that describe the use of resources and time. The student critically evaluates the plan and justifies any modifications to the design.
The student competently uses appropriate techniques and equipment. The student follows the plan and justifies any modifications made, resulting in a product/solution of appropriate quality using the resources available.
The student considers the plan and creates at least part of a product/solution.
The student considers the plan and uses techniques and equipment to create a product/solution.
The student uses appropriate techniques and equipment, following the plan and mentions any modifications made, resulting in a product/solution.
The student uses appropriate techniques and equipment, and follows the plan, justifying any modifications made, resulting in a product/solution.
The student uses appropriate techniques and equipment and follows the plan, justifying any modifications made, resulting in a product/solution of appropriate quality.
The student evaluates the product/solution or his or her own performance and makes some attempt to test the product/solution.
The student evaluates the product/solution and his or her own performance, and makes some attempt to test the product/solution.
The student evaluates the product/solution and his or her own performance, and suggests ways in which these could be improved, testing the product/solution to evaluate it against the design specification.
The student evaluates the product/solution in an objective manner based on the results of testing, and provides an evaluation of his or her own performance, and provides an appropriate evaluation of the product/solution.
The student evaluates product/solution in an objective manner based on the results of testing, and the views of the intended users, providing an evaluation of his or her own performance, and suggests improvements, providing an appropriate evaluation of the impact of the product/solution.
The student evaluates the success of the product/solution in an objective manner based on the results of testing, and the views of the intended users, providing an evaluation of his or her own performance, and suggests improvements, providing an appropriate evaluation of the impact of the product/solution on life, society and/or the environment. The student consistently displays a satisfactory standard in personal engagement (motivation, independence, general positive attitude) and in team work (attitudes towards safety, cooperation and respect for others).
The student rarely displays a satisfactory standard in personal engagement (motivation, independence, general positive attitude) or in team work (attitudes towards safety, cooperation and respect for others).
The student occasionally displays a satisfactory standard in personal engagement (motivation, independence, general positive attitude) or in team work (attitudes towards safety, cooperation and respect for others).
The student sometimes displays a satisfactory standard in personal engagement (motivation, independence, general positive attitude) and in team work (attitudes towards safety, cooperation and respect for others).
The student frequently displays a satisfactory standard in personal engagement (motivation, independence, general positive attitude) and in team work (attitudes towards safety, cooperation and respect for others).
The student often displays a satisfactory standard in personal engagement (motivation, independence, general positive attitude) and in team work (attitudes towards safety, cooperation and respect for others).


Cornbread. I forgot to put in the baking powder. Each muffin looks like a shortcake for strawberry shortcake.
I belatedly added baking powder to the remaining batter; the muffins in the later batches rose more, but they had a faintly bitter tang. Perhaps there had been too much baking powder. I did go off-recipe this time, adding butter (not in the original recipe) and honey (ditto), but adding the baking powder—which I did rather sloppily—probably didn't help matters. The first batch of muffins tasted better.
I suspect that this entire batch is ruined. I tried a sample of each of the other trays of cornbread I'd baked, and not one tasted the way it should have. No matter: I've got enough material to bake everything again tomorrow.
ADDENDUM: or, instead of making a whole new set of cornbread, I could salvage the current crop by turning it into a nifty bread pudding.
Sorry to hear about the cornbread. Baking powder comes with its own acid to neutralize the base, so it shouldn't be too bitter; perhaps the addition of honey brought more acid than necessary to the party and threw off the balance? You might try substituting a little baking soda in for part of the baking powder to get the balance right.


How many times have I heard a New England Conservatory orchestra play Mahler’s Ninth? Benjamin Zander favored it when he was conducting at NEC, and he still does: his Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra will be performing it next March in Symphony Hall. But Wednesday at Jordan Hall, it was the turn of Hugh Wolff and the NEC Philharmonia, and they did themselves proud.
You’d think that Mahler had anticipated the Holocaust, nuclear weapons, terrorist attacks, and climate change. The Ninth, which Mahler completed in 1909, is actually a very personal response from a composer who had lost his four-year-old daughter Maria to diphtheria and scarlet fever in 1907 and had been diagnosed with a serious heart condition — bacterial endocarditis — that would lead to his death in 1911. Bernstein suggested that the opening syncopated rhythm in the French horns and cellos represents Mahler’s irregular heartbeat.
Death is certainly in the air. At the outset of the Andante comodo first movement, the second violins’ major-second descending figure, F-sharp to E, recalls the beginning of Beethoven’s Les adieux (“Farewell”) piano sonata. The development finishes in a cortège; Mahler marked it “Wie ein schwerer Kondukt” (“Like a heavy funeral procession”). Mahler also, on a draft of the Andante, wrote “Leb’ wol” (“Farewell”) at the end.
Yet as Mahler’s great biographer, Henry-Louis de La Grange, reminded us, the full title of Beethoven’s sonata is Les adieux, l’absence et le retour (“The Farewell, the Absence, and the Return”), and it was dedicated to Archduke Rudolph, who at the time (May 1809) was leaving Vienna (Napoleon’s troops were approaching) but was expected back. And when he composed the Ninth, a century later, Mahler was in reasonably good health and spirits; he certainly wasn’t doomed to die as early as he did. No sooner did he complete the Ninth than he started work on the Tenth.
Mahler also wrote on his draft of the Andante “O Jugendzeit! Entschwundene! O Liebe! Verwehte!” (“O Youth! Vanished! O Love! Blown away!”) — which might suggest that this movement is really about the death of love. It’s built on two thematic groups, one in D major, the other in D minor. The consoling D-major group can’t quite bring itself to drop all the way from F-sharp to E to D — as if fearful of what it will find when it reaches “home.” But it’s the turbulent, chaotic D-minor group that keeps causing the Andante to crash. The culprit is a theme from the Blumine movement of Mahler’s First Symphony, a movement that grew out of his abortive love for the soprano Johanna Richter. Mahler deleted Blumine after the First’s initial three performances, but its themes return in the symphony’s final movement, and they persist throughout his work, notably at the beginning of the Third Symphony and in the Scherzo of the Seventh. It’s the Johanna Richter of Mahler’s vanished youth (he was 24 at the time) who’s the lost love of the Andante, and the Blumine theme that gives the movement no peace.
What repose the Andante does have provided by another allusion, this time to a Johann Strauss waltz, Freut euch des Lebens (“Enjoy Life”). This is hinted at the beginning of the movement and then is heard in full at bar 147, a few minutes into the development. (It’s probably not a coincidence that the German folksong with the same title turns up in Titan, the Jean Paul novel that for a time gave its name to Mahler’s First Symphony.) One could debate whether Mahler meant the allusion to be ironic. Irony would be inevitable in any case, but perhaps the title speaks for itself. The waltz tune, even as it’s disassembled, persists to the end of the movement.
The second movement, though marked “Im Tempo eines gemächlichen Ländlers” (“In the tempo of a leisurely ländler”), actually comprises four dances: a clumsy, awkward Ländler, a pair of bad-tempered waltzes (the first hinting at a waltz from Franz Lehár’s Die lustige Witwe, the second heavy on trombones and oom-pah tuba), and finally a shy, wallflowerish Ländler, almost a minuet, that recalls the Andante’s falling D-major idea. Things get hectic on the dance floor: when after the first waltz appears the first Ländler tries to re-enter, it gets shoved aside. I don’t imagine for a moment that Mahler had Cinderella in mind, but you could think of the first Ländler as Cinderella, the bad-tempered waltzes as her stepsisters, and the second Ländler as a hapless fairy godmother.
Dedicated to his “brothers in Apollo,” those critics who had accused Mahler of not being able to write counterpoint, the Rondo-Burleske serves up a dozen minutes of snarling, vertiginous polyphony. It’s not all academic, however: about five minutes in there’s an obvious reference to Die lustige Witwe’s “Weiber” chorus, and then, after some sarcastic squeaking from the E-flat clarinet, the Lustige Witwe waltz that was hinted at in the second movement reappears, Danilo’s “O kommet doch, o kommt, ihr Ballsirenen” (“Oh come you now, oh come, you dancing sirens”), turned into a wistful, idealistic trumpet theme, a promise of better things to come, whether in life or death.
Mahler never heard his symphony; the premiere, from the Vienna Philharmonic under Bruno Walter, didn’t take place till 1912. Walter and the Vienna Philharmonic also made the first recording, in 1938; it’s an impassioned reading that runs just under 70 minutes. These days, an average performance lasts around 80 minutes, but Wyn Morris and James Levine, in recordings made in the late 1970s, exceeded 90 minutes, and more recently Mark Gorenstein and Lorin Maazel have exceeded 95. Time is relative, of course: Jascha Horenstein’s 1966 recording with the London Symphony runs 20 minutes longer than Walter’s, but it’s so similarly ferocious, you hardly notice the difference.
Wolff and the NEC Philharmonia didn’t quite achieve their intensity Wednesday, but it was a very fine performance. Wolff did some of his best work before he even took the podium, having seated the first and second violins antiphonally, firsts on his left, seconds on his right. This is the arrangement that Mahler and other composers of his time wrote for; in the Ninth, the firsts and seconds swap ideas in the Andante’s opening D-major statement, and when Freut euch des Lebens starts up, you can hear the seconds beginning each phrase and the firsts finishing it.
The movement timings were middle of the road: 27:30, 16:00, 12:00, and 23:00. But it’s the mark of a good performance that you register the character of it and not whether it’s fast or slow. In the Andante, there was a slight stopped-horn bobble to start, and when the first D-minor section arrived, the mood didn’t seem to change much. But the “Etwas frischer” (“Somewhat fresher”) second D-minor section actually was fresher, and the first Blumine-instigated crisis, starting at bar 92, shrieked in agony. In the development, the bass clarinet (Somin Lee) was exemplary, and so was the transition right afterward from open French horns to snickering stopped. Freut euch des Lebens was a ray of sunshine; the cortège enjoyed a firm underpinning from the timpani (Jennifer Marasti), and toward the end the flute solo (Sho Kato), where it seems the soul is looking to escape, was ethereal. Despite the odd further bobble along the way, the French horns (led by Nicholas Auer) stood out in this movement: assertive, occasionally raw but never crass, always glowing.
Wolff’s second movement gave the right prominence to the second ländler: Mahler marks it to go “ganz langsam” (“quite slow”), and it did. Ländler and waltz were in general well distinguished; the movement, after losing its innocence, built to a dizzy whirl before deconstructing into humorously limping fragments. The Rondo-Burleske was a menacing juggernaut that slowed just enough to let you appreciate the humor of the “Weiber” allusion; the E-flat clarinet (Barret Ham) was cheeky, and the solo trumpet (Benjamin Jones) was prelapsarian in the “Ballsirenen” melody. This movement has to go faster and faster toward the end; here it did so with energy and no loss of clarity.
In 1938, Bruno Walter glided through the Adagio finale in just over 18 minutes; in his 2010 recording with the State Symphony Orchestra of Russia, Mark Gorenstein required just under 32. Wolff, at 23 minutes, achieved the weight of a slower tempo and the urgency of a faster one. The psychopomp bassoon (Luke Fieweger) was implacable, and so was the contrabassoon (Micah Gharavi) that subsequently plays the same theme. There were melting solos from the English horn (Marshal McClure), the principal cello (Chava Appiah), and the concertmistress (Abigail Fayette).
The coda, where Wolff managed to sound both restful and resigned, brought a novelty: the lights dimmed in the course of those final 27 measures, till by the end the orchestra was barely visible. Only the violins, violas, and cellos were playing at this point, and there were so few notes that I imagine the musicians had no problem performing from memory. I don’t know that the Ninth needs this theatrical touch, but on Wednesday it made for a ghostly, somber conclusion.
Jeffrey Gantz has been writing about music, dance, theater, art, film, and books for the past 35 years, first for the Boston Phoenix and currently for the Boston Globe.
A fine document, worth keeping for future reference. Would that the maestro across Huntington Ave. try antiphonal seating some time.


The publishing company McGraw-Hill Cos., which owns the Standard & Poor's corporate-credit-rating firm, says it will cut 550 jobs at its education arm and freeze all employees' pensions next year as part of a plan to split into two companies.
In the education business, McGraw-Hill said last week, it will cut 20 percent of executive positions and 10 percent of the workforce overall, making most of the reductions by the end of this year.
The company said in September that it will split into McGraw-Hill Financial and McGraw-Hill Education. The move follows a yearlong review of the company's business.
The job cuts in the education business come as management looks to move toward a subscription-based model. New York City-based McGraw-Hill said it plans to make further investments in its education business to create digital products and services.


Does Overclocking Make a Difference?
As expert bikers will tell you, every machine is capable of a lot more than what its specifications say it could handle. By tuning the bike engine correctly, one can derive a lot better performance from it, taking it beyond its limitations. Similarly a piece of computer hardware like a processor, graphic card or a memory card can deliver higher performance through overclocking. However, it is a very delicate procedure, which needs thorough understanding of the various dependencies that influence hardware performance.
A valid question that may arise in the mind of budding overclockers who plan to derive better performance from their existing computer hardware is whether overclocking can actually make a difference. That's exactly what I have tried to answer in this Techspirited article. After providing you with an overview of what overclocking a CPU is all about, I discuss the benefits and risks of this procedure.
Every electronic circuit in a computer, including the processor, graphic card, front side bus and memory is operated by a clocking frequency, which decides its speed of performance. Through overclocking, these computer hardware devices can be made to perform at a higher clocking frequency, beyond set limitations, boosting overall computer performance in the process.
For example, a processor with a base clocking frequency of 1.8 GHz can be made to perform at a clocking frequency beyond 2 GHz. This is achieved by tweaking the FSB frequency, providing a higher memory, core and chipset voltage. Due to the higher voltages supplied, extra cooling equipment is required to prevent overheating. Let us now consider the advantages, as well as disadvantages or risks of overclocking.
One of the obvious benefits of this technique is the marginal improvement in computer performance, without hardware upgrades. Instead of paying for a brand new processor with a higher clocking frequency, you can derive a comparable performance from your existing processor through overclocking. Thus, overclocking can be cost-effective in a sense and it also saves your existing hardware from going into abeyance due to upgrades.
Another advantage is the enrichment of your cerebrum with some real knowledge of the working of a computer system. You get a real nut and bolt feel of what's happening under the hood. You get to understand firsthand, how the processor, motherboard and memory modules work together to make the computer work.
So what are the risks involved? The biggest risk of course, is permanent hardware damage, which can be caused by overheating of components, because of incorrect voltage settings and improper cooling mechanism. If you are foolhardy in changing the voltage settings, you may simply end up frying the processor. This makes it increasingly important that you learn the craft before attempting overclocking. Another risk lies in the fact that your motherboard and other computer hardware warranties becomes void, after you have tampered with the voltage settings. I would suggest that you try out overclocking 'expendable' old computer hardware, as a test run, perfect your technique and then implement it on processors that are in use.
Does Overclocking Really Improve Performance?
Overclocking works and the millions of computer enthusiasts who have benefited from it, can stand testimony to its advantages. When you overclock correctly and arrange for adequate cooling equipment, you will see an improvement in overall computer performance. The amount of improvement you will see, may be anywhere between 5% to more than 10% depending on the processor, motherboard and your overclocking procedure. Unless you are into gaming or running CPU intensive tasks like video editing, it would be overkill. However, those who need that extra computing power, will find overclocking to be worthwhile.
To sum it all up, I would say, YES, overclocking does make a difference and help you gain better performance from your computer, but it comes with many inherent risks, that you need to take into consideration. Don't attempt it without proper know-how. If you study the intricacies of overclocking, take adequate precautions and are confident of pulling off a coup, go ahead. Know what you are doing, know how far you can push hardware limits, understand the risks, prepare for them and only then begin the overclocking operation. There is plenty of online help in the form of forums, run by expert overclockers, who can provide you with information about the risks involved. There are high chances that your first bid might fail, but with practice, you will only get better. A recommended read for all budding overclockers is 'The Book of Overclocking: Tweak Your PC to Unleash Its Power', by Robert Richmond and Scott Wainner. Good luck!
Why is My Computer So Slow All of a Sudden?


When your goal is to democratize access to artificial intelligence, how do you give developers the ability to implement intelligent image analysis in their apps? You give them an API that can tear an image apart, identify and tag more than 300 elements, and continue to learn and evolve a it's trained. That's the Computer Vision API: a machine-learning image analyzer that any dev can drop into any app with just a few lines of code. And it is the next step on a long journey to make apps behave—and respond—in a more human way.
Microsoft didn't begin using AI to analyze images with its Computer Vision API. There was an earlier, more limited iteration—the precursor to Computer Vision. It was part of an API suite—but more limited in scope. Microsoft developers including one of Computer Vision's architects, Cornelia Carapcea, listened to the devs who used the original API suite and decided how to evolve Computer Vision from the community's responses. For example, the original API didn't recognize lions—it thought they were dogs. So improvements needed to be made.
Carapcea and her team have spent the last year engineering the Computer Vision API to meet that demand. But her work on the API goes beyond tweaking what the machine can identify. Apps are becoming more human, she explains, and developers want ways to allow their apps to behave more like humans would behave. To do this, you must use AI and machine learning as the backbones. "The only way you can try to match the many layers—labels and classifications—that the human brain can accomplish is with AI," Carapcea says. "It's based on deep learning and neural networks, and large volumes of data."
What this does, she continues, is allow the API to classify elements of an image in much the same way a human brain would. For example: a four year old might see a pony, and know it's a pony. But would that four year old see a pony and know to call it a type of horse? Would that four year old know both of those creatures are called animals? That's the level of depth and intelligence Carapcea and her team strives to provide with Computer Vision: an API that recognizes the horse, the pony, and that both are types of animals. So, what you see here is that humans seem to learn by seeing the same pattern (or image) multiple times; the machine learning behind Computer Vision does the same.
But Computer Vision goes beyond even that—it constructs sentences based on the tags it identifies. The CaptionBot app is a basic application of what could be done with Computer Vision. "Its applications for accessibility, the visually impaired, or bots that understand images, are endless," Carapcea says. "This is cutting-edge stuff. No one else out there gives you image captioning as an API right now. If you want thousands of objects recognized, this is the API to use."


By now, most everyone has read a myriad of of opinions, blogs, message boards and news stories on Mario Lemieux's statement regarding the aftermath of an ugly, incident-filled, mauling of his Pittsburgh Penguins at the hands of the New York Islanders.
Garnering even more attention, has been the backlash by fans, players and media members concerning Lemieux's statement.
If by some chance you missed it click here.
The "unacceptable and embarrassing" actions that Lemieux was referring to no doubt included the Islanders’ Matt Martin sucker-punching an unaware Max Talbot, Islanders’ Michael Haley, lauching himself at Talbot and then Penguins goalie Brent Johnson; and no doubt Trevor Gillies elbowing of Penguins’ Eric Tangradi in the head, who continued to punch him while Tangadi lay prone on the ice, then shouted at and mocked him as Gilles was forced off the ice surface.
Lemieux's comments were harsh to be sure, however, the backlash did not come from the NHL, at which his comments were directed, but from elsewhere.
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, chose to take no action against Lemieux, and stated that the comments would not be discussed or debated publicly.
Yet, that did not give Lemieux any reprieve from the likes of the Edmonton Journal, Don Cherry, Zenon Konopka, Jeremy Roenick or countless fans and bloggers.
Most of Lemieux's critics thought his comments were ill-timed or overly dramatic, but the word that crept up over and over was "hypocritical".
Paraphrasing: Cherry doesn't understand why Lemieux was OK with Brent Johnson knocking Rick DiPietro's lights out, and that Matt Cooke works for Lemieux and never criticizes him.
You don't even have to watch the video to know that Don Cherry is a moron, so we won't waste our time enumerating every nonsensical comment, but some of his arguments were made elsewhere.
Many outlets made references to Cooke, Goddard leaving the bench to fight Michael Haley, Johnson hurting DiPietro in a fight a few days prior, and how the Penguins lead the league in penalty minutes and fighting majors.
Now, do you have to agree with Lemieux's statement?
No. I'm not sure that I do.
Can you accuse him of not having the best timing and being reactionary?
However, the criticism that he received was not about these issues. Repeatedly, we read the same unscientific accusation that sought evidence to support a pre-conceived notion, not the other way around.
First, the point that because the Penguins lead the NHL in fighting majors and Johnson's breaking the face of DiPietro, Lemieux has no grounds for argument.
These are weak and ill-conceived concepts.
Fighting is part of the game. It always has been and always will be. Most fights are for spark or retalition of liberties taken on another player within the confines of a game.
Lemieux made no statement regarding fighting. What we are sure he didn't like, was much of the violence in this game was a premeditated foolish display in response to DiPietro's misfortune in a consensual skirmish.
Regarding the other idea of Lemieux being a "hypocrite" as long as he employs Matt Cooke.
This will assuredly be a topic of debate, but the facts win out over heart-felt opinion.
Cooke's history and the incidents that occurred during the game in question are completely unrelated.
Regardless of how you view Matt Cooke, you won't find tape of him attacking goaltenders, throwing shots at a player, hitting him while he is down, and then taunting him afterward. You won't find evidence of him sucker punching anyone, anywhere.
Sure he makes questionable safety decisions. You can reasonably accuse Cooke of not respecting other players.
Granted, his propensity for knee on knee collisions happen far too often to be excused, but they happen no more frequently than Alex Ovechkin's. His latest suspension was a result of an unnecessary hit on Fedor Tyutin, not a dirty one.
Cooke has a record for questionable and dangerous decisions, but his rap sheet does not include a single incident that is in line with Gilles', Haley's or Martin's.
Public opinion is just that, opinion.
Many times evidence, facts or reality have little to nothing to do with the formation of these opinions/criticisms.
The criticism of Mario Lemieux is no exception.


Imagine being immortal, what would you pay to be Immortal?
You can omit the first 'high'.
Firstly, I will highlight the existence of immortality-granting SCPs and SCPs that are themselves immortals.
The article seems to be a rather direct take on the 'immortality is bad' concept, especially the path that associates it wit great pain. It is too simplistic of a route, and does nothing interesting with the concept. The researcher's rant essentially becomes something that does not resonate strongly with users. For a concept well-played in fiction already, you need to play with the known concepts even more.
Also, why would the researchers essentially use themselves to study the SCP? D-class exist largely to handle the more dangerous situations, after all.


Every scene you play as an actor, no matter how old you are, will require a deep understanding from you. You need to understand who the character is, what the context of the scene and larger story is, and countless other aspects of the scene that will make your work on and with it shine.
In our opinion, there are five steps you need to take to truly understand a scene. To help walk you through and illustrate them, let’s use the following scene scenario as a setup for the five steps that will help you work on your character and the scene: You are a 17-year-old whose mom has just returned from three months at a drug rehab facility. You’ve been living with your dad while she was getting help and even though she’s back home and clean, she is still struggling and not the fully-recovered mom you hoped to find.
Step 1: Determine the given circumstances.
The given circumstances are what you know from the text based on what the writer has told you with his or her words. Your mom has been in rehab detoxing from drugs. You have been living with your dad while she was away. Now that she is home, you’re getting used to what life is like with a recovering, struggling parent.
Step 2: Find your deep wish.
Also known as your objective, this is what your character needs to happen. In the above scene, your deep wish is to have your mother be the role model you always wanted and be a loving, protective, participating parent. You have been without this your whole life and have suffered greatly.
Step 3: Identify the opponent or obstacle.
Internal or external, this is something that gets in the way of you getting what you want. In life, we don’t always have an obstacle but in acting, there must be one to create the struggle. If it’s too easy to get what you want without a fight, there’s nothing interesting happening. The obstacle in this scene could be that your mom is in too much pain and not willing to get well right now.
Now that you have your identified your deep need and discovered what’s in the way of achieving it, you’ll need to personalize the situation to make it true for you. Begin this process by looking at the character’s situation and asking what might be going on in your life that could lead to a similar problem or challenge to overcome. What you choose to work with can be imaginary/fictional, but the meaning must hold true.
This the most vital part. Acting is doing. What are you going to do to get what you want? Perhaps you beg and plead with your mom to stop using drugs. Maybe you start parenting your mom in a role reversal to get your—and her—needs met. It’s in this doing, this action, that you become a compelling actor.


The text of the bill below is as of Apr 9, 2008 (Introduced).
To amend the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 and title 11, United State Code, to provide necessary reforms for employee pension benefit plans.
This Act may be cited as the Employees’ Pension Security Act of 2008 .
The assets of a pension plan which is a single-employer plan shall be held in trust by a joint board of trustees, which shall consist of two or more trustees representing on an equal basis the interests of the employer or employers maintaining the plan and the interests of the participants and their beneficiaries.
Except as provided in clause (ii), in any case in which the plan is maintained pursuant to one or more collective bargaining agreements between one or more employee organizations and one or more employers, the trustees representing the interests of the participants and their beneficiaries pursuant to subparagraph (A) shall be designated by such employee organizations.
Clause (i) shall not apply with respect to a plan described in such clause if the employee organization (or all employee organizations, if more than one) referred to in such clause file with the Secretary, in such form and manner as shall be prescribed in regulations of the Secretary, a written waiver of their rights under clause (i).
In any case in which clause (i) does not apply with respect to a pension plan which is a single-employer plan because the plan is not described in clause (i) or because of a waiver filed pursuant to clause (ii), the trustee or trustees representing the interests of the participants and their beneficiaries shall consist of one or more participants under the plan elected to serve as such in accordance with this clause. The Secretary shall provide by regulation for a secret ballot of the participants under the plan for purposes of such election, and for certification of the results thereof to the participants (and any employee organization referred to in clause (ii)) and to the employer.
in subparagraph (A) (as so redesignated), by striking ‘‘the plan’’ the first place it appears and inserting ‘‘in the case of a plan other than a pension plan which is a single-employer plan, the plan’’.
The amendments made by this title shall apply with respect to plan years beginning after 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act. The Secretary of Labor shall prescribe the initial regulations necessary to carry out the provisions of such amendments not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this Act.
The plan sponsor and plan administrator of a pension plan described in paragraph (1) shall have a fiduciary duty to ensure that each participant and beneficiary under the plan, in connection with the investment by the participant or beneficiary of plan assets in the exercise of his or her control over assets in his account, is provided with all material investment information regarding investment of such assets to the extent that the provision of such information is generally required to be disclosed by the plan sponsor to investors in connection with such an investment under applicable securities laws. The provision by the plan sponsor or plan administrator of any misleading investment information shall be treated as a violation of this paragraph.
The Secretary may assess a civil penalty against any person of up to $1,000 a day from the date of the person's failure or refusal to comply with the requirements of section 404(c)(6) until such failure or refusal is corrected.
Section 502(a)(6) of such Act (29 U.S.C. 1132(a)(6)) is amended by striking (7), or (8) and inserting (7), (8), or (9) .
The amendments made by this title shall apply with respect to investments made on or after the date of the enactment of this Act.
Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, unless the corporation or the court, in the case of a distress termination pursuant to subparagraph (B)(ii), has determined that reasonable efforts to consider available alternatives to termination (including, but not limited to, alternatives described in section 4042(c)(4)) have been undertaken by such person (and, in the case of a plan maintained pursuant to a collective bargaining agreement, have been undertaken by the bargaining parties in good faith bargaining), the plan may not be terminated. A participant or beneficiary of the plan or an employee organization representing such participants or beneficiaries may bring an action in the appropriate court to challenge such determination by the corporation and seek equitable relief or must be afforded an opportunity to be heard by the appropriate court if a court is making such determination.
in the sentence following the sentences inserted by paragraph (1), by striking the preceding sentence and inserting the first sentence of this paragraph, .
Section 4042(c) of such Act (as amended by subsection (b)) is further amended by inserting after the fourth sentence the following new sentence: ‘‘If any party consisting of the plan sponsor, a plan participant, or (in the case of a plan maintained pursuant to a collective bargaining agreement) the employee organization representing plan participants for purposes of collective bargaining disagrees with any such determination by the corporation, such party may intervene in the proceeding to challenge the determinations of the corporation.’’.
Section 4042(c) of such Act (as amended by the preceding provisions of this section) is further amended by adding after the seventh sentence the following: ‘‘The corporation and the plan administrator may proceed with such an agreement only if they have made reasonable efforts to consider available alternatives to termination (including, but not limited to, alternatives described in paragraph (4) of this subsection) and the plan participants and beneficiaries have been provided with at least 60 days notice before such agreement is given effect. During such 60-day period, a participant or beneficiary of the plan or an employee organization representing such participants or beneficiaries may bring an action in the appropriate court to seek appropriate equitable relief if such reasonable efforts have not been made.’’.
Prior to making any determination referred to in the preceding provisions of this subsection, the corporation shall consult with the plan participants and (in the case of a plan maintained pursuant to a collective bargaining agreement) the employee organization representing plan participants for purposes of collective bargaining to determine whether there are any reasonable available alternatives to termination (including, but not limited to, alternatives described subparagraph (B).
Financing or loans sought by any member of the plan sponsor’s controlled group, with or without assistance from the corporation, in order to obtain plan financing, including back-up guarantees to any such financing which the corporation is hereby authorized to provide for such purpose.
New plan structures agreed to by the parties, such as transfer of plan liabilities to multiemployer plans, new benefit formulas for new hires or non-vested participants, or other plan restructuring alternatives agreed to by the parties.
Reinsurance which the corporation is hereby authorized to obtain for the plan.
An agreement by the parties authorizing alternative funding schedules, approved by the corporation, which would modify plan funding, subject to the minimum funding requirements for the plan under part 3 of subtitle B of title I.
Purchase by the plan sponsor of an annuity contract to cover liabilities of the plan, which the corporation is hereby authorized to guarantee as necessary to secure such a contract.
the right of participants and beneficiaries to challenge determinations under this section.
Section 4042(a) of such Act (29 U.S.C. 1342(a)) is amended by adding at the end the following new sentence: ‘‘Prior to commencing proceedings under this section with respect to any plan, the corporation shall provide notice to plan participants and beneficiaries of the right to challenge determinations under this section, written in a manner likely to be understood by the participant or beneficiary.’’.
The amendments made by this title shall apply with respect to any plans undergoing termination proceedings pursuant to section 4041 or 4042 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 which are pending on or after the date of the enactment of this Act.
Subject to subparagraphs (A), (B), and (C), allowed unsecured claims for benefit liabilities to participants and beneficiaries under a single-employer plan (as defined in section 4001(a)(15) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974) in connection with the termination of the plan, in excess of the benefits payable to the participants and beneficiaries by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation under section 4022 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 in connection with such termination.
Except as provided in subsection (b), section 401 and the amendment made by such section shall take effect on the date of the enactment of this Act.
The amendment made by section 401 shall not apply with respect to cases commenced under title 11 of the United States Code before the date of the enactment of this Act.


Chairman and CEO Brian Cornell says the company was unable to find a realistic scenario in which Target Canada would become profitable before at least 2021.
The retailer said Thursday that it anticipates approximately $5.4 billion in fourth-quarter losses from discontinued operations in Canada.
Target Corp. currently has 133 stores in Canada with about 17,600 employees.


This easy carrot cake recipe makes a delicious moist old-fashioned cake.
A three layer cake with cream cheese frosting, this homemade cake recipe is good for any occasion.
An easy cake recipe to make, using a food processor to grate the carrots will speed up the process. If you want to make this easy carrot cake recipe even easier, use fresh shredded carrots from the produce section or salad bar section of your local grocery.
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour three 9-inch round cake pans.
2. Grate carrots (you should have about 3 cups total grated). Set aside.
3. Break eggs into a small bowl and beat well. Set aside.
4. In a large bowl, combine carrots, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar and cinnamon. Stir in eggs, oil and vanilla, mixing well.
5. Pour batter equally into the cake pans. Tap each pan gently on counter to level batter and release air bubbles.
6. Bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pans on wire racks for 10 minutes. Remove cakes from pans and let cool completely on wire racks.
7. Prepare Cream Cheese Frosting. In a large bowl, with mixer set on medium speed, combine cream cheese and butter, beating until smooth. Slowly add powdered sugar and beat until light and fluffy. Stir in vanilla extract.
8. Spread Cream Cheese Frosting between layers and on top and sides of cake.


Eric Cantor plans to join investment bank Moelis & Co. as vice chairman and managing director, where he will earn a salary of $3.4 million, the company announced in an SEC filing this morning. Cantor will also join the bank's board.
The former House majority leader will earn an annual base salary of $400,000, plus a onetime cash payment of $400,000 and $1 million in stock options, the company said. For FY2015, Cantor will also earn a minimum of $1.2 million in cash and $400,000 in stock options as incentive pay (read: bonuses).
With all that cash, the former majority leader of the House should have no trouble paying for a place in New York. Except that he won't have to, because Moelis is also paying for "the reasonable cost of a New York City apartment for his first 12 months and a hotel equivalent rate thereafter." What's "reasonable?" Unclear, but it's safe to assume the former majority leader of the House won't be living in a fifth-floor walkup in Bushwick.
The CEO of Moelis & Co., Ken Moelis, has known Eric Cantor for "about three years," according to a spokesperson for Moelis & Co. "And when Eric was thinking about his next career move or next chapter after the election, he and Ken got together the weekend before the July the 4th holiday. That was just a talk about Eric's options, as it were, looking ahead," she said.
Talks became serious later in July, the spokesperson said.
Cantor was ousted from his Virginia House seat in June in a stunning loss to an unknown and underfunded Tea Party challenger.
He had worked at his family's real estate development business before being elected to Congress.
Correction: An earlier version of this article referred to Cantor as speaker of the House. He was the House majority leader.


Few among the lay public know the real state of scholarly consensus about the Old Testament as a source of history. What is true? What isn't? Is it reliable? Is it unreliable? A book that aims to get the common man and woman up-to-date about this subject has been long overdue, but now such a book exists, written by a prominent archaeologist and a historian and journalist of archaeology. This book is well-written and easy to read, and is an excellent introduction to the field of Old Testament history, as well as a nice short history of Biblical Israel drawn up according to an appropriate "archaeology first, Bible second" approach. It charts a believable middle ground between the wild claims of literalists and mythicists, and is not afraid to say where the Bible gets it right, as well as where it gets it wrong.
As an introduction aimed at the general public, however, it may be too simplistic for some, although it does introduce one interesting and novel theory, while at the same time touching on several existing disputes in the scholarly community about the true history of Israel, which will interest even the expert. By and large, however, the conclusions reached and the picture painted is mainstream, representing the general consensus of objective scholars in the field. Nevertheless, this consensus flies in the face of standard Evangelical apologetic, and this book is an excellent launching point for any debate between believer and unbeliever, who can both pursue the authors' references and thus slowly work their way into objective Biblical studies. Indeed, the bibliography is very useful for the beginner, or as a reference for the experienced layman, and is broken down by chapter (and thus historical period) as well as by subjects within each chapter. The authors took their intended audience to heart and deliberately limited their references as much as possible to works in English that are available to most everyone, which are the most recently published and authoritative.
The book reaches its conclusions from a huge array of archaeological evidence of different kinds, some quite clever, such as the analysis of camel bones; others representing new trends in field archaeology, such as settlement surveys. The Biblical narrative is always interpreted in the light of this physical evidence, producing the clear conclusion that the Bible was almost entirely written in the seventh century B.C., and revised or added to later, by a new political party, only sporadically in power over a polytheistic society, espousing a novel religious idea of monotheism and a unified kingship based on this. Most of the Bible is found to be legend or propaganda favoring that party or its agenda. The Israelites did not come from somewhere else, neither Ur nor Egypt, but are the same people who had been living there for millennia, not much different from any of their neighbors, like the Canaanites. This is pretty much accepted as fact by most experts.
The authors add to this, however, the more controversial position that in fact there was never even a united monarchy: according to their view, this was a deliberate invention serving the interests of some of the kings of Judah (spearheaded by the ambitious Josiah, whom the Bible depicts actually "discovering" the book of Deuteronomy) who dreamed of conquering the northern territory of Israel. Finally, the authors make sense of this theory by advancing their own addition that Judah was an undeveloped rural backwater throughout its history until after the downfall of Israel to the north at the hands of Assyrian conquerers. According to this view, had Israel, which was a far more developed and sophisticated civilization, survived to tell its own version of Jewish history, we would have a very different story. This theory is not entirely new, for Finkelstein has been arguing it in the peer reviewed journal Levant since 1996, and it has merit, since it is based on sound archaeological evidence and arguments. But only time will tell if the scholarly community will find it persuasive, and expand upon it or demonstrate or refute it with further evidence. As to the other material, readers are advised to pay attention when the authors point out and discuss the different sides of various continuing debates, so as not to assume too readily that this is all cut-and-dried. But apart from that caveat, the evidence and arguments are persuasive and written in terms that anyone can understand.
The organization of the book clearly has the lay reader in mind. The authors do not even assume readers will be acquainted with the Bible and its stories, but instead follow a pattern whereby within each chapter they summarize what the Bible says (those of us who already know this like the back of our hands can simply skip these sections), then present the evidence for the earlier view, held even through much of the 20th century, that archaeology had confirmed the Bible in most respects. Then they present the findings of archaeology since the 1970's, and especially ground-breaking work in the 1990's, that has totally overturned most of these earlier beliefs. However, along the way they are careful to note what in the Bible has actually been proven or is most likely true, reminding us that there is some history in there amidst the myths and tales. This pattern is more or less repeated for each epoch or historical period from the time of the patriarchs up to the construction of the second temple in 440 B.C. Consequently, almost nothing is said about the history of Israel (or the rewriting of the Bible by new parties with new interests) in the intertestamental period, and that is a story still in need of telling to general readers. But for the Biblical period this book touches on all the most significant archaeological discoveries in the past thirty years that have shattered previous conceptions, which alerts us not to trust apologists who still cite works on Biblical history written before 1970. Recent archaeology has rendered almost all such works obsolete.
Biblical Archaeology Review has published a review by William Dever of this same book (27:2, Mar/Apr 2001, pp. 60-2). Dever's review is irrationally hostile, and at points dishonest in my opinion. In response to it, I wrote the following letter to the editors of BAR, and Secular Web readers may be interested to compare the actual book, if not my review and following comments, against Dever's scathing critique available at the BAR website.
There is a disturbing trend in scholarly book reviewing that I have encountered several times now: reviewers aren't actually reading the books they review, or else they make no effort to understand them. Your own reviewer William Dever is guilty of this unacceptable crime.
First, Dever attacks the book for saying nothing new, yet he cites not even a single book aimed at "general readers" that advances a complete synthetic history of Israel based on key archaeology completed since the 1990's. There is none. And can Dever be unaware that the intended audience of the book (the lay public) is certainly ignorant of all this material? If not, he would discover this by asking anyone on the street a few probing questions. Therefore the book serves a purpose, one that Dever himself paradoxically admits is "much-needed." This book is reaching out to a new audience to reveal what we scholars take for granted but which is certainly revolutionary to the average individual. Hence their idiom is well-suited to their audience and does not deserve Dever's elitist disdain.
Second, Dever claims that they "mention few scholars by name and include not a single footnote or specific reference" apart from "a general reading list at the end." This is a very irresponsible and inexcusable lie. First, books for laymen rarely have footnotes or endnotes. Dever is betraying his elitism again, or else his ignorance of what non-scholars like to read. But I count no fewer than ninety scholars mentioned by name in the body and appendixes. That is hardly a "few," and this considering the fact that the authors overtly declare their desire to name as far as possible only authors published in English (appropriate, considering their lay audience). And the "reading list" (a derogatory term for what an unbiased person calls a bibliography) is hardly "general" but divided by chapter and hence by period, and even further by subject heading within each chapter. Every author named in the text has his or her book or article carefully cited in the corresponding chapter's bibliography for further reading, and almost every general topic discussed has a specifically-identified "reading list" there as well. This is hardly "general." Altogether, over 300 works are cited, usually the best or most up-to-date English works that establish a certain point made in the text. I had no trouble figuring out which readings supported which claims in the text. Indeed, the authors did an admirable job of making this clear without mystifying lay readers with the arcana of cross-cited footnotes and endnotes. Dever should be ashamed of himself for misrepresenting this. Indeed, contrary to his claim that readers are not directed to the "crucial" archaeological evidence, this is in fact the primary occupation of the bibliography, at least a third of which is comprised of references to specific archaeological research (see p. 365 for the clearest example).
Third, Dever accuses the book of being "an ideological manifesto, not judicious, well-balanced scholarship," yet the two main "bold" claims of the book (the late date of the Bible's composition and its composition by a new monotheistic party with particular propagandistic aims) Dever admits "are almost certainly right." He even goes on to agree that almost every other substantial point made by the book is correct. Indeed, how can it be an ideological manifesto if, as Dever claims, it says nothing new and "adds little to the discussion"? By far the vast majority of the book's claims are accepted by mainstream scholars, and of what remains the vast majority involve existing mainstream disputes which the authors portray as such, presenting both sides before stating their own conclusions. Only a tiny handful of points are truly novel (the redating of a few finds), and they are not simply stated as facts, but argued for at length (over ten pages are exhausted on the evidence and reasoning). And these arguments are not without some merit. Dever apparently could not name a single scholar opposed to them, but chose instead to say that no other scholar has defended them--even though the arguments were previously published in a peer-reviewed journal and thus are hardly spurious or pseudohistorical. But this contradicts his accusation that this book contains nothing novel, and in fact contradicts the point of that accusation: for if Dever expected novel things to be argued in such a book, why does he also attack the book for arguing novel things? This is a sad case of Catch 22 if ever I saw one. Finkelstein and Silberman can't win against this sort of irrational hostility. What justifies Dever's vitriol? In Dever's own words the book is "modest," "avoiding the extremes," yet to be discounted because it is an unscholarly manifesto; the book offers nothing new, but argues for a novel redating of some key finds. Something other than fairness and reasoned judgement is guiding Dever's pen.
Fourth, Dever accuses the authors of not informing readers of the novelty of their redating arguments, apparently not bothering to read their introduction, where they say on p. 22 that "we" (as in the authors) take a different stand than all "textual scholars and archaeologists" on the dating of these crucial finds. Thus, their admission of novelty is right there in their very thesis statement. The authors never "downplay" this as Dever charges, but always argue it as a new theory, in need of the most careful analysis of evidence of any point made in the entire book.
Fifth, Dever seems to miss the entire point, argued at length by the authors, that there is a difference between a tribal "kingdom" and a developed kingdom called a "state." Thus, he accuses the authors of contradiction in accepting a king list for Judah for when they claim there was "no real kingdom," but this betrays the fact that Dever did not read the book but only skimmed it. The authors take great pains to draw a distinction between having kings and having a fully-developed state or "kingdom," throughout the entire book. There is no contradiction in their position here.
Sixth, Dever seems to think the authors claim that Dever himself "espoused" the "peasant revolt" model of ancient Israel's emergence. This again betrays the fact that he skimmed and did not read the book, for the authors do not claim this at all. They never once say that Dever espouses the theory. Rather, they simply cite on p. 337 Dever's research (easily found on p. 362, in the context of the main chapter that discusses the matter, rather than the appendix referred to there) as supporting one single element of Gottwald's theory (continuous sedentary Israelite population). They say his conclusions provide an ideal context for the theory, not that he advanced that theory himself. They could have been more specific and stated that Dever does not support the theory, but I wonder how they would know that. It seems to me that the authors simply wrote what they knew and did not speculate further on the secret opinions of one minor author out of hundreds. At any rate, Dever is issuing a trivial egocentric criticism that hardly justifies the charge of "outright misrepresentations" (note the plural--Dever is unreasonably generalizing from a single, trivial, ambiguous case).
Seventh, Dever says the authors use the term "Israelites" despite "rejecting" the label, apparently not having read their introduction which explains their use of this term. And finally, Dever attacks the authors for not addressing the relevance of their history to the role of the Bible as the foundation of a religion. Since the authors are writing history, not theology, this charge is wholly inappropriate and rendered all the more absurd by Dever's hyperbolic classification of it as "the most damaging weakness of the book." What the hell is he talking about? It is not the historian's job to worry about how religions will be affected by the truth--it is only their job to seek the truth. The rest is the task of preachers.
I shall never be able to trust anything Dever writes in the future, given his shamelessly biased, false, and useless review of this book, and you should think twice before using him as a reviewer again.
Richard C. Carrier, B.A., M.Phil.


Improve GPS accuracy by a building photo and a 2D map in urban environments.
Example: GPS tells me a location, but with several meters inaccuracy. If I also have a photo and the map, I know only at certain positions could I see a building looks like that, then I can probably find out where am I more accurately.
Step 1: Find vertical building edges in the photo, represent them in a tilt-invariant way: Tilt-Invariant Vertical Edge Position (TICEP) features.
Step 2: We don't know (and we can't know for sure) which building the camera looks at. So for each building, compute Location-Orientation Hypotheses (LOHs) as if it is the building in the photo.
Step 3: Remove unreasonable LOHs, then select the one nearest to the noisy GPS reading. And that's our final result!
Note: not guaranteed to 100% find better position than GPS, but generally speaking achieves better accuracy.
Example: The correct LOH (much more accurate than GPS as geometry doesn't lie!) can be selected as long as GPS falls into the red area (the refinable area).


I'm filming a concert this weekend and what got me thinking is white balance. There are going to be all sorts of lights. Blue, red, green, you name it. And not much white. How do I set this thing up? On what do I do my white balance??
Most indoor concert halls use 3200k balanced instruments. Colors will change but setting your camera to 3200k will be the best place to start in my experience.
The main time when 3200k does not work as well is when your only have spot lights which are often closer to 5600k in normal situations.
Arrange to meet the lighting tech there when you are setting up and ask him to bring all the "white" stage lights up to 100% (lights without gels on them). Then take a white balance reading. As Tim noted, most concert halls have lights that are close to 3200K but I have been in some that end up closer to 4200K (weird mixture of lights).
If you can't get a reading ahead of time I would also recommend setting to 3200K and hopefully you'll have something white in one of the shots where it looks like they are not using gelled lights. Then you can get a good fix on white balancing in post.
Just set them to INDOOR or TUNGSTEN or 3200, whichever your cams have as indoor default, and forget it. The colored lights are supposed to look colored.
I don't know what cams you have but none I've ever had lose the WB setting when you turn them off.
Whatever you do, don't use AUTO.
I agree with the others and have shot concerts and ice shows. Just balance backstage with your camera light which will give you about 3200 and try to get them to bring up their brightest setting they will use during the sound check and set your iris with just a tad of zebra showing at 70%. Resist the urge to adjust your exposure during the shoot too much because the climactic parts of the show tend to get real bright and that is the stuff you DO NOT want overexposed or with an obvious iris correction.
Make sure the automatic gain is off.
Your camera retain the white balance settings when they are turned off.
Best practice is to attend the dress rehearsal, show up early and have them put the spots on without any gels. Spot people refer to it as white light in the US.
Then do a white balance using one of the video cameras. I would not use the 7D as still white balance seems to be different from a number point of view.
If your WB is close to 3200k I would set all of the cameras to straight 3200k since you will have gymnastics in post anyway!
By going to the rehearsal maybe you can ask the lighting folks to calm the red down (seems like everybody want to use red and it looks horrible for video) and ask to use more skin tone friendly gels on the spots.
Often times this is a topic that nobody thinks of and they are happy to "do it your way". Also ask if you can get more fill lighting as it will improve the video image as well.
I would not use the 7D as still white balance seems to be different from a number point of view.
Really? Didn't know that... Are you sure?
To take a WB reading with a still camera you need to actually take a photo or dial it in yourself. The kelvin number is not shown, just the colors change so you would not be able to know the actual number.
When I shoot tungsten with my 5D & 7D when I get into Lightroom the kelvin number is often under 3000k for the proper white balance as well.
I would rather see a true video camera's WB than a still camera's for a video shoot.
Ok. Thank you all for helping!
I always set to 3200K (Tungsten) however as mentioned ask the lighting tech to switch on white lights for the recording. I filmed a concert last month which had a lot of red lights going and made skin tones look horrible on TV I had to manually grade WB in almost every scene in post.
Lighting technicians at concerts who never do film or video are usually not aware of the concept of "color temperature". They just throw in what looks good to the naked eye. They love instant changes from all halogen with red gels to their brand-new LED lights turned to maximum blue. 10K color temp difference from one song to the other - hurray!
In my experience, anything from 3200K to 5600K can work when you film a concert (mostly 3200K though). Nobody expects a neutral look, so a lot of colors is fine - you just have to be consistent. If the lighting guy doesn't own a lot of modern LED lights, you are perfectly right with the 3200K preset. When there's lot of LED lights, you might consider going a little higher, but even then you can stick with your 3200K preset. There will be halogen lights present in any case, so the 3200K is not wrong.


I need to make a stream of water that washes away vellum cloth. I tried to merge together vellumsolver and flipsolver but it didn't work, water just moves through the cloth. Can someone help me with this?
Eternal jittering of hard constraint. How to deal with this?
I made a simple hard constraint setup. No mater how I tweak its parameters, it always jitters even if there is no other force that affects the constraint. https://streamable.com/hyq55 The other issue with this is, if there is a wall made of glue constraints that stays close to a wall made of hard constraints, the first one gets destroyed due to these micro movements of the hard constraints. https://streamable.com/qnpki This is not good at all. Is there a way to stop this nonsense jittering? How hard constraints are used in production pipeline then if they always jitter?
Can't achieve the same wall distraction result as in a tutorial. What could be the problem?
I guess this topic is referred to those who were following Steven Knipping's Rigids tutorials. I am trying to make distraction of a wall based on Steven's method where the wall is divided into clusters with one set of constraints that hold together as one piece and, another set of constraints (between the clusters) that represent the weakest constraints. The idea behind this method is that when constraints break, the breakage propagates along the weakest constraints holding the clusters, with strong constraints, intact. In my case this method is not working for some reason even if constraint strength=0. The propagation does not happen as in Steven's tutorial. Here is my test file: https://ufile.io/8et37 This is Steven's result: https://streamable.com/gxefk This is my result: https://streamable.com/9xhb7 What am I doing wrong?
I am trying to make a tank canon shot. The shot has to be fast with fast expansion of the gases. I set up velocity along positive X to have directional shot. In the Pyro Solver, I set Timescale = 10, Gas released about 150 in the first 5 frames with fast decreasing up to 15 by the frame 10. Then I tweaked some additional values and kind of achieved the dynamic that I wanted but I don't like one thing. At the beginning of the first 7 frames gases start to expand in all directions and then move along X axis. Some reference images. As you can see, the flame and the gas smoke is always in front of the canon. You can see my result here https://streamable.com/k38dq Looking at the real reference images and videos of tank's shots, you may notice that the entire amount of gases always move forward and never (partially) backwards. So I am trying to achieve the same result: to have a cone or torus like expansion of gases in the beginning with fast advance forward of the gas. How to get rid of this bubble like expansion and to achieve the correct behavior of the gas? I've been trying to obtain the correct result for about 2 months and still got no luck.


The objective of a vendor reference questionnaire is to identify certain qualities of the vendor like are they honest and trustworthy, reliable, supportive, committed, easy to work with etc. Organizations looking to develop vendors to market their products will be able to choose the right vendors based on this type of information. This questionnaire can be filled by customers of a particular vendor and the pattern of questions will change according to the industry or product or service.
Q1. How will you define your relationship with the vendor?
Q2. What do you buy from the vendor?
Q3. Have you faced any issue with vendor support?
Q4. Which of the following issues have you faced with the vendor?
Q5. Why did you choose this vendor?
Q6. What products or services have you bought from the vendor?
Q7. What impresses you the most about the vendor?
Q8. Which of the following limitations do you find with the vendor?
Q9. Is this the only vendor in your area offering the product or service you need?
Q10. Would you recommend this vendor to any customer?
Q11. Would you recommend this vendor to any organization?


Let's never allow misinformation to be the motivation for missteps. I propose returning $100 million back to the pockets of Montana homeowners. Others have suggested we should use that $100 million and provide property tax cuts, instead. The difference between the tax rebate and tax cut is simple: who stands to benefit?
Giving $100 million back in the form of a tax rebate will return $400 to everyone with their primary residence in the state. If you take the $100 million and use it to cut property taxes, instead, the average Montana homeowner would receive just $44 this year, not $400. Think about that--it will take 10 years for the taxpayer to get as much money back as they'll get this year with the rebate.


Why "Mon père est dans le prison." incorrect?
The correct expression is "mon père est en prison" because it means 'incarcerated' which is a general statement as explained in the lesson above.
Note the absence of the article (by the way prison is feminine so it would have been la prison).
very good point! Something like " mon père travaille dans la prison de Fresnes."
IT SHOULD SAY "MON PERE EST EN PRISON."
I have exactly the same question. An example later on uses dans la when saying "there is a riot in the prison" My firstt inclination is that they are using prison in the dans only sentence to indicate prison as place in general, but what if there is only one prison he could be in?


How can you speak up for someone accused of a savage murder? Or sway a jury? Or get a judge to drop a case?
In this memoir, murder case lawyer William Clegg revisits his most intriguing trials, from the acquittal of Colin Stagg to the shooting of Jill Dando, to the man given life because of an earprint.
All the while he lays bare the secrets of his profession, from the rivalry among barristers to the nervous moments before a verdict comes back, and how our right to a fair trial is now at risk.
Under the Wig is for anyone who wants to know the reality of a murder trial. It has been praised as "gripping" by The Times, "riveting" by the Sunday Express and "fascinating" by the Secret Barrister, who described the author as "one of our country's greatest jury advocates."
Several prominent barristers, including Matthew Scott and Bob Marshall-Andrews QC, have said Under the Wig is a "must read" for anyone with an interest in the criminal law. Switch off the TV dramas and see real criminal law in action.
'One of England's best barristers provides a fascinating sometimes hilarious combination of a personal odyssey and insider accounts of the most important and famous court cases of recent times.
'Bill Clegg's memoir draws on some of the most high-profile criminal prosecutions of recent years to illuminate the career of a defence lawyer at the peak of his success.
'Deftly weaving personal reminiscences into the view from counsel's bench, he solves one high-profile murder case long before the police and ensures that justice is finally done in another after the tactics adopted by a better-known QC have led to a miscarriage of justice.


Former federal prosecutor Gene Rossi told Hill.TV on Friday that he would never have approved the latest indictment against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort Paul John Manafort21 questions for Robert Mueller Why did Mueller allow his investigation to continue for two years? Manafort transferred to minimum security federal prison MORE on mortgage fraud charges, calling it a political move.
The new charges against Mueller were announced by New York state prosecutors just minutes after he was sentenced in the second of two trials that resulted from special counsel Robert Mueller Robert (Bob) Swan MuellerSasse: US should applaud choice of Mueller to lead Russia probe MORE's investigation into Russia's election interference.
"In the 30 years with [the Department of Justice], I would never have approved that indictment," Rossi told hosts Krystal Ball and Buck Sexton on "Rising."
"You have a defendant, 70 years-old, indicted in D.C. and the Eastern District of Virginia, two judges made a decision to give him a combined 90 months, and now you have a third indictment by a state prosecutor," he continued.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance announced 16 charges against Manafort shortly after he was sentenced to prison in a federal court in Washington on Wednesday. The charges are the first Manafort has faced that fall outside the purview of a possible presidential pardon.
The charges include residential mortgage fraud, attempted mortgage fraud, falsifying business records and conspiracy.
"The decision to indict the third time by Cy Vance, to me, is more political than being a prosecutor and it bothers me," Rossi said. "The purpose of that indictment is just one reason: to be a catch-all if the president pardons Paul Manafort."
"If a Democrat gets back in the White House, and the Republicans hope that never happens again, but a Democrat will get back into the White House, that president may pardon somebody. It could be a drug case, it could be a fraud case, and if you have an aggressive state prosecutor, they're going to say, 'you know what? I'm going to indict them because the double jeopardy clause doesn't prevent me from doing that,'" he said. "You'll have the same situation, and it's going to haunt the Democrats. That's why I don't like it."
Trump has not ruled out pardoning Manafort, telling reporters on Wednesday that he felt "very bad" for his former campaign chairman.
Rossi, who has been critical of Trump in the Russia probe, is a Democrat who was defeated in the party's primary for Virginia's lieutenant governor in 2017.


In this course, you will discover how computer science supports the interpretation of the text of genomes. Running the adequate programs, a computer may produce predictions on the location of the thousands of genes in a living organism and the functions of the proteins these genes code for.
You are not a biologist? Attending this course, you will be introduced to several entities and processes involved in the interpretation of the genomic texts: cell, chromosome, DNA, genome, genes, transcription, translation, proteins and many more.
You are not a computer scientist? This course is also an introduction to algorithms on character strings: pattern searching, sequence similarity, Markov chain models, or phylogenetic tree reconstruction are some basic algorithms which are implied in genome sequence analysis and will be explained.
You are neither a biologist nor a computer scientist? This course is a great opportunity to a joint approach to genomics and algorithmics, or if you prefer, to algorithmics and genomics.


When endangered whooping cranes fly their routes to summer breeding grounds, the old birds play a crucial role in showing the young birds where to go.
"This learning takes place over many years," Thomas Mueller, an expert on animal migration at the University of Maryland and lead author of a study on the cranes' migration habits, told NBC News. "It is a long-term process."
The finding adds new support for the idea that at least some of the bird's migratory behavior is learned from experience rather than all of it being the result of information encoded in genes, he noted.
The research, reported Thursday in the journal Science, takes advantage of eight years of data collected as part of a conservation effort to reintroduce endangered whooping cranes to their historic range.
The birds are bred in captivity in Maryland and then transported to Wisconsin in the summer, where they are trained to follow a human-piloted ultralight on their first southbound fall migration. After that first flight, the birds are left to their own devices, though they're carefully monitored by scientists.
Mueller and colleagues analyzed data collected after that inaugural flight. The data show that "if younger birds fly with older birds, they do better," Mueller said. "And it matters how old that older bird is."
When the oldest cranes in the group were just 1 year old, the cranes flew off course by about 47.3 miles. But when the oldest cranes were 8 years old, the birds went off course by about 29.1 miles.
Why none of the birds fly in a perfectly straight line probably has to do with the weather, Mueller noted. Most flew off course toward the east, an indication that they were being pushed that direction from the predominantly westerly winds.
Older birds may be better able to cope with the winds, or elect not to fly on particularly bad weather days, Mueller noted. Likewise, the older birds may stick to the straighter course because they are more familiar with the path.
"The more often you go a route, the better you know exactly where you are and where to go next, just based on landmarks along the way," he said, adding that these hypotheses have not been tested.
The researchers didn't find support for the idea that genetic relatedness plays a role in how straight a path the cranes take. Before the study was done, they expected that the flights of related birds might be more similar to each other than those of non-related birds. But Mueller said "we couldn't find that effect."
"It doesn't mean it doesn't exist, we just didn't see it in the data that we have," he added. "On the other hand, genetics are clearly also important for the whole process, because the first northbound migration the birds go on their own initiation without any sort of learning … that seems to be an innate program."
The research may help scientists better understand how to help these reintroduced whooping cranes successfully reproduce. That's one of the biggest challenges facing this population, noted Sarah Converse, a research ecologist and study co-author with the U.S. Geological Survey who leads the reintroduction effort.
"One of the things we're uncertain about is whether the poor reproduction we're currently seeing may improve over time due to learning by the birds," she told NBC News in an email. "For example, maybe young chicks learn from their parents how to be successful parents themselves."
The new research, she added, lends some support to this learning hypothesis, given that learning behavior appears crucial to successful migration.
"In other words, our results suggest that restoring whooping crane populations requires restoring the whooping crane culture — the knowledge that birds accumulate over time and pass directly between them," she said.
If so, she added, "it may well be important to have patience if we hope to see migratory whooping cranes thrive in eastern North America."


Tracing the evolution of English verbs over 1,200 years - from the Old English of "Beowulf" to the modern English of "The Princess Diaries" - researchers have found that the majority of irregular verbs have gone the way of Grendel, felled by the linguistic equivalent of natural selection.
The irregular verbs, governed by confusing and antiquated rules, came under evolutionary pressure to obey the modern "-ed" rule of regular verb conjugation, according to a report today in the journal Nature.
That the English language has undergone dramatic change over a millennium will come as no surprise to generations of high school students who have struggled to decipher "Beowulf," which dates from the ninth century, or Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales," written about 1200.
Linguists have constructed elaborate "family trees" showing how language has morphed over time but have been unable to detect the principle governing such changes.
The researchers, led by Martin Nowak, an evolutionary theorist at Harvard University, discovered that irregular verbs evolve in a predictable manner - just like genes and living organisms. Analyzing databases containing millions of words, Nowak and colleagues showed that the patterns of change depended on how often irregular verb forms were used.
Infrequently used irregular verbs were quickest to evolve. For instance, "holp," the past tense of "help," became the modern "helped." Similarly, "chode" became "chided" and "swole" became "swelled."
Researchers found they could compute the precise rate by which irregular verbs became "regularized" in the same way physicists calculate the half-life of radioactive materials. In general, they discovered, a verb used 100 times less frequently evolved 10 times as fast.
Co-author and Harvard graduate student Jean-Baptiste Michel said irregular verbs were like fossils that could reveal how linguistic rules - and perhaps cultural rules - were born and then died. The research brings the field of linguistics, which inspired Charles Darwin as he pondered biological evolution, full circle, said W. Tecumseh Fitch of the University of St. Andrews in Britain, who wrote a commentary accompanying the report.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, he said, linguists were focused on how languages developed over time. Their crowning achievement, Fitch said, was a comprehensive "family tree" that showed how such modern languages as English, Russian, Spanish and Hindi diverged from Indo-European, a dead ancestral tongue spoken about 10,000 years ago.
Darwin's contemporaries in linguistics, however, were not evolutionists and adhered to quasi-mystical ideas to explain language development. One influential linguist believed languages were living things; another proposed that an internal spirit drove language change.
Modern linguists have been more focused on the biological capacity of individuals to learn and use language, Fitch said, leaving questions about the evolution of language largely unanswered.


In a water-using mass transfer process, different components are transported to the water (Fig. 13.7a). In the following, we will study only one component. The index i for different compounds can now be omitted.
Fig. 13.7 Concentration/mass flow rate diagram. (a) Schematic of a water using process for impurity. (b) A water-using process in a concentration/mass flow rate diagram, with the water profile not limited for one impurity. (c) The water profile is limited (one impurity).
The concentration of this component (the impurity) decreases inside the process system and increases in the water. This can be demonstrated using a concentration/mass flow rate diagram (Fig. 13.7b). The slopes of the straight lines are the reverse of the flow rate Q. The water flow rate is very high, resulting in a low increase in the concentration ci. In Fig. 13.7c, the water flow rate Q is reduced down to the lowest possible value which is still sufficient to meet the required reduction of cin to cout. The lower straight lines are called water supply lines and the limiting line in Fig. 13.7c is the limiting water supply line. Any water supply line which is below the limiting water supply line will satisfy the process requirements. However, there are also possibilities to save water. How we can find a method to save the greatest possible amount of fresh water without reducing the transferred impurities if there are four processes with different cin and flow rates Qj?
We want to approach the solution step by step. The first step is to construct a concentration/mass flow rate diagram as in Fig. 13.7, one for each of the four processes presented by Fig. 13.6 and Table 13.2.
All four water supply lines start at the point (q = 0, Qj q = 0), but they end at different points q_out, showing different slopes Qj (Fig. 13.8 and Table 13.2). The total water flow rate is 2Qj = 112.5 m3 h-1.
The next step is a discussion with the process operators which may result in higher permissible cin values for processes 2, 3 and 4 (Table 13.3).
If such a system of process water management is to be realized, the total water flow rate would have to be increased to 170 m3 h-1 (Table 13.3), much more than if using fresh water for each process (112.5 m3 h-1, Table 13.2). However, the following considerations will show a way to reduce this water flow rate remarkably.
Fig. 13.8 The four processes j connected in parallel with a fresh water use of 112.5 m3 h-1 presented in a concentration/mass flow rate diagram.
Table 13.3 Example for limiting process data (see Fig. 13.9a).
As a part of the analysis we constructed one concentration/mass flow rate diagram for the four processes, but there are still no connections between the straight lines (Fig. 13.9a).
The discontinuities in concentrations can be avoided by connecting the points as follows (Fig. 13.9b, based on Table 13.3).
The water for process 1 must be clean (c1in = 0 kg m-3). So the first straight line will not be changed but the second straight line for process 2, starting at c2in = 0.05 kg m-3, meets the first line at Qc2in = 1.0 kg h-1. The straight line for process 3 follows from Table 13.3, by calculating the slope using Ac; = 0.4 -0.1 = 0.3 kg m-3 and AQjcj = 21 - 9 = 12 kg h-1, giving slope = 0.3/12 h m-3 and thus Q = 1/slope = 40 m3 h-1. Figure 13.9b presents the concentration/mass flow rate diagram for a system of four processes characterized by requirements presented by Table 13.3. This curve is called the limiting composite curve.
Fig. 13.9 Limiting composite curve. (a) Limiting water profile. (b) Limiting composite curve with water supply line defining the minimum water flow rate.
In analogy to Fig. 13.7, which presents the concentration/mass flow rate diagram for only one process, it is very interesting to find the limiting water supply line. The straight line with the lower slope plotted in Fig. 13.9b shows a water supply with a relatively high flow rate Q. The lowest possible flow rate Qmin can be calculated from the limiting water supply line which touches the limiting composite curve without crossing the line. This point is called a pinch (Wang and Smith 1994).
The slope of this limiting water supply line can be calculated using cin = 0 kg m-3 and cout,max = (41 • 0.1)/9 = 0.455 kg m-3.
But what network of processes do we have to build in order to save this amount of water?


An MRI scan is a safe and painless test that can provide detailed pictures of organs and other structures inside your body.
Note: the information below is a general guide only. The arrangements (and the way tests are performed) may vary between different hospitals. Always follow the instructions given by your doctor or local hospital. These are usually included with your appointment letter.
What does an MRI scan involve?
What is an MRI scan for?
What preparation do I need to do before an MRI scan?
What are the possible side-effects of an MRI scan?
What can I expect after the scan?
MRI stands for magnetic resonance imaging. An MRI scan uses a strong magnetic field and radio waves to create pictures on a computer screen. It can show tissues, organs and other structures inside your body.
This image is an MRI scan of a brain. The person's eyeballs can be seen at the top of the picture.
Then short bursts of radio waves are sent from the scanner into your body. The radio waves knock the protons from their position.
When the burst of radio waves stop, the protons realign back into place. As they do so they emit radio signals. The protons in different tissues of the body realign at different speeds. Therefore, the signal emitted from different body tissues varies. So, for example, softer tissues can be distinguished from harder tissues on the basis of the signals sent.
These signals are detected by a receiving device in the scanner.
The receiving device transmits the signals to a computer. The computer creates a picture based on the radio signals emitted from the body.
The MRI scanner is like a tunnel about 1.5 metres long, surrounded by a large circular magnet. You lie on a couch which then slides into the scanner. A 'receiving device', like an aerial, is placed behind, or around, the part of the body being examined. This detects the tiny radio signals emitted from your body. When each 'picture' is being taken you need to keep still for a few minutes, otherwise the scan picture may be blurred.
By Jan Ainali (own work) via Wikimedia Commons.
The scan itself is painless. The whole procedure can take 15-40 minutes. It may be a little uncomfortable lying still on the couch for this time. Small children may need a general anaesthetic to keep them still long enough for the pictures to be taken. Where you lie is quite enclosed and some people may find this very unsettling. If you have a fear of confined spaces (claustrophobia) you should discuss this with your doctor before you go for the scan. Some parts of the country have access to 'open' scan machines. However, they are not widely available.
In some cases, an injection of a special contrast dye is given into the bloodstream via a vein on the arm. This helps to give clearer pictures of certain tissues or organs being examined.
The radiographer sits in the control room next to the scanner and observes through the window. However, you can talk to them, usually via an intercom, and you will be observed at all times on a monitor.
The scanner is noisy so you will be given some headphones or earplugs to protect your ears from the noise. Quite often you can listen to the radio through the headphones or bring a CD to listen to.
An MRI scan can create clear pictures of most parts of the body. So, it is useful for all sorts of reasons where other tests (such as X-rays) do not give enough information required.
It is commonly used to obtain detailed pictures of the brain and spinal cord, to detect abnormalities and tumours. Even torn ligaments around joints can be detected by an MRI scan. So it is being used more and more following sports injuries.
Brain: MRI is the first-choice investigation for brain tumours, as it produces clearer images than computerised tomography (CT) and shows hard-to-reach areas of the brain. There is clear contrast between grey and white matter parts of the brain and this makes MRI the best choice for many other conditions, including multiple sclerosis, stroke, Alzheimer's disease and epilepsy.
Musculoskeletal system: here, MRI is used to look at the spine - to assess joint disease and soft tissue tumours.
Gastrointestinal system: MRI allows non-invasive assessment of inflammatory bowel disease and bowel tumours. It can also look at problems in the liver and pancreas.
Blood vessels and the heart: this is called magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) and it generates pictures of the arteries to look for abnormal narrowing or vessel wall dilatations (those at risk of bursting). MRA is often used to evaluate the arteries of the neck and brain, the thoracic and abdominal aorta, the renal arteries, and the legs. It might also be used to assess congenital heart disease.
Usually very little. Your local hospital should give you information about what is required before you come for the scan.
The MRI scanner uses an extremely strong magnet, so people with certain types of medical implant cannot be scanned. This is because the magnet can potentially move medical devices with metal in them, or affect their function.
Internal (implanted) defibrillator or pacemaker.
Surgical clips such as those used on brain aneurysms.
Artificial limbs or metallic joints.
Pins, screws, plates, stents or surgical staples.
It is also important to tell the radiographer if you have ever had any metal fragments lodged in your eyes or your body. In some cases you may need an X-ray before an MRI scan, to make sure you are safe to enter the scanner.
MRI scans are painless and thought to be safe. MRI scans do not use X-rays so the possible concerns associated with X-ray pictures and CT scans (which use X-rays) are not associated with MRI scans.
Rarely, some people have reactions to the contrast dye which is sometimes used.
Pregnant women are usually advised not to have an MRI scan unless it is urgent. Although the scan is thought to be safe, the long-term effects of strong magnetic fields on a developing baby are not yet known.
There are no after effects from the scan. You can return to your normal activities as soon as the scan is over. The scan pictures are studied by a specialist who interprets them - a radiologist - who sends a report to the doctor who requested the scan. It is usual to have to wait for at least two weeks before hearing about your results. If there are any urgent findings, the specialist will be informed as soon as possible.


Can bitcoin transaction data be used to study markets?
The nice thing about bitcoin is that it generates partially anonymous data about every single transaction. Can this data be used to gain insight about real-world markets? Or are there some fundamental differences that cannot be accounted for? If this data can be used, does anybody have any references on academic papers that use the bitcoin data?
There are no academic papers on Bitcoin market behavior.
If Bitcoin or another peer-to-peer currency ever develops a significant closed economy, then it would be a rich source of information on the behavior of markets and economies, as the transaction timing, value and locations (for both the sender and receiver in a transaction) of Bitcoin transactions is publicly broadcasted -and in the case of timing and value, already being recorded in the block chain.
Furthermore, information about the full Bitcoin transaction history of each pseudonymous individual can be deduced through network analysis techniques.
While Bitcoin is reserved for niche use and doesn't form a closed economy though, the data from the transaction history is of limited use for studying real world market and economic behavior.
Also, in the future the visibility of Bitcoin transaction data could be reduced if many participants in the Bitcoin economy begin to rely on private layers built on top of the Bitcoin network to conduct their transactions through, which is likely to happen given the implications for privacy that visible transactions create.
I'm not aware of any serious studies on the topic but I have seen folks on the forum talking about how bitcoin price seems to correlate with the google trends data on bitcoin-related searches. Compare: Google Trends and MtGox Price.
So there's sort of a study on popularity/price ratios, though it's hardly been conducted with any sort of scientific rigor. I'd assume that there are many such studies to be found, the limits from the bitcoin side of the fence are quite few so I'd say the upper limit is your imagination.
This is still a fledgling currency. You can see how Bitcoin lacks credibility by listening to the recent publication on NPR. Overall there is a great deal of misinformation, and lack of credible citations.
Although, there are substantial studies of virtual currency, there are no published studies from accredited sources concerning bitcoin proper.
It makes for a good economics thesis, there are plenty of hypotheses to explore!
The fact that the blockchain records every single bitcoin transaction does mean that it would probably be possible to analyse the data to infer some real market information.
Similar tools and network analysis methods as used in the Reid/Harrigan paper on anonymity in the Bitcoin system could also be used to glean market information from the Bitcoin transaction record. One of the authors (Fergal Reid) of this paper discusses some of these possibilities in this forum post on the bitcointalk.org site. One of the speculated ideas is that it could be possible to identify flows of bitcoins to the exchanges and thus be possibly able to predict if a sell-off is imminent based on a larger than normal volume of bitcoins being moved to the exchanges.
There is a paper by Fergal Reid and Martin Harrigan of University College Dublin, Ireland. PDF can be downloaded from this page. It's called "An Analysis of Anonymity in the Bitcoin System".
It describes, amongst other things, methods and tools for building a Transaction Network and User Network from the data taken from the blockchain and from external sources.
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Where can I find people willing to pay me in bitcoin for services?