The United States
Commission on Civil Rights
The United States Commission on Civil Rights, first created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957, and reestablished by the United States Commission on Civil Rights Act of 1983, is an independent, bipartisan agency of the Federal Government. By the terms of the 1983 act, as amended by the Civil Rights Commission Amendments Act of 1994, the Commission is charged with the following duties pertaining to discrimination or denials of the equal protection of the laws based on race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin, or in the administration of justice: investigation of individual discriminatory denials of the right to vote; study and collection of information relating to discrimination or denials of the equal protection of the law; appraisal of the laws and policies of the United States with respect to discrimination or denials of equal protection of the law; maintenance of a national clearinghouse for information respecting discrimination or denials of equal protection of the law; investigation of patterns or practices of fraud or discrimination in the conduct of Federal elections; and preparation and issuance of public service announcements and advertising campaigns to discourage discrimination or denials of equal protection of the law. The Commission is also required to submit reports to the President and the Congress at such times as the Commission, the Congress, or the President shall deem desirable.
The State Advisory Committees
An Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights has been established in each of the 50 States and the District of Columbia pursuant to section 105(c) of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and section 3(d) of the Civil Rights Commission Amendments Act of 1994. The Advisory Committees are made up of responsible persons who serve without compensation. Their functions under their mandate from the Commission are to: advise the Commission of all relevant information concerning their respective States on matters within the jurisdiction of the Commission; advise the Commission on matters of mutual concern in the preparation of reports of the Commission to the President and the Congress; receive reports, suggestions, and recommendations from individuals, public and private organizations, and public officials upon matters pertinent to inquiries conducted by the State Advisory Committee; initiate and forward advice and recommendations to the Commission upon matters in which the Commission shall request the assistance of the State Advisory Committee; and attend, as observers, any open hearing or conference that the Commission may hold within the State.


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Thermal epoxy is any adhesive epoxy that has one or more substances added to it to enhance thermal, or heat, transfer. These epoxies can be electrically conductive or not conductive, depending on the thermal additive used. Silver and other metal-based thermal additives are usually electrically conductive, and thermal epoxies that contain these additives must be applied very carefully so as not to cause electrical shorts. Ceramic-based additives are not electrically conductive but are also not as efficient at thermal conduction.
Manufacturers make thermal epoxies that are designed to work as high-performance engineering adhesives and structural adhesives in a wide range of applications and environments. These include aircraft, boats, marine equipment, cars, surfboards, snowboards, and bicycles, among others. There are thermal formulations for almost every application imaginable, including those that cure while under water, those that remain very flexible or get quite rigid when cured, those resistant to fire or high heat, and even those certified by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for low outgassing.
Heat can damage or destroy electrical components, and today’s high-speed computer components produce a large amount of heat that must be removed. Devices called heat sinks are used to pull heat away from an object and dissipate the heat to the air, sometimes with the help of a cooling fan. Heat sinks are made from metal alloys designed to have excellent thermal conduction properties, and they have specially designed fins to help conduct and remove the heat. They are almost always mounted to a surface using a special adhesive thermal epoxy.
When used in computer applications, a thermal epoxy can help fill microscopic voids that occur in the surfaces of heat sinks and other devices. These voids occur in the manufacturing process. When two objects are mounted together, for instance a chip and a heat sink, the voids fill with air. Air is a very poor thermal conductor, so a substance is introduced to fill the voids and help conduct the heat to the heat sink for removal. The substance used can be thermal grease, thermal tape, thermal pads or, if the device needs to be secured to the mounting surface, thermal epoxy.
When applying thermal epoxy it is very important to use the least possible amount required to fill any voids and make the bond. If a too-thick coat of epoxy is applied, the electrical conductivity of the epoxy will be degraded. Once the epoxy has cured, the bond between the two surfaces is permanent. Epoxies should only be used in well-ventilated areas, and the manufacturer’s instructions should always be followed for best results.


Their Life Work Ended Their Lives
Their work was for the benefit of the world, but they died as a direct or indirect result of their inventions. Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in 1903 for her work science and chemistry. She discovered two new elements including radium and polonium and the theory of radioactivity. She carried test tubes of radioactive materials in her pocket and kept them in her desk drawer. She often wrote about the pretty blue light it gave off. She died of aplastic anaemia – a direct result of her work.
William Bullock invented the rotary printing press. It completely changed the printing industry. It increased the speed and accuracy of printing especially for newspapers. But one of his machines crushed his foot when he was trying to repair it when he tried to kick a pulley in place. After his foot became infected, he died during an operation to amputate it.
Otto Lilienthal was known as the Glider King. He studied birds and built gliders with big wings that almost made him look like a bird and he was able to glide like one. He made repeated flights until August of 1896 when he fell six stories and broke his back. He died the next day.
Astrodome Capsule Stunt
Karel Soucek was a Canadian stuntman who built what he called a cushioned capsule to make a successful plunge over Niagara Falls. He was arrested and prosecuted, but he made a name for himself and in 1985 convinced a promoter to put on a stunt at the Houston Astrodome. He was hoisted 180 feet to the top of the dome and the idea was to ride a cascade of water to a pool on the Astrodome floor. It didn’t go as planned. His capsule hit the side of the pool and was destroyed. He was badly hurt and died the next day. Be careful what you invent. SOURCE: Listverse


Ticks have been bad in north central Arkansas ever since the spring of 2011, even throughout the "winter" months in unusual numbers. In particular, there are a lot of seed ticks, say park officials.
Coming into contact with ticks in this part of the country is normal and those who live here generally know the common-sense steps to take to minimize tick contacts and tick bites. Avoiding tick habitat, including grassy, brushy, and wooded areas, doesn't leave much else but gravel bars, parking lots, and lake surfaces.
However, just knowing that you may be entering such areas will help with the next level of preventive measures:
- Use 20%-30% DEET insect repellant on exposed skin and clothing (yes, there are risks associated with using DEET, too). Premethrin is a chemical which will kill ticks on contact but should not be applied to the skin.
- Wear long pants, long sleeves, long socks; tuck pant legs into sock tops or wear gaiters to help keep ticks away from the skin.
- Check clothes for ticks, preferably before going indoors, and check all skin surfaces to eliminate ticks before they begin the process of biting you. This goes for your pets, too. They often bring these hitch-hikers indoors with them where they end up in surprising places.
And don't turn your back on tried and true techniques, such as keeping a roll of duct tape handy to wrap around the palm of your hand, sticky side out, to remove seed ticks. Whatever works!
Click here for more information on ticks and their health risks to humans from the Centers for Disease Control website.
Image courtesy: CDC website.


French winemakers will harvest fewer grapes this year than in 2007 because spring frost hurt early buds and some growers uprooted vines to combat overproduction.
The smaller harvest in France comes at a time when California winemakers believe that the state's wine grape crop could be 15% smaller than last year.
Total production in France will probably fall about 5% to 1.2 billion gallons, according to Paris-based industry group Viniflhor. That's "much lower" than the average harvest in the last five years, Viniflhor said in a statement on its website.
Vineyards in Bordeaux, Provence and other southern regions were particularly affected after buds that had developed early thanks to mild winter temperatures froze at the outset of spring. Bourgogne, Alsace, Champagne and other northern areas were spared since vines mature later there because of a colder climate.
"The cold that arrived in late March had a direct impact on some vineyards," Viniflhor said. "From the Bordeaux region to Provence, the frost wreaked havoc on April 6 and 7, at a critical period when the buds are very vulnerable."
Winemakers also had to combat mildew after April rains, according to the statement.
"The health of the grapes was preserved, but only thanks to treatments that were sometimes very costly," the industry group said.
Some producers chose to uproot unprofitable vineyards to receive compensation from the European Union, which seeks to limit production and improve quality. In the Rhone-Alpes region alone, vineyards covering about 3,800 acres were torn up, according to Viniflhor.


A fairly recent study put on by researchers at Columbia, Harvard and the University of Wisconsin sought to test the effects of internet/computer use to see if it is changing the way people remember information. For one part of the experiment, participants were asked type 40 different bits of trivia into a computer. One example of such trivia was "an ostrich's eye is bigger than its brain." Half of these participants were told the computer would save what they typed in, while the other half were told their items would be erased. The study found that the participants who were told their items would not be saved were better able to recall what they typed as opposed to the participants who thought their items would be saved. In essence, the people who thought they could simply check the computer later did not make as much as an effort to remember what they typed. The experiment toys with the notion of transactive memory and our growing reliance on computers and internet. The idea behind transactive memory is that we rely on other people and materials in our lives to help recall information. The advent of computers and internet has increased our reliance on accessing information transactively. In this day and age we don't need to remember everything anymore. Google has become a household term, with the click of a mouse we can pretty much find anything we want. The validity of this experiment seems legitimate, except we aren't told how these participants were selected - some people may be better at remembering information. If you tell people something won't be saved, of course they are going to pay closer attention to the details. While people argue that the "Google Effect" is making us dumber, I have to disagree. Aren't we taking advantage of our resources? Isn't it making us more productive? Why spend three hours looking for a formula in a dusty book when I could find it instantly on Google? I argue that with the "Google Effect" we have more time to work rather than waste valuable time recalling information. There is in fact successful replicability of this experiment. All in all, there is still a lot to explore, but is this phenomenon good or bad?
Memories or Megabytes?
TrackBack URL: http://blog.lib.umn.edu/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/159371


DENVER – Put on your poodle skirts and tune in Elvis on the transistor radio, because it’s starting to look a lot like the 1950s.
Unfortunately, this won’t be the nostalgic ’50s of big cars and pop music.
The 1950s that could be on the way to Colorado is the decade of drought.
So says Brian Bledsoe, a Colorado Springs meteorologist who studies the history of ocean currents and uses what he learns to make long-term weather forecasts.
“I think we’re reliving the ’50s, bottom line,” Bledsoe said Friday morning at the annual meeting of the Colorado Water Congress.
Bledsoe studies the famous El Niño and La Niña ocean currents. But he also looks at other, less well-known cycles, including long-term temperature cycles in the oceans.
In the 1950s, water in the Pacific Ocean was colder than normal, but it was warmer than usual in the Atlantic. That combination caused a drought in Colorado that was just as bad as the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
The ocean currents slipped back into their 1950s pattern in the last five years, Bledsoe said. The cycles can last a decade or more, meaning bad news for farmers, ranchers, skiers and forest residents.
“Drought feeds on drought. The longer it goes, the harder it is to break,” Bledsoe said.
The outlook is worst for Eastern Colorado, where Bledsoe grew up and his parents still own a ranch. They recently had to sell half their herd when their pasture couldn’t provide enough feed.
“They’ve spent the last 15 years grooming that herd for organic beef stock,” he said.
Bledsoe looks for monsoon rains to return to the Four Corners and Western Slope in July. But there’s still a danger in the mountains in the summer.
“Initially, dry lightning could be a concern, so obviously, the fire season is looking not so great right now,” he said.
Weather data showed the last year’s conditions were extreme.
Nolan Doesken, Colorado’s state climatologist, said the summer of 2012 was the hottest on record in Colorado. And it was the fifth-driest winter since record-keeping began more than 100 years ago.
Despite recent storms in the San Juan Mountains, this winter hasn’t been much better.
“We’ve had a wimpy winter so far,” Doesken said. “The past week has been a good week for Colorado precipitation.”
However, the next week’s forecast shows dryness returning to much of the state.
Reservoir levels are higher than they were in 2002 – the driest year since Coloradans started keeping track of moisture – but the state is entering 2013 with reservoirs that were depleted last year.
“You don’t want to start a year at this level if you’re about to head into another drought,” Doesken said.
It was hard to find good news in Friday morning’s presentations, but Bledsoe is happy that technology helps forecasters understand the weather better than they did during past droughts. That allows people to plan for what’s on the way.
“I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy,” he said.


Water Conservation; Environmental Economics & Policies; Governance Indicators; Poverty Assessment; Health Economics & Finance; Community Development and Empowerment; Decentralization; Agricultural Knowledge and Information Systems
Summary: States can do much to tap community-level energies, and resources for development, if they seek to interact more synergistically with local communities. The broader spin-off is creating a developmental society, and polity. Using case studies from Asia and Latin America, the authors show how: 1) State efforts to bring about land reform, tenancy reform, and expanding non-crop sources of income, can broaden the distribution of power in rural communities, laying the basis for more effective community-driven collective action; and 2) Higher levels of government can form alliances with communities, putting pressure on local authorities from above, and below to improve development outcomes at the local level. These alliances can also be very effective in catalyzing collective action at community level, and reducing :local capture" by vested interests. There are several encouraging points that emerge from these case studies. First, these powerful institutional changes do not necessarily take long to generate. Second, they can be achieved in a diversity of settings: tightly knit or loose-knit communities; war-ravaged, or relatively stable; democratic, or authoritarian; with land reform, or (if carefully managed) even without. Third, there are strong political payoffs in terms of legitimacy, and popular support for those who support such developmental action.
Official, scanned versions of documents (may include signatures, etc.)


Sarah Bernhardt as Hamlet, 1880-1885.
|Family||King Hamlet (father)
Claudius (uncle, stepfather)
|Role||Prince of Denmark|
|Quote||"To be, or not to be, that is the question"|
Prince Hamlet is the title character and protagonist of Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet. He is the Prince of Denmark, nephew to the usurping Claudius and son of King Hamlet, the previous King of Denmark. Throughout the play he struggles with whether, and how, to avenge the murder of his father, and struggles with his own sanity along the way. By the end of the tragedy, Hamlet has caused the deaths of Polonius, Laertes, Claudius and his two childhood friends Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. He is also indirectly involved in the deaths of his love Ophelia (drowning) and of his mother Gertrude (poisoned by mistake). Hamlet himself is the final character to die in the play.
Views of Hamlet
Perhaps the most straightforward view sees Hamlet as seeking truth in order to be certain that he is justified in carrying out the revenge called for by a ghost that claims to be the spirit of his father. The 1948 movie with Laurence Olivier in the title role is introduced by a voiceover: "This is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind."
T. S. Eliot offers a similar view of Hamlet's character in his critical essay, "Hamlet and His Problems" (The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism). He states, "We find Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' not in the action, not in any quotations that we might select, so much as in an unmistakable tone...".
Others see Hamlet as a person charged with a duty that he both knows and feels is right, yet is unwilling to carry out. In this view, all of his efforts to satisfy himself of Claudius' guilt, or his failure to act when he can, are evidence of this unwillingness, and Hamlet berates himself for his inability to carry out his task. After observing a play-actor performing a scene, he notes that the actor was moved to tears in the passion of the story and compares this passion for an ancient Greek character, Hecuba, in light of his own situation:
- "O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
- Is it not monstrous that this player here,
- But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
- Could force his soul so to his own conceit
- That from her working all his visage wan'd;
- Tears in his eyes, distraction in's aspect,
- A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
- With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing!
- For Hecuba?
- What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
- That he should weep for her?" […]
Etymology of his name
The name Hamlet occurs as early as the 10th century. His name is easily derived in from Belleforest and the lost play from Amlethus of Saxo, and remaining in this form is then derived from its Latin form of the old Jutish Amlethoe. From this point the name can be divided into sections with common meanings. In terms of etymology the root name of Hamlet is an Icelandic noun, Amlooi, meaning ‘fool.’ However, this name is derived from the way that Hamlet acts in the play and is not in all actuality the true etymology of the name. The second way of translating the name is by analyzing the noun aml-ooi into ‘raving mad’ and the second half, amla into ‘routine’. Later these names were incorporated into Irish dialect as Amlodhe. As phonetic laws took their course the name’s spelling changed eventually leaving it as Amlaidhe. This Irish name was given to a hero in a common folk story. The root of this name is ‘furious, raging, wild.’ These are all meanings Shakespeare would have been aware of when deciding on the name for his longest play.
Influence of the Reformation
It has also been suggested that Hamlet's hesitations may also be rooted in the religious beliefs of Shakespeare's time. The Protestant Reformation had generated debate about the existence of purgatory (where King Hamlet claims he currently resides). The concept of purgatory is a Catholic one, and was frowned on in Protestant England. Hamlet says that he will not kill his uncle because death would send him straight to heaven, while his father (having died without foreknowledge of his death) is in purgatory doing penance for his. Hamlet's opportunity to kill his uncle comes just after the uncle has supposedly made his peace with God. Hamlet says that he would much rather take a stab at the murderer while he is frolicking in the "incestuous sheets", or gambling and drinking, so he could be sure of his going straight to hell.
Freudian interpretation
Ernest Jones, following the work of Sigmund Freud, held that Hamlet suffered from the Oedipus complex. He said in his essay "The Oedipus-Complex as an Explanation of Hamlet's Mystery: A Study in Motive":
- His moral fate is bound up with his uncle's for good or ill. The call of duty to slay his uncle cannot be obeyed because it links itself with the call of his nature to slay his mother's husband, whether this is the first or the second; the latter call is strongly "repressed," and therefore necessarily the former also.
Harold Bloom did a "Shakespearean Criticism" of Freud's work in response.
As a mirror of the audience
It has also been suggested that Hamlet, who is described by Ophelia as "th’ expectancy and rose of the fair state, / The glass of fashion and the mould of form" (Act III, Scene i, lines 148-9), is ultimately a reflection of all of the interpretations possessed by other characters in the play—and perhaps also by the members of an audience watching him. Polonius, most obviously, has a habit of misreading his own expectations into Hamlet’s actions ("Still harping on my daughter!"), though many other characters in the play participate in analogous behaviour.
Gertrude has a similar tendency to interpret all of her son’s activities as the result of her "o’erhasty marriage" alone. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern tend to find the stalled ambitions of a courtier in their former schoolmate’s behaviour, whereas Claudius seems to be concerned with Hamlet’s motivation only so far as it reveals the degree to which his nephew is a potential threat. Ophelia, like her father, waits in vain for Hamlet to give her signs of affection, and Horatio would have little reason to think that Hamlet was concerned with anything more pressing than the commandment of the ghost. And the First Gravedigger seems to think that Prince Hamlet, like that "whoreson mad fellow” Yorick, is simply insane without any need for explanation. Several critics, including Stephen Booth and William Empson have further investigated the analogous relationship between Hamlet, the play, and its audience.
Parallels with other characters
One aspect of Hamlet's character is the way in which he reflects other characters, including the play's primary antagonist, Claudius. In the play within a play, for instance, Gonzago, the king, is murdered in the garden by his nephew, Lucianus; although King Hamlet is murdered by his brother, in The Murder of Gonzago - which Hamlet tauntingly calls "The Mousetrap" when Claudius asks "What do you call the play?" - the regicide is a nephew, like Prince Hamlet. However, it is also worth noting that each of the characters in the play-within-a-play maps to two major characters in Hamlet, an instance of the play's many doubles:
- Lucianus, like Hamlet, is both a regicide and a nephew to the king; like Claudius, he is a regicide that operates by pouring poison into ears.
- The Player King, like Hamlet, is an erratic melancholic; like King Hamlet, his character in The Murder of Gonzago is poisoned via his ear while reclining in his orchard.
- The Player Queen, like Ophelia, attends to a character in The Murder of Gonzago that is "so far from cheer and from [a] former state"; like Gertrude, she remarries a regicide.
Hamlet is also, in some form, a reflection of most other characters in the play (or perhaps vice versa):
- Hamlet, Laertes, Fortinbras and Pyrrhus are all avenging sons. Hamlet and Laertes both blame Claudius for the death of their fathers. Hamlet and Pyrrhus are both seized by inaction at some point in their respective narratives and each avenges his father. Hamlet and Fortinbras both have plans that are thwarted by uncles that are also kings.
- Hamlet, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Osric and Polonius are all courtiers.
- Hamlet, his father, Bernardo, Marcellus, Francisco, Fortinbras and several other characters are all soldiers.
- Hamlet and his father share a name (as do Fortinbras and his father).
- Hamlet, Horatio, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and Laertes are all students.
- Hamlet, his father, Gertrude and Claudius are all members of the Royal Family. Each of them is also killed by poison—poison that Claudius is responsible for.
- Hamlet and Ophelia are each rebuked by their surviving parent in subsequent scenes; the surviving parent of each happens to be of the opposite gender. Both also enter scenes reading books and there is a contrast between the (possibly) pretend madness of Hamlet and the very real insanity of Ophelia.
- Hamlet, Horatio, Polonius, Rosencrantz, Guildenstern and Claudius are each "lawful espials" at some point in the play.
Hamlet's age
In Act V, scene I of Shakespeare's Hamlet, the First Gravedigger is asked by Hamlet at about line 147 and following, how long he has "been a grave-maker." His reply appears to determine the age of Hamlet for us in a roundabout but very explicit manner. The Gravedigger says that he has been in his profession since the day that Old Hamlet defeated Old Fortinbras, which was "the very day that young Hamlet was born." Then, a little later, he adds that "I have been sexton here, man and boy, thirty years." According to this logic, Hamlet must be thirty years old. Yorick, the dead jester whose skull Hamlet holds during this scene, is said to have been in the earth "three-and-twenty years," which would make Hamlet no more than seven years old when he last rode on Yorick's back.
This view of Hamlet's age is supported by the fact that Richard Burbage, the actor who originally played the role, was thirty-two at the time of the play's premiere.
However, a case has been made that at an early stage in Hamlet — with its apparent history of multiple revisions — Hamlet was presented as a sixteen-year-old. Several pieces of evidence support this view. Hamlet attends the University of Wittenberg, and royals and nobles (Elizabethan or medieval Danish) did not attend university at age 30. Additionally, a 30-year old Prince Hamlet would clearly have been of ruling age. Given his great popularity (mentioned by Claudius), this would raise the question of why it was not he, rather than his uncle, who was elected to succeed to the throne upon the death of King Hamlet.
The line about the length of the Gravedigger's career does not appear in the First Quarto of Hamlet; in that text Yorick is said to have been in the ground only twelve years. Furthermore, in Belleforest, Shakespeare's source for the story, it is said that Amleth has "not attained to man's estate." And in the original spelling of the Folio text, one of the two authoritative texts for the play, the Gravedigger's answer to how long he has "been a grave-maker" reads "Why heere in Denmarke: I haue bin sixeteene heere, man and Boy thirty yeares.." "Sixteene" is usually rendered as "sexton" (a modernization of the second quarto's "sexten"), even in modern texts that take F1 as their "copy text." But modernizing the punctuation — a normal practice in modernized texts — renders "Why heere in Denmarke: I haue bin sixeteene heere — man and Boy thirty yeares." In other words, this reading suggests that he has been a grave-digger for sixteen years, but that he has lived in Denmark for thirty. According to this logic, then, it is the Grave-digger who is thirty, whereas Hamlet is only sixteen.
However, this reading has the disadvantage that in the Folio the length of time Yorick has been in the ground is said to be twenty-three years, meaning that he had been dead seven years by the time Hamlet was born. Another theory offered is that the play was originally written with the view that Hamlet was 16 or 17, but since Shakespeare wrote his plays to be performed, and not read, these lines were likely changed so Burbage (who was almost always the protagonist in Shakespeare's plays) could play the role.
Below are listed some of the notable acting portrayals of Hamlet.
- Richard Burbage originated the role of Hamlet at the Globe Theatre.
- David Garrick made the role one of the centerpieces of his repertory in the 18th century.
- Master Betty played the role at the height of his popularity in 1805, and the House of Commons once adjourned early so that members of Parliament could see him play it.
- Edwin Booth was famous for the role in New York in the 1860s and 1870s.
- Sir Henry Irving, the first actor to be knighted, played Hamlet for an unprecedented 200 consecutive performances at the Lyceum Theatre in London in 1874.
- Johnston Forbes-Robertson played the role in 1898.
- John Barrymore created a sensation with his performance on Broadway in 1922 and again when he took it to London in 1925.
- John Gielgud played Hamlet over 500 times between 1930 and 1945.
- Gustav Gründgens played Hamlet in the Staatliches Schauspielhaus in Berlin in 1936.
- Laurence Olivier first played Hamlet at the Old Vic in 1937, later performing the production at Elsinore Castle.
- Maurice Evans first played the part at the Old Vic Theatre in 1935 and had a triumph on Broadway in 1938 and 1945.
- Paul Scofield (actor) played Hamlet at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1948 and again in 1955, directed by Peter Brook.
- Richard Burton first played the role at the Old Vic Theatre in 1953 and returned to it in a 1964 Broadway production that became notorious when he married Elizabeth Taylor during its out-of-town tryout.
- David Warner starred in Peter Hall's Hamlet in the RSC's August 1965 production at Stratford-Upon-Avon.
- Richard Chamberlain was the first American actor to play the role in London since John Barrymore. This occurred in the late 1960s, immediately after the run of Dr. Kildare, the TV-series in which Chamberlain first made his name, ended.
- Vladimir Vysotsky played Hamlet in Moscow's Taganka Theatre between 1971 and 1980.
- Derek Jacobi played the role for the Prospect Theatre Company in 1978.
- Christopher Walken played the role for the American Shakespeare Theatre in 1982.
- Kenneth Branagh played the role for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1992
- Ralph Fiennes won the Best Actor Tony Award in 1995 for his portrayal.
- Samuel West played Hamlet for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2001-2 and won the Critic's Circle Award.
- Christopher Eccleston played the role for the West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2002.
- Toby Stephens played the role for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2004.
- Ben Whishaw played the role for the old Vic in 2004.
- David Tennant played the role for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2008-9.
- Jude Law played the role for the Donmar West End and later on Broadway.
- Michael Brando (grandson of Marlon Brando) played the role for a special TED event in 2010; he had played the role previously in 2008-9.
- Michael Sheen played the role at the Young Vic in 2011-12.
- Gustaf Skarsgård played Hamlet in Stockholm City Theatre's Hamlet in 2010.
- Pat O'Neill played the role for the Melbourne Theatre Company in 2011.
- Johnston Forbes-Robertson immortalized scenes from his performance in a highly truncated silent film made in 1913.
- Danish actress Asta Nielsen portrayed Hamlet in a loose 1921 adaptation which re-imagines Hamlet as a woman.
- Laurence Olivier directed himself as Hamlet in the 1948 film.
- Richard Burton portrayed Hamlet in a 1964 filmed version of the stage play.
- Innokenty Smoktunovsky played Hamlet in the 1964 Russian film Hamlet (1964 film), directed by Grigori Kozintsev.
- Nicol Williamson portrayed Hamlet in Tony Richardson's 1969 version.
- Mel Gibson played Hamlet in Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 version.
- Iain Glen portrayed Hamlet in the 1990 film Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, directed by Tom Stoppard and based on his play.
- Kenneth Branagh directed himself as Hamlet in a 1996 film version, which is the only full length version of the play on film.
- Ethan Hawke played Hamlet in an adaptation released in 2000.
- Maurice Evans was the first to play the role on American television, in 1953 on the Hallmark Hall of Fame.
- Christopher Plummer received an Emmy Award nomination for a television version filmed at Elsinore Castle in 1964.
- Richard Chamberlain played Hamlet in a Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation in 1970.
- Derek Jacobi played Hamlet in the 1980 BBC Television Shakespeare production.
- Kevin Kline played the role in a 1990 PBS television production which he also directed, and which originated at the New York Shakespeare Festival.
- Campbell Scott played the role in a U.S. 2000 television production set during the American Civil War, in which Polonius, Ophelia, and Laertes were portrayed as an African-American family.
- David Tennant and the rest of the original cast from the 2008-9 Royal Shakespeare Company production reprised their roles for a BBC film version, which aired in the UK in December 2009.
Other versions
In the comic book series Kill Shakespeare, Hamlet is the central character. After he is exiled from Denmark, his ship is attacked and he washes up on England. He is encountered by Richard III of England, who tells him that he is the "Shadow King", a figure of prophecy. He tells Hamlet that he must find and kill the wizard William Shakespeare and retrieve his quill. He goes off, but is relentlessly pursued by assassins from Richard and his lieutenant, Iago. He is eventually captured by the fool known as Falstaff, who helps him get out of the woods after an encounter with a being known as a Prodigal. He is shot in the leg by Iago, but is saved by Juliet Capulet and Othello. Hamlet stops Othello from killing Iago, but is taken captive by Juliet and her resistance army. After going with them into a town and seeing the cruelty of Richard, Hamlet flees into the woods, where he is forced to face the ghost of his father. He defeats the ghost and is eventually picked up by two travellers: Lysander and Demetrius.
- Kemp Malone The Review of English Studies, Vol. 3, No. 11 (Jul.,1927),pp.257-271 <http://www.jstor.org/view/00346551/ap020014/02a00000/0>
- The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 21, No. 1. (Jan., 1910), pp. 72-113.
- Roth, Steve Hamlet: The Undiscovered Country <http://www.princehamlet.com/chapter_1.html>
- Writing in La Jeune Belgique in 1890; quoted by Braun (1982, 40).
- Braun, Edward. 1982. The Director and the Stage: From Naturalism to Grotowski. London: Methuen. ISBN 978-0-413-46300-5.
- Jenkins, Harold. Hamlet. Ed. Methuen, 1982. (The Arden Shakespeare)
- Wilson, J. Dover, What Happens in Hamlet. Cambridge University Press; 3rd edition, 1951. (First published in 1935)
- "The Women Who Have Played Hamlet" - Interview with Tony Howard on research into female Hamlets


VLTI observations of the radii of four small stars
The radii and masses of the four very-low-mass stars now observed with the VLTI, GJ 205, GJ 887, GJ 191 (also known as "Kapteyn''s star") and Proxima Centauri (red filled circles; with error bars). For comparison, planet Jupiter's mass and radius are also plotted (blue triangle). The two curves represent theoretical models for stars of two different ages (400 million years - red dashed curve; 5 billion years - black fully drawn curve; models by Gilles Charier and collaborators at the Ecole Normale Supérieur de Lyon, France). As can be seen, theory and observations fit very well.
About the Image
|Release date:||29 November 2002|
|Size:||800 x 789 px|


In an era when almost every energy technology is unpopular with somebody, the people who don’t want wind turbines, generating stations or new transmission lines installed in their neighborhoods often raise the idea of improving energy efficiency as an alternative.
That argument is particularly common in New York State and in Vermont, where state governments are trying to close nuclear reactors within their borders. So, how effectively can efficiency replace a reactor, making up for the loss of this zero-carbon energy source?
Not very, according to a new study of carbon dioxide output in Japan in the months around the Fukushima disaster.
Figures collected by the Breakthrough Institute, a group that often presents contrarian views on environmentalism and energy conservation, found that despite stringent efforts to use less energy, Japan emitted 4 percent more carbon dioxide in November 2011 than it did in the same month the previous year. After a quake and tsunami in March 2011 led to three meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear plant, Japan began closing other plants as well, one because it appeared vulnerable to tsunami and others because local officials did not want them running.
Energy consumption dropped sharply and was nearly 10 percent lower last November than in November 2010, the institute’s figures show. But with natural gas, oil and coal substituting for about 46 reactors, the production of carbon dioxide per unit of energy produced ran about 15 percent higher.
The pattern was the same all year after the March 11 tsunami and quake: consumption dropped but fuel burn increased. This was true even though Japan ran office air-conditioners at far reduced levels last summer and some demand had disappeared because of damage from the disaster.
What analogy can be drawn at Indian Point, 30 miles north of New York City, or Vermont Yankee, near Brattleboro? This month, a New York State Assembly committee concluded that Indian Point was replaceable, an assertion sharply disputed by a business consumer group.
Jason Grumet, an air pollution expert and founder of the Bipartisan Policy Center, said it was hard to draw direct parallels. “The circumstances in the United States are obviously different from Japan,’’ he said. For one thing, Japan was parsimonious in its use of electricity even before Fukushima, and American consumers probably have more fat to cut.
But in either country, he said, it is true that “a decrease in nuclear production in favor of fossil fuels will increase carbon intensity of the power sector, and total carbon dioxide emissions.’’
“It’s an incredibly difficult public policy challenge’’ for the United States, Mr. Grumet said, with different imperatives colliding. “One is to ensure that the aging fleet of nuclear plants is held to the highest safety standards, and the second is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,’’ he said. “And the third is to keep the lights on.”


4 Nero ascended to the Roman throne.
1332 Rinchinbal Khan, Emperor Ningzong of Yuan became the Khagan of the Mongols and Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, reigning for only 53 days.
1775 The United States Continental Congress orders the establishment of the Continental Navy (later renamed the United States Navy).
1777 British General John Burgoyne’s Army at The Battles of Saratoga was surrounded by superior numbers, setting the stage for its surrende which inspired France to enter the American Revolutionary War against the British.
1792 The cornerstone of the United States’ Executive Mansion (known as the White House ) was laid.
1812 War of 1812: Battle of Queenston Heights – As part of the Niagara campaign in Ontario, United States forces under General Stephen Van Rensselaer were repulsed from invading Canada by British and native troops led by Sir Isaac Brock.
1843 Henry Jones and 11 others founded B’nai B’rith (the oldest Jewish service organization in the world).
1845 A majority of voters in the Republic of Texas approved a proposed constitution, that if accepted by the U.S. Congress, would make Texas a U.S. state.
1862 Mary Kingsley, English writer and explorer, was born (d. 1900).
1885 The Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) was founded in Atlanta.
1904 Wilfred Pickles, English actor and broadcaster, ws born (d. 1978).
1915 The Battle for the Hohenzollern Redoubt marked the end of the Battle of Loos in northern France, World War I.
1917 The “Miracle of the Sun” was witnessed by an estimated 70,000 people in the Cova da Iria in Fátima, Portugal.
1918 Mehmed Talat Pasha and the Young Turk (C.U.P.) ministry resigned and signed an armistice, ending Ottoman participation in World War I.
1923 Ankara replaced Istanbul as the capital of Turkey.
1925 Lenny Bruce, American comedian (d. 1966)
1925 – Margaret Thatcher, former British Prime Minister, was born.
1934 Nana Mouskouri, Greek singer and politician, was born.
1941 Paul Simon, American singer and musician (Simon & Garfunkel), was born.
1943 World War II: The new government of Italy sided with the Allies and declared war on Germany.
1946 France adopted the constitution of the Fourth Republic.
1959 Marie Osmond, American entertainer, was born.
1962 The Pacific Northwest experienced a cyclone the equal of a Cat 3 hurricane. Winds measured above 150 mph at several locations; 46 people died.
1968 Carlos Marin, Spanish baritone (Il Divo), was born.
1969 Nancy Kerrigan, American figure skater, was born.
1970 Paul Potts, British opera singer, was born.
1972 An Aeroflot Ilyushin Il-62 crashed outside Moscow killing 176.
1972 Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed in the Andes mountains. By December 23, only 16 out of 45 people were still alive to be rescued.
1975 Dame Whina Cooper led a land march to parliament.
1976 A Bolivian Boeing 707 cargo jet crashed in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, killing 100 (97, mostly children, killed on the ground).
1976 The first electron micrograph of an Ebola viral particle was obtained by Dr. F.A. Murphy.
1977 Four Palestinians hijacked Lufthansa Flight 181 to Somalia and demanded the release of 11 members of the Red Army Faction.
1983 Ameritech Mobile Communications (now AT&T) launched the first US cellular network in Chicago, Illinois.
1990 End of the Lebanese Civil War. Syrian forces launched an attack on the free areas of Lebanon removing General Michel Aoun from the presidential palace.
1992 An Antonov An-124 operated by Antonov Airlines crashed near Kiev.
1999 – The United States Senate rejected ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).
2010 – The 2010 Copiapó mining accident in Copiapó, Chile came to an end as all 33 miners arrived at the surface after surviving a record 69 days underground awaiting rescue.
Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia


EPO is a nootropicWednesday, 10 September, 2008
Erythropoietin (EPO), a hormone that increases red blood cells and is used as a performance enhancer for athletic performance, has now been shown to enhance memory in normal, healthy mice. Mice that received EPO injections had enhanced memory for 3-4 weeks afterwards, which is longer than the elevation in red blood cell count lasts.
This effect isn’t actually novel, as other researchers had noticed that EPO improved brain function over 18 years ago (Grimm et al, 1990), and research into mental illness has also suggested that EPO has an effect on brain function (Ehrenreich et al, 2004). But it was always thought to be dependent on the change in red blood cells, but more recent evidence has suggested it works independently of effects on blood cells (Miskowiak et al, 2007). This mouse model confirms this.
Of course, the researchers have been focusing on this as a treatment, but anyone can see that this is a promising enhancement too. This mouse research showed that EPO enhanced memory and athletic function in healthy mice. It enhances both athletic and mental performance – how good is that?
Then again, if EPO becomes a common cognitive enhancer, it will mean that few of us normal people would ever be able to compete in the Olympics. It was only in 2004 that caffeine was allowed in professional competition, but pretty soon college students will be doping themselves with EPO as a biochemical study aid. It will be interesting when almost all normal people would not be able to pass an Olympic-level drug test.
The possibility exists, however, that we may want the cognitive boost without increasing our red blood cells too much. And now that we know the cognitive effects of EPO are independent of red blood cell production, this may be possible too. Make a drug that stimulates the brain like EPO does, but doesn’t effect an increase in red blood cells. And this study has gone a long way to unraveling the relevant effects of EPO on neuronal plasticity that underly the enhancement to memory circuitry in the brain, which means that we may be able to find drugs that do so more effectively than EPO or act on other brain functions.


Resources - Homeschool Groups - Article
This article was published in the HSLDA Discount Groups E-Zine, March 2007.
Guest Article: A Mom Shares Her Perspective—
Making Families of Handicapped Students Welcome
By Esther Mast
Given that homeschoolers come in all shapes and sizes, it is not surprising to find a few in wheelchairs. The local homeschool group is in a position to make these students feel as valued and included as possible. There are a few practical ways to do this:
First of all, keep the physical limitations of handicapped students in mind when planning group activities. Try to arrange at least a couple events a year that can include everyone, even those who can’t kick a ball or run races. Such awareness of limitations is especially important when planning a field trip. A considerate coordinator will research the proposed location well beforehand and inform the pupil’s parents about accessibility issues, so that there is less chance of an unpleasant surprise on arrival.
In addition, all students must be treated with respect by their homeschooled peers. Even if the venue of an activity is physically accessible, a handicapped student may feel out of place if other people constantly stare, ask awkward questions, or try to be too helpful by pushing the wheelchair for him. Remember, it is not the responsibility of the handicapped family to educate the entire group on demand, they have enough stress as it is. Make it a priority to teach proper courtesy to your own able-bodied children; if you must ask, direct a tactful question to the parents privately. If a handicapped student senses that others are uncomfortable around him, he will also feel very uncomfortable.
A wheelchair indeed places certain restrictions on the student and her family and homeschool group. With thoughtful planning and good manners, however, it need not be a hindrance to the homeschool experience.
The Masts have homeschooled eight children, four of whom have graduated and gone on to college. One of these college students is in a wheelchair.


Cancer of the Throat
Alternative NamesSquamous Cell Carcinoma of the Tonsil
What is Cancer of the Throat
Throat cancer takes its beginning in your throat (pharynx), voice box (larynx) or tonsils. The throat is the passage from the back of your mouth to the top tubes that go down to your stomach and lungs. Voice box is the part of your throat that you use to produce the sounds when you speak. Both the throat and the voice box are located below the throat.
Throat cancer is subdivided into different types:
- Nasopharyngeal cancer originates just behind your nose.
- Oropharyngeal cancer starts behind your mouth that includes your tonsils.
- Hypopharyngeal cancer (laryngopharyngeal cancer) develops in the hypopharynx (the lower part of your throat, just above your esophagus and windpipe).
- Glottic cancer located in the vocal cords.
- Supraglottic cancer begins in the upper portion of the larynx (the part of your throat where the voice produced).
- Subglottic cancer. This type of the cancer is found in the lower portion of your voice box, below your vocal cords.
Signs and symptoms
The symptoms below may signal that the person has got a throat cancer:
- A cough
- A hoarseness (when you speak in a low rough voice)
- Swallowing problems
- Feeling pain in your ear
- Open wound
- A sore throat
The patients with throat cancer can have possible complications:
- Swallowing problems
- Airway obstruction
- Disfigured neck or face
- Stiff skin of the neck
- Speaking disability
- Metastasis of the cancer
The main reasons leading to the occurrence of throat cancer is the development of genetic mutations in your throat. As a result uncontrolled growth of tumour cells happen which can live longer than healthy cells.
Unfortunately there are no proper ways which help to prevent the disease. But in order to avoid your risk of occurrence of throat cancer, you should:
- Get rid of smoking
- Avoid drinking alcohol
- Keep to a healthy diet rich in fruits and vegetables
- Don’t contact chemicals
- Avoid breathing hazardous chemical fumes
- Air your room and working place
There are the following ways of throat cancer treatments:
- Surgery – can help to get rid of tumour alone, either combined with radiation therapy, especially when it’s of small size. Some patients are offered operations which can help to remove the tumor, including all or part of the vocal cords.
- Radiotherapy is used when the tumor reached the second stage and became larger. If the tomour has spread to lymph nodes in the neck, a combination of radiation and chemotherapy is recommended.
- Speech therapy can be effective if you’ve got laryngectomy. There exist some other ways to talk that are leant.
- Swallowing therapy helps patients adjust to the changes in the structure of the throat.


Jacob loves books. His mom knows this because when she sits down to read to him every night, he waves his arms excitedly.
His favorite page of "Goodnight Moon" shows a cow jumping over the moon. He squeals and reaches for the book every time he sees it. When she is done reading, his mom usually lets him hold the sturdy board book, which he promptly sticks into his mouth.
Jacob is only 6 months old, but he is already well on his way to becoming a reader.
Why Read to My Baby?
You may wonder about the benefits of reading to your baby. An infant won't understand everything you're doing or why. But you wouldn't wait until your child could understand what you were saying before you started speaking to him or her, right? Nor would you bypass lullabies until your baby could carry a tune or wait until he or she could shake a rattle before you offered any toys.
Reading aloud to your baby is a wonderful shared activity you can continue for years to come — and it's an important form of stimulation.
teaches a baby about communication
introduces concepts such as numbers, letters, colors, and shapes in a fun way
builds listening, memory, and vocabulary skills
gives babies information about the world around them
Believe it or not, by the time babies reach their first birthday they will have learned all the sounds needed to speak their native language. The more stories you read aloud, the more words your child will be exposed to and the better he or she will be able to talk.
Hearing words helps to build a rich network of words in a baby's brain. Kids whose parents frequently talk/read to them know more words by age 2 than children who have not been read to. And kids who are read to during their early years are more likely to learn to read at the right time.
When you read, your child hears you using many different emotions and expressive sounds, which fosters social and emotional development. Reading also invites your baby to look, point, touch, and answer questions — all of which promote social development and thinking skills. And your baby improves language skills by imitating sounds, recognizing pictures, and learning words.
But perhaps the most important reason to read aloud is that it makes a connection between the things your baby loves the most — your voice and closeness to you — and books. Spending time reading to your baby shows that reading is a skill worth learning. And, if infants and children are read to often with joy, excitement, and closeness, they begin to associate books with happiness — and budding readers are created.
Young babies may not know what the pictures in a book mean, but they can focus on them, especially faces, bright colors, and contrasting patterns. When you read or sing lullabies and nursery rhymes, you can entertain and soothe your infant.
Between 4 and 6 months, your baby may begin to show more interest in books. He or she will grab and hold books, but will mouth, chew, and drop them as well. Choose sturdy vinyl or cloth books with bright colors and repetitive or rhyming text.
Between 6 and 12 months, your child is beginning to understand that pictures represent objects, and most likely will develop preferences for certain pictures, pages, or even entire stories. Your baby will respond while you read, grabbing for the book and making sounds, and by 12 months will turn pages (with some help from you), pat or start to point to objects on a page, and repeat your sounds.
When and How to Read
Here's a great thing about reading aloud: It doesn't take special skills or equipment, just you, your baby, and some books. Read aloud for a few minutes at a time, but do it often. Don't worry about finishing entire books — focus on pages that you and your baby enjoy.
Try to set aside time to read every day — perhaps before naptime and bedtime. In addition to the pleasure that cuddling your baby before bed gives both of you, you'll also be making life easier by establishing a routine. This will help to calm your baby and set expectations about when it's time to sleep.
It's also good to read at other points in the day. Choose times when your baby is dry, fed, and alert. Books also come in handy when you're stuck waiting, so have some in the diaper bag to fill time sitting at the doctor's office or standing in line at the grocery store.
Here are some additional reading tips:
Cuddling while you read helps your baby feel safe, warm, and connected to you.
Read with expression, pitching your voice higher or lower where it's appropriate or using different voices for different characters.
Don't worry about following the text exactly. Stop once in a while and ask questions or make comments on the pictures or text. ("Where's the kitty? There he is! What a cute black kitty.") Your child might not be able to respond yet, but this lays the groundwork for doing so later on.
Sing nursery rhymes, make funny animal sounds, or bounce your baby on your knee — anything that shows that reading is fun.
Babies love — and learn from — repetition, so don't be afraid of reading the same books over and over. When you do so, repeat the same emphasis each time as you would with a familiar song.
As your baby gets older, encourage him or her to touch the book or hold sturdier vinyl, cloth, or board books. You don't want to encourage chewing on books, but by putting them in his or her mouth, your baby is learning about them, finding out how books feel and taste — and discovering that they're not edible!
Books for babies should have simple, repetitive text and clear pictures. During the first few months of life, your child just likes to hear your voice, so you can read almost anything, especially books with a sing-song or rhyming text. As your baby gets more interested in looking at things, choose books with simple pictures against solid backgrounds.
Once your baby begins to grab, you can read vinyl or cloth books that have faces, bright colors, and shapes. When your baby begins to respond to what's inside of books, add board books with pictures of babies or familiar objects like toys. When your child begins to do things like sit up in the bathtub or eat finger foods, find simple stories about daily routines like bedtime or bathtime. When your child starts talking, choose books that invite babies to repeat simple words or phrases.
Books with mirrors and different textures (crinkly, soft, scratchy) are also great for this age group, as are fold-out books that can be propped up, or books with flaps that open for a surprise. Board books make page turning easier for infants and vinyl or cloth books can go everywhere — even the tub. Babies of any age like photo albums with pictures of people they know and love. And every baby should have a collection of nursery rhymes!
One of the best ways you can ensure that your little one grows up to be a reader is to have books around your house. When your baby is old enough to crawl over to a basket of toys and pick one out, make sure some books are included in the mix.
In addition to the books you own, take advantage of those you can borrow from the library. Many libraries have storytime just for babies, too. Don't forget to pick up a book for yourself while you're there. Reading for pleasure is another way you can be your baby's reading role model.


Check out our new Video Podcast -- Math Snacks!
This hands-on activity uses manipulatives to help students physically trade in one unit for another, larger unit of measure. By manipulating the tiles, students can find all types of conversions. To download the entire lesson plan, click on file attachments below. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to email me email@example.com
Using the 200 Chart For Division
Using the 200 Chart to Count Money
The other day I saw the neatest way of using a 200 Chart (a hundreds chart that goes through 200) to help students as they were learning to count money. I would have never came up with this idea, but it worked so well for students who were struggling keeping track of how much money they were counting. Directions for how it works:
These easy-to-use cards let students explore place value concepts—from ones to one hundred thousand. Just cut off the extra white to the left of the digits. These cards can be used to teach standard and expanded form of a number. Download the files below. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to contact me at firstname.lastname@example.org
My Kids Turn is a website which hosts 6 different shows which provides quick ideas for parents to use with their children. This would be awesome to share with parents as a follow up to parent teacher conferences.
My Kids Turn is about our kids -- yours and ours -- and how we're going to make sure that they have the best opportunity we can give them to succeed at school.
I often get asked the question, why do students need to learn how to find the LCM of two or more numbers. I can only think of two mathematical examples, the first is to find common denominators for fractions so that we can add the fractions more easily. For example, if we have the fractions 1/4, 1/3, and 1/6, we could use the LCM to create equivalent fractions to add quickly and easily.
Comparing and ordering numbers is an important skill for students at any grade level. But there is more to comparing and ordering numbers than comparing the individual digits in each of the placeholders. When we teach children to look a the first number, furthest to the left, and then if they are the same, look at the second number, we are teaching children a rote procedure to compare and order numbers.
The goal of this math lesson is for students, using dice, to create four-digit numbers which become larger and larger. This can be adjusted easily for older students (add more dice) to younger students (use fewer dice).
Lesson can be downloaded below.
This lesson is designed to help students learn the representational value of numbers. This lesson is accompanied with pictorial representation of base ten blocks, numerals, and numbers written in expanded form. Students match the cards to identify several representations. An example of a card, match 5 hundreds, 13 tens, and 4 ones to 634. Sometimes the order is mixed around, this gets to true understanding of the value of the number.


Part 1: North Carolina's First Radio Stations, Part 2: Radio Enters Its "Golden Age" in North Carolina, Part 3: National Networks and Popular Local Shows and Personalities, Part 4: Radio Broadcasting and the Civil Rights Movement, Part 5: Growth of FM Stations and Increasing Corporate Ownership
Part 3: National Networks and Popular Local Shows and Personalities
With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 came a temporary freeze on radio station applications, which hampered smaller carriers. Through the 1940s, the airwaves were dominated by the four major broadcast networks:NBC, ABC, CBS, and the now-defunct Mutual Broadcasting System. In addition to war-related news, the networks provided a wealth of block programming-from serialized dramas to live performances. Comedy shows featuring Fred Allen, Jack Benny, George Burns, and Gracie Allen, along with dramas such as the Lux Radio Theater, Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre on the Air, and The Guiding Light, made radio the centerpiece of family entertainment. Kay Kyser joined the ranks of big band leaders like Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, and Duke Ellington on nationally broadcast shows.
Despite the networks' seeming monopoly of radio real estate, small stations still managed to spring up across North Carolina. Mount Airy's WPAQ, after its birth in 1948, began broadcasting live string band performances at 10,000 watts while also amassing a sizable catalog of traditional and folk music. In 1947 the North Carolina Association of Broadcasters was founded to provide support and information to state radio talent. Recognizable on-air personalities carved out reputations in the region. Greensboro native Edward R. Murrow moved on to a national audience, but local color ruled the state's airwaves. Commentators such as WBT's fiery, pulpit-tested J. S. Nathaniel Tross and WRAL's Fred Fletcher, known for his children's programming and traffic reports, were radio fixtures for years. Although by the 1950s television replaced radio as America's "everyday" medium, local radio fought the advance of network TV by filling spots on the airwaves normally overlooked by larger corporations, such as early morning time slots. For 30 years Grady Cole, beloved as "Mr. Dixie," was the voice of WBT's sunrise schedule, providing farm reports, community announcements, weather reports, and more into the early 1960s.
Devotion to certain broadcasters induced listeners to continue tuning in, either for a chance of catching the "Voice of the Duke Blue Devils," announcer Lee Kirby, or the sweet sounds of Crackerjacks bandleader Arthur Smith. In addition to Grady Cole, WBT helped bring Charles H. Crutchfield, a station program director and the eventual president of Jefferson-Pilot Broadcasting, to prominence in the postwar years.
Kay Kyser and his band entertain U.S. Navy personnel during a live NBC radio broadcast of Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge, ca. 1943. North Carolina Collection, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library.
1 January 2006 | McFee, Philip; Williams, Wiley J.


Fri October 12, 2012
For Sale: A Chunk Of Mars
Originally published on Tue October 23, 2012 2:31 pm
Few things are as rare as a piece of rock that falls from outer space and crashes onto Earth.
Among the most prized of these meteorites are from Mars. Friday, scientists describe the latest one discovered: It's called Tissint, and this weekend you can buy a piece of it.
First, it's clear to experts that Tissint is extraordinary as well as extraterrestrial. It contains a unique story about Mars. Says meteoriticist Caroline Smith of the London Museum of Natural History: "Many people think that this meteorite may well be one of the most important meteorites that have actually fallen in the last century."
She's one of those people.
The museum owns the biggest piece of Tissint, and Smith is one of the scientists who described it in the journal Science on Friday.
Tissint's journey began as basaltic volcanic rock on the Martian surface. Smith says scientists can tell liquid washed over the rock and weathered it. It deposited elements from Martian soil inside cracks in the rock. Then an object — probably an asteroid — smacked into Mars and blasted the rock into space. In July 2011, it flamed through the Earth's atmosphere and smashed into the Moroccan desert.
"The thing is, no matter how fantastic the robotic missions are, it's still not the same as being able to actually analyze a piece of rock in a laboratory on Earth," she says. "So I think the big message here is that the meteorite is almost ground-truthing what we're actually seeing on Mars."
There are a few other Martian meteorites. But Tissint is special for several reasons. The impact that blew it off Mars melted part of its surface into smooth, black glass. That trapped bubbles of Martian atmosphere and elements inside, including cerium, an element scientists thought might be on Mars but weren't sure of. Also, its fragments were found quickly, so it hasn't been too contaminated by elements on Earth. It's also one of only five Martian meteorites that was observed hitting the Earth.
Scientists have just begun to tease out its story.
"Whenever I pick up a meteorite," says Smith, "I get excited. Each of those stones is a little time capsule and a little space probe to actually help us understand how our solar system formed."
But the piece in London is just one of many that broke off Tissint as it hurtled through Earth's atmosphere. Where they ended up is a story that begins in Morocco.
Meteorite scientist Hasnaa Chennaoui Aoudjehane at Hassan II Casablanca University had heard news of the fireball that lit up the sky in the summer of 2011. Last January she traveled 700 miles from Casablanca, over the Sahara, to find the "strewn field" — where pieces spread across the sand. She was not the first one there. "The first thing that I see is hundreds of people in the middle of nowhere. And this is something that I will never forget."
Men, women and children were camped out, hunting for the pieces. Meteorites are often found in North Africa — unusual rocks stand out in the desert — and they bring a good price.
People brought pieces to her to identify. "On the first view of the first sample, it's clear that it's a Martian meteorite," she says. Professional dealers scooped up most of the pieces. Aoudjehane bought some small pieces for her university in Casablanca, where laboratory tests confirmed what she'd recognized on sight — Martian rock. She's a co-author on the paper in Science.
About the time Aoudjehane was collecting pieces, a meteorite collector and dealer in New York City named Darryl Pitt got a tip about fragments of Mars for sale. Pitt, who is curator of the Macovich Collection of meteorites, got money from a group of investors. A Moroccan dealer sold him a piece, dispatching his au pair to fly with it to New York City. "Immediately after she clears customs, she reaches into her purse and gives me a packet and I'm looking around and looking at the cameras and thinking, 'Oh my golly, this is going to be a problem.' " Not that it was illegal; the transaction just made it look suspicious.
Pitt bought or brokered the sale of more pieces, including the one that went to the London's Natural History Museum. "It's important to make the material available to scientists and researchers first and foremost," he says. Collectors like Pitt have the time and means to cultivate contacts in places like Morocco, where the trade has flourished, especially among the Berber nomads. "Several of these fellows that I know have become rich. A couple own hotels now. They're no longer trekking the desert. ... it's been really fantastic."
The museum's Caroline Smith agrees that collectors and scientists do help each other — the collectors to find meteorites, the scientists to analyze them. "I would be not telling the truth if I said there was no tension with anything where large amounts of money is involved," she says. "But I would like to stress that, you know, on the whole relationships are very good, it's a mutually beneficial arrangement in many cases." The trade does push up prices, sometimes beyond what scientists can afford. But Smith says sometimes collectors sell them to museums at a discount.
On Sunday, a piece of Tissint will be offered at a meteorite auction in Manhattan. It's billed as the biggest ever, and Pitt helped Heritage Auctions arrange it. There are pieces from the moon and from the asteroid belt. But Pitt says the Martian meteorites are the stars because they are so rare. All told on Earth, he says, "You're talking like about 300 pounds of material. That's it. Mars is among the rarest substances on Earth."
The Tissint fragment at the auction starts at $230,000. As for potential buyers, Pitt says they're "most anyone who has an appreciation for the exotic, the romantic. Anyone who wants to enthrall a child or anyone's sense of wonder. Radio hosts? Everyone." Pitt notes that the piece at the auction actually fits exactly into the piece at the London museum. He's hoping whoever buys it will reunite the two.


Go to these sites to learn about a person in the news. Use the information you learn to answer the questions on your sheet:
FOR FRIDAY ONLY:
First, search for an interesting news story or article on anything you want. Use the news source links above to find it.
Next, copy the web address of the article and paste it on Crocodoc.
Paste the web address on Crocodoc. Use the highligher to highlight important or interesting information. Highlight five-to-seven words in each paragraph.
Next, use the “notes” to write two questions and two connections.
Finally, copy and paste the web address of your page to the comments section of this post.


Photo by Brad Otto
One of the world’s most technologically advanced floating nautical survey platforms has been anchored off Birch Bay for the past few weeks collecting data to update national nautical charts.
The Rainier, one of the research ships in the Pacific fleet of the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA), is in the middle of a mission collecting data to update NOAA’s nautical charts for the Strait of Georgia. Its work will eventually take it up the coast of Alaska.
The data will provide more information on the shoals in the vicinity of Cherry Point, which is the largest tanker port in Washington. This information will be helpful to the Puget Sound pilots who steer large tankers through the sound and the Strait of Georgia. The area has seen changes in vessel traffic recently due to the increased capacity of the facilities at Cherry Point, according to the NOAA website for the ship.
The Rainier, originally launched in 1967, is 231 feet long and weighs about 1,500 tons. It can house a total of 25 crew members and stay at sea for 22 days at a time. For more information on the Rainier, visit the ship’s website.


When Pablo Picasso presented his first cubist paintings to the world, even most educated people thought them hideous and irrational, yet his peers saw them to be ingenious.
Likewise, Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity was equally baffling to the uninitiated.
But to those who were knowledgeable about both art and physics, parallels would have been recognized between Einstein’s new visions of reality and Picasso’s paintings that could be viewed from multiple points of view in simultaneous space and time. They also would have guessed correctly that Picasso’s revolutionary paintings were influenced by Einstein’s visionary physics.
And it has become evident to me, after working with science and art students for two years on collaborative projects, that the humanities and sciences must be united – for our collective future success.
At the highest levels of innovative thought, art and physics share one common goal: the investigation of reality.
Art tends to communicate through metaphor and poetics. Science communicates through logic and mathematics. Both disciplines seek to foster and produce creative and innovative problem solvers.
One way students of the arts and sciences can communicate with one another to enhance opportunities for success and educational enrichment is through collaborative activities.
Two almost overlapping events in Orlando – a UCF/National Science Foundation-sponsored art exhibition and a national physics-students convention – serve as examples where both disciplines were enhanced by the other.
One event is a STEAM Exhibition, “Searching for Ultimate Truth in Science and Art,” to be held Thursday, Nov. 15, from 5:30 to 9 p.m. at UCF’s Center for Emerging Media in downtown Orlando. STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics, and the exhibition of paintings, posters and sculptures responds to and attempts to interpret current breakthroughs and issues in science.
The posters are a result of collaborations between science and art students. The works attempt to visually illustrate the complex concepts behind cutting-edge scientific research, some literally and others abstractly.
The paintings and sculptures are inspired by various presentations in science and engineering by UCF scientists and their students. In these pieces the art students have attempted to communicate their own imaginative conceptions of reality through visual metaphor. Some serve as commentaries on the potentials for both good and harm to humanity and the earth.
The other event was the Quadrennial Physics Congress, “Connecting Worlds through Science and Service,” this past weekend in Orlando. The theme was “Scientific Citizenship.”
As a brochure announced: “From global warming to Facebook to the International Space Station, we’re realizing now, more than ever, how connected we all are – as physicists, as scientists, as members of society, as humans, and as part of a vast universe.”
At the congress, it was repeatedly acknowledged that as scientific research and knowledge become increasingly more specialized and complex, outreach and education becomes more important.
Two popular sessions during the gathering highlighted that one way to communicate complex ideas is through art and emerging media.
An example of a professional who has crossed both disciplines is Henry Reich, the creator and animator of a popular YouTube video series called “MinutePhysics” that explains “cool topics in physics.” Another example in which science and the humanities converge in contemporary pop culture is the TV sitcom “The Big Bang Theory.” At the Physics Congress we met David Saltzberg, who is the science consultant to the show. His contribution is to work with the artists – the script writers, art directors, prop designers and actors – to make sure the science behind the show is correct.
University undergraduate and graduate arts programs across the country are encouraging and teaching students to reach out into their communities to initiate and facilitate public art and collaborative art-related activities among citizens.
Like scientists, artists realize their discipline is in no way isolated.
Jordan Guzman, a Bachelor of Fine Arts painting major, won a first-place award in the art contest at the Physics Congress in the category of “Connecting Worlds.” She and many other art students at UCF are becoming increasingly intrigued with science, especially physics, because of educational collaborations between the arts and sciences through UCF’s 2-year-old STEAM project.
The first UCF STEAM exhibition of science-themed artworks was last spring. More than 500 visitors attended the two-day exhibition, many of whom were K-12 students.
The artworks provided a visual doorway to the science behind the images, sparking enthusiasm and conversation about both the science and the art. The show illustrated how images that emerge from collaborations between science and art students can provide provocative points of view to contemplate and discuss outside the traditional science classroom.
As Florida and other states wrestle with current pressing issues of how best to fund and facilitate effective educational preparedness for future students, perhaps legislators could take a larger view of the long-term issues facing our young people.
A solid education offers opportunities for students to become innovative problem solvers by encouraging them to seek out unanticipated interdisciplinary connectedness and by exposing students to more – not less – diversity.
UCF Forum columnist Carla Poindexter is an associate professor of fine art at the University of Central Florida and can be reached at Carla.Poindexter@ucf.edu.


Wed December 5, 2012
How History Created The Cult Of The Catcher
NEAL CONAN, HOST:
Earlier this week, Deacon White was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. And yes, we know, you've never heard of him. White's career began in 1871, at the dawn of professional baseball. He played catcher in the days when catchers use no equipment at all: no glove, no pads, no facemask. They became heroes celebrated for their courage and their wits, and Deacon White stood out as one of the best.
Baseball historian Peter Morris serves on what used to be called the Veteran's Committee at Cooperstown. It's now called the Pre-Integration Era Committee. He's also the author of "Catcher: How the Man Behind the Plate Became an American Folk Hero" and joins us now from the studios at Michigan Radio in Ann Arbor. Good to have you with us today.
PETER MORRIS: My pleasure to be here, Neal.
CONAN: And in your book, you argue that the generation that came of age after the Civil War looked around for some heroes and found them behind home plate.
MORRIS: Yeah. It's hard to understand today just how much the catcher, especially in the 1870s, dominated the baseball game. A single baseball game was - really revolved around the catcher's ability to harness what the pitcher was pitching, and everything revolves around that. The pitcher couldn't use his best pitches if he had - he didn't have confident - confidence in the catcher.
So he really was a sort of iconic folk hero, dominated the game in a way that I think no player ever has before or since and - at a point to where people resented it and would say, you know, this is a game played by two players while the other seven just kind of watch.
CONAN: The pitcher and the catcher and everybody else watches. The catcher's - well, we are familiar with the crouched position right behind home plate. That was not what they did in the 1870s.
MORRIS: No. They stood, sometimes a little stooped but mostly straight up, and they would just catch the ball and be ready to throw it to bases immediately. And the way that they would throw it sort of made them look like gunslingers. And so that really fed into the whole icon of them, the whole idea of them as American folk heroes.
CONAN: Folk heroes. Give us some idea. You quote any number of sources, literary and otherwise, in your book who worshipped these men.
MORRIS: Yeah. One of the most prominent was Stephen Crane, the great American novelist, and he really - most of his preparation for writing the "The Red Badge of Courage" and his other novels was spent being a catcher. And in fact, he really had two very unsuccessful stints in college where he spent most of his time trying to be the catcher for the college nine and didn't go to too many classes. And really, all he developed was a kind of love of baseball and a sense of what it took to be - to have great courage. And I think both of those really fed into "The Red Badge of Courage."
CONAN: And courage, we see the beating that catchers take today. They got the same foul tips and balls off their various parts of their body back then too.
MORRIS: Oh, it was tremendously difficult position to be in. You were right in the line of fire, and of course, you know, you could be the most prepared possible and then the batter might foul tip it. And it would just, you know, the angle will change just enough that it would, you know, hit your forehead usually. And a few of them had such great reflex. I mean, Deacon White was known for his great reflexes and became an incredibly durable catcher. But it was sort of known that, you know, if you put a neophyte behind a plate, he would usually get injured within an inning or two. That was - the danger was so great.
CONAN: And the early history of baseball is replete with teams that raided other teams for their catchers.
MORRIS: Oh, and particularly in the 1870s that the best teams were the ones with the best catchers. You really couldn't be successful without one. And Deacon White stood above everybody else to the point where he played on five consecutive championship teams. And he went from team to team and the championship just followed him around wherever he went.
CONAN: He was quite a good hitter too.
MORRIS: He was a great hitter. He was a way above-average hitter, playing a position where, you know, the defense was so all-encompassing as a skill that you could, you know, you could really just put anybody there if they could field the position and not worry about their bat. But he was a consistent .300 and above hitter.
CONAN: And I wonder - statistics then and now are so different. The game essentially was so different. When you were talking with the people on the Veterans Committee about Deacon White, what were you saying that finally convinced them that this man, at long last, deserves to be in the Hall of Fame?
MORRIS: Well, we had some great conversations about what it took to play the position. And you know, Bob Watson, who started out as a catcher, was one of the committee members. Phil Niekro, Bert Blyleven and Don Sutton, Pat Gillick, all pitchers, all Hall Famers, were really able to add a lot of insight to what it must have been like.
And the other - one of the main things we talked about was just how they played much shorter schedules in the 1870s. So when you look at career statistics, that's a huge distortion. Deacon White ended up with 2,000 career hits, but he was playing in a - in an average of 40, 50, 60-game schedules a year. So there was no way to generate the kind of career milestones that we look at as benchmarks today. You know, 3,000 hits would be all but impossible. And 2,000 was a terrific accomplishment.
CONAN: And the number of errors he recorded even as a great defensive catcher would have been, you know, totally unacceptable by today's standards.
MORRIS: Oh, exactly. Yeah. And again, an issue where we had to really sort of look at what - compare him to people from his own era. And when we did that, you know, it became really obvious just how much he stood above his contemporaries.
CONAN: Are the records from those days good enough that you have reliable accounts of who was good and who was great?
MORRIS: Well, they're getting a lot better. I mean, we have a very good full statistical record now. We're getting a better sense - it's becoming easier and easier to get back to the contemporary accounts of them in the newspapers and generate an idea from it then. And you know, the trouble over the years in putting people in the Hall of Fame has been that that's been either on a partial statistical record or, you know, after all their contemporaries are dead, so we don't have that record. And of course we can never bring those people back to life.
But by accessing the newspaper accounts, we can get a better sense of it, and I think it's really encouraging to be able - to be able to - to be on a committee that, I think, did such great work in bringing back an era that happened so long ago that even when the Hall of Fame was founded in 1939, it was ancient history back then.
CONAN: And it's interesting, your book had pictures of the hands of some of the great catchers of those days, gnarled and twisted. Anybody who played catcher could expect to be crippled - their hands - for the rest of their lives.
MORRIS: Exactly. And people would say, you know, I don't know what this guy looks like but just look for a catcher's hands. And as soon as you'll see - you see those hands, you recognize, oh, that's - that must be who it was.
CONAN: Are there stories about Deacon White? You mentioned he traveled from team to team. I guess he had one fantastic year in Boston. But what kind of a man was he? Do we know?
MORRIS: He was a really high-character man. In a time when baseball had a lot of guys who spent their evenings drinking and carousing, Deacon - he was known as Deacon because he went to church and he was a Sunday school teacher. And family came absolutely first for him.
And so the only season in his first 15 years in the big leagues where he missed any significant amount of time was when his father was ill. And when his father passed away, he signed a new contract to come back and play. But he actually signed it - he signed a very unique contract that said he would only have to play for two months, and then he could decide for himself whether he needed to go back home when the harvest was ready to (unintelligible) ready and his mother would need help around the house. So he was a man of family.
He was - family came first and his religion came first. He never played on a Sunday. And he was teammates with Connie Mack and Billy Sunday towards the end of his career. So...
CONAN: Two other well-known gentleman of the game, yes.
CONAN: And it's interesting, you talked about the hero worship these catchers generated in the 1870s. When protective equipment did start to come in, gloves and then masks and pads, Roger Bresnahan and shin guards, that - the view of the catcher began to change.
MORRIS: Exactly. It really - in a way it almost emasculated what had been this ultimate American hero. And instead of, you know, being able to look at themselves as this sort of ultimate warrior, this ultimate gunslinger, they started to see themselves, you know, they would - people would make fun of them, you know, this man with a mattress on, this man with a bustle on his face. You know, people would compare the mask to a bustle, which is part of a woman's dress, and it was very, you know, very insulting. And a lot of catchers had a really hard time adjusting to that.
CONAN: And the gloves were pretty primitive by today's standards, but even the first ones were no more than just a pad, I guess, on the palm of the hand. The fingers were left exposed.
MORRIS: Exactly. Because the idea was you really - you had to catch the ball with both hands and then throw it with one. So catchers would have really very light gloves on both hands. And often they just cut the fingers off altogether because the idea was you would catch it, you would catch it like a spring, kind of like a receiver catches the ball where you just - you let it hit your hands and your hands moved back. And then you have to immediately adjust into the throwing position. So again, very much like a gunslinger.
CONAN: And it's interesting. As you talk about this, the catcher today has regained some of that reputation from those days.
MORRIS: I think so. I think the catcher's toughness is really recognized. And also, the catcher's unique position, as somebody who's part of the offense and part of the defense, plays a key role in what the pitcher throws and the pitcher's ability to throw, you know, particularly balls in the dirt, which are very hard.
You know, if you don't have a good catcher back there, then the whole team is lost. And so I think the catcher has really started to regain the reputation of being a key contributor to both, and I think that's why so many great managers are former catchers.
CONAN: We've been talking about Deacon White, the newest member of baseball's Hall of Fame. Baseball historian Peter Morris, thanks very much for your time today.
MORRIS: You're very welcome. Thank you.
CONAN: Peter Morris wrote the book "Catcher: How the Man Behind the Plate Became an American Folk Hero" and joined us from the studios at Michigan Radio in Ann Arbor. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


- Historic Sites
The Great Diamond Fraud
Two slick miners fooled Tiffanys and Rothschilds until a geologist found the fake “mountain of gems”
February 1956 | Volume 7, Issue 2
In England, Baron Rothschild was watching developments. After the testimony of Tiffany and Janin, the Baron ordered his agents to get control of the gem enterprise. Ralston laughed at this move but he had Rothschild’s agent, A. Gansel, elected to the board of directors.
Meanwhile, Arnold and Slack decided they had had enough of the last company. After showing several corporation officials how to locate the diamond field, they sold out. They took for their interest $300,000 each and a percentage of the future profits.
King and Gardner still were sure that the mine was fraudulent, and they decided that they must talk to Henry Janin. Since they did not expect Janin to want to talk to them, they learned where he customarily ate dinner and waited for two days until he appeared. When he entered the restaurant, King invited Janin to eat with them.
To their astonishment, Janin opened the conversation by asking if they had heard about the Arizona diamond discovery. He was proud that his name was associated with it.
He related that the journey on horseback had followed an erratic course. Even with their blindfolds, he could tell that at times Arnold and Slack seemed lost. Perplexed, they argued about the position of the sun; Arnold left the party to climb a high peak in search of landmarks. Long after the San Franciscans were ready to give up the search, the guides removed their blindfolds and announced that they had reached their goal. The spot was at a high elevation, about 7,000 feet above sea level, and near a conical mountain.
Immediately all fatigue and irritation disappeared. The party began to scratch and dig where Arnold and Slack pointed. Within ten minutes a San Franciscan found a diamond. Then they all began to have fantastic success. Diamonds were everywhere; occasionally the hunters found a ruby, a garnet, a sapphire, or an emerald. Janin swore that twenty rough laborers could wash out a million dollars’ worth of diamonds per month indefinitely.
When Janin was spent, King and Gardner began a cross-examination. “Of course, you know exactly where the place is?” King asked.
“No. No, I don’t. I was taken a long distance on a train, about 36 hours. Then we left the railroad at some small station where there was no attendant. We were brought out of the station blindfolded and put on horses which our guides secured in some way. For two days we rode, and at last they took our blinds off when we got to this mountain. If I hadn’t gone through it all myself, I should hardly believe it.”
“Why?” Gardner asked.
“It’s a curious place, a desert with a conical but flattopped mountain rising right out of it, and on the mountain you find everything from garnets to diamonds!”
King then commented, “It’s a pity you had such had weather to ride in.”
“Why, we had splendid weather,” Janin said. “In fact, we had the sun in our laces for the entire two days during the trip; it was quite too hot.”
When the mining expert left, King explained to Gardner why he had asked Janin about the weather, Janin was fooled about the mine’s location, or he had not been entirely frank with them. It was impossible to get to Arizona by a 36-hour train trip followed by a two-day ride on horseback. Thirty-six hours on the Central Pacific would have taken the party east of Promontory Point in Utah and on into Wyoming. This checked with some information they had about rainfall. Almost all the mountainous areas in Nevada and Utah had been covered with rains and storms at the time of the trip, yet Janin had said that his trip was dry. Only southwestern Wyoming and northern Utah had escaped the deluge. The party must have been traveling generally southward since Janin made such a point about facing the sun for the entire day. Unless they had wound and twisted a great deal, two days’ trip to the south would have taken them into Utah.
King and Gardner studied their maps. They had a faint recollection ol the mountain Janin had described, but neither could place it exactly. In a few minutes, they found such a mountain on the edge of the Uinta Range east of Salt Lake City, which they had surveyed only a year before.
Thirty-six hours later, King arrived at Rawlings Springs, near what is now Green River, Wyoming. Here he hired an elderly German prospector who had some horses to carry the barometers, transits, sextants, food and books King found necessary for all his trips. King and the German cut across Red Canyon and the valley of the Green River and up into the gulches and ravines of the Uinta foothills, about 140 miles east of Salt Lake City. Finally they climbed onto the mountain of their destination, Table Rock, a plateau of 6,840 feet elevation. They arrived on November 2.
At first they found nothing. Quickly satisfied that their search was profitless. King quit scratching around in the rocks and began to took supper; the old prospector, however, still continued digging, just as the meal was ready, the German called from a spot several hundred feet from their camp site. He had discovered what |an!n and the San Francisco reports had promised: raw diamonds, emeralds, rubies and sapphires.
The geologist and the prospector pitched camp and went to bed, but neither of them slept much. At sunrise, the prospector was again scurrying around picking up the valuable stones. Suddenly he held up a stone and shouted, “Look, Mr. King. This diamond field not only produces diamonds but cuts them also!”