Artificial Intelligence had its ups and downs in the last 50 years. Early success solving small problems in simulation ignited a flurry of predictions about super intelligent machines taking over the world before the coming of the 21st century. Hampered by a lack of a good understanding of how commonsense reasoning works in people and a lack of computational resources, computers being very slow up until the mid nineties, AI research stalled in the 80s. Many people rushed to dismiss it as nothing more than hot air.

However, science is all about proposing and testing new theories in order to find the best ones. Since the mid-90s, AI research has advanced by leaps and bounds. We now have a better understanding of how the human brain works and that has helped us to find and test better computational models for AI. These in turn have also helped us to better understand the functions of the human brain. New techniques such as statistical analysis are helping intelligent agents to copy with large amounts of information and noisy sensors. Faster computers with vast amounts of storage are allowing us to experiment in more challenging domains and solve larger problems.

It is true that AI has not yet been able to produce a machine capable of commonsense reasoning. However, by specialization, many AI systems are actually running our world today. AI helps us fly airplanes and drive our cars. It aids doctors perform surgery. It helps us find information in the vastness of the World Wide Web. It helps us discover spam email and promptly delete it. It helps us schedule traffic lights and public transportation. It helps us analyze financial markets and make predictions about the outcome of sports events. It aids in surveillance of public spaces improving security and safety. These are only a small sample of the penetration of intelligent systems in our daily lives. Artificial Intelligence is here to stay and I bet it won’t be long before we have the understanding, methods and resources to finally construct thinking and learning machines. Let us wish and hope that such technology would only be used to benefit mankind and not destroy it.

You can find lots of information about AI’ and its50th birthday on the Internet. However, I think that best reading about this topic is the 1955 proposal for the AI workshop. You can read it here.

Artificial Intelligence is 50 years old is a post from: 101 Spa Education Site

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) describes 12 ideal “prototypes” of personality disorders. It provides lists of seven to nine personality traits per each disorder. These are called “diagnostic criteria”. Whenever five of these criteria are met, a qualified mental health diagnostician can safely diagnose the existence of a personality disorder.

But important caveats apply.

No two people are alike. Even subjects suffering from the same personality disorder can be worlds apart as far as their backgrounds, actual conduct, inner world, character, social interactions, and temperament go.

Diagnosing the existence of a personality trait (applying the diagnostic criteria) is an art, not a science. Evaluating someone’s conduct, appraising the patient’s cognitive and emotional landscape, and attributing motivation to him or her, is a matter of judgment. There is no calibrated scientific instrument that can provide us with an objective reading of whether one lacks empathy, is unscrupulous, is sexualizing situations and people, or is clinging and needy.

Regrettably, the process is inevitably tainted by value judgments as well. Mental health practitioners are only human (well, OK, some of them are…:o)). They hail from specific social, economic, and cultural backgrounds. They do their best to neutralize their personal bias and prejudices but their efforts often fail. Many critics charge that certain personality disorders are “culture-bound”. They reflect our contemporary sensitivities and values rather than invariable psychological entities and constructs.

Thus, someone with the Antisocial Personality Disorder is supposed to disrespect social rules and regard himself as a free agent. He lacks conscience and is often a criminal. This means that non-conformists, dissenters, and dissidents can be pathologized and labeled “antisocial”. Indeed, authoritarian regimes often incarcerate their opponents in mental asylums based on such dubious “diagnoses”. Moreover, crime is a career choice. Granted, it is a harmful and unpalatable one. But since when is one’s choice of vocation a mental health problem?

If you believe in telepathy and UFOs and have bizarre rituals, mannerisms, and speech patterns, you may be diagnosed with the Schizotypal Personality Disorder. If you shun others and are a loner, you may be a Schizoid. And the list goes on.

To avoid these pitfalls, the DSM came up with a multi-axial model of personality evaluation.

Diagnosing Personality Disorders is a post from: 101 Spa Education Site

Byron departed from England leaving a trail of scandal over his marital conduct and since then saw himself as an exiled expatriate. Shelley was expelled from Oxford and he fell in disgrace by marrying an in-keepers daughter; he always struggled to reconcile his origin with his political ideas: Shelley could find no way of resolving his own contradictory opinions (Cronin, 2000).

This icon of the fallen aristocrat is rooted on another character revered by romantic poets: the fallen angel. As Mario Praz proves, miltonic Satan became the rebel figure of choice among romantic poets. Milton reversed the medieval idea of a hideous Satan and wrapped its figure with the epic grandeur of an angel fallen in disgrace. Many of the byronic heros share with Miltons Satan this fallen-from-grace condition, such as Lara: “There was in him a vital scorn of all:/
As if the worst had fall’n which could befall,/ stood a stranger in this breathing world,/An erring spirit from another hurld” ( Lara XVIII 315-16)

There is another social factor that is behind the formation of the romantic myth of the vampire. In the early nineteen century, the foundations of what would later become a mass society were laid; the expansion of the press and of the reading public produced an increased diffusion for literary works and fostered movements such as the gothic and the sensation novel. Byron himself experienced the event of being turned into a proto-bestseller. The unification of literary taste and preferences that was a correlate to this social changes could not be more alien to the romantic notion of individual gusto and original sensibility. In order to combat this unifying forces, romantic poets revered the individual who stands outside society and is free from common concerns. Many of Byrons heros look down on the masses from above, even though they walk among them and do not lean towards wordsworthian escapades into nature; they achieve to remain untainted by the masses in a sort of exile within the world akin to that of a ghost or a dammed spirit. This self-definition of Manfred is revelatory:

From my youth upwards
My spirit walkd not with the souls of men,
Nor lookd upon the earth with human eyes;
The thirst of their ambition was not mine,
The aim of their existence was not mine;
My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers
Made me a stranger; though I wore the form,
I had no sympathy with breathing flesh, (Manfred II, ii, 50-58)

Not only Byrons works contrived to produce the modern image of the vampire in relation to the Male Seducer archetype, but also some odd events in his life and the life of those surrounding him exercised a decisive influence. A critical study bundled with an anthology of vampire tales (Conde de Siruela, 2001) attributes to the short story The Vampire (1819) by John William Polidori the fixation of the classical images of the literary vampire as a villanious, cold and enigmatic aristocrat; but, above all, perverse and fascinating for women. Mario Praz, in the same line, also states that Byron was largely responsible for the vogue of vampirism. Polidori was the unfortunate doctor and personal assistant of Lord Byron who died half-crazy at 25. The idea for the tale published in 1819 came from the famous meetings at Villa Diodati on June 1816 between Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Shelley and Polidori, in what was probably the most influential gathering for fantastic fiction in the history of modern literature. In order to pass the stormy and ether-fuelled nights, they agreed to write each one a ghost story. Mary Shelley (who was then 17 years old) got during these nights the idea of what later became Frankenstein and Polidori wrote the tale The Vampire that he would publish three years later. The story appeared in the New Monthly Magazine falsely attributed by the editor to Lord Byron (taking advantages of the aura of Satanism that surrounded the poet in the popular view to promote the sales of the magazine). A misguided Goethe hailed the story as the best that Lord Byron had ever written. The tale was, actually, a covert portrait of Lord Byron disguised as the vampire Lord Ruthven, a cruel gambler and killer of innocent girls. Polidori had introduced in the story fragments from an autobiographical and revengeful novel called Glenarvon written by Caroline Lamb, an ex-lover of Byron. The Lords reaction was a threat to the editor and the denouncing of a commercial imposture with his name. Eventually Stokers Dracula (1897) blended, according to Siruela (2001), this tradition derived from Polidoris Lord Ruthven with some old romano-hungarian tales of wandering dead and enchanted castles, fixating thus the modern images of the vampire.

The vampire is closely linked to another romantic archetype: the dissatisfied lover. Rafael Argullol summarizes its traits: el enamorado romntico reconoce en la consumacin amorosa el punto de inflexin a partir del cual la pasin muestra su faz desposedora y exterminadora.. The romantic lover begins to feel a sense of dissatisfaction, caducity and mortality at the very moment when his passion is fulfilled. This feeling prompts him to embark in a sentimental rollercoaster where each peak of satisfaction is followed by a valley of despair and the impulse to seek satisfaction in a new object of love in order to renew the faded passion (the extreme of this attitude is the character of Don Juan). The vampire goes one step further than the seducer: for him the loved one stands as an image of his own dissatisfaction and it must be destroyed at the very moment when the longing for her disappears; at the instant of consummation. Again Byron in Manfred expresses this transference, which Argullol opportunely labels as romantic self-mirroring: I loved her, and destroy’d her! (211). Keats conveys in his Ode on Melancholy the feeling of mortality that is hidden in the moment of pleasure for the romantic: Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:/ Ay, in the very temple of Delight/Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,/ Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue/Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine. La belle dame sans merci is according to Argullol also a poem where vida y muerte se vivifican y complementan mutuamente [...] se hallan en total simbiosis. But there is a crucial difference between Byron and Keats in their approach to the fatal lover: Byrons characters are fatal males, epitomized in the vampire, while Keats characters are femmes fatales. This difference underlines a different attitude to gender issues: Byron liked to emanate a dominant masculinity which is imprinted in all his leading characters. Keats, however, had a passive approach to love, his poetic personas like to be seduced even if that means, as we have seen, to be killed. Byron is the male aristocrat who thinks all women are naturally his, they are his possessions and, as such, disposable at will. Keats, who disliked Byrons Don Juan – in a letter to his brother, he referred to it as Lord Byron’s last flash poem, announces a more modern and non-patriarchal approach to love where the woman is free to be the seducer. Nevertheless, as we have seen, they both share the extreme notion of love as creation and destruction at the same time; and their characters, though of different gender, are vampire lovers. This different attitude is not only personal but it mirrors a wider and epochal distinction. Mario Praz has observed how the fatal and cruel lovers of the first half of the nineteenth century are chiefly males, while in the second half of the century the roles are gradually inverted until late century decadentism is dominated by femmes fatales. This literary process mirrors the advancement of social changes throughout the century, and the slow but continuous emancipation of love from patriarchal standards. Gender issues shift focus, but power and domination remain at the core of the portrayals of love even in the fully bourgeoisie society of the late nineteenth century. Goodland (2000) has explored the role of women as a redundant class subject to another classes and the gender/class dialectic found in the vampire.

Not only Byron and Keats were fascinated by the myth of the vampire, but we can find its presence in most romantic poets, even in the proto-romantic early Goethe. A list of authors who use such characters made by Twitchell (1981) comprises: Southey in Thalaba the destroyer, Coleridge in Christabel and Wordsworth in The Leech Gatherer.

As we have seen throughout this paper the figure of the vampire is shaped in the romantic period under the form of an ideological knot where many social forces converge: the French Revolution, an embryonic mass society, the decline of aristocracy and the gradual shifting apart of gender divisions from the patriarchal model. Therefore, it constitutes a myth that may be read as a battleground for the play of discourses of its era, shedding light on other romantic attitudes towards existence. As such it is subject to an analysis that, as new historicisms maintain, is aware of the historicity of a text and the textuality of history.

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Vampires: the Romantic Ideology behind Them is a post from: 101 Spa Education Site

There are thousands of individuals and companies that, through e:mails or via internet web sites, offer to help you protect your assets from creditors, ex spouses and or taxing authorities. Many of these individuals and businesses help you protect your assets by having you take actions that can or will put you in violation of the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act. This could, in the long run, not only end up causing you to lose the assets that you were trying to protect but also cost you additional money in court costs, attorney’s fees or collection costs. Additionally, if you had a family member or friend help you, he or she could end up in court or having his or her credit harmed by having a judgment entered against him or her.

Many of these asset protection schemes involve transfering assets to someone you trust, a spouse, other family member, friend or a business that you form. As far as I can determin, if the creditor can prove that the transfer was done in order to avoid creditors, then under the Uniform Fraudulent Transfer Act the creditor has several remedies depending on the circumstances. These remedies can include causing a judgment to be entered against both you and the transferee, causing the property transfered to be attached or levied upon or causing a lein to be placed against the property. There are other remedies set by statute. The one thing that all of these remedies have in common is that you, the transferee or both of you could be held liable for the costs of obtaining and enforcing the remedy.

Note: Another thing to think about. Over the years I have been involved in numerous asset search and recovery matters where the person
that the bank account, collectibles, stocks, bonds, real estate or other assets were transfered to ended up closing out, selling or otherwise transfering or encumbering the assets, leaving the original owner with nothing. No matter how much you trust someone today you never know what the future will bring.

Other services offer to set up a revocable living trust. They state that the assets then will belong to the trust and be protected from your creditors. As any competent attorney will advise you, this theory is completely false. Since the assets placed in the trust are yours and since you control the trust then you and the trust are the same thing and a creditor can go after any assets placed in the trust. While a revocable living trust may not be a fraudulent transfer, neither is it a way to protect your assets from creditors.

I am not saying that all asset protection companies are worthless or might get you into trouble. I assume that there are some excellent and knowledgeable asset protection companies out there. I just would feel safer getting advice directly from an attorney.

The best way to find out if your assets can be protected and if protecting them is worth the cost is to seek the advice of an attorney who specializes is asset protection, debt collection, estate planning or, in certain cases, bankruptcy law. In some cases the attorney will provide a free or low cost consultation.

Note: I am not an attorney and none of the foregoing should be construed as legal advice. This article is written strictly as my opinion based on life experiences through both my personal life and my work as a private investigator dealing with attorneys in asset search and recovery matters. As in all matters of law you should always consult an attorney before taking on any legal endeavor.

Asset Protection And Fraudulent Transfer is a post from: 101 Spa Education Site

Of course the second language learner does not have these advantages. Even if you are now living in an English speaking country, and attending classes to learn English you will still have opportunity to speak and hear your first language with friends and family, this is especially true in America a county of immigrants where finding a community of people with the same language background is possible.

Another challenge is the expectation factor. For many years you have heard a speech pattern and there is an expectation of what you will hear when others speak. You are predicting what sounds will come next based on your subconscious knowledge of language. I call this listening with an accent. It is necessary to break through this barrier, to really hear how others are speaking, to actively listen.

To listen is to learn, and I dont mean that in an existential way. I really mean that if you cant hear the way the sounds are produced you cannot learn how to produce the sound. Maybe that is why ETS added speaking and listening sections to the TOEFL. The two skills are so closely linked.

Once you can hear the sounds you must add them to your own phonetic library. This means that you have in your mind the knowledge and understanding of how to produce every sound or phoneme in you original language. Now you must add on some sounds that are in the American sound system that is not in your original language sounds system. Record your self reading a brief paragraph. Only 2-3 sentences in English. Then listen to the recording. Write down exactly what you hear on the recording. Not what you meant to say but what you really did say. How is it different from what was written? Did you say th, when it was written or did you say d? I would suggest sticking with the consonants at first because the differences are easier to pinpoint.

If you would like to get help in improving your pronunciation it would be best to go to a speech therapist rather than an ESL teacher. Speech therapists are trained in physiology of the speech mechanisms and musculature. They understand what is involved in producing each sound and are trained to identify and work with articulation problems. Though an accent is not the same as an articulation problem they have similar characteristics. When a client has difficulty articulating specific sounds the speech therapist can hear and see what they are doing differently and describe and show how to do it correctly. When a client has an accent the speech therapist can see what the person is doing differently and show and describe how to make the sound so it more closely approximates the standard.

The most important advice I can give you is to keep practicing. At first it may feel like you are exaggerating when you speak with an American accent but I am sure that the native American speakers around you will not even notice. They will merely be impressed with your great diction!

English Pronunciation For The ESL Learner is a post from: 101 Spa Education Site

There are many options to weigh in such as: new school clothes, school supplies, peer pressure, after school care, homework, league sports, and transportation.

This is time of year for great changes, but here are two changes that will impact your child for life and require a bit of work and commitment on your part.

Expose your child or children to some kind of faith: The faith of your parents, your faith, your spouses faith, or the faith that you left behind. Set an example and start attending a temple, mosque, shrine, or church right now.

If your children have nothing to believe in, will they have a happy, productive, and successful life? You already know the answer to the question, and it requires work to teach children. Anybody can let years go by, and teach their children nothing.

Find a hobby that suits your child and have them stick to it. Oh no, more work! Yes, it is, but your child will benefit immensely from this decision.

It could be dance, Yoga, martial arts, music, gymnastics, boy scouts, girl scouts, or something else, but whatever it is, your child should initially like it. At that point have them make a commitment and dont allow them to quit unless there is a solid reason.

If a coach, teacher, or tutor is abusive, thats an understandable reason to leave, but you can always find another coach. In truth, if you allow laziness, in your child, you will receive it. Children will usually follow the path of least resistance, but they crave structure.

My experience has been: Children constantly turn their attitudes around, for the better, in martial arts and Yoga classes. Due to the fact, that there is a formal set of existing rules and a code of conduct.

Dont allow them to sit in a corner with a video game and a television, except for rare occasions. There are too many good things going on in the real world that need their attention.

These two changes will instill fortitude, perseverance, and goal-setting skills that last a lifetime. The rewards can be endless, for your whole family.

Back to School Responsibilities Again is a post from: 101 Spa Education Site

For many years, homeschooling was the purview of those families who lived in rural areas and found the cost and/or time it would take to transport their children to school unbearable. For these people, homeschooling was and continues to be the only real option when it comes to their childrens education. Many rural families have traditionally relied on their children to help around the house, and thus homeschooling allowed them to pursue their studies around the family schedule, and work and education could be fit into the day according to a suitable timetable.

Another traditional reason for families choosing the option of homeschool was a fundamental disagreement with what was or is being taught in other schooling environments. Chief among this group are families whose religious beliefs clash with the prevailing educational methods. Families who choose the option of homeschooling are not subject to the rigid curriculum of established schools, and there are many options when it comes to homeschool resources that can offer as wide or as narrow a field of study as far as worldviews that the parent wishes.

A more recent development in the reason people choose to homeschool their children is that of safety. School ground violence seems to be increasing, and that has many parents worried. They feel that the best way to keep their children away from harm is to keep them close.

Hand-in-hand with the safety issue is a concern for the childs self esteem. Bullying is a common issue within any school system, as any parent well remembers from their own school days. Many parents cannot bear the thought of throwing their children into the kind of system that breeds a pack mentality, and are choosing instead to have them educated at home.

A very recent development in the reasons for homeschooling is the fluidity in choices that homeschooling children allows. This is especially apparent in Generation X, who seem to be fairly insistent on independence and not being tied down to any one place or situation. Homeschooling eliminates the need to plan all vacations around established school holidays, as the pace is determined by the parent and child.

Finally, parents may choose to homeschool their children because they simply feel they can do a better job than any educational system. Parent of gifted children do not want to see the child wasted in the hard pressed for both resources and qualified teachers system that public schooling represents, and private schools are becoming increasingly unaffordable for the average family. Parents who believe their children need the advantages of a more intimate education are therefore turning to the option of homeschooling.

The rise in popularity of homeschooling has meant a corresponding rise in the materials available to the parent who chooses to homeschool. There are resources available to meet any educational needs, and with a little bit of homework a parent will find the curriculum they feel will best suit their childrens needs.

Compelling Reasons For Homeschooling is a post from: 101 Spa Education Site

Third World and Climate modification

By definition, climate modification impacts the globe as a whole. That being said, is it possible to predict specific results in certain regions of the world? While there is no definitive answer, the impact on third world countries in Asia and Africa has been the subject of much discussion. Lets take a look.

Africa is considered a third world continent because a vast majority of the African countries have underdeveloped economies and living standards. Unfortunately, Africa is also believed to be one of the most heavily impacted areas when it comes to climate modification. More than half the people in Africa live in rural areas with agricultural economies. These communities rely heavily on naturally occurring rain resources, to wit, planned irrigation is minimal. This, of course, results in the horrific famines we see on television. Climate modification is predicted to devastate Africa because it is believed the greenhouse effect will reduce the amount of rain received on the continent. As the Sahara Desert expands, less land will be available for farming and the problem will grow worse. Malnutrition from famines will lead to weak immune systems and disease will be prevalent. If the predictions are accurate, Africa could become a living nightmare.

Climate modification could devastate Asia as well. You might be surprised to learn that over 60 percent of the human population lives in greater Asia. This mass of humanity has stretched agricultural and health resources to the maximum. To top it off, large population centers sit right on the coastline in flat areas only a few feet above sea level.

If climate modification trends continue, we will be saying goodbye to large chunks of Asia. Cities such as Jakarta, Tokyo and Bangkok sit at sea level. If the melting polar caps result in a three foot rise in sea levels as predicted, these cities will be underwater. Countries such as Vietnam, Indonesia and Bangladesh are expected to lose 37,000 square miles of coastline under a similar situation. Over 34 million people will suddenly have to move to already congested population centers. Economies, health care and food supplies will undoubtedly reach critical levels.

Is there any good news when discussing the third world and climate modification? Yes. The first step is to put regulations in place that reduce greenhouse gases. Second, proactive planning must be undertaken to account for these potential effects of third world climate modification.

Asia, Africa and Climate Modification is a post from: 101 Spa Education Site

The University of Phoenix online program offers students the opportunity to achieve: Bachelors, Masters and Doctorate level degrees in the areas of: Business, Information Systems, Education, Nursing, and Technology at their own pace and from the comfort of home.

The Master of Business Administration program or MBA Online Degree Program offered by the University of Phoenix is designed to enable a student taking management courses, to gain or advance the skills needed to function effectively within an organization. Through specialized coursework developed to build and enhance these skills, students will create and defend solutions for problems in crisis management, profitable growth opportunities, and changes in leadership. Throughout the course of this program students will gain the knowledge and experience to turn volatile -situations into well-managed problems. Students will have the chance to apply different tools and concepts towards achieving this, as well as analyzing a variety of alternate solutions to common problems in management. Students will select a course of action for solving situations, and then defend their choice.

The Master of Business Program at the University of Phoenix employs the use of problem-based learning, where students can polish their problem-solving skills, as well as improve their communication, creativity, information processing, and critical thinking skills. Student progress is assessed by the students ability to demonstrate effectively through classroom presentations: their skills in problem-solving, communication, and critical thinking.

Students are grouped together in learning teams. These learning teams will apply the principles of benchmarking throughout the course to research the most creative solutions to any given problem. This gives a learner a broader selection of alternatives for solving problems.

The MBA Degree Program offered by the University of Phoenix consists of 39 credit hours and includes 3 proficiency courses. These are (MBA501, MBA502, MBA503) which may be satisfied through an undergraduate business degree, undergraduate coursework, or graduate coursework. Students may also waive 9 additional credits through graduate courses and may even qualify for a 21-hour residency. Ask your UOP Online Education Counselor, for more details about this waiver and residency, if you think you may qualify.

A review of The University of Phoenix Online MBA Degree is a post from: 101 Spa Education Site

But why are audio versions a convenient way to “read” a book?

1) You save time, because you can listen to an audio book anywhere and everywhere, and you can even do other things at the same time. You can listen when driving to and from work, when walking the dog, cycling, working around the house or at the computer, exercising, and so on. The possibilities are endless.

According to a recent survey, in the USA a person is driving an average of 1 hour and 13 minutes daily, which means over 440 hours a year for each driver, or 11 full-time work weeks. This is huge! Imagine how many things you could learn during this time by simply having your MP3 player with audio books at hand.

2) If you love reading but don’t have a enough time, audio books can give you the opportunity to read many more books that you would otherwise have time for. Audio books are a great way to fill the “dead” moments we all have in our lives.

3) Audio books are good for older, ill or recovering people and can be a wonderful gift for someone in a nursing institution. This is a gift they can remember and enjoy time after time.

4) Audio books can be a blessing for blind people, disabled people or people with impaired vision. Everyone should have the chance to experience and enjoy a book and in many cases, this is the only way for such persons to do it.

Spoken books can help these people improving their education, help them developing new hobbies and habits and greatly enriching their life, both personally and professionally.

5) The most important skill a child can ever acquire is probably the ability to read, and audio books can be easily used to stimulate literacy in children. Books can be listened to by children while following the story in the paper book. Or they could listen just to gain and improve vocabulary and communication skills. If you want to instill in your child the love of reading, audio books can be a excellent start.

There are many more benefits of using audio books, but even these few reasons should be enough to convince you to enter the exciting world of the spoken books.

5 Good Reasons For Choosing An Audio Book is a post from: 101 Spa Education Site