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Introduction to Philosophy/What is a Person

At one time the general view in some religious societies was that people had souls, which, when they died went to heaven or hell, or else were reborn. The soul was considered the essential core of what a person was. This idea is perhaps less fashionable now, but it forms the basis of most religious beliefs. This belief in the separation of mind and body is known today as dualism.

Current scientific thought tends toward the alternate view: monism. Bodies are viewed as complex biological entities responsible for all behaviors and thought processes they express. Since no evidence for a soul exists, only the physical entity remains for consideration. To say that X now and Y then are the same person is to say that there is bodily spatio-temporal continuity between them.

The question of personal identity, which was first raised by Locke and later expanded on by Leibniz, would at first seem trivial in nature. When looking at a person or an object one can easily trace that person throughout his life. If I place a pen behind my back and then pull it back out again it is obviously the same pen. Problems arise when we discuss cases where this is not so straightforward.

Let us return to the example of the person; from the time you are born to the time you die you change a large portion of the matter in your body, are you then the same person? A tree that grows from a nut shares the same thing in common throughout its entire life, mainly its origin, however is it always the same 'tree?' How about when it is just a nut, or firewood behind my house. When does an object cease to be an object and become a different object?

Perhaps the most famous historical example comes from the ship of Theseus. The ship of Theseus has 100 parts to it, and within the hold are contained 100 replacement parts. The ship sets sail on a voyage and on the first day out the captain discovers there is a problem with a piece of the boat so he replaces it with the one in the hold. The next thing happens on the next day, and the next, etc. At the end of 100 days the ship returns to port with every piece of it having been exchanged with its correlating piece in the hold. Is the ship the same ship? What if the captain emptied the hold and built a new ship with the parts that were originally the ship of Theseus, would those be the ship of Theseus or would it be the ship he sailed into port with?

Concerning personal identity at what point does a person cease to be a person? If your arm is chopped off are you still a person, still the same person? What do I need to remove in order to take away your personhood?

The question of what makes a person is charged with all types of implications. For example, is an unborn human a "person?" Ask a pro-lifer and you will likely get one answer; conversely, ask someone from Planned Parenthood and you will almost inevitably get another. If an unborn human is a "person," at what point does it become recognizable as a person? Is it, perhaps, implicit in the being? What, then, differentiates between an unborn human from an unborn chicken? Both contain similar levels of sentience at the time, it would seem. Many questions like these are raised no matter which definition of personhood is used.

Freedom of the Will and the Concept of a Person
Harry Frankfurt (1929- ), wrote, "[The criteria for being a person] are designed to capture those attributes which are the subject of our most humane concern with ourselves and the source of what we regard as most important and most problematical in our lives." In philosophy, "what is a person?" is not a question of biology, but a question of other attributes. Harry Frankfurt says that one of those attributes is the structure of the will.

Within the Free-will Debate, there are three main schools of thought: Hard Determinism, Soft Determinism and Libertarianism. These schools are divided over two issues, Determinism vs. Indeterminism and Compatibilism vs Incompatibilism. In the terms of the free will debate, determinism is the view that the decision-making parts of the human brain are not fundamentally random, whereas indeterminism is the view that those decision-making parts of the brain are fundamentally random. Compatibilism holds that humans can make free-willed decisions even if our decision systems are not random, while incompatibilism holds that we can only have free will if our decision processes are random.

The debate is complicated by the fact that some writers use the term "determinism" interchangeably with "hard-determinism." Determinism is a condition of a group of objects (a "system") such that its state at time t-0 determines its state at time t-1, t-1 being the moment in time that comes immediately after t-0. A determinist about free will believes that the decision making system in the human brain is just such a system. A hard-determinist believes this and one other thing, namely, that the fact that someone's decisions are determined (by their desires and so on) somehow means that they do not have free will. Thus it is important to carefully distinguish between these two terms, and to remember that a person who believes in determinism is not necessarily a person who disbelieves in free will.

Another complication stems from the fact that some writers believe that lack of determinism ("indeterminism") is a fundamental randomness in which the state of something at time t-0 does not determine the state, or even the existence of that thing at t-1, thus making control impossible, while other writers believe that indeterministically brained human beings can still control what they do at t-1, even if their brain states at t-1 have absolutely no relationship to their immediately preceding t-0 brain states. (Writers who hold the former view tend to be soft determinists, while libertarians seem to tend to take the latter view. Hard determinists can take either view.)

Incompatibilists argue that in order for a person to have free will, under all of the same conditions, it must be the case that one would follow different courses of action. For example, let us imagine I go to the ice cream store wanting chocolate ice cream. With all of my inner states and psychological states and every condition remaining the same, it must be the case that I would order EITHER the chocolate OR the Neapolitan, in order to have free-will. For instance, if it is the case that I love chocolate and hate Neapolitan, me ordering chocolate because I wanted chocolate ice cream would not be a free-willed action because it was determined by the fact I wanted chocolate ice cream. Incompatibilists argue that I could only have free will if me going into the ice cream store wanting chocolate and hating Neapolitan could result in me ordering Neapolitan even though I wanted chocolate and hate Neapolitan.

In contrast, compatibilists argue that in order for a person to have free-will, they must decide what they do without coercion. If I go to the ice cream store wanting ice cream, compatibilists hold that my choice to order chocolate being determined by my firm desire for chocolate does not make it not a free willed action. Rather, compatibilsts believe that what robs people of free will is coercion. If a crazed tourist from Naples held a gun to my head and made me order Neapolitan instead of my beloved chocolate, my ordering the Neapolitan ice cream would not be a free willed action.

Hard Determinists accept determinism and incompatibilism, believing that human decisions are not random, and that this nonrandomness rules out free will. Soft Determinists accept determinism and compatibilism, believing that human decisions are not random, and that this nonrandomness does not rule out free will. (Some soft determinists believe that randomness in human decision making would make free will impossible.) Libertarians accept indeterminism and incompatibilism, believing that human decisions are random, that this randomness does not rule out free will, and in fact that randomness actually allows free will.

Determinists hold that, if a particular system is deterministic, its immediately next state will be exactly determined by its present state. This means that, in a deterministic system given any particular set of circumstances, the immediately succeeding set of following outcomes or events are determined, guaranteed by the laws of nature. Everything in nature is made up of atoms that behave according to the laws of nature, and we are no different. Determinism is the view that everything happens necessarily due to the circumstances that precede it; Hard determinism is the dual view that this is true and that people are unable to truly make their own decisions. Incompatibilism is the view that, if the laws of nature determine what people will do under certain circumstances (circumstances which were themselves determined by the circumstances that immediately preceded them), people cannot have free will.

Everything we know about science and the physical world points to determinism being true under virtually all observable circumstances. However, certain interpretations of quantum mechanics hold that some events are fundamentally random, which means it is possible that some brain events are random. This in turn means that it is at least theoretically possible that some human decisions could be random, as in the case of a person who decides to order chocolate ice cream but instead, for no reason, orders Neapolitan.

Libertarians believe that the everyday experiential evidence that people have free-will proves that human decisions are not determined. Soft determinists agree that the evidence overwhelmingly supports the idea that free will exists, but that the fact that human beings at least sometimes determine their own actions does not prove that those actions are not determined. Some soft determinists argue that the fact that someone determines her own action proves that the action was determined (by her).

Libertarians argue that people can only deliberate about choices that are truly up to them, and that this fact proves that human actions are not determined. Soft determinists reply that deliberation is not a random sequence of events, but a deterministic process in which a human brain comes to a decision caused by the person's needs, preferences and desires.

Libertarians sometimes refer to the basic feeling they have that tells them they are making things happen. Soft determinists reply that this feeling is correct, and that it reflects the fact that the person's brain is recognizing needs, forming preferences, making decisions and then initiating actions based on those decisions, none of which could happen if the brain was inderterministic, which is to say, random.

People feel like they are making my own choices, and that they are free to pick among different alternatives. These feelings are cause by the fact that I experience myself forming forming preferences based on my feelings, forming desires based on my preferences, making decisions based on my aggregated desires, and performing actions from those decisions. Libertarians, who hold that human behavior is not subject to cause-and-effect, cannot explain this orderly one-thing-leads-to-another process, and thus this experience of choosing is a strong argument against libertarianism.

Throughout history, the majority of philosophers have found middle-ground, and argued that free-will and determinism are compatible. David Hume is a good example of this. Hume argued that people are free as long as they are doing what they want to do. I may not be able to really make my own choice (in the way that hard-determinists and libertarians mean), but as long as I wanted the chocolate ice cream, and that desire determined that I would choose it, I have free will.

Back to Harry Frankfurt. He believes that causation really has nothing to do with freedom of the will and personhood. Frankfurt constructs a hierarchy of desires and volitions. A first order desire is wanting to do something. Mostly every creature has this type of desire. "I want to eat." A second order desire is the want to be different, or to have different first order desires. This self-evaluation, Frankfurt says, is a mostly human trait. A step up from that is a second order volition, that is, when someone wants a certain desire to be his will. Frankfurt says that these volitions are characteristics of people, whereas "wantons" are creatures without these volitions, creatures who do not care about their will and are moved simply by their desires.

These theories, along with others, still exist and are in conflict to this day.

This question must be answered before we can even begin to think about whether it might be possible to build a person. The English term, "person," is ambiguous. We often use it as a synonym for "human being." But surely that is not what we intend here. It is possible that there are aliens living on other planets that have the same cognitive abilities that we do (e.g., E.T., Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, the famous "bar scene" from Star Wars). Imagine aliens that speak a language, make moral judgments, create literature and works of art, etc. Surely aliens with these properties would be "persons"—which is to say that it would be morally wrong to buy or sell them as property the way we do with dogs and cats or to otherwise use them for our own interests without taking into account the fact that they are moral agents with interests that deserve the same protection that ours do. Thus, one of our primary interests is to distinguish persons from property. A person is the kind of entity that has the moral right to make its own life-choices, to live its life without (unprovoked) interference from others. Property is the kind of thing that can be bought and sold, something I can "use" for my own interests. [Of course when it comes to animals, there are serious moral constraints on how they may be "used." We urge you to learn about the philosophical debates concerning the ethical treatment of animals and whether animals may not themselves have extensive rights not commonly accorded them in our society.] Persons are not to be treated as property. Henceforth, we shall define a person as follows:

PERSON = "any entity that has the moral right of self-determination." So then, any entity judged to be a person would be the kind of thing that would deserve protection under the constitution of a just society. For example, you might think that any such being would have the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." One of the primary philosophical questions that concerns us in the PT-Project is: What properties must an entity possess to be a "person"? Many properties have been suggested: Intelligence, the capacity to speak a language, creativity, the ability to make moral judgments, consciousness, free will, a soul, self-awareness. . and the list could go on almost indefinitely.

Free-will and Ethics
There is a definite link between ideas of free-will and ideas of ethics and responsibility. Libertarians and Determinists mostly agree that in order for a person to be held responsible for her/his actions, that person must have made the decision to carry out said action. This translates to philosophy of law. We generally do not hold someone responsible for a crime if we do not consider him/her to be the "owner of his actions". For example, if a man with schizophrenia shoots someone in a fit of hallucinogenic rage, we do not believe it was his fault, and we consider him "not guilty by reason of insanity". There can be no blame, nor praise, in a world without freedom of the will.

However, some compatibilists, namely Hume, claim that people can be held responsible for their actions only when they are not free. In his essay "Of Liberty and Necessity", Hume offers a disjunctive syllogism. He claims that either the actions of humanity are pre-determined (like everything else in this world), or else human actions are random and chaotic. He goes on to say that if human action is random, if my actions do not come from my character but only from chance, then there is no ethical responsibility. I cannot be held responsible if my actions do not come from me. However, if everything is pre-determined, then at least my actions are coming from my psychological and metaphysical states. At least then it can be said that my character is causing me to act in a certain way.

Hume, for the most part, lost this battle, mostly because Richard Taylor defeated Hume's syllogism and offered a third alternative: Agent Causation, the notion that a person can cause an event to happen. This is arguably different from determinism and the idea of random, chaotic action. However, even this notion can be countered by determinists who can argue that though a person can be said to have caused an event, the person cannot make the decision that causes the event without relying on the beliefs and desires that followed naturally, or deterministically, from past experience and genetics. If the person's actions do not follow directly from beliefs and desires developed from past experience and genetics, we come full circle and must accept that the world is random and chaotic.


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Talk:Introduction to Philosophy/What is a Person

I have put up an initial stub for this page.

Perhaps I have more to say about personal identity than person per se. I'll say more if you want me to. I feel I know enough about this area to have a point of view about it. And that could render me liable to charges of bias. Even my reading list is biassed, though I haven't gone as far as referring to my own MPhil dissertation, which is perhaps an imperfect document.

--publunch 18:19, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I added to your stub. I personally felt it necessary for an intro to philosophy text to mention the free-will debate, and I thought this was the best place for it. --Mike

Sorry, I didn't have a Wiki account when I did the edit. But here I am now... --poetreason

In para 8 of Identity Theory there is a reference to something called Planned Parenthood. Can someone enlighten me as to what this is? 62.253.64.14 10:56, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Meeting Basics/Resources

English
More or less useful information can be found on the following sites:
 * Meeting Wizard
 * Effective Meetings

Dutch
Voor gevorderden is het volgende boek een aanrader, het is een uitgebreide verhandeling over de kunst van het overtuigen, politiek, liefde, beschaving en de daaraan ten grondslag liggende ruil principes:

title: Meeting Basics/Resources


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Talk:Handbook of Descriptive Statistics

I removed these means: Because I don't think they are really used in statistics, but rather in analysis, etc.
 * 1) Arithmetic-Geometric Mean
 * 2) Geometric-Harmonic Mean
 * 3) Generalized Mean
 * 4) Quadratic Mean

If I'm wrong, please add them back.

title: Talk:Handbook of Descriptive Statistics


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Biblical Studies/Bible Topics/The Kingdom

 * Isaiah 2:1-4 This is what Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

2:2 It shall happen in the latter days, that the mountain of Yahweh’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; and all nations shall flow to it. 2:3 Many peoples shall go and say, “Come, let’s go up to the mountain of Yahweh, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths.” For out of Zion the law shall go forth, and the word of Yahweh from Jerusalem. 2:4 He will judge between the nations, and will decide concerning many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.

 * Daniel 2:44 In the days of those kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed, nor shall its sovereignty be left to another people; but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.

 * Daniel 7:18 But the saints of the Most High shall receive the kingdom, and possess the kingdom forever, even forever and ever.
 * Judges 6;09 When hope  comes, this is my kingdom, our perffersins, and our hearts to be brave, and our love.


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Talk:General Biology/Cells/Cell Structure

TIVI Finding Cancer Cells Faster
Researchers at the University of Illinois have used a new microscopy technique, termed nonlinear interferometric vibrational imaging (NIVI), and produced color coded images of tissue, showing clear tumor boundaries, with more than 99% confidence in less than five minutes.

Current diagnostic methods require a day or more to show biopsy results, and are based on visual interpretations of cell structure. NIVI can assist in making diagnostics faster and more quantitative. Instead of focusing on cell structure and tissue structure, NIVI constructs images based on molecular composition, which is much clearer than the current visual method used by pathologists. Cancer cells produce more protein, a useful fact that NIVI uses to identify cancer cells, without relying on the staining method used currently. Another advantage of NIVI is that it shows a better mapping of tumor boundaries, the uncertain boundary zone of NIVI being only 100 microns.

Since each type of molecule has its own unique vibrational energy, enhancing the resonance of that vibration is used by NIVI to identify cells with high concentrations of that molecule. Two beams of light are used to excite molecules in a tissue sample. One beam serves as a reference, so that background noise can be cancelled and the molecular signal can be isolated. The resulting spectrum produces a color coded image for the tissue (for example, blue for normal cells, red for cancer cells).

Further improvements to NIVI are being worked on. Other light sources (different lasers) may make NIVI portable. The research is sponsored by The National Cancer Institute.

References

P. D. Chowdary, Z. Jiang, E. J. Chaney, W. A. Benalcazar, D. L. Marks, M. Gruebele, S. A. Boppart. Molecular Histopathology by Spectrally Reconstructed Nonlinear Interferometric Vibrational Imaging. Cancer Research, 2010; DOI: 10.1158/0008-5472.CAN-10-1554

Not to be rude, but what does this have to to do with general biology for high school students? Svrangerchrista (discuss • contribs) 21:11, 23 April 2017 (UTC)


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Talk:Wi-Fi/Cantenna

Hi ,

my final project now is to buikld and test those kind of antennas .. i hope i do well ... im seeing it interesting .. experiment always good

title: Talk:Wi-Fi/Cantenna


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User talk:24.251.242.236

I deleted the page as simple vandalism, as it was full of disinformation. It is no better than the junk posted to wikipedia by Michael or the B-Movie Bandit. Gentgeen 06:31, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

title: User talk:24.251.242.236


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What You Should Know About Medicines/Why Medicines?

What You Should Know About Medicines

Medicine is a substance (not a device) that is used in treatment of conditions of the human body. Medicines are used to relieve pain, prevent progression of disease or alleviate the symptoms of conditions. In the area of infectious disease, they may cure the illness. Examples where medications allow resumption of normal body functions would be treatment of diabetes, thyroid deficiencies, or sex hormone deficiencies.

Medicines in the United States today are prescribed by experienced clinicians, whose ability to prescribe is subject to state licensing laws. In most states they include Doctors of Medicine, Doctors of Osteopathic Medicine, and Doctors of Podiatric Medicine (Physicians), Nurse Practitioners, Physician Assistants, and in rare cases, Pharmacists themselves. All clinicians have undergone training, though Physicians have had the most extensive training in a medical school, and have developed an extensive body of knowledge expanded over the years.


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Cookbook:Poaching

Poaching is a method of cooking that employs a liquid, usually a small amount, that is hot but not actually bubbling. The French term is frisonne – shivering. The ideal temperature is between 160F and 180F (75-80C). The cooking liquid is often water, but broth, stock, milk or juice can also be used.

Delicate foods such as fish, eggs out of the shell, or fruits are commonly cooked by poaching. The cooking method is also used to partially cook certain foods such as sweetbread in order to eliminate undesirable flavors and to firm the product before final cooking.

It should be noted that the term is occasionally used to describe foods that have been boiled or simmered.

Tips for poaching

 * Use a thermometer to gauge the temperature of the cooking liquid or watch for bubbling and adjust the heat as necessary.
 * Do not allow the food being cooked to touch the bottom of the pan or it may cook too rapidly or burn.
 * When poaching eggs, add a splash of vinegar to the water. This will help quickly firm the egg white so multiple eggs can be cooked at once without all sticking together.

Whirlpool method

 * 1) Choose fresh eggs: Fresh eggs have a tighter egg white, making them easier to poach. Avoid using older eggs as they tend to spread out more in the water.
 * 2) Bring water to a simmer: Fill a large saucepan with water, about 2-3 inches deep. Heat the water over medium-low heat until it reaches a gentle simmer. Avoid boiling the water, as it can be too aggressive for poaching.
 * 3) Add vinegar and salt (optional): Adding a splash of white vinegar (about one tablespoon per liter/quart of water) can help coagulate the egg white, resulting in a neater poached egg. You can also add a pinch of salt for seasoning at this stage.
 * 4) Create a gentle whirlpool: Using a spoon or whisk, create a gentle whirlpool in the simmering water. This motion will help the egg form a neater shape as it cooks.
 * 5) Crack the egg: Carefully crack an egg into a small bowl or cup. This will make it easier to slide the egg into the water without breaking the yolk.
 * 6) Slide the egg into the whirlpool: Gently and slowly slide the cracked egg into the center of the whirlpool. The swirling water will help wrap the egg white around the yolk.
 * 7) Set a timer: Depending on your preference, poach the egg for about 3-4 minutes for a soft, runny yolk or 5-6 minutes for a firmer yolk. The timing may vary slightly based on the size of the egg and the temperature of the water.
 * 8) Check for doneness: Using a slotted spoon, carefully lift the poached egg out of the water and inspect it for the desired level of doneness. The egg white should be fully set, and the yolk should have the desired consistency.
 * 9) Drain and serve: If the egg is done to your liking, remove it from the water with the slotted spoon and let it drain briefly on a paper towel or kitchen towel. This will remove any excess water. Serve the poached egg immediately while it's still warm.

Hole technique

 * 1) Heat water to just under simmering.
 * 2) With a pushpin, carefully pierce one end of the egg.
 * 3) Place egg on a large spoon, and lower it gently into the water.  Keep submerged for 20-30 seconds.  Some egg protein may start to come out of the hole in "streamers".
 * 4) Raise spoon, gently crack egg, and drop into water.

Pre-cooking the egg by letting some hot water inside the shell will result in a firmer egg once opened, and it will be less likely to come apart in the water while cooking.

Kochbuch/ Techniken/ Pochieren Kookboek/Pocheren

title: Cookbook:Poaching


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Cookbook:Sweetbread

| Basic foodstuffs | Organ Meat

Sweetbread is the genteel name of the meat of the thymus and pancreas of a young calf. Sweetbreads are noted and prized for their flavor and texture. Sweetbreads have nothing to do with bread and they are not sweet.

The thymus is known as neck sweetbread.

The pancreas is known as stomach sweetbread.

The testicles are known as sweetmeat, not sweetbread.

title: Cookbook:Sweetbread


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Cookbook:Fenugreek

| Herbs and Spices

Fenugreek, or Trigonella foenum-graecum, is a plant used as herb and spice.

Characteristics
The seeds of the plant are light brown and resemble small bits of gravel. Their characteristic flavor and aroma comes from sotolon, which is reminiscent of caramelized sugar and imitation maple flavor. They also have secondary notes that some describe as musty or mushroom-like. The leaves are much milder in flavor than the seeds.

Selection and storage
Fresh fenugreek leaves are perishable and should be stored in the fridge for a few days like other leafy greens. Dried fenugreek leaves keep well at room temperature. Fenugreek seeds keep for a very long time (months to years) at room temperature if kept in an airtight container away from light, heat, and moisture. Ground fenugreek seed has a shorter shelf life than whole—storage in the fridge can help.

Use
Fenugreek is common in South Asian and Persian cuisines. The leaves can be sautéed, stewed, incorporated into breads, and more. The seeds—especially roasted—are used as a spice, where they are incorporated into spice blends, chutneys, and curries.

Since they are so hard, the seeds must be ground in a specialized mortar or spice grinder.

title: Cookbook:Fenugreek


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Cookbook:Cumin

Cumin (Cuminum cyminum) comes from Western Asia, where it has been cultivated since Biblical times. People cook with the fruits of the plant, which are usually referred to as the seeds.

Cumin is a very strong spice often used in highly spiced cuisines, especially Mexican and Indian. Commonly, you will use 1/4 to 1 teaspoons per pound (11 to 44 mL/kg) of meat.

Cumin might be confused with caraway. Both belong to the same family of spices.

Cumin is known as jeera in Hindi and zeera in Urdu.

Recipes featuring cumin include

 * Taco
 * Burrito
 * Tamales
 * Chili
 * Hummus

hy:Եփութուխ:Չաման Kookboek/Komijnzaad

title: Cookbook:Cumin


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Circuit Theory/Systems of Linear Equations

Linear equations
a1,a2, etc. are called the coefficients of the equations and b is called the constant term. Variables in linear algebra are usually denoted by xn instead of x, y, z, etc. because real world problems can have millions of variables. Problems in this text will have no more than 5 or 6.

Terms that appear on the left side of a linear equation must have a power of exactly 1. Terms that appear on the right hand side must have a power of zero.

Examples

1. $$2x_1 - 5x_2 + x_3 = 9 \!$$ a linear equation

2. $$x_1 + 2x_2 + 2\sqrt{x_3} = 1 \!$$ NOT a linear equation because of the square root. A square root $$\sqrt{x_3}$$ is the same as $$x_3$$ to the power $$1/2$$ and not to the power 1.

3. $$-10x_1 + 2x_2 = 0 \!$$ a linear equation

4. $$x_1x_2 + 2x_3 = 0 \!$$ NOT a linear equation because $$x_1x_2 $$ is a term of power 2.

Systems of linear equations
Note that if the coefficient of a variable in a linear equation is zero, we could omit it. Therefore not every variable needs to be present in every equation. Below are two systems of linear equations:

1. $$\begin{matrix}2x_1&-2x_2&+x_3&=&1\\-3x_1&+2x_2&&=&3\\3x_1&+2x_2&+x_3&=&7\end{matrix}$$

2. $$\begin{matrix}2x_1&-2x_2&-x_3&+2x_4&=&0\\-3x_1&&+2x_3&&=&0\\3x_1&+2x_2&+x_3&-x_4&=&0\end{matrix}$$

The second system is called a homogeneous system as all the constant terms are zero.

Usually, a system of linear equations consists of two or more linear equations that have the same variables. Theoretically, we may treat a single linear equation as a system also.

Matrix formulation
Arrange the coefficients of a linear system in a m-by-n matrix (i.e. an array with m rows and n columns), we get

 * $$A=\left(\begin{matrix}

a_{11}&a_{12}&\cdots&a_{1n}\\ a_{21}&a_{22}&\cdots&a_{2n}\\ \cdots&\cdots&\cdots&\cdots\\ a_{m1}&a_{m2}&\cdots&a_{mn} \end{matrix}\right)$$

and let $$b=\left(\begin{matrix}b_1\\b_2\\\vdots\\b_n\end{matrix}\right)$$ and $$x=\left(\begin{matrix}x_1\\x_2\\\vdots\\x_n\end{matrix}\right)$$. The system of linear equations could be written as

 * $$Ax=b$$

This motivates the study of matrix theory. For further introduction, see Linear Algebra/Matrices.

Solutions of systems of linear equations
A solution of a system of linear equations is a set of numbers for each variable that makes every equation true. For example, a solution of the first system given is (0,1.5,4) because 2(0)-1.5(2)+1(4)=1, -3(0)+2(1.5)=3, and 3(0)+2(1.5)+4=7.

See Algebra/Solutions of systems of linear equations.

Applications
Solving systems of linear equations is essential in modern engineering. Physical systems of high complexity, which would require impossible formulas to describe, are approximated with high accuracy by solving a very large set of linear equations. By breaking the subject at hand into tiny, finite pieces, a solution can be obtained after a great deal of brute-force calculation. When such numerical analysis introduces errors into the calculation at hand, a sufficiently complex analysis often makes up for the simplifications often introduced in less numerical methods. Error can be avoided with smaller pieces or with more sophisticated algorithms. Specific methods include finite difference analysis, finite element analysis, and boundary layer analysis. Specific applications include computational fluid dynamics, heat transfer, fatigue analysis, strain analysis, and stress analysis.

Systems of linear equations are also used in statistical regression. A common algorithm for the least squares regression uses a matrix with n rows and m columns, where n represents the number of data points and m represents the number of base functions, or the number of coefficients sought. (A polynomial ax^3 + bx^2 + cx + d, for example, uses four base functions: x^3, x^2, x, and 1.) A good explanation of this algorithm may be found in Numerical Recipes: The Art of Scientific Computing.


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Cookbook:Caraway

| Herbs and Spices Caraway, also called carroway, meridian fennel, and Persian cumin, refers to the plant Carum carvi. It is often confused with cumin, and both belong to the same family of spices.

Characteristics
All parts of the caraway plant are edible. The leaves are delicate and green with an mild and dill-like flavor.  The roots are similar to carrots and parsnips. They have a light yellow color and a mild flavor. Caraway seeds are small and crescent-shaped, and they may be confused with the closely-related fennel and cumin seeds. They are aromatic, containing s-carvone, limonene, and anethole, with a flavor of anise and pepper.

Selection and storage
The young leaves should be stored in the fridge after picking and washed before use. The roots can be stored like potatoes in a cool, dry place and peeled before use. They seeds should be stored dry in an airtight container away from light, heat, and moisture.

Leaves
Caraway leaves are aromatic and can be used like parsley or dill as an herb. They go well in salads and can also be used in cooking or as a garnish.

Roots
The roots can be cooked much like any other root vegetable. Once peeled, they can be roasted, boiled, and/or incorporated into soups and stews.

Seeds
Caraway seeds are extremely aromatic and used as a spice in cooking and baking. Especially in Europe, they flavor many dishes, including curries, stews, liqueurs, breads, vegetables, and more. One common and well-known caraway-containing food is rye bread.

Substitution
Caraway can sometimes be substituted by other spices in the same family like cumin, coriander, aniseed, fennel seed, and dill seed.

title: Cookbook:Caraway


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User:Rachel

Rachel is vegan and loves to cook. She enjoys the vegan recipes in the Wikimedia Cookbook.

title: User:Rachel


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User talk:Rachel

Welcome
Hi Rachel, welcome to Wikibooks! I see you've been making some contribution to the Cookbook, and I wanted to thank you! Keep up the good work. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me on my talk page, or at the Staff lounge. Most importantly, have fun. Gentgeen 21:38, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Ingredients index
Is the Cookbook:Ingredients page done manually, or is there a tool for that sort of thing? The cookbook needs a global index. I'd like to see something like this:

 * Cheese Sandwich, Toasted
 * Sandwich, Toasted Cheese
 * Toasted Cheese Sandwich

Also, Fried_Rice and fried_rice (lowercase) ought to be together. It'd be especially nice if this worked for non-ASCII text.

AlbertCahalan 05:09, 2 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Daughter
I have a vegan daughter with your name. I'll let her know about your cookbook. unsigned comment by 68.121.47.161

Wikijunior Solar System
Thanks for helping out! And thanks for signing up for some proofreading tasks! --SV Resolution 18:59, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I'd also like to thank you for helping out. If words are going into the glossary, are already there, or you think they should be there, then bold them. I think names of craters, geographical features, etc. should be italic, but there's no set policy on this, I think. I think I'll add this to the proofreading instructions.--Shanel 06:05, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Deadline -- We miss it!
RachelI don't think it is humanly possible to make an October 3 deadline. The book is not proofread, we need to cut it by about 50%, we don't have an artist lined up, we have all the layout to do, and a printer to line up.

I don't really know what a reasonable timeline is for all this. Do you? Maybe we can come up with something sensible.

--SV Resolution 22:47, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:Rachel


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Cookbook:Stir-frying

| Frying

Stir-frying involves frying food quickly over very high heat in an oiled pan. While stir-frying, you generally stir continually. A special slope-sided pan called a wok is designed for stir-frying. An open flame heat source such as gas works best when using a wok.

Different frying oils produce different results. A light oil such as sesame produces a slightly healthier and much more tasty result but can burn if overheated. Olive oil has a low smoking point and may heat too quickly.

Here are some tips:

 * Make sure all ingredients are prepared before you begin stir-frying.
 * Heat the wok on medium-high or high heat at least one minute before adding oil. Do not pre-heat the wok if it has non-stick coating, as the heat can damage the coating.
 * Drizzle the oil down the sides of the wok to maximize oil coverage as well as to heat the oil more quickly.
 * Cook meat on high heat in order to keep it juicy. Remove the meat before stir-frying the vegetables. Add the meat back into the mix once the vegetables are almost cooked.
 * If you are cooking over an electric range, replace the wok with an ordinary heavy-bottomed frying pan. You will achieve better results this way since electric ranges will not properly heat the curved sides of a wok.
 * If you are using an electric range, you can preheat the pan or wok in an oven set to its highest setting, and only use the electric range to maintain heat during cooking. Be careful, as the pan's handle will be very hot.

Example recipes

 * additional recipes can be found in Category:Stir fry recipes

 * Black Bean Stir-Fry
 * Chuu Chee Fish
 * Kung Pao Chicken
 * Peanut Chicken Stir-Fry

title: Cookbook:Stir-frying


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Cookbook:Ingredients

Cookbook | Recipes | Ingredients

The cookbook contains many ingredients featuring in a variety of cultures and cuisines. Almost all foods are of plant or animal origin, although there are exceptions. Almost every form of life has been used as food, either for nutritive or ritual purposes, by one or more human societies at some time in the past.

Ingredient index
For a complete, alphabetical list of ingredients in the cookbook visit Category:Ingredients, or browse the subcategories below:

Adding ingredients
To create a new ingredient page yourself, enter your title directly behind the Cookbook prefix below.

title: Cookbook:Ingredients


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User:Jrv~enwikibooks

See my user page on Wikipedia.

title: User:Jrv~enwikibooks


text:
Cookbook:Potato

A potato is a tuber. Originally from South America, the potato is now grown and used as a foodstuff in most parts of the world and is valued for its relative ease of growing and its high carbohydrate content. It is also extremely versatile in the kitchen and can be served boiled, roasted, baked, shallow-fried or deep-fried. There is a large number of varieties of potato, each of which has its own qualities and uses. Finally, some potatoes are harvested while still relatively immature ("new potatoes"), while others ("old potatoes") are left to grow to their maximum size. This also affects the texture and flavour.

Potatoes have a thin layer of high-grade protein just under the skin. The best ways to take advantage of it is to consume them whole, or boil them and very carefully remove their skins.

Types
Potatoes can also be classified according to type. There are starchy, waxy and all-purpose types.

Starchy
The starchy potatoes are ideal for frying or baking. Under this type we have the Russet, Jewel yam, Japanese sweet and Hannah sweet potatoes.

Waxy
The waxy types of potatoes are ideal for roasting and boiling. Under this type we have the Red bliss, French fingerling, Russian banana, Red thumb, La ratte and Austrian crescent potatoes.

All-purpose
The all-purpose types of potatoes are ideal for pan-frying, roasting and stewing. Under this type we have the Yukon gold, Red gold, Red Norland, Purple majesty and All blue potatoes.

External link
Chart of varieties from the British Potato Council

Charlotte
A small reddish potato, normally used as a new potato, served boiled.

Fortyfold
A small red-skinned maincrop potato, with a creamy texture, best used baked or roast.

King Edwards
A large, all purpose potato. Normally used as an old potato, and traditionally served roast as part of a formal Sunday dinner (with roast beef).

Maris Piper
A white potato, which can be harvested new or, more usually, as an old potato, when it is widely regarded as among the best potatoes for making into chips.

Picasso
A large to very large maincrop potato with a reddish skin and a smooth texture. Good roast.

Pink fir apple
A long, thin potato with a knobbly, pinkish skin. Normally boiled in its skin and allowed to cool for use in a salad.

Shetland Black
A variety first introduced in the 1920s. The skin is dark purple, rather than black, and the flesh is creamy with a nutty flavour. Best roast or baked, but can be boiled in its skin for an attractive visual appearance and contrast in texture.

Buying potatoes
For practical purposes, potatoes can be put into three groups, although the distinctions between them are not clear-cut, and there is much overlapping. While the Russet Burbank baking potato is probably the most pleasing for general use, potatoes with oddly-coloured flesh often provide antioxidants like beta-carotene and lycopene. Odd colours may hide greening and rotten spots, though.

 * The term new potato is most frequently used to describe those potatoes freshly harvested and marketed during the late winter or early spring. The name is also widely used in later crop producing areas to designate freshly dug potatoes which are not fully matured. The best uses for new potatoes are boiling or mashing. They vary widely in size and shape, depending upon variety, but are likely to be affected by "skinning" or "feathering" of the outer layer of skin. Skinning usually affects only their appearance.

 * The term general purpose potato includes the great majority of supplies, both round and long types, offered for sale in markets. With the aid of air-cooled storage, general purpose potatoes are amply available throughout the year. As the term implies, they are used for boiling, frying, and baking, although many of the common varieties are not considered to be best for baking.

 * The term baking potato means a potato grown specifically for baking quality. Both variety and farm location are important factors affecting baking quality. A long variety with fine, scaly netting on the skin, such as the Russet Burbank from Idaho, is commonly used for baking.

With new potatoes, look for firm potatoes that are free from blemishes and sunburn (a green discolouration under the skin). Some amount of skinned surface is normal, but potatoes with large skinned and discoloured areas are undesirable. For general-purpose and baking potatoes, look for reasonably smooth, firm potatoes free from blemishes, sunburn, and decay. Avoid potatoes with large cuts, green spots, bruises, decay, sprouting, or shrivelling.

Storage
Potato storage facilities need to be carefully considered to keep the potatoes alive and slow the natural process of decomposition, which involves the breakdown of starch. It is crucial that the storage area is dark, well ventilated and, for long-term storage, maintained at temperatures near 4 °C (39 °F). For short-term storage before cooking, temperatures of about 7 °C (45 °F) to 10 °C (50 °F) are preferred. Temperatures below 4 °C convert potatoes' starch into sugar, which alters their taste and cooking qualities and leads to higher acrylamide levels in the cooked product, especially in deep-fried dishes.

Under optimum conditions possible in commercial warehouses, potatoes can be stored for up to ten or twelve months. When stored at home, the shelf life is usually only several weeks.

If potatoes are exposed to light, they will develop green areas or start to sprout. Green parts can be very poisonous, as they indicate the presence of glycoalkaloids, ⍺-solanine and ⍺-chaconine. Although the green colour is caused by chlorophyll and is harmless, one should discard any such potatoes, as the toxins cannot be adequately removed by peeling or trimming techniques. These potatoes are no longer suitable as animal food.

Boiling
Old potatoes normally need to be peeled before boiling. Many new potatoes are better when boiled in their skins, but one should wash them first. Small potatoes can be cooked whole. Larger potatoes will cook more evenly and quickly if they are first cut into roughly egg-sized pieces. Put the potatoes in a large enough pan and add enough water to cover them easily. Add a little salt, if desired. Bring to the boil. Potatoes will take around 20 minutes to cook through. To test whether they are done, press the tip of a cook's knife into one. It should be able to slip in and out easily. Serve with butter if you're not worried about your weight, with salt if you're not worried about your blood pressure, or with a sprinkling of chopped chives if you want them to look nice. Also boiled potatoes go well with mayonnaise.

Mashing
Skin potatoes and slice them as about finger thick (about 1 cm) slices. Put slices into pot and add some water (1/5 water of total level is enough, no need to cover them completely. Idea is to steam cook them and keeping the cooking water so nothing is wasted). Cook potatoes under a lid until they are ready, about 10 minutes. Attack the potatoes with a knife so that they are cut into smaller pieces. You then need to add some milk and butter (according to taste and waistline) and purée all ingredients. Use a potato-ricer for best results or a hand-held masher for possibly lumpy mash. Food processors can have a tendency to over process for mashed potatoes, instead producing more of a purée suitable for vichyssoise and other potato soups. You can add salt, pepper, muskat, or other herbs and spices as you wish. Roasted garlic is also a popular addition.

Roasting
Roast potatoes are a good and traditional accompaniment to roast meat. Prepare the potatoes as for boiling, and parboil them for just a few minutes. Then put in the roasting dish around the meat, and baste them with the juices as cooking goes on.

Baking
On a cold day, few things are nicer than a baked potato. Use a large potato, with its skin on. It is important to stab the potatoes with a knife or fork in several places so they will not explode. Preheat the oven to moderately hot (gas mark 5, about 375 F) and put in the potatoes for about an hour. Especially when using an electric oven, it is important to protect the potatoes from drying by covering them with foil or coating them in oil. A lid over the whole batch will do, saving on foil and oil. You may put a metal skewer through the potato to help distribute heat evenly. There are a variety of approaches to a baked potato and some cooks will prefer a low heat (c. 300 F) for an hour, uncovered so that the steam can exit the potato. Make sure to cut it open as soon as it's out of the oven to let off steam and keep the skin from getting soggy and separated.

Serve the potato as hot as you can stand it. Fillings can include butter, grated cheese (something strong like cheddar or red Leicester), baked beans, pesto—you name it. Eat the skin—it really is good for you.

Microwave
Perforate the skin with a fork in many places to prevent the potato from exploding. It is important to protect the potatoes from drying by covering them with a damp paper towel or coating them in oil. A low power setting may be a good idea, but you wouldn't be using the microwave if you didn't want fast cooking!

Deep frying
Described here is the basic method. Put the potatoes in whole. If you don't have any day-old bread to hand, drop one of your chips in; if the fat is hot enough it will start to cook. Add the chips, using a frying basket. The temperature of the fat will drop sharply, so keep the heat high under the pan. Cook until the chips are browned. Remove the frying basket, and allow the fat to get a little hotter. Then plunge the basket back in for a few minutes to complete the cooking. Keep a fire blanket or damp towel nearby at all times.

An alternative, and safer, method is to use a specialized deep fat fryer.

Shallow frying (sautéing)
Potatoes can be shallow fried, as an easier and quicker alternative to deep-frying. Use a mealy potato (such as King Edward) and cut into cubes of about 1 cm or half an inch. Heat up a sauté pan then add vegetable oil and the potatoes. Cook at a high temperature for about five minutes, stirring often, until the cubes are browned all round. At the last moment you can add butter to glaze the potatoes and maybe some herbs or chopped shallots.

Another way of sautéing potatoes is to produce a Roesti (Rösti), a dish which originates in Switzerland. Instead of chopping the potatoes into cubes, grate the potato using the coarse setting on a three-sided grater.

Rinse the potatoes under cold running water to extract their starch. It is essential that you then squeeze the potato shards very dry. If you can, use a muslin cloth to squeeze out all the excess moisture.

Now, add the potato mixture to DRY (yes, really) frying pan and spread out evenly. Cook on a medium heat for about 5-7 minutes, resisting the temptation to turn or flip the potatoes. After this time, take a spatula and flip the entire potato pancake over. It should be a lovely golden colour and not burned. Fry the pancake for another 5 minutes on its other side, and then the Roesti is ready to eat. Simply slide it from the frying pan, onto a plate.

N.B.: Traditionally, Roesti either have butter or fat mixed into the grated potato before frying, or are fried in fat or oil.

Stewing
Stewing is a great way to take care of left over potatoes. Potato stew goes well with sausages, meatballs, or smoked, salted or gravad fish. To make stewed potatoes, peel and dice the cold, already boiled potatoes. Make the cubes about 1 cm to 2 cm across. Mix flour with milk and butter in a saucepan. Bring the sauce to a boil, add the potatoes, and boil gently for 5 min. Add salt, pepper and dill to taste.

title: Cookbook:Potato


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Cookbook:Broccoli Rabe

Broccoli rabe, also known as rapini or broccoli rape is a variety of brassica closely related to the turnip. It may be confused with broccolini, although they are different ingredients.

Characteristics
Broccoli rabe consists of a stem with leafy greens and small green buds similar to those of broccoli. The stems are light green while the leaves are dark green. The buds are notably less compact than broccoli, though they taste similar. Broccoli rabe has a bitter, slightly spicy flavor like that of turnip and mustard greens—this can be reduced by cooking.

Selection and storage
Select broccoli rabe that are firm with un-wilted leaves. The buds should also be firm and compact. Store broccoli rabe in an airtight container in the fridge to keep it from wilting—it will last for a few days. Trim off any woody parts of the stem before cooking.

Uses
The bitter flavor of broccoli rabe pairs well with heavy protein and fat. It is usually cooked, and it can be treated like other bitter greens. Blanching in boiling salted water will help reduce the bitterness before using it, although this step is not required. Broccoli rabe can be used in pastas, meat dishes, pestos, stir-fry, and more.

title: Cookbook:Broccoli Rabe


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Cookbook:Broccolini

Broccolini, also called baby broccoli, is a cross between broccoli and gai lan (Chinese kale).

Characteristics
Broccolini has long, thin stems with loose florets of green buds similar to those of broccoli. It also includes a few leaves, although fewer than the Chinese kale it's derived from. It has crunchy stems and a mild flavor.

Selection and storage
Like other hearty greens and brassicas, broccolini can be stored unwashed in an airtight container in the fridge for up to several days. Moisture will make it go bad quickly.

Use
Broccolini can be eaten raw, but it is most commonly cooked. It can be roasted, sautéed, steamed, grilled, or blanched. The tougher ends of the stalk should be removed before cooking.

title: Cookbook:Broccolini


text:
Introduction to Philosophy/Logic

Before we are ready to ask any questions, we must first understand how to go about reasoning about them. The branch of philosophy that covers the study of reasoning is called logic. It stands at the foundation of all philosophical and scientific thinking processes.

Logic is very important. After all, if we want good answers to our questions, we need some way to verify that we didn't make a mistake in our reasoning.

The field of logic has matured to give rise to a very structured way of approaching the art of reasoning, turning it into a science. Even so, of course, interesting questions and problems still remain to be researched. However, for this introductory book, we will cover the basics of correct reasoning, and slowly introduce you to the most structured form of all: formal logic.

This book will only provide an introduction. To read more about formal logic specifically, we recommend advanced readers to check out the related wikibook Formal Logic.

Table of Contents

 * 1) Introductory Material
 * 2) Older Pages
 * 3) Preface
 * 4) Logic and Reason
 * 5) Truth and Validity
 * 6) Paradoxes
 * 7) Classical Logic
 * 8) Modes
 * 9) Sentential Logic
 * 10) Older Pages
 * 11) The Sentential Language (heavily modified) (moved to Formal Logic)
 * |Truth Tables (completely rewritten) (moved to Formal Logic)
 * 1) Building More Complicated Formulas
 * 2) Tautologies and Contradictions
 * 3) Fault Diagnosis
 * 4) Some Properties of the Logical Connectives
 * 5) Nand and Nor
 * 6) A More Formal Approach to Sentential Logic
 * 7) Soundness, consistency, completeness
 * 8) Syntax and semantics
 * 9) Propositional calculus and probability theory
 * 10) Summary for propositional calculus
 * 11) Tableau proofs
 * 12) Predicate Logic
 * 13) Other Material
 * 14) Older Pages
 * 15) Modal Logic
 * 16) Names - Frege, Sinn and Bedeutung
 * 17) Equality - Leibniz's law
 * 18) Definite descriptions - Russell
 * 19) Intensionality, Belief, Scope
 * 20) Truth, Tarski
 * 21) Vagueness
 * 22) Bibliography
 * 23) Newer Pages

title: Introduction to Philosophy/Logic


text:
Talk:Introduction to Philosophy/Logic

Well, I've got as far as a table of contents. I welcome constructive comments. I might copy some of the wikiversity stuff I've written across to here, as I think this is where a lot of it really belongs. --publunch 12:40, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Well, I'm busy working on this. But I need your help. I feel like there is some kind of 'mathematical creep' going on. Now this might be something to do with the nature of logic as a tradition - a lot of logicians were also mathematicians, predicate calculus has its roots in mathematical analysis, etc. Trouble is I've been steeped in mathematics and am part of this tradition myself. I don't want to expunge the maths, but I don't want the book to become too mathematical, which it could do if I'm the sole author. Logic should be able to cope with the real world, not just some platonic heaven.

It would be nice to have some logic gurus here. But failing that, I'll try to be the guru for any student who is moderately interested in being guinea pig for this text as it develops. --publunch 16:35, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Under construction, Update
I (User:JMRyan) have decided that it is best to move (most of) the newer pages (see Introduction to Philosophy/Logic/Some Properties of the Logical Connectives above) to a new book, Formal Logic. Introduction to Philosophy appears to be a general survey book which looks broadly at a wide variety of philosophical areas, but does not cover any one of them in much detail. The newer pages are a more detailed presentation of standard formal logic. I will also try to patch up the older pages to fit in with the apparent goal of Introduction to Philosophy. (October 13, 2005)

link back
publunch, good work. I think it would be good to have links from the subpages back to the main page. See the example I made on the modes page. What do you think? I was also wondering what the reasoning was behind calling the page Modes vs Introduction_to_Philosophy:Logic:Modes or Introduction_to_Philosophy:Modes? Does Modes ever have the potential of being a book of its own? It is possible I am seeing all these pages in a bit too linear of form though. liblamb 19:32, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * Thanks, liblamb. It is nice to know that someone is reading this stuff - I sometimes get the feeling that I am talking to myself when I am writing and that makes me feel lonely and depressed and makes me wonder what the point of writing this is.  Well, there is a lot of bad reasoning in the world, and a bit of teaching about logic might just help.  It could stop wars!

 * Perhaps there is a problem with the page called 'modes'. I needed to introduce modus ponens and modus tollens there, as they are pretty basic and I don't think the propositional calculus, which I am working on at the moment would make any sense without me talking a little bit about introducing MP and MT there.  Somehow some rather important stuff about logical fallacies has crept in at the bottom of the modes page.

--212.56.114.4 12:13, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * Well, I might get round to putting some links back in my pages, or you can put the links in for me. There is so much to do, so a bit of help is appreciated.  --publunch 11:06, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

 * Well, I'm note sure where this goes so feel free to move or delete it, but what I am trying to understand is another paradox and its relation to logic.

When a person is inebriated they often report bothing being and not-being themselves.

Or there are some logical arguments that have all sound premises that are true for the people who believe them. While there are opposite logical arguements leading to the opposite conclusions, but consisting of sound premises from the point of view of the people who believe them.

All x is y, a is x. .: a is y

But other people will believe that All x is ~y, a is x. .: a is not y.

My problem is that it can be shown by both parties that 1) All x is y and 2) All x is not y is sound from their point of view. But this leads to the unallowable a is not a, a contradiction

Now, is this handled by having some sort of statement that when we see "a is not a," what we are really seeing is that B(a is y) and C(a is not y) where B and C are the people holding those conclusions. Or they hold those beliefs because they flow logically from their assumptions B(All x is y) or C(All x is not y).

I guess what I'm asking is how does point of view fit into logic, specifically related to what are taken to be sound premises.

Almost all political arguments for policy outcomes seem to fall into the above (paradox?). The other example may not, but it's the one of both being and not being yourself when you are inebriated. I guess I'm trying to see if there's a relation of logic to psychology or if logic can't apply to psychological states. (teacher@mediawell.com)

false name space
I've been asked by someone on irc to move all the logic pages to a 'false name space'. So stuff is slowly being moved to 'introduction to logic'. This will be done, but it may take a while, 'coz I don't rush anything these days. --publunch 12:09, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Notation
I have just put a couple of paragraphs into the Modal logic section and I have used LaTeX with the "math" tab to write the formulae. I think they look much better this way. Although the formulae in the previous sections look fine, I don't think they will when they get more complicated. (80.58.11.107 11:52, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC))

Casing
I have started to moving (renaming) these pages to achieve better casing consistency, especially with the parent Introduction to Philosophy book. The parent book is not completely consistent, but it mostly appears to follow book title casing with the first and all subsequent non-minor words capitalized. --JMRyan 19:42, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

E-Prime
I thought this might be the place to also mention E-Prime. It relates very much to logic. Perhaps the regular editors to this book would be interested in incorporating a chapter about it. --Loplin 05:34, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

title: Talk:Introduction to Philosophy/Logic


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Cookbook:MPT (Mozzarella Pasta with Tomato and Basil)

This is a delicious and quick recipe for a sunny day, or to bring back a little memory of summer. It's served warm so may not suit a winter evening! The combination of flavours (milky mozzarella, eggy pasta, sweet tomato and spicy basil) is just wonderful. The secret here is to prepare all the ingredients except the pasta ahead of time and let them soak together. You can also stand the prepared bowl of ingredients in a sink full of hot water, so that the mozzarella starts to soften and the juices start to run.

Ingredients

 * 2 mozzarella balls (cow or buffalo)
 * About 10–15 small tomatoes or 4–5 larger tomatoes (you need about the same amount as the mozzarella)
 * A good handful of basil leaves (about 15–20 leaves)
 * Olive oil
 * Salt
 * Black pepper
 * 250 g fresh egg pasta

Procedure

 * 1) Roughly chop the mozzarella and the tomatoes and put them in a big salad-type bowl.
 * 2) Tear up the basil and sprinkle it over the mozzarella and tomatoes.
 * 3) Drizzle on lots of extra virgin olive oil (at least 3 tablespoons).
 * 4) Add a good amount of salt and just a little black pepper. The salt will start to leach moisture out from the other ingredients and create a sauce.
 * 5) Let rest for at least 30 minutes.
 * 6) Boil the egg pasta until al dente, then drain.
 * 7) Add the hot pasta to the bowl of other ingredients. Toss well until the pasta is well-coated. Serve.


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Cookbook:Fresh Pasta with Mozzarella, Tomato and Basil

| Pasta

This recipe, originally contributed by Rich Osborne, is a delicious and quick dish for a sunny day, or to bring back a little memory of summer. The combination of flavours (egg pasta, milky mozzarella, sweet tomato and spicy basil) is just wonderful.

The key here is to prepare all the ingredients except the pasta ahead of time and let them soak together. You can stand the prepared bowl of ingredients in a sink full of hot water, so that the mozzarella starts to soften and the juices from the tomatoes start to run.

Ingredients

 * 250 g fresh egg pasta
 * 2 mozzarella balls (cow or buffalo)
 * About 10–15 small tomatoes or 4–5 larger tomatoes (you need about the same amount as the mozzarella)
 * A good handful (about 15–20) of basil leaves
 * Extra-virgin olive oil
 * Salt
 * Black pepper

Procedure

 * 1) Chop the mozzarella and the tomatoes roughly, and put them in a large dish. You're looking to create small cube shapes between 1 cm and 1 inch.
 * 2) Tear up the basil, and sprinkle it over the mozzarella and tomatoes.
 * 3) Drizzle on lots of olive oil (at least 3 tablespoons).
 * 4) Add a good amount of salt and just a little black pepper. The salt will start to leech moisture out from the other ingredients and create a sauce.
 * 5) When you're ready, boil the egg pasta until al dente. Drain the pasta and then pour, still hot, over the other ingredients.
 * 6) Stir the pasta up, coating everything really well, and serve.

Notes, tips, and variations

 * This recipe also works well with brie instead of mozzarella.

Kookboek/Pasta met mozzarella, tomaten en basilicum


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Meeting Basics/The Meeting

So the meeting comes. What are you going to do? Here it is:

Participants with Special Roles
Two participants have special roles in a meeting, the Chairman and the Secretary. Other participants my have importance during the meeting, however these two roles are consistent across many different types of meetings. Together these two roles form the motor of the meeting.

Chairman
The chairman takes care of an orderly progression of the meeting, sees that procedures are followed and that every participant gets a chance to play his or her role. In meetings regarding multi-sided discussion, this person is typically a facilitator of discussion rather than a strong proponent of one side or another.

Secretary
The secretary is a person who supports the chairman and is also responsible for taking the minutes. This person is usually tasked with preparing and sending out the agenda, however in some organizations this can fall in the chairman's responsibilities.

Speaking and Listening
An important part of participating in a group meeting is that all points of discussion and opinions be heard. It is the chairman's role to ensure that no one voice be louder than the rest, and that no voices go unheard. As a meeting facilitator, the chairman's authority must be respected by all participants, otherwise an imbalance of input can occur.

It is important that all participants adhere to the guidelines agreed upon at the onset of the meeting. If the chairman notices that one person is speaking out of turn or is speaking more forcefully than any others, it is the chairman's right and responsibility to direct the over-talking person to remain quiet while opposing viewpoints are heard.

One method for ensuring that all participants are able to follow the flow of the meeting is to ask for feed back during the course of the meeting. While it's not always practical to ask for feedback continually, the appropriate point to ask this question would be when the end of an agenda item is about to be reached, or the beginning of a new agenda item is about to be started. By asking for feedback at these points rather than all at the end of a meeting, it allows the topic to remain fresh in all participant's minds.

Introducing an Agenda Point
When introducing an agenda point, the person who knows the most about this point should be given the opportunity to summarize it without interruption. Questions and comments should be left until the topic has been fully outlined by the presenter. This allows for all participants to be provided with the same basic understanding of an agenda point, which allows discussion to be productive and informative.

Several methods for allocating speaking time are provided below.

Formal Structures for Allocating Speaking Time
There are several methods that a Chairman might utilize regarding allocation of speaking time. Some have more effectiveness with different types of people and there is no catch-all method to ensure every meeting runs smoothly.

The more people are involved in a meeting, the greater importance it is that everyone be given the same respect and opportunity to speak. Interruption while another person is speaking is counter-productive and can increase the meeting times beyond the desired limit. It is the chairman's responsibility to ensure that interruption is not tolerated.

Round-robin
In this method for allocating speaking time, the facilitator of the current agenda item (typically the chairman, but sometimes another participant) presents the complete overview of the agenda point as well as any extra details. Once the facilitator has finished presenting the relevant information, questions and feedback are opened up sequentially (such as clockwise from the chairman). Each person is given an opportunity to speak without interruption before two-way discussion commences.

This method is lengthy but allows every person to have an opportunity to speak.

Other methods
There are other methods that a chairman might utilize.

Adding an Agenda Item during a meeting
There will be times when the prepared agenda does not cover all topics that need to be discussed. In this case, during an appropriate pause, a participant might suggest adding a new agenda item to the end of the meeting. This might fall under a catch-all agenda item of other business or discussion near the end of a meeting. It is usually not appropriate to discuss the item until the appointed time, so even if it is a hot-ticket topic, discussion should be postponed until its appointed time.

When the new agenda item is given time in the meeting, the person who requested the item be added to the agenda should be given a moment to speak about the topic before it is dismissed from discussion. If a meeting is running long, it is usually appropriate to set these impromptu agenda items to a future meeting's previous business agenda item.

Quotations
Quotations on communication: (contributed by Vividh jcimargao@sify.com)
 * "It is better to keep quiet and let people think that you are a fool than to open your mouth and clear all doubt."
 * "We have two ears and one mouth that we may listen more and speak less."
 * "Learn to listen and listen to learn".

Taking Notes
Minutes are a written record of what transpired at the meeting. Minutes can be of two types: Minutes of resolutions wherein only the resolutions taken at the meeting are recorded; or Minutes of discussions wherein the entire discussion that led to the decision is recorded. Minutes of discussion help us to understand the reasoning behind a certain resolution/decision while minutes of resolution can help the person who was instrumental in initiating a certain decision to remain in the background. If meetings are not properly conducted we may say that "meetings are places where minutes are kept but hours are wasted"!

title: Meeting Basics/The Meeting


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User talk:Canscorch

Good work on the page.--DesertFox_59 {X} 20:50, 22 Oct 2004 (UTC)

title: User talk:Canscorch


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Cookbook:Blanching

| Boiling

Blanching is a cooking technique involving boiling food (usually vegetables and fruits) in water for a very short time. Blanching is often followed by plunging the food into ice water to stop the cooking process. Though the word means to make something white or pale, blanching certain vegetables like broccoli will make their colors more vivid.

Blanching is commonly used to remove skins from tomatoes and almonds.

Vegetables are often blanched prior to freezing or canning. This helps preserve the food by slowing down or halting enzyme action that causes foods to break down, losing color, flavor, and nutritional value.

Blanching is similar to parboiling, which also involves boiling food briefly in water. Certain vegetables may benefit from being blanched or parboiled before being stir-fried. One quick way to blanch vegetables is to boil fresh vegetables in water, with salt, for about 30 seconds to 1 minute, before immediately draining and freezing them.

ספר מתכונים/חליטה

title: Cookbook:Blanching


text:
High School Mathematics Extensions/Mathematical Proofs/Problem Set/Solutions

Mathematical Proofs Problem Set
1.
 * For all

\begin{matrix} a & > & 0\\ n+a & > & n\\ n & > & n-a\\ \sqrt{n} & > & \sqrt{n-a}\\ 1 & > & \frac{\sqrt{n-a}}{\sqrt{n}}\\ \frac{1}{\sqrt{n-a}} & > & \frac{1}{\sqrt{n}} \end{matrix} $$
 * Therefore $$\frac{1}{\sqrt{1}}$$, $$\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}$$ , $$\frac{1}{\sqrt{3}}$$... $$ > \frac{1}{\sqrt{n}}$$
 * When a>b and c>d, a+c>b+d ( See also Replace it if you find a better one).
 * Therefore we have:
 * $$\frac{1}{\sqrt{1}}+\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}+\frac{1}{\sqrt{3}}......+\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}}>n\times\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}}$$
 * $$\frac{1}{\sqrt{1}}+\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}+\frac{1}{\sqrt{3}}......+\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}}>\frac{n}{\sqrt{n}}\times\frac{\sqrt{n}}{\sqrt{n}}$$
 * $$\frac{1}{\sqrt{1}}+\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}+\frac{1}{\sqrt{3}}......+\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}}>\frac{n\sqrt{n}}{n}$$
 * $$\frac{1}{\sqrt{1}}+\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}+\frac{1}{\sqrt{3}}......+\frac{1}{\sqrt{n}}>\sqrt{n}$$

3.
 * Let us call the proposition
 * $${n \choose 0} + {n \choose 1} + {n \choose 2} + ... + {n \choose n} = 2^n$$ be P(n)
 * Assume this is true for some n, then
 * $${n \choose 0} + {n \choose 1} + {n \choose 2} + ... + {n \choose n} = 2^n$$
 * $$2\times \left \{ {n \choose 0} + {n \choose 1} + {n \choose 2} + ... + {n \choose 2} \right \} = 2^{n+1}$$
 * $$\left \{ {n \choose 0} + {n \choose n} \right \} + \left \{ {n \choose 0} + 2{n \choose 1} + 2{n \choose 2} + ... + 2{n \choose n-1} + {n \choose n} \right \} = 2^{n+1}$$
 * $$\left \{ {n \choose 0} + {n \choose n} \right \} + \left \{ {n \choose 0} + {n \choose 1} \right \} + \left \{ {n \choose 1} + {n \choose 2} \right \} + \left \{ {n \choose 2} + {n \choose 3} \right \} + ... + \left \{ {n \choose n-1} + {n \choose n} \right \} = 2^{n+1}$$
 * Now using the identities of this function:$${n \choose a} + {n \choose a+1} = {n+1 \choose a+1}$$(Note:If anyone find wikibooks ever mentioned this, include a link here!),we have:
 * $$\left \{ {n \choose 0} + {n \choose n} \right \} + {n+1 \choose 1} + {n+1 \choose 2} + {n+1 \choose 3} + ... + {n+1 \choose n} = 2^{n+1}$$
 * Since $${n \choose 0} = {n \choose n} = 1$$ for all n,
 * $${n+1 \choose 0} + {n+1 \choose n+1} + {n+1 \choose 1} + {n+1 \choose 2} + {n+1 \choose 3} + ... + {n+1 \choose n} = 2^{n+1}$$
 * $${n+1 \choose 0} + {n+1 \choose 1} + {n+1 \choose 2} + {n+1 \choose 3} + ... + {n+1 \choose n} + {n+1 \choose n+1} = 2^{n+1}$$
 * Therefore P(n) implies P(n+1), and by simple substitution P(0) is true.
 * Therefore by the principal of mathematical induction, P(n) is true for all n.

Alternate solution Notice that
 * $$(a + b)^n = {n \choose 0} a^n + {n \choose 1} a^{n-1}b + \cdots + {n \choose n} b^n$$

letting a = b = 1, we get
 * $$(1 + 1)^n = 2^n = {n\choose 0} + {n \choose 1} + \cdots + {n\choose n}$$

as required.

5.
 * Let $$P(x)=x^n + y^n\,$$ be a polynomial with x as the variable, y and n as constants.

\begin{matrix} P(-y) & = & (-y)^n + y^n\\ \ & = & -y^n + y^n(\mbox{When n is an odd integer})\\ \ & = & 0 \end{matrix} $$
 * Therefore by factor theorem(link here please), (x-(-y))=(x+y) is a factor of P(x).
 * Since the other factor, which is also a polynomial, has integer value for all integer x,y and n (I've skipped the part about making sure all coeifficients are of integer value for this moment), it's now obvious that
 * $$\frac{x^n+y^n}{x+y}$$ is an integer for all integer value of x,y and n when n is odd.


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Latin/Stylistic Features of Latin Verse and Prose

=Stylistic Features of Latin Verse and Prose=

This is a brief glossary of stylistic features often found in Latin especially in rhetoric and poetry.

Alliteration
Alliteration is a common poetic technique used in Latin from the earliest surviving fragments to the latest literary age. In alliteration there is a repetition of the initial consonantal letter.

Hyperbaton
Hyperbaton is the arranging of words in a particular manner to produce an effect. Hyperbaton is used often in Latin literature because Latin syntax is far more flexible than English.

Example 2
Analysis: The word 'periculo' separates the words 'magnae' and 'opes' even if it should be used before magnae opes.

Hendiadys
Hendiadys is a rhetorical and poetic technique that uses the juxtaposition of two or more words with a similar meaning to reinforce an idea.

Parallelism
Parallelism is a stylistic device common in Latin in which two sentences have similar syntax.

Example 3
Analysis: In both sentences the nominative is placed first and the principal verb is last.

Chiasmus
Chiasmus is the reverse of parallelism, because syntactic structures are inverted. The name is from the Greek letter Chi which resembles an X and illustrates symmetrical crossing. A good example is the aphorism quod cibus est aliis, aliis est venenum, "What is food to some, to others is poison." The pattern is: noun, verb, pronoun; pronoun, verb, noun.

Litotes
The negation of a verb instead of using an antonym is a poetical device known as litotes. Litotes is much weaker than simply using an antonym. Litotes is often used as underestimation.

Anaphora
The rhetorical figure called anaphora is often used in conjunction with parallelism where the first word in the first sentence of a paragraph or stanza is repeated in the following sentences. It is sometimes used where the initial word in a sentence must be understood in the clauses or sentences that follow.

Example 6
Analysis: timeo is repeated in the sentence, although not strictly necessary

Epistrophe
An epistrophe is a rhetorical device like anaphora except at the end of a sentence.

Asyndeton
As you can see, an asyndeton is a multiple numeration without the "et (and)"

Polysyndeton
This is a numeration with et:

Veni et vidi et vici.

Polysyndeton is marked by the repeated use of the same conjunction (et...et...et) or (neque...neque...neque). It is the direct opposite of asyndeton (listing with no conjunctions).

Pluralis modestiae
This is an advanced technique, often used in ancient fabulae, by Aesop and others.

It means that the Plural is used to show "modestia", for example

"officium magnum e nostro est."


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User:BenM

Organised Adversary

title: User:BenM


text:
Computer Programming/Component based software development

BEng Software Engineering

= Component Oriented Programming =

Software components is at the moment one of the most popular buzz words in the software engineering community. This chapter surveys component technology, its reuse concepts and characteristics. Then, we will give a short overview of software architecture and its relation to component based development. Finally, we will examine JavaBeans as an example of a component model.

The Software Crisis
In the year 1968 on a NATO conference in Garmisch Partenkirchen for the first time the "software crisis" was mentioned. It was admitted that software development is difficult, even so difficult that it has to be considered as an own engineering discipline. Also, the hope aroused that a way out from the misery could be the formation of a new software component industry and component market.

The state of software development was compared to that of many industries in the early 19th century: the products were hand-crafted, expensive, and error prone. A characteristic of maturing industries is that it fabricates products that are assembled of many small standardized and exchangeable parts.

An example is electronic engineering, where small electronic components like diodes, resistors and transistors are not designed for a single application but for numerous and different ones. They can be composed on circuit boards to larger integrated circuits (IC). A single part can simply be replaced by others, provided that it offers the same functionality. Standards like the ISO, ANSI, or DIN guarantee that components are compatible and interchangeable.

Characterization of Components
Software development tries to imitate these reuse mechanisms. The idea is to develop software systems by assembling a set of independently developed components off-the-shelf (COTS) in a 'plug and play' manner.

The notion of a "software component" is already quite old, but in recent time it has changed considerably. While in the early days of programming, software components were mostly seen as source code modules like FORTRAN libraries, one has nowadays more requirements to components. There is no common definition of what a software component actually is. The problems are that the point of view depends much on the background of the author, and that there was in the last years so much discussion about components, that the notion of a component became somewhat fuzzy and ambiguous.

Yet, there are a couple of generic properties, one usually associates with software components. A good starting point is a definition made at the ECOOP 96 conference:

'"A software component is a unit of composition with contractually specified interfaces and explicit context dependencies only. A software component can be deployed independently and is subject to composition by third parties."'' Clemens Szyperski, Component Software, ACM Press/Addison-Wesley, England, (1998).

Next, we will describe the unfamiliar terms occurring in the definition in more detail.

Information Hiding
Probably the most important characteristic is that components completely hide their implementation. The importance was stressed already very early by Parnas' information hiding principle:

"Every module hides an important design decision as well as its implementation behind a well-defined interface which does not change when the design decision or the implementation changes"

Components are like black boxes: The programmer knows, how the outside looks like, and what the component can provide, but he does not know how it works internally. At a first glance, this total encapsulation might seem like a limitation, but we will see that it actually is a help. The application builder profits insofar as he can replace the component by another one, if it supports the same interface and functionality. In addition, he needs not understand the inner working, but only the interface of the component.

The component provider, on the other hand, can change the implementation of the component as long as the interface is still satisfied. The interface is a quite important term in CBSD. It is defined by "a named collection of methods representing one functionality". An interface serves as a kind of contract between component provider and component user. It should not only mention the services of a component but also its dependencies to its environment.

The absence of source code imposes some difficulties that need to be solved. First, it must still be possible to adjust a component to the individual requirements of a user. Adaptation without knowledge about the components implementation is called customization. Further, components must offer a mechanism to get information about the their specification. This self-descriptiveness is achieved by introspection.

Context Independence
Components are easily transferable into different application contexts. As a consequence, components need to be self-contained software elements, independent from any other components. The independence is so strict that even implementation inheritance is forbidden, because it makes a component dependent from its superclass, and changing the superclass can break the component. Interface inheritance, which is a mere subsumption of feature specifications, is allowed.

Implicit Invocation.
So that components are exchangeable, components may ideally not address one another directly, but through an indirection mechanism. A central registry stores all information about the components and interfaces. Each time, a client wants to invoke a method, it queries the registry for the required interface, which, in turn returns a reference to the implementing component.

Component Models
The next demand one makes to components is that they are interoperable, that means they must have the capacity to communicate with components programmed in another programming language or located on a different host. In addition, they must be themselves transferable to other operating systems and hardware platforms. These requirements are ensured by virtual machines, cross-compilers and middleware like Avaki EII from Sybase, CORBA from OMG and DCOM from Microsoft.

Components are not used in isolation, but according to a software architecture that determines the interfaces that components may have and how components can be composed. A component model provides a common framework in which components interact. Component models are programming guidelines that have to be followed so that the component can be used. Outside of the framework, the component is not usable. Two important component models are JavaBeans from Sun Microsystems and ActiveX from Microsoft, which is based on the Component Object Model (COM). CSBD owes its attention and success mainly to these two component models. However, no existing component model realizes all features that are expected of components.

Impacts of CBSD
If one day CBSD really gets established in a large scale, it will bring fundamental changes in the way software is developed. Through Component Based Development, the process of programming components gets separated from that of composing components to applications. The hope is that components can be plugged together as easily as Lego bricks without the need for writing source code. Thus, even domain experts with rather few technical skills can assemble applications.

Furthermore, CBD is expected to have a strong impact on the quality of software development:

 * Due to the simplicity, the software development speeds up. There is no need to develop everything from scratch because one can buy third-party components. The shorter development time results in reduced costs.
 * Components enhance the reliability of the software, as they are improved, tested and debugged over years. Aside from this, the composer can choose and combine the best components of different vendors.
 * The extensibility and evolvability of software systems is improved, because components can flexibly be substituted by another component that satisfies the requirements

A few years ago, this prospect led to a kind of euphoria in the software development community, as components were expected to solve a lot of problems. Now, some disillusion prevails. CBSD turned out to be very difficult, because software consists of many strongly coupled interacting entities, which cannot be wired together in a straightforward way.

Differences to Object Oriented Programming
Often, components and objects are confused or mixed up. Component Based Development indeed owes many concepts to object-oriented methods. Component Based Development as it is understood today, builds on OOP, but gives a more abstract view of software systems than object-oriented methods.

The principal difference is that components are totally encapsulated, as we have just seen. Components strictly prevent access to their internals, while in OOP knowledge about the objects' inner working is necessary, for example when inheriting from a class. This reuse mechanism in OOP is also known as white box reuse, because the source code is open for insight and modification.

Also, the building blocks' granularity is different: Components exist at different sizes varying from single objects inside a library to whole applications. In most cases, however, components are larger entities and contain several objects.

Composition Patterns and Software Architecture
A difficulty of OOP is the representation of interaction protocols. In object oriented programming, the global control flow is distributed over several objects. Therefore, modifications to the interaction protocols result in the change of several objects, which hinders the straightforward evolution of the system. Another problem is that the objects are only reusable in systems with similar interaction patterns.

Component technologies allow the representation of the architecture of software systems as reusable entities. Architecture Description Languages (ADL) describe a software system in terms of collaborations between abstract roles. A role is a kind of placeholder for a real existing component. At composition time, the roles are filled in with components by means of separate connectors. The benefits are:

 * Components contain fewer contextual dependancies and are therefore easier to transfer to other software systems.
 * The interaction protocols can be reused.
 * Software Architectures promote the creation of a well designed structure for the system instead of hacking the components together. A good structuring increases the maintainability of the software system, so that later changes can be undertaken more easily.

The JavaBeans Component Model
JavaBeans, the mainstream Java component Model, was introduced in 1996 by Sun Microsystems. It takes into account most important characteristics which constitute a component. JavaBeans are defined as follows:

"A Java Bean is a reusable software component that can be manipulated visually in a builder tool."

Together with the component model, Sun released a simple visual composition tool, the BeanBox. It is rather intended for experimenting with Beans than offering a professional IDE. For real world applications, one should better fall back on one of the Java IDEs like Visual Age or JBuilder that support the visual composition of JavaBeans, too.

As we can see, JavaBeans do not necessarily differ much from standard Java classes. That makes the beans component model quite easy to use. But JavaBeans can have some features most normal Java classes do not have:

 * Persistence
 * Properties
 * Introspection
 * Event Communication
 * Customization

Persistence
The requirements for an object to be a bean is to define a public parameterless constructor, so that beans can be instantiated by builder tools in an uncomplicated way (In the Point bean, the parameterless constructor is given implicitly). Secondly, one of the interfaces  java.io.Serializable or  java.io.Externalizable need to be implemented. The interfaces do not prescribe the implementation of any methods, but are an approval, that the bean may be saved in persistent storage as in a file or database. In doing so, the bean can be restored after an application was shut down or transferred across networks. The ability to store state of a component in persistent storage is called persistence. Java offers a standard serialization mechanism, what makes it very easy to serialize objects. Alternatively, component can be stored in a customized manner (e.g. in xml format) by implementing the  Externalizable interface.

Properties
The properties of a bean are all fields that are accessible and modifiable by public methods. These getter and setter methods should be marked as such by following a certain naming scheme:

(PropertyType).

The accessor methods, on the other hand, are programmed by the pattern public PropertyType get

Introspection
The intention behind this naming convention is that it helps builder tools to find out how a bean works and what capabilities it has. As we have seen, a component has to provide information about its services, which is called introspection. Java Beans provides two mechanisms for introspection: reflection and the BeanInfo class. BeanInfos gives complex information about a Bean component, but have to be implemented explicitly.

Events
JavaBeans interact with each other by means of events. Events are notifications, a component can give to other components, that something interesting has happened. An example for an event might be a mouse click on a button or the closing of a window. Beans can be source and target of events. To be informed about an event, a bean has to register at another Bean as a listener.

The Java event model realizes the observer design pattern with the effect that the inter-component coupling is reduced. Method calls require tight coupling, as caller and receiver need to know each other at compile time, while with events all communication happens solely via interfaces.

A special kind of event are  PropertyChangeEvents. They are used to restrict some properties to take only specific values, for example for a month integer values between 1 and 31. Every time, such a bound property is modified, notifications to all registered PropertyChangeListeners will be send.

Customization
Customization is done via Property Editors. A property editor is a tool for customizing at design time a particular property type. Property editors are activated from so-called property sheets, which display all properties of a bean. If a property is selected for customization, the property sheet finds out the type of the property, displays the appropriate property editor with the property's current value.

Final Remarks
A big strength of the JavaBeans component model is that it is designed for simplicity. Developing JavaBeans is very simple, because a lot of behaviour (like the platform independence or packaging mechanism) is supported in the Java Programming Language by default. However, one can optionally equip beans with additional objects like BeanInfos or custom PropertyEditors to use the component model in a more flexible way. A second facility is that Sun designed the whole swing GUI library according to the JavaBeans component model. Thereby Swing components can easily be composed in visual builder tools. However, JavaBeans do not realize all features of a component model. A drawback is that JavaBeans are restricted to the Java programming language, while an important goal of components the independence of an implementation language is.


text:
Van Dwelling/Cooking

Fuel, water, and space are very limited in a van or small vehicle. Therefore, it can sometimes be a challenge to eat healthily on the road.

There are a wide variety of foods that can be eaten without cooking:

Fruit -- bananas, apples, oranges, grapefruit, grapes,

Vegetables -- broccoli, cauliflower, string beans, tomatoes, "spinach in a bag".

Breakfast cereals -- Advantages: convenient, tasty, portable, stores well for moderate lengths of time (a few months). Disadvantages: somewhat expensive, full of sugar (with a few exceptions).

Canned soup -- Canned soups are relatively inexpensive, durable, don't require refrigeration, and can be eaten cold or heated. Disadvantages: often high in salt, more expensive than self-prepared foods.

Tips to reduce fuel usage:

 * Presoak beans and grains overnight before cooking. This will soften them up and reduce the time required for cooking.
 * Use an insulated container to "slow cook" your food.
 * Use waste engine heat. As Laren Corie writes:  "Even the dash heater can put out temperatures high enough for a lot of cooking, if you build a frame to direct the air over and around the food or container." It is even possible to cook on the engine block. After running for any length of time, the engine block should be hot enough to cook on.

Sprouts
Advantages of sprouts:

 * Inexpensive
 * Nutritious
 * Easy to prepare
 * Compact
 * Require no cooking or heating
 * Easy to find

Disadvantages:

 * Require an ongoing water supply
 * Require twice daily rinsing
 * Some people don't like the taste

title: Van Dwelling/Cooking