Teacup, micro,  pocket and toy  puppies.  We have the smallest, teeny tiny babies ever.

Shots, wormed and Health Checked.

see us on the we at www.tinypawsandclaws.com

Is it a Break-up?

Well i guess we all saw the episode on where Diddy confronts Danity Kane about the future of the group. Well blow number one Aundrea is put on the spot and confronted that she sent Diddy an email that she wanted out of the group because she felt that they didn't get along and that she had personal issues. Blow number two Diddy confronts Aubrey that she sent an email also wanting to leave the group and says she is fed up with the dis honesty and the management issues. Blow number three Dawn breaks it down for us and basically says yo we don't get along, people don't show up to performances, and we suck in reality! Blow number four D.Woods says she have no beef with no one, and Shannon says nothing! yatah yatah! Blow number five is the blow of them all! Aubrey breaks it down and explains that she basically is jealous because Diddy is using Dawn on his mixtapes for demos. Diddy doesn't have to explain shit to you Aubrey, you are a ant in his fucking ant farm. He is your boss and you don't have to know everything! And you have a slick mouth thanks goodness you aren't in corporate america girl you wouldn't have a job!!! Ever sense last season I was wondering why you were still there. Please he can replace you with someone that has talent. Boy she was making me mad! And Diddy is a mess but bout business and once you jeopardize that you gotta go! Well part two comes on next week so stayed tuned!

So I'm watching Kath and Kim right now and they're supposed to be mother and daughter.  But in real life, aren't they both like 35?

Signed

Justin

Justin,

Thanks for bringing this the attention of us all.  I'm kidding. It's not true.  It's Thursday night.  Go out and get hammered or something you homo.

To answer your question. Neither are 35. Selma Blair is 36.  Molly Shannon is 44.  So you are wrong.  With new technology an eight year old can definitely have a child.  Though I'm sure the child is more apt to be autistic or dyslexic, which I think works for the dynamic of this show.  So its obvious they already thought of that.  Please stop asking me such stupid questions.  That show sucks and you're an idiot.  Not that I have actually watched the show but I read the headlines of reviews about the show and the puns do not seem appealing.

Much love,

Justin

Well, the responses I got revolved around not trusting people in general to be honest, especially when it's so easy to be dishonest in the virtual realm, and not feeling the media can convey feelings and emotions as well as face to face contact.

While these are valuable points, they may not apply to everyone.  Personally I don't seem to have any pronblem expressing myself online and I find that there's just as dishonest face to face as they are in text, but I found out something even more telling about online realtions.

They give you the ability to choose to respond or not.

Had I asked each member of our sociology class face to face about these issues there would have been more responses because "No comment" isn't exactly a socially acceptable answer in face to face situations.  However, online we gain the ability to ignore queries that we don't want to respond to, especially when these queries aren't directed at us by name.  Even when they are we claim that "oh your e-mail much have gotten sent to my spam filter by mistake" when we infact are just ignoring the correspondance of an annoying cousin.  Perhaps this relates back to dishonesty, but I think it's linked to something grander.

Freedom.

Online we exist within two realms: the private (in this case the private areas of our computer that aren't available over the network) and the virtual network.  Because we can hide our private/real world activities from the networked world we gain the freedom to do as we please, with out the social restraints we feel in the networked world, or even the social situations of the real world.

To illustrate my point, think back to the analogy of questioning all members of the class individually on online realtionships.  Social rules we feel compelled to follow force us in to responding in a face to face situation.  However, because of our private world on our computer we can act as we please, hiding from the eyes of society and the networked world.

We exercise our rights to freedom in this private world far more than we would in a face to face world because we feel no social pressures.  It is a turely free world.

So perhaps that was the more important thing to learn from this experiement.  We are free to use our private and social worlds as we please to be as social as we wan through technological methods.  I choose to see the virutal world as more closely realted to the real world as others do, and maybe in the process comprimise some of my freedoms, but that is my choice.

And so, go exercise your freedom, and comment if you please, text if you will and ignore e-mails if it makes you happy, because it's your choice in the end, and maybe that's why the internet has such staying in our lives.  It proivdes us more of the freedom we so crave.

Hoje o dia teve uns quantos incidentes: o Juan (o rapaz que vai para o Iraque dentro de dias) abandonou o posto de trabalho a meio e despediu-se; a Shannon teve de ficar com o turno dele e, como é full-time e não queria trabalhar no Contemporary Resort, também arranjou confusão e tivemos de mudar os turnos todos para ela poder ir falar com o manager.

Com excepção destes pequenos acontecimentos, nada de especial se passou. Era suposto chover muito mas a chuva e os trovões só chegaram poucos minutos antes de fecharmos a piscina, ou seja, só atrapalhou porque tivemos de fechar debaixo de chuva torrencial (isto porque, normalmente, eu quero que chova e que troveje, pois assim fecha-se a piscina a meio do dia e joga-se qualquer coisa com os miúdos).

Como nas últimas 48h trabalhei 24, não tenho tido muito tempo para publicar umas coisas que já estão pensadas para aqui, mas logo que possível irei fazê-lo.

Amanhã só trabalho 7h no Yacht & Beach Club e depois tenho treino, das 19h às 21h em Windermere (isto se não chover e trovejar, como está previsto acontecer).

Moving on to something more entertaining. Suzanne vs. Mike vs. Stephanie. Now we all knew Stephanie wasn't going to make it. She's 21 years old and this is her first job. I don't care how good you look in pumps, you are definitely not ready to work for Diddy. You definitely can't work for Diddy if you don't know what Sambo is either. When she stated blankly into the camera and laughed "I don't even know what a Sambo is" I think I died a little inside.

Mike and Suzanne presented themselves well I suppose. Neither one of them was fantastic however Mike's speech almost brought a tear to my eye. Almost. In the end he chose Suzanne. Now anyone who's familiar with Diddy antics should have expected something to happen. As Mike watched the plan start to move, it stops! The door opens! Diddy comes out and proclaims, "I got a lot of businesses so I could still use you." Thanks for keeping us on our toes Diddy!

Moving on to Tuesday night. Making the Band 4. Now I must applaud the editing staff at MTV. I've been watching MTB and to my knowledge those girls got along fine. There didn't seem to be any major squabbles; Dawn was with Q, Aubrey was a hot mess running around showing her underwear to sailors, D. Woods was confused about the length of hair (Do I want it long or short...hmm how bout both), Shannon was married, and Andrea was...Andrea. Leave it to Diddy to plan the big 'i'm kicking you out of the group episode" the same night as the Presidential Debate.

I watched the first 40 minutes of both groups gallivanting in Cabo thinking, "come on get to the goodness." Now I've been watching these little reality shows for a hot minute so I know nothing is what it seems for the most part. The previews combined with the fact that Aubrey has been EVERYWHERE by herself led me to believe that she left the group on her own volition.

After their trip Diddy met with all groups to give them the normal "you did a good job speech." He excuses Donnie and Day 26 to have real talk with Danity Kane. Finally we're getting to the good stuff! He basically tells them, cut the BS what in the heezy is going on. After some sugar-coated discussion about the direction of DK and such we got to the juicy, drama-filled goodness. The girls don't trust each other, cliques exist (duh), Andrea wanted to leave because the girls didn't share their vision, Diddy had dawn working on some solo demos etc.

Now Aubrey brings up the relevant point that a lot of outside people talking in their ear led to their distrust of each other. I imagine when you're in a group and outside management is telling you that they want to move forward with a solo career for one of your group members it is a little jarring. It would have been nice for the girls to be informed but Diddy made a good point; he doesn't have to answer to them. Diddy is Diddy. He doesn't need to tell you what his next move will be. He expects that you'll trust him enough to know that all will be revealed to you when the time is right.

Of course Aubrey has a problem with this, fight ensues and Diddy says, "I don't want you in the group." WOW-to-the-SERS!!

The notion of "communication" seems to entail at least three things: a sender, a sent, and a receiver.  For all practical purposes (maybe for all purposes), what is sent is going to be information, of some sort, and for those of us interested in philosophy, we are probably most interested in "meaningful" information; some sort of semantically interpretable, relationally expressive, actionable information.

Information has been dealt with variously as "a reduction of uncertainty in the receiving agent", "a message selected at one point which matches the message selected at another spatially distinct point", and other sorts of technical uses.  One treatment that I recently ran into which deals more specifically with the transmission of meaning in natural language is from D.M. Mackay:

The meaning of an utterance is its selective function on the range of possible states of the receptive system

This is similar, in some ways, to what I think a useful way of looking at communication as it relates to philosophy is, but also seems to be imperfect, at least for my purposes.  This brings in a notion of meaning, such that it is defined entirely by the systems involved, which I find slightly more relative than the one I want to employ, but it does have a point.  Like Claude Shannon's descriptions, this one is an exclusive project, which imagines that there are a finite number of "possible states" of a receptive system, and an utterance somehow (by means of this "selective function") "collapses" the range of possibilities into one actual state, and this state then is the meaning of the utterance.  There are a few assumptions there which are philosophically dangerous territory, and I don't think we need to use them to get the benefits we want out of this conception.

Another important aspect of meaningful communication is a presumed similarity between the sender and the receiver.  Obviously they must be capable of understanding whatever language the information is being transmitted in to a close approximation, but they also ought to have other "relevant knowledge" in common in order for communication to effectively occur.   For example if one English speaker says to another, "I have conclusively disproved the computational theory of mind by means of an ingenious thought experiment!"  The receiver may, on one level, "understand" the meaning of the words employed, but not understand the intended message that the speaker was trying to communicate if they do not know what "the computational theory of mind" or "thought experiments" are; the communication would have worked better if the two participants were more closely allied in their "knowledge base".

My proposal for what communication (of meaningful information in philosophical applications) is is something like "Bringing the receiver into a functionally equivalent internal information state to that of the sender".  It seems more useful and accurate to reflect the sort of understanding we aim for in philosophical communication to speak on the level of function rather than anything more fine grained.  How could one know the actualized state out of Mackay's "possible states" that the receiver is placed in (and hence the meaning of anything) if one does not look at the subsequent functioning of that receiver?

Even if we accept a materialist conception of the receiving system, it seems to me to be a clear folly to attempt to insist upon an identical pattern or structure in all agents in order for understanding to be communicated.  Instead, the best we can do (maybe the best which can be done) is to examine this on the level of functional equivalence as evidenced by behaviors and a reflexive discourse.  What do you think?

So yesterday, we're sitting around watching the the Skins giving the Eagles a nice little ass kicking, when Vlad comes inside the house meowing his little lungs out. Hmm, he's got something in his mouth. Yup, it's a chipmunk! Now this cat can hunt! He's done most of his hunting this year. Did I mention he's 16 years old? And deaf?

So after making sure we see the chipmunk, he runs down to the basement, most likely to show Sammy his catch, then takes it back upstairs. This whole time I'm thinking poor little chipmunk. He's toast, but that's nature for you. Nope! Since Vladi wasn't quite done playing with his prey, he releases it. Inside the house! In our living room

This chipmunk was nowhere near dead, and promptly runs away and escapes behind the entertainment center. Great, now we have a chipmunk loose in the house. Hilarity ensues. I'm already starting to imagine the dead chipmunk behind entertainment center smell. It's a rats nest of wires back there and impossible for me to get too. This is going to be lovely.

A few hours later, we hear this rustling sound by the fireplace. There he is. A very scared, but otherwise unharmed chipmunk. Not even a puncture wound. I think Vlad wanted himself a pet.

Now I'm determined to catch this chipmunk and throw him outside, so I get all gloved up. I don't want to get bitten by a rodent after all. More hilarity ensues.

Chipmunk:1, Me:0.

He's back behind the entertainment center again. At this point I'm thinking maybe if we befriend him, he'll eventually let us catch him, so we put out some bird seed for him(apparently chipmunks will eat just about anything). We didn't want him to starve to death somewhere in the house. Of course, having had his whole life flash in front of his eyes just a few hours earlier, he was having none of that.

Eventually, we did grab a poker and flush him out from behind there, and sort of chased him towards the open door. I think he got out. I lost sight of him under the bar, but did see something streaking out the door out of the corner of my eye. I think Chippy's going to be OK!

Video of the encounter:

[flickr video=http://www.flickr.com/photos/chriggy/2920227529]

Up to 1,500 jobs are to be lost at Aer Lingus in a dramatic new cost-cutting plan.

The plan, which includes outsourcing of the airline's entire ground operation, was announced in a meeting with union representatives at Dublin Airport this afternoon.

The company's bases at Shannon and Heathrow will be closed with staff being redeployed to Dublin or Cork airport, or made redundant.

The measures, which aim to save at least €74m a year, are due to come into affect from the first of December this year.

Ed allora la domanda é: quante possibili partite si possono effettuare a Tris? Un modo per cominciare a farsene un'idea é quello di pensare: al primo turno, il giocatore 1 ha a sua disposizione 9 possibili mosse (una per ogni quadrato della griglia), mentre il giocatore 2, successivamente, ne avrà 8 (9 meno il quadrato in cui il primo giocatore ha disegnato il suo cerchietto o la sua croce), e cosi via finché la griglia non si riempie. Quindi, in tutto si dovrebbero avere 9 * 8 * ... * 1 = 9! = 362 880 partite diverse. Questo numero sembra esagerato, ed in effetti nel nostro ragionamento ci sono svariate "falle": prima di tutto, non é necessario che la griglia si riempia, visto che un giocatore potrebbe vincere anche solo in cinque turni, lasciando quindi quattro caselle vuote.

Eliminando queste partite impossibili (un conto per cui vi rimando ai links a fine post), ce ne rimangono 255 168. Ancora troppo alto? Naturalmente possiamo raffinare il conto tenendo presente le varie simmetrie della griglia. Ad esempio, pensiamo alle possibili mosse iniziali: giocare in uno dei quattro angoli del quadrato (in alto a sinistra, in basso a destra e cosi via) dà il via a quattro alberi di possibili partite uguali fra loro, ma semplicemente ruotati di 90°, 180° o 270°: in effetti, le possibili aperture non simmetriche fra loro non sono 9, ma tre: centro, angolo, oppure lato centrale. Eliminando anche queste simmetrie, le possibili partite si riducono (a seconda della definizione che diamo di simmetria) a 26 830 oppure 31 896. Tante, non é cosi? In effetti il Tris, nonostante la sua assoluta semplicità e compattezza, permette di passare diverse settimane di gioco prima di essere riusciti a provare tutte le diverse partite (anche se, in questo conto, permangono comunque partite sostanzialmente dementi, in cui quando il nostro avversario sta per fare Tris non facciamo nulla, oppure, viceversa, non lo facciamo noi quando ne abbiamo l'opportunità).

Ci si potrebbe chiedere cosa accade con un gioco nettamente più complicato come gli Scacchi, in cui (per esempio) solo le mosse d'apertura possibili sono 20. Fare un calcolo preciso come prima risulta essere praticamente impossibile, ma gli esperti sono riusciti a trovarne un numero minimo (nonostante molto probabilmente la realtà sia maggiore): 10¹²⁰, anche chiamato Numero di Shannon: un numero addirittura maggiore degli atomi nell'Universo. Metaforicamente parlando, sembra proprio vero che gli Scacchi siano un gioco... infinito!

Fonti:

Tic-Tac-Toe su btinternet.com
Numero di Shannon su lestinto.it

4-6 pork chops

1 c. catsup

1 c. Coca-Cola

Directions-

Place pork chops in a frying pan.  Don’t add salt and pepper. Mix catsup with Coke and pour over pork chops. Simmer one hour with cover on pan

I consider this quick and easy, because it doesn’t require a lot of ingredients or attention. You can throw it in a pan and leave it.  It doesn’t have to be stirred or anything.

Shannon Williamson

2 c. (1 lb.) crumbled sausage

1 ½ c. grated sharp cheddar cheese

1 ½ c. grated Monterey Jack Cheese

1 c. prepared Ranch salad dressing

1 can (2.25 oz) sliced black olives

½ c. chopped red pepper

1 pkg. fresh/ frozen won ton wrappers

Vegetable oil or Pam

Directions-

Preheat oven to 350°. Blot sausage dry with paper towel and combine with cheeses, salad dressing, olives, and red pepper. Cut won-ton wrappers into 4 smaller squares (1/4). Lightly stray mini muffin tin with Pam and press small wrapper square in each cup. Spray lightly with Pam. Bake 5 minutes until golden. Remove from oven and fill with sausage mixture. Bake 5 minutes until bubbly. Makes 4-5 dozen

Shannon Williamson

2 pkg. strawberry jello

2 c. boiling water

2 10 oz. frozen strawberries

1 ½ c. crushed pineapple

1 carton sour cream

½ c. pecans

2 bananas

Directions-

Dissolve jello in boiling water. Stir well. Add frozen strawberries and stir until well dissolved and begins to thicken. Add pineapple, bananas, and nuts. Pour ½ into 8× 8 ×2 in. pan and chill until firm. Spread sour cream on top.  Then, pour the rest of the jello mixture on top of this. Chill until firm.

Shannon Williamson

Center Ryan Shannon, a man of many moves, got his first big break of the season last month when the Vancouver Canucks pulled their own zig-zag on him.

Earlier in the offseason, the Canucks re-signed Shannon, 25, to a one-year deal. As training camp drew near, Vancouver could see he was tilting more toward being a depth player again. That was the route Shannon took last season in 27 games with the Canucks and 13 in Manitoba.

So the Canucks decided that freeing the talented sparkplug was better than burying him. They sent him to the Ottawa organization in exchange for talented offensive defenseman Lawrence Nycholat.

"I was surprised. I'd been training, getting ready to go back to Vancouver," Shannon said. "With the change in management, they said there wasn't room for me. Instead of shoving me to the [AHL], they traded me to somewhere else."

Shannon is still caught in something of a roster squeeze. Last week, Ottawa demoted him to Binghamton. Although that's something of a forced marriage right now, it could also turn out to be one of the AHL's most beneficial ones.

Shannon tore onto the AHL scene three years ago as an undrafted free agent for Portland. He was the igniter of a great Pirates offense, shining with 27 goals and 59 assists. Shannon hasn't come close to replicating those numbers. He might have for the Moose last season, but he missed three months with a torn MCL. When healthy, he's been nudged out of his comfort zone and down to a third-line center role with Anaheim (11 points in 53 games in 2006-07) and Vancouver (13 in 27 last season).

That shouldn't be an issue in Binghamton. The team has a solid group of wings – hello, Denis Hamel – but missed the playoffs last season because the offense at times turned a little stagnant.

"He's going to be a real big part of our team. For as skilled as he is, he works just as hard or harder than anybody else," said Binghamton coach Cory Clouston, who got his first extended in-person look at Shannon this preseason. "He's a very focused athlete."

And considering Binghamton's desperate need for a top-two line middleman, a very busy one as well.

"You want high expectations on yourself. I feel confident about my game," Shannon said. "There's good skill players (in Binghamton). I think we have all the tools right here. I'd like to play the same way I did in Portland. I think I can do similar things here."

More

Lindsay Kramer, the AHL correspondent for NHL.com, profiles an up-and-coming player each Monday during the season, and his AHL notebook appears each Thursday on NHL.com.

5 lbs. potatoes, peeled

½ c. butter

1 c. sour cream

1 Tbls salt

½ c. parmesan cheese

8 oz cream cheese

½ tsp. pepper

Directions-

Boil potatoes until tender (20 minutes). Mash while hot. Using a mixer, stir in butter and cream cheese. Add remaining ingredients and stir just to combine. Makes one large casserole dish or two small ones.  Bake at 350° about 30 minutes to eat. I’ve made this to bring over to Thanksgiving dinner. You can do everything except cook it the day before and refrigerate, and cook it the day of.

Shannon Williamson

3 pkg. beef chunks

2 cans cream of mushroom soup

1 can of French onion soup

Directions-

Combine all ingredients into crock pot.

Cook on low all day.

Serve on rice.

Shannon Williamson

2 10 oz. pkg. chopped frozen broccoli

2 c. cream of chicken soup

1 c. cream of mushroom soup

3 soup cans of milk

1 lb. pkg. of Mexican Velveeta cheese

1 med. onion, chopped

3 tbsp. butter

Directions-

Sauté onion in butter until soft.  Meanwhile, cook broccoli in 3 qt saucepan; drain. Add onion, soup, milk, and cheese to cooked broccoli. Stir together and simmer until well blended and hot.  Makes 2 ½ qts.

Shannon Williamson

1 box of Betty Crocker Supermoist Mix-Golden Vanilla flavor

2 eggs

1/3 c. oil

Jelly of your choice

Directions-

1.      Mix together cake mix, eggs, and oil together.

2.     Roll into balls ½ in. in size.

3.     Place on greased cookie sheet

4.     Carefully press thumb into cookie dough leaving an impression.

5.     Drop ½ tsp jelly in the impression

6.     Bake 10-12 min. at 350° or until cookies begin to look cracked.

Shannon Williamson

1 c. Ritz cracker crumbs                               Salt to taste

1/3 c. grated Parmesan cheese                       1 garlic clove minced

¼ tsp. ground oregano                                    ¾ c. margarine

¼ tsp. pepper                                     

6 boneless chicken halves or tenderloins

Directions-

1.       Combine cracker crumbs, cheese, oregano, pepper, and salt in a plastic bag. Set aside.

2.     Sauté garlic in 2 Tbsp. of butter.  Add remaining butter.

3.     Dip chicken in garlic butter and roll in crumb mixture.

4.     Place chicken in casserole dish and sprinkle with remaining cracker crumbs. Pour on remaining butter (optional)

5.     Bake in a preheated oven at 350° for 55 minutes (45 minutes for tenderloins)

Shannon Williamson

I'm currently in what is termed "a long distance relationship".  I started dating my current SO (significant other) in late December of last year.  I'd met him before then, had a bit of face to face and MSN contact with him, but hadn't really spent a good deal of time with him.  We fell in love etc and then, I had to go back to school in Lethbridge while he stayed in Calgary.

Now for many people this would have been the end of the relationship.  For others it would have been the start of higher than average phone bills as they called each other every night.  For us, nothing changed.

How you ask?  Simple!  We have what I call a "digital relationship".

We picked up right where we left off.  Our previously spoken conversations became text messages (which we send at a rate of 50+ a day).  To us, it's like we're never that far apart.  Sure, we miss the physical contact associated with our relationship, but we make the best of the visits we do have.  The important thing to both of us was to keep things natural and not let the distance stop our relationship.

Now, you may be thinking "Shannon, that's a great story, but where is this going?" and to that I say: Right here!  :P

I never personally felt that digital communication was any different than face to face.  Though I know from experience, not everyone shares my opinions.

So I pose a question to all of you (respond in the comments section please!) :  Does digital communication work for you?  In what kind of relationship does it work best for you if it does?  Why?

My answers: Digital communication is best for me, as I'm a writer by nature.  It also allows me to control my temper by re-evaluating all my messages before I send them (I stick my foot in my mouth a lot less).  I feel no difference between face-to-face communication except in situations of physical touch. The only exception is with my family; my parents and I don't talk much face to face, so Internet communication has brought us a little closer (especially with my Mother who likes to e-mail me almost every day).  My sister isn't a fan of computers, so I often cater to what works best to her (or like to think I do).

If you're uncomfortable posting in the comments, e-mail me @ shannon.ogrady@uleth.ca.  This is also a bit of a get to know you exercise too on what I hope is a fairly neutral topic to most people, so hopefully everyone will feel safe opening up.

From your responses I'd like to write about how digital communication is viewed by technology savvy folk like ourselves.  I could generalize it all based on what I've read in sociology, anthropology and psychology textbooks but wouldn't it be more fun to read about yourselves!

Thank you all for your time!