## Thursday, December 6, 2007

Mathematics
In neutral geometry, the minimum distance between two points is the length of the line segment between them.
In analytic geometry, one can find the distance between two points of the xy-plane using the distance formula. The distance between (x1, y1) and (x2, y2) is given by
$d=sqrt{(Delta x)^2+(Delta y)^2}=sqrt{(x_2-x_1)^2+(y_2-y_1)^2}.,$
Similarly, given points (x1, y1, z1) and (x2, y2, z2) in three-space, the distance between them is
$d=sqrt{(Delta x)^2+(Delta y)^2+(Delta z)^2}=sqrt{(x_1-x_2)^2+(y_1-y_2)^2+(z_1-z_2)^2}.$
Which is easily proven by constructing a right triangle with a leg on the hypotenuse of another (with the other leg orthogonal to the plane that contains the 1st triangle) and applying the Pythagorean theorem.
In the study of complicated geometries, we call this (most common) type of distance Euclidean distance, as it is derived from the Pythagorean theorem, which does not hold in Non-Euclidean geometries. This distance formula can also be expanded into the arc-length formula.
In pseudo code the common distance formula is written like this:

Geometry
In the Euclidean space R, the distance between two points is usually given by the Euclidean distance (2-norm distance). Other distances, based on other norms, are sometimes used instead.
For a point (x1, x2, ...,xn) and a point (y1, y2, ...,yn), the Minkowski distance of order p (p-norm distance) is defined as:
p need not be an integer, but it cannot be less than 1, because otherwise the triangle inequality does not hold.
The 2-norm distance is the Euclidean distance, a generalization of the Pythagorean theorem to more than two coordinates. It is what would be obtained if the distance between two points were measured with a ruler: the "intuitive" idea of distance.
The 1-norm distance is more colourfully called the taxicab norm or Manhattan distance, because it is the distance a car would drive in a city laid out in square blocks (if there are no one-way streets).
The infinity norm distance is also called Chebyshev distance. In 2D it represents the distance kings must travel between two squares on a chessboard.
The p-norm is rarely used for values of p other than 1, 2, and infinity, but see super ellipse.
In physical space the Euclidean distance is in a way the most natural one, because in this case the length of a rigid body does not change with rotation.

Distance in Euclidean space
In mathematics, in particular geometry, a distance function on a given set M is a function d: M×M → R, where R denotes the set of real numbers, that satisfies the following conditions:
Such a distance function is known as a metric. Together with the set, it makes up a metric space.
For example, the usual definition of distance between two real numbers x and y is: d(x,y) = |xy|. This definition satisfies the three conditions above, and corresponds to the standard topology of the real line. But distance on a given set is a definitional choice. Another possible choice is to define: d(x,y) = 0 if x = y, and 1 otherwise. This also defines a metric, but gives a completely different topology, the "discrete topology"; with this definition numbers cannot be arbitrarily close.

d(x,y) ≥ 0, and d(x,y) = 0 if and only if x = y. (Distance is positive between two different points, and is zero precisely from a point to itself.)
It is symmetric: d(x,y) = d(y,x). (The distance between x and y is the same in either direction.)
It satisfies the triangle inequality: d(x,z) ≤ d(x,y) + d(y,z). (The distance between two points is the shortest distance along any path). General case
Various distance definitions are possible between objects. For example, between celestial bodies one should not confuse the surface-to-surface distance and the center-to-center distance. If the former is much less than the latter, as for a LEO, the first tends to be quoted (altitude), otherwise, e.g. for the Earth-Moon distance, the latter.
There are two common definitions for the distance between two non-empty subsets of a given set:
The distance between a point and a set is the infimum of the distances between the point and those in the set. This corresponds to the distance, according to the first-mentioned definition above of the distance between sets, from the set containing only this point to the other set.
In terms of this, the definition of the Hausdorff distance can be simplified: it is the larger of two values, one being the supremum, for a point ranging over one set, of the distance between the point and the set, and the other value being likewise defined but with the roles of the two sets swapped.

One version of distance between two non-empty sets is the infimum of the distances between any two of their respective points, which is the every-day meaning of the word. This is a symmetric prametric. On a collection of sets of which some touch or overlap each other, it is not "separating", because the distance between two different but touching or overlapping sets is zero. Also it is not hemimetric, i.e., the triangle inequality does not hold, except in special cases. Therefore only in special cases this distance makes a collection of sets a metric space.
The Hausdorff distance is the larger of two values, one being the supremum, for a point ranging over one set, of the infimum, for a second point ranging over the other set, of the distance between the points, and the other value being likewise defined but with the roles of the two sets swapped. This distance makes the set of non-empty compact subsets of a metric space itself a metric space. Distances between sets and between a point and a set
Distance cannot be negative. Distance is a scalar quantity, containing only a magnitude, whereas displacement is an equivalent vector quantity containing both magnitude and direction.
The distance covered by a vehicle (often recorded by an odometer), person, animal, object, etc. should be distinguished from the distance from starting point to end point, even if latter is taken to mean e.g. the shortest distance along the road, because a detour could be made, and the end point can even coincide with the starting point.

Other "distances"

Taxicab geometry
astronomical units of length
comoving distance
distance geometry
distance (graph theory)
Distance in military affairs
Dijkstra's algorithm
Distance Measuring Equipment (DME)
great-circle distance
length
milestone
Metric (mathematics)
Metric space
orders of magnitude (length)
Proper length
distance matrix
hamming distance
proxemics - physical distance between people

## Wednesday, December 5, 2007

For other places that have the same name, see Pyrgos (disambiguation).
Pyrgos (Greek: Πύργος) is the capital of the Prefecture of Ilia in Greece. It's named for a local tower. The city is located in the western part of the Peloponnese, in the middle of a plain in Ilia. It is 96km away from Patras via Greek National Road 9, 320 km from Athens, 144 km from Tripoli. It is bypassed by GR-9/E-55 or GR-74 (eastbound) to its east. The town of Katakolo lies 12 km to the west. Olympia is also nearby, as are Agios Georgios to the north and Lampeti (Lambeti) to the east. The Alfeios River is about 4 km to the south. The population of Pyrgos is 34,902 people. Television stations include Cosmos and ORT (Olympiaki Radiophonio Teleorassi, lit. Olympic Broadcasting Television).

Communities of the Municipality

Anthopyrgos
Kavasilakia
Kokkinochoma, located in the northeastern portion of Pyrgos
Tragano Sporting teams

Giorgos Karagounis (b. March 6, 1977), a soccer player

## Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Larry Coryell (April 2, 1943-) is an American jazz guitarist.
He was born in Galveston, Texas, in 1943. After graduating from Richland High School in eastern Washington, he moved to Seattle to attend the University of Washington. In 1965, Coryell moved to New York City where he became part of Chico Hamilton's quintet, replacing Gabor Szabo. In 1967 and 1968, he recorded with Gary Burton and Jim Pepper. His music during the late 1960s and early 1970s combined the influences of rock, jazz and eastern music. He formed his own group, The Eleventh House, in 1973. Following the break-up of this band, Coryell played mainly acoustic guitar, but returned to electric guitar later in the 1980s. In 1979, Coryell formed "The Guitar Trio" with jazz fusion guitarist John McLaughlin, and flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia and toured Europe briefly, eventually releasing a video recorded at Royal Albert Hall in London entitled "Meeting of Spirits". In early 1980 Larry was replaced by Al Di Meola, due to drug addiction.
With over 60 recordings under his belt, Larry continues to be a groundbreaking force in the guitar world. He currently lives in Kissimmee, Florida, and still continues to perform and write music. Larry's two sons, Julian Coryell and Murali Coryell are also actively involved in the music business.
Among others, he has performed with:

Eric Clapton
Chick Corea
Jimi Hendrix
Paco de Lucia
John McLaughlin
Billy Cobham
Keith Jarrett
Miles Davis
Jaco Pastorius
Al Di Meola
Biréli Lagrène
Emily Remler
Pat Metheny
Kazuhito Yamashita
Brian Q. Torff
Alphonse Mouzon Selected discography

Bob Moses: Love Animal (1967-68)
Herbie Mann: Memphis Underground (1968, with Sonny Sharrock)
Barefoot Boy (1969)
Larry Coryell at the Village Gate (1971)
The Real Great Escape (1973)
Introducing Eleventh House (1974)
The Restful Mind (1975, with Ralph Towner, Glen Moore, Collin Walcott)
The Eleventh House - Aspects (1976)
Philip Catherine/Coryell: Twin House (1976)
Charles Mingus: Three or Four Shades of Blue (1977)
The Eleventh House at Montreux (1978)
Together (1985, with Emily Remler)
Private Concert (Live) (1999)
Tricycles (2004)
Traffic (with Lenny White and Victor Bailey, 2006)

## Monday, December 3, 2007

Alexandru Dobrogeanu-Gherea or Alexandru Gherea (rendered in Russian as Александр Доброджану-Геря or Доброжану-Гере - Aleksandr Dobrodzhanu-Gerya /Dobrozhanu-Gere; July 7, 1879, Ploieşti1938, in the Soviet Union) was a Romanian communist militant and son of socialist, sociologist and literary critic Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea. He also used the pseudonyms of G. Alexe and Saşa/Sasha.

Communism
From 1932, he lived in the Soviet Union, working as a journalist and holding official positions in the Comintern. Gherea translated some of Vladimir Lenin's works into Romanian.
Together with the majority of Romanian communists inside the Soviet Union, after attracting Joseph Stalin's suspicion, he fell victim to the Great Purge: arrested in 1936, he was executed two years later.
In April 1968, Nicolae Ceauşescu's regime chose to investigate and exonerate most of the former Party members to have died in the period, Dobrogeanu-Gherea included. A similar measure had been taken inside the Soviet state in the previous decade, during Nikita Khrushchev's process of De-Stalinization.

## Sunday, December 2, 2007

Kellogg School of Management
The Kellogg School of Management (The Kellogg School or Kellogg) is a business school and one of eleven schools comprising Northwestern University located in Evanston, Illinois and downtown Chicago, Illinois. Kellogg offers full-time, part-time, and executive programs, as well as partnering with schools in China, India, Hong Kong, Israel, Germany, Canada, and Thailand, granting the M.B.A and Ph.D. Founded in 1908 in downtown Chicago as a part-time evening program, the school was chartered to educate business leaders with "good moral character." Kellogg has historically been ranked highly by BusinessWeek, U.S. News & World Report, The Economist Intelligence Unit, and other business news outlets. Alumni from the Kellogg school hold leadership positions in for-profit, nonprofit, governmental, and academic institutions around the world.

History
Kellogg offers Full-Time MBA, Executive MBA, and Part-Time MBA programs. The Kellogg School's Full-Time MBA programs include the traditional Two-Year MBA program (known as the 2Y Program); the accelerated One-Year MBA program (known as the 1Y Program); the Master of Management and Manufacturing (MMM) program, a joint program with Northwestern University's Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science; and the JD-MBA program, taught in conjunction with Northwestern University Law School.
The Part-Time MBA programs include the standard Evening MBA as well as the recently-created Saturday Part-Time MBA program, which is designed for students who travel during the week for work.
The Executive MBA program consistently ranks as one of the worlds top EMBA programs and is offered as a joint degree with the Schulich School of Business at York University which is ranked as the top business school in Canada (The Economist 2006, and also with theWHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management, one of the top ranked business schools in Germany. In addition to its highly-successful MBA programs, the school also offers a PhD program.
Regardless of which program they enroll in, the school's students are part of a culture that is famous for its emphasis on teamwork and leadership skills. Much of this reputation is driven by the School's operational model, which provides a plethora of opportunities for students to lead initiatives on behalf of the school. Many aspects of the school, from admissions decisions, to admitted students weekend, to orientation week, to the annual conferences and events that the school hosts, are organized and led by students.

Students and culture
Some of the Kellogg School's most prominent scholars and professors, past and present, include:
Kellogg's research centers include:
All of Kellogg's professors perform both teaching and research. The school takes feedback from executives participating in Executive MBA and Part-time MBA programs into account in defining the curriculum of its Full-time MBA program. Most classes combine lectures on theory, discussion of case studies, as well as student group projects.

Philip Kotler,#4 management guru of all time as ranked by the Financial Times and renowned marketing scholar
Arthur Andersen, founder of the auditing firm bearing his name
Willard Eugene Hotchkiss, founding Dean of Kellogg who went on to act as founding Dean of Stanford University's Graduate School of Business
Bala Balachandran, one of the top management accountants alive, pioneered Activity Based Costing
Walter Scott, former Chairman of Diageo, CEO of Ameriprise Financial, CFO of the Pillsbury Company, and Associate Director for Economics and Government at the United States Office of Management and Budget
Mohan Sawhney, pioneer in the field of technology management, and one of the 25 most influential people in e-Business as ranked by Businessweek
Donald Jacobs, Dean Emeritus who led the school during its rise to national and international prominence from the 70s into the 90s.
Dipak C. Jain, current Dean and pioneer in quantitative marketing
Louis Stern, the inventor of channel strategy
Ravi Jagannathan, expert in asset pricing and investment management
Robert McDonald, author of Derivatives Markets, the textbook on derivatives taught at business schools around the world
Robert Korajczyk expert in asset pricing and investment management
Richard Sandor, the "father of financial futures" and the CEO and Chairman of the Chicago Climate Exchange
Donald Haider, expert on intergovernmental relations, and the only individual to be named both a Congressional Fellow and a White House Fellow
Steven Rogers, professor of entrepreneruship and winner of the Entrepreneur of the Year Award (supporter category) by Ernst and Young
Ranjay Gulati, one of the top 10 most cited scholars in Business over the last 10 years
Andris Zoltners, pioneer in sales force strategy and founder of ZS Associates, a global management consulting firm specializing in sales and marketing strategy
Lynn M. Martin, Chair of the Council for the Advancement of Women
Sergio Rebelo, pioneer in the field of international finance and exchange rate theory
Brian Uzzi, pioneer in social networking theory
Sunil Chopra, world-renowned expert in supply chain management
John Ward, expert in family-business issues, co-founder of the Family Business Consulting Group, author of several books on the subject, and winner of the Richard Beckhard Award for Distinguished Leadership in Family Business
Marvin Manheim, William A. Patterson Distinguished Professor of Transportation
The Accounting Research Center
The Center for Biotechnology
The Center for Business, Government and Society
The Center for Executive Women
The Center for Family Enterprises
The Center for Financial Institutions and Markets
The Center for Health Industry Market Economics
The Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics & Mathematical Science
The Center for Nonprofit Management
The Center for Operations & Supply Chain Management
The Center for Retail Management
The Center for Research on Strategic Alliances
The Center for Strategic Decision-Making
The Center for Research in Technology & Innovation
The Dispute Resolution Research Center
The Ford Motor Company Center for Global Citizenship
The General Motors Research Center for Strategy in Management
The Guthrie Center for Real Estate Research
The Heizer Center for Entrepreneurial Studies
The Larry and Carol Levy Institute for Entrepreneurial Practice
The Kellogg Team & Group Research Center
The Zell Center for Risk Research. Research and academics
Kellogg has built a network of partner schools around the world to increase collaboration across regions, create a global dialogue on important management topics, and provide an integrated global network for executive education. Partner schools include:

School of Business and Management at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Hong Kong, China
Guanghua School of Management at Peking University, Beijing, China
Recanati Graduate School of Management at Tel Aviv University in Israel
WHU-Otto Beisheim School of Management in Germany
Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration of Chulalongkorn University in Thailand (Kellogg co-founded the school) Global partnerships
Kellogg has over 50,000 alumni. Prominent alumni include:

Alumni

Peter G. Peterson, Founder and Chairman of Blackstone Group, one of the world's largest buyout firms
John Meriwether, Founder of Long-Term Capital Management, one of the world's most influential hedge funds
Robert L. Berner III, partner, CVC Capital Partners, a global private equity firm
T. Bondurant French, Founder and CEO of Adams Street Partners, one of the world's largest private equity fund-of-funds
Stephen G. Woodsum, Founder and Managing Partner of Summit Partners, one of the world's largest growth capital firms
David Kabiller, Founding Principal of AQR Capital Management, one of the world's largest hedge funds (\$20 billion in assets)
Harry M. Jansen Kraemer, Jr., Executive Partner of Madison Dearborn Partners
Jack S. Levin, Senior Partner at Kirkland & Ellis, and author of Structuring Venture Capital, Private Equity, and Entrepreneurial Transactions and Mergers, Acquisitions, and Buyouts, textbooks that are taught at dozens of business schools and law schools Private Equity

Edwin G. Booz, founder of Booz Allen Hamilton consultancy
James L. Allen, founder of Booz Allen Hamilton consultancy, and namesake of the Kellogg School's executive education center
Arthur Andersen, Founder of the auditing firm bearing his name
Ken Danieli, Brand Strategist and Principal, Danieli Consulting, LLC, strategy & branding consultancy, Pepsi Stuff creator
Jack S. Levin, Senior Partner at Kirkland & Ellis, and author of Structuring Venture Capital, Private Equity, and Entrepreneurial Transactions and Mergers, Acquisitions, and Buyouts, textbooks that are taught at dozens of business schools and law schools
Edwin C. Gage III, Chairman and CEO of Gage Marketing Group, LLC
Kenneth R. Herlin, Partner at Ernst & Young LLP
Virginia A. Clarke, Director of Spencer Stuart
Robert C. Knuepfer, International Partner at Baker & McKenzie
Susan G. Rosenstein, President of Susan Rosenstein Executive Search Limited
Mark A. Shapiro, Principal of New England Consulting Group
Ben Perks, CFO of Navigant Consulting
Michael Tower, Managing Director North America at AT Kearney
John Livingston, Managing Director Chicago Office, McKinsey & Co
Michael D. Lyman, Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer, Global Management Consulting, BearingPoint Professional Service

Jerome P. Kenney, Vice Chairman and Member, Executive Client Coverage Group of Merrill Lynch, one of the world's largest investment banks
Patrick Ryan, Founder and Executive Chairman of Aon Corporation, one of the world's largest insurance companies
Thomas J. Wilson, President and CEO of Allstate Insurance Company
Wayne E. Hedien, Chairman Emeritus of Allstate Insurance Company
Craig Donohue, CEO of Chicago Mercantile Exchange, one of the world's largest commodities and derivatives exchanges
Leland C. Brendsel, Chairman and CEO Emeritus of Freddie Mac
Andrew Duff, CEO of Piper Jaffray
Chris Peacock, CEO Emeritus of Jones Lang LaSalle, one of the world's leading real estate firms
Stephen W. Baird, President & CEO of Baird & Warner Inc.
Donald C. Clark, Chairman Emeritus of Household International
Alan J. Weber, Chairman & CEO Emeritus of U.S. Trust Corporation
William A. Osborn, Chairman and CEO of Northern Trust Corporation
Scott C. Evans, CFO of TIAA-CREF
Steven E. Buller, CFO of Blackrock
A. John Gambs, CFO Emeritus of Charles Schwab
Robert J. Simmons, CFO of E-Trade Financial
Martha Coolidge Boudos, CFO of Morningstar
Paul J. Krump, COO of Chubb Commercial Insurance
David P. Bolger, EVP, CFO and Chief Administrative Officer of Aon Corporation
Yung-Ku Ha, CEO of Citibank Korea Financial Services

Promod Haque, Managing Partner at Norwest Venture Partners and winner of Forbes magazine's Midas Award for venture capitalist of the year.
Stephen G. Woodsum, Founder and Managing Partner of Summit Partners
Matt McCall, Founder and Managing Partner of Draper Fisher Jurvetson / Portage Ventures
James O'Connor, Jr., Founder of Motorola Ventures
L. Scott Minick, Managing Director of ARCH Venture Partners
Scott Halstead, General Partner at Morgan Stanley Venture Partners
John Chapman, General Partner at Techno Venture Management
Tod H. Francis, General Partner of Shasta Ventures
David Mayer, General Partner at Thoma Cressey Equity Partners
Gordon Pan, General Partner at Baird Venture Partners
E. Scott Crist, Founder & Managing Director of Crist Ventures
Patrick Pollard, President and Managing Director of BlueStar Ventures LP
James Dugan, CEO and General Partner of OCA Ventures Venture Capital

Christopher Galvin, CEO and Chairman Emeritus of Motorola
Mark Randall Goldston, CEO of United Online
Jim Safka, CEO of Match.com
Andrew B. Parkinson, Founder of Peapod.com
Thomas L. Parkinson, Founder of Peapod.com
Kent J. Lindstrom, President & COO of Friendster
J. Scott Etzler, President & CEO of InterCall
Jim Rose, Chairman and CEO Emeritus of QXL.com
Jeffrey Jackson, CFO of Sabre Holdings, parent company of Travelocity and other online travel brands
Cedric Loiret-Bernal, President & CEO of NanoInk
Laurance A. Spear, Founder of Go2Call.com
Stephen Hafner, Founder and CEO of Kayak.com
C. David Moll, CEO of Webroot Software
Robert Wayman, CFO of Hewlett Packard
David W. Devonshire, CFO of Motorola
Robert P. Dotson, President & CEO, T-Mobile USA Technology

Walter Scott, former Chairman of Diageo, CEO of Ameriprise Financial, Inc., CFO of the Pillsbury Company, and Associate Director for Economics and Government at the United States Office of Management and Budget
Richard H. Lenny, Chairman, President, & CEO of The Hershey Company
Phil Marineau, CEO of Levi Strauss & Co.
Robert Eckert, CEO of Mattel
Raymond F. Farley, President and CEO Emeritus of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc.
Douglas R. Conant, President and CEO of Campbell Soup Company
Robert H. Beeby, Retired CEO of Frito-Lay, Inc
William D. Smithburg, Retired Chairman and CEO of The Quaker Oats Company
Sheryl O'Loughlin, CEO of Clif Bar Inc.
Ronald C. Kesselman, President & CEO of Elmer's Products, Inc.
Kevin Kotecki, CEO of Pabst Brewing
Paul Tate, SVP & CFO of Frontier Airlines Consumer Goods

Gordon I. Segal, Founder & CEO of Otto Group's Crate & Barrel
Steve Odland, Chairman and CEO of Office Depot
Gregory P. Josefowicz, Chairman and CEO of Borders Group
Joseph M. DePinto, President and CEO of Seven-Eleven
Gregg Steinhafel, President of Target Corporation
Brad Blum, CEO Emeritus of Burger King
Dennis R. Farrow, COO of IHOP Corp.
Daniel M. Smith, President & CEO of Jillian's Entertainment Corp.
Selim Bassoul, Chairman and CEO of Middleby Corp
Thomas P. Cawley, CFO of Peet's Coffee & Tea, Inc.
Christine Lansing, CMO of Peet's Coffee & Tea, Inc.
Mark Berey, CFO of Giant Food
Lawerence F. Levy, Chairman of Levy Restaurants Health care and biotechnology

Sheraton Kalouria President, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Television
Theodore Peter Phillips, President and CEO of the Chicago Bears
Kenard Gibbs, President of Vibe Magazine
W.C. Korn, Former President and CEO of CBS Stations Group
Michael George, President and CEO of QVC
Scott C. Smith, President and Publisher of the Chicago Tribune
David Shaffer, CEO of Thomson Financial
Paul Johnson, President & Publisher of Kelley Blue Book
John J. Lewis, President and CEO of AC Nielsen USA
Linda Johnson Rice, President and CEO of Johnson Publishing
Philippe Blatter, CEO of Infront Sports & Media
Henry W. Adams, Founder & CEO of Sportvision
Bruce P. Boren, President and CEO of Televisa Networks
Robert Birge, Chief Marketing Officer of IMG Sports & Entertainment
Joseph M. Vrankin, CFO of the Arena Football League
James J. Palos, President of the Institute for Media and Entertainment
James M. Rose, CEO of Media Planning Group
Raymond L. Gellein, Chairman & Co-CEO, Starwood Vacation Ownership, Inc
David A. Donatelli, Executive Vice President, Storage Product Operations, EMC Corporation Media, entertainment, and information services

James Keyes, CEO Emeritus of Johnson Controls
Fred Kindle, President and CEO of the ABB Group, the world's largest engineering firm
J. Stephen Simon, President of ExxonMobil Refining & Supply Company
David Speer, President and CEO of Illinois Tool Works
Tadahiro Yoshida, President and CEO of YKK Corporation
John W. Seiple, Jr., President & COO of ProLogis
Pamela Forbes Lieberman, CEO Emeritus of TruServ Corporation
John J. Zillmer, Chairman and CEO of Allied Waste
Stephen R. Wilson, Chairman, President and CEO of CF Industries
Terrell K. Crews, CFO of Monsanto
Thomas E. Bergmann, CFO of Harley-Davidson
John H. Tate, CFO of Frontier Airlines
Jeffrey L. Keefer, CFO of DuPont
Andrew Fastow, former CFO, Enron
William G. Walter, Chairman of the Board, President and CEO of FMC Corporation Industry

John Hoeven, Governor of North Dakota [1]
Andrew Maner, CFO of the Department of Homeland Security
Somkid Jatusripitak, Minister of Finance of Thailand
Ali Babacan, Minister of State for the Economy of Turkey
Jye-Cherng "Joseph" Lyu, Minister of Finance of Taiwan
Anwar Ul-Haq Ahady, Minister of Finance of Afghanistan
Cesar Purisima, Secretary of Trade & Industry, Republic of the Philippines
Carole Brown, Chairperson of the Chicago Transit Authority Academia
Kellogg is consistently ranked among the top five business schools in the world. Recent historical rankings of the Kellogg School's MBA, Executive MBA, and Part-Time MBA in BusinessWeek, The Economist, Financial Times, Forbes, US News & World Report, and Wall Street Journal are:

Two of the Kellogg School's other executive MBA programs are also highly ranked by the Financial Times. The School's Kellogg-HKUST program at the Hong Kong UST Business School is ranked No. 2 in the world, while the school's Kellogg-WHU program at WHU Business School in Germany is ranked No. 12 in the world.

## Saturday, December 1, 2007

Microsoft Outlook or Outlook (full name Microsoft Office Outlook since Outlook 2003) is a personal information manager from Microsoft, and is part of the Microsoft Office suite.
Although often used mainly as an e-mail application, it also provides a calendar, task and contact management, note taking, a journal and web browsing.
It can be used as a stand-alone application, but can also operate in conjunction with Microsoft Exchange Server to provide enhanced functions for multiple users in an organization, such as shared mailboxes and calendars, public folders and meeting time allocation.

Versions
Outlook is an integrated application for email, calendaring, tasks, contacts and much more. However, it does not fully support other calendar programs for calendaring or contacts such as iCalendar, CalDAV, SyncML and vCard 3.0. Outlook 2007 claims to be fully iCalendar compliant, however it does not support all core objects, such as VTODO, VJOURNAL. Also, Outlook supports vCard 2.1 and does not support multiple contacts in the vCard format as a single file. Outlook has also been criticized for having proprietary "Outlook extensions" to these Internet standards. Also, for Outlook 2007, Microsoft has replaced the more standards-compliant Internet Explorer-based HTML editing/viewing engine with the one from Microsoft Office Word 2007. Outlook Express is being replaced by Windows Live Mail.
Outlook encourages top-posting by placing the cursor above the quoted text. A proponent of bottom-posting has created an application known as Outlook-QuoteFix to change this default to bottom-posting.

Internet standards
One of Microsoft's goals is for the e-mail client to be easy to use. However, the embedded automation and lack of security features compared to competitors have been repeatedly exploited by malicious hackers using e-mail viruses. These typically take the form of an e-mail attachment which executes on the user's machine and replicates itself by mass-mailing the user's or Exchange server's address list. Examples of such viruses are the Melissa and Sobig worms. Other programs have exploited Outlook's HTML e-mail capabilities to execute malicious code or confirm that e-mail addresses are valid targets for spam. The notoriety of the worms and other viruses has gained Outlook a reputation as a highly insecure e-mail platform.
Unix programmer Bill Joy has suggested that Outlook is insecure largely because it was written in C, making it easy to write programs to exploit it. He also believes the widespread use of Outlook is a major contributing factor in the proliferation of spam

Security concerns
Outlook 2007 was available in retail stores at the end of Jan 2007. A trial is available for download on Office Online:

A to-do bar added to the shell UI that shows a snapshot of the user's upcoming appointments and active tasks for better time and project management.
Improved calendar views that display the tasks due below each day on the week view and supports overlaying multiple calendars.
'Instant Search' through a context indexer based search engine with Windows Desktop Search
Enhanced integration with Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server
New programmability features [1]
Ability to publish calendars in Internet Calendar format to Microsoft Office Online or to a WebDAV server

## Friday, November 30, 2007

Churches

Cotroceni Palace Museum (Muzeul Naţional Cotroceni)
George Enescu Museum
Grigore Antipa Museum of Natural History
History and Art Museum (Palatul Şuţu)
Romanian National History Museum
Jewish History Museum
Military Museum
Museum of Art Collections
Museum of the Romanian Peasant (Muzeul Ţăranului Român)
National Museum of Art (Muzeul Naţional de Artă)
Theodor Aman Museum
Village Museum (Muzeul Satului)
Zambaccian Museum Museums
Public Universities and Colleges:
Source: the Law on the Organization of the Education and Research Ministry [1].

Architecture Institute (Institutul de Arhitectură Ion Mincu)
Microtechnology Institute (Institutul de Microtehnologie)
University of Bucharest (Universitatea Bucureşti)
Polytechnic University of Bucharest (Universitatea Politehnică Bucureşti)
Technical University of Construction (Universitatea Tehnică de Construcţii)
Carol Davila Medicine and Pharmacy University (Universitatea de Medicină şi Farmacie Carol Davila)
University of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine (Universitatea de Ştiinţe Agricole şi Medicină Veterinară)
Music University (Universitatea de Muzică)
Art University (Universitatea de Arte)
University of Theatrical Art and Filmmaking (Universitatea de Artă Teatrală şi Cinematografică "Ion Luca Caragiale")
National School for Political and Administrative Studies (Şcoala Naţională de Studii Politice şi Administrative) Colleges and universities

Bucharest Mall
Casa Presei Libere
National Military Center (Cercul Militar Naţional)
Creţulescu Palace
Palace of the Parliament (Palatul Parlamentului)
Palace Casino
Pasajul Macca-Vilacrosse
ruins of the Old Court (Curtea Veche)
Central University Library of Bucharest (Biblioteca Centrală Universitară) Other public Buildings

Act Theater (Teatrul Act)
C. Tănase Theater (Teatrul C. Tănase), home of a satirical revue
Casandra Theater Studio (Studioul Casandra), student theater
Comedy Theater (Teatrul de Comedie)
Excelsior Theater (Teatrul Excelsior)
Green Hours Theater (Teatrul Luni de la Green Hours)
Hanul cu Tei Theater
Ion Creangă Theater (a puppet theater)
Bulandra Theatre
Nottara Theater (Teatrul Nottara)
Odeon Theatre
Operetta (Teatrul Naţional de Operetă)
National Theatre Bucharest (Teatrul Naţional I.L. Caragiale)
Small Theater (Teatrul Mic)
Ţăndărică Theater (a puppet theater)
Theatrum Mundi
Union Theater
State Jewish Theater (Teatrul Evreiesc de Stat)
Very Small Theater (Teatrul Foarte Mic) Theaters

Romanian Athenaeum (Ateneul Român)
Romanian National Opera (Opera Română) Hotels
This is not a comprehensive list of restaurants in Bucharest, only those of architectural or historic significance.

Amsterdam Grand Café
Bistro Atheneu
Caru' cu Bere
Casa Capşa
Manuc's Inn (Hanul lui Manuc)

## Thursday, November 29, 2007

The Cantonese Wikipedia is the Cantonese language edition of Wikipedia, run by the Wikimedia Foundation. Started in 25 March 2006, the Cantonese Wikipedia has, as of May 2007, over 3,300 articles, and over 2,000 users.
Cantonese is one of the five regional Chinese tongues to have its own Wikipedia. The other four are: Minnan Wikipedia (Main Page), Mindong Wikipedia (Main Page), Wu Wikipedia (Main Page), and Hakka Wikipedia (Main Page).
Currently, it has 11 administrators in the Cantonese Wikipedia.

Chinese Wikipedia

## Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Henri-Louis Bergson (IPA: [bɛʁkˈsɔn]; October 18, 1859January 4, 1941) was a major French philosopher, influential in the first half of the 20th century.

Biography
Bergson was born in the Rue Lamartine in Paris, not far from the Palais Garnier (the old Paris opera house). He was descended from a Polish Jewish family (originally Berekson) on his father's side, while his mother was from an English and Irish Jewish background. His family lived in London for a few years after his birth, and he obtained an early familiarity with the English language from his mother. Before he was nine, his parents crossed the English Channel and settled in France, Henri becoming a naturalized citizen of the Republic. His sister, Mina Bergson (also known as Moina Mathers), married the English occult author Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers, a leader of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and the couple later relocated to Paris as well.
Bergson lived the quiet life of a French professor. Its chief landmarks were the publication of his four principal works: in 1889, Time and Free Will (Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience); in 1896, Matter and Memory (Matière et mémoire); in 1907, Creative Evolution (L'Evolution créatrice); and in 1932, The Two Sources of Morality and Religion (Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion).

Overview
Bergson attended the Lycée Fontaine (now known as the Lycée Condorcet) in Paris from 1868 to 1878. While there he won a prize for his scientific work and another, in 1877 when he was eighteen, for the solution of a mathematical problem. His solution was published the following year in Annales de Mathématiques. It was his first published work. After some hesitation as to whether his career should lie in the sphere of the sciences or that of the humanities, he decided in favour of the latter, and when he was nineteen, he entered the famous École Normale Supérieure. He obtained there the degree of Licence-ès-Lettres, and this was followed by that of Agrégation de philosophie in 1881 .
The same year he received a teaching appointment at the Lycée in Angers, the ancient capital of Anjou. Two years later he settled at the Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand, capital of the Puy-de-Dôme département, a town whose name is usually more of interest for motorists than for philosophers, being the home of Michelin tyres and the Charade Circuit racing track.
The year after his arrival at Clermont-Ferrand Bergson displayed his ability in the humanities by the publication of an excellent edition of extracts from Lucretius, with a critical study of the text and the philosophy of the poet (1884), a work whose repeated editions are sufficient evidence of its useful place in the promotion of classical study among the youth of France. While teaching and lecturing in this part of his country (the Auvergne region), Bergson found time for private study and original work. He crafted his dissertation Time and Free Will, which was submitted, along with a short Latin thesis on Aristotle, for his doctoral degree which was awarded by the University of Paris in 1889. The work was published in the same year by Felix Alcan, the Paris publisher.
Bergson dedicated Time and Free Will to Jules Lachelier, then public education minister, who was a disciple of Felix Ravaisson and the author of a rather important philosophical work On the Founding of Induction (Du fondement de l'induction, 1871). Lachelier endeavoured "to substitute everywhere force for inertia, life for death, and liberty for fatalism." (Lachelier was born in 1832, Ravaisson in 1813 . Bergson owed much to both of these teachers of the Ecole Normale Supérieure. Cf. his memorial address on Ravaisson, who died in 1900 .)
Bergson settled again in Paris, and after teaching for some months at the Municipal College, known as the College Rollin, he received an appointment at the Lycée Henri-Quatre, where he remained for eight years. In 1896 he published his second large work, entitled Matter and Memory. This rather difficult, but brilliant, work investigates the function of the brain, undertakes an analysis of perception and memory, leading up to a careful consideration of the problems of the relation of body and mind. Bergson had spent years of research in preparation for each of his three large works. This is especially obvious in Matter and Memory, where he showed a thorough acquaintance with the extensive pathological investigations which had been carried out during the period.
In 1898 Bergson became Maître de conférences at his Alma Mater, L'Ecole Normale Supérieure, and was later promoted to a Professorship. The year 1900 saw him installed as Professor at the Collège de France, where he accepted the Chair of Greek Philosophy in succession to Charles L'Eveque.
At the First International Congress of Philosophy, held in Paris during the first five days of August, 1900, Bergson read a short, but important, paper, "Psychological Origins of the Belief in the Law of Causality" (Sur les origines psychologiques de notre croyance à la loi de causalité). In 1901 Felix Alcan published a work which had previously appeared in the Revue de Paris, entitled Laughter (Le rire), one of the most important of Bergson's minor productions. This essay on the meaning of comedy was based on a lecture which he had given in his early days in the Auvergne. The study of it is essential to an understanding of Bergson's views of life, and its passages dealing with the place of the artistic in life are valuable. The main thesis of the work is that laughter is a corrective evolved to make social life possible for human beings. We laugh at people who fail to adapt to the demands of society, if it seems their failure is akin to an inflexible mechanism. Comic authors have exploited this human tendency to laugh in various ways, and what is common to them is the idea that the comic consists in there being "something mechanical encrusted on the living".
In 1901 Bergson was elected to the Académie des sciences morales et politiques, and became a member of the Institute. In 1903 he contributed to the Revue de metaphysique et de morale a very important essay entitled Introduction to Metaphysics (Introduction à la metaphysique), which is useful as a preface to the study of his three large books.
On the death of Gabriel Tarde, the eminent sociologist, in 1904, Bergson succeeded him in the Chair of Modern Philosophy. From the 4th to September 8 of that year he was at Geneva attending the Second International Congress of Philosophy, when he lectured on The Mind and Thought: A Philosophical Illusion (Le cerveau et la pensée: une illusion philosophique). An illness prevented his visiting Germany to attend the Third Congress held at Heidelberg.
His third major work, Creative Evolution, appeared in 1907, and is undoubtedly the most widely known and most discussed. It constitutes one of the most profound and original contributions to the philosophical consideration of the theory of evolution. Imbart de la Tour remarked that Creative Evolution was a milestone of new direction in thought. By 1918, Alcan, the publisher, had issued twenty-one editions, making an average of two editions per annum for ten years. Following the appearance of this book, Bergson's popularity increased enormously, not only in academic circles, but among the general reading public.

Education and career
Bergson came to London in 1908 and visited William James, the Harvard philosopher who was Bergson's senior by seventeen years, and who was instrumental in calling the attention of the Anglo-American public to the work of the French professor. James's impression of Bergson is given in his Letters under date of October 4, 1908. "So modest and unpretending a man but such a genius intellectually! I have the strongest suspicions that the tendency which he has brought to a focus, will end by prevailing, and that the present epoch will be a sort of turning point in the history of philosophy."
As early as 1880 James had contributed an article in French to the periodical La Critique philosophique, of Renouvier and Pillon, entitled Le Sentiment de l'Effort. Four years later a couple of articles by him appeared in the journal Mind: "What is an Emotion?" and "On some Omissions of Introspective Psychology." Of these articles the first two were quoted by Bergson in his 1889 work, Time and Free Will. In the following years 1890-91 appeared the two volumes of James's monumental work, The Principles of Psychology, in which he refers to a pathological phenomenon observed by Bergson. Some writers, taking merely these dates into consideration and overlooking the fact that James's investigations had been proceeding since 1870 (registered from time to time by various articles which culminated in "The Principles"), have mistakenly dated Bergson's ideas as earlier than James's.
It has been suggested that Bergson owes the root ideas of his first book to the 1884 article by James, "On Some Omissions of Introspective Psychology," which he neither refers to nor quotes. This article deals with the conception of thought as a stream of consciousness, which intellect distorts by framing into concepts. Bergson replied to this insinuation by denying that he had any knowledge of the article by James when he wrote Les données immédiates de la conscience. The two thinkers appear to have developed independently until almost the close of the century. They are further apart in their intellectual position than is frequently supposed. Both have succeeded in appealing to audiences far beyond the purely academic sphere, but only in their mutual rejection of "intellectualism" as final is there real unanimity. Although James was slightly ahead in the development and enunciation of his ideas, he confessed that he was baffled by many of Bergson's notions. James certainly neglected many of the deeper metaphysical aspects of Bergson's thought, which did not harmonize with his own, and are even in direct contradiction. In addition to this, Bergson can hardly be considered a pragmatist. For him, "utility," far from being a test of truth, was in fact the reverse: a synonym for error.
Nevertheless, William James hailed Bergson as an ally. Early in the century (1903) he wrote: "I have been re-reading Bergson's books, and nothing that I have read since years has so excited and stimulated my thoughts. I am sure that that philosophy has a great future, it breaks through old cadres and brings things into a solution from which new crystals can be got." The most noteworthy tributes paid by him to Bergson were those made in the Hibbert Lectures (A Pluralistic Universe), which James gave at Manchester College, Oxford, shortly after meeting Bergson in London. He remarks on the encouragement he has received from Bergson's thought, and refers to the confidence he has in being "able to lean on Bergson's authority."
The influence of Bergson had led him "to renounce the intellectualist method and the current notion that logic is an adequate measure of what can or cannot be." It had induced him, he continued, "to give up logic, squarely and irrevocably" as a method, for he found that "reality, life, experience, concreteness, immediacy, use what word you will, exceeds our logic, overflows, and surrounds it."
These remarks, which appeared in James's book A Pluralistic Universe in 1909, impelled many English and American readers to an investigation of Bergson's philosophy for themselves. A certain handicap existed in that his greatest work had not then been translated into English. James, however, encouraged and assisted Dr. Arthur Mitchell in his preparation of the English translation of Creative Evolution. In August of 1910 James died. It was his intention, had he lived to see the completion of the translation, to introduce it to the English reading public by a prefatory note of appreciation. In the following year the translation was completed and still greater interest in Bergson and his work was the result. By a coincidence, in that same year (1911), Bergson penned a preface of sixteen pages entitled Truth and Reality for the French translation of James's book, "Pragmatism". In it he expressed sympathetic appreciation of James's work, coupled with certain important reservations.
In April (5th to 11th) Bergson attended the Fourth International Congress of Philosophy held at Bologna, in Italy, where he gave an address on "Philosophical Intuition". In response to invitations he visited England in May of that year, and on several subsequent occasions. These visits were well received. His speeches offered new perspectives and elucidated many passages in his three major works: Time and Free Will, Matter and Memory, and Creative Evolution. Although necessarily brief statements, they developed and enriched the ideas in his books and clarified for English audiences the fundamental principles of his philosophy.

The lectures on Change, and Bergson's later life
From his first publications, Bergson's philosophy attracted strong criticism. Many writers of the early 20th century criticized his intuitionism, indeterminism, psychologism and confused interpretation of the scientific impulse. Among those who explicitly criticized Bergson (either in published articles or letters) were Bertrand Russell (see his short book on the subject), George Santayana (see his study on the author in "Winds of Doctrine"), G. E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Julien Benda (see his book on the subject), T. S. Eliot, Paul Valéry (despite some recent claims otherwise), Andre Gide (see below), Marxists philosophers such as Theodor W. Adorno (see "Against Epistemology"), Lucio Colletti (see "Hegel and Marxism"), Maurice Blanchot (see Bergson and Symbolism), Jean-Paul Sartre (see his early book Imagination) and Georges Politzer (see the latter's two books on the subject: Le Bergsonisme, une Mystification Philosophique and La fin d'une parade philosophique: le Bergsonisme both of which had a tremendous effect on French existential phenomenology), American philosophers such as Irving Babbitt, Arthur Lovejoy, Josiah Royce, The New Realists (Ralph B. Perry, E. B. Holt, and William P. Montague), The Critical Realists (Durant Drake, Roy W. Sellars, C. A. Strong, and A. K. Rogers), Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Roger Fry (see his letters), and Virginia Woolf (for the latter, see Ann Banfield, The Phantom Table).
C. S. Peirce took strong exception to being aligned with Bergson. In response to a letter comparing his work with that of Bergson he wrote, "a man who seeks to further science can hardly commit a greater sin than to use the terms of his science without anxious care to use them with strict accuracy; it is not very gratifying to my feelings to be classed along with a Bergson who seems to be doing his prettiest to muddle all distinctions." William James's students resisted the assimilation of his work to that of Bergson's. See, for example, Horace Kallen's book on the subject James and Bergson. As Jean Wahl described the "ultimate disagreement" between James and Bergson in his System of Metaphysics: "for James, the consideration of action is necessary for the definition of truth, according to Bergson, action...must be kept from our mind if we want to see the truth." Gide even went so far as to say that future historians will over-estimate Bergson's influence on art and philosophy just because he was the self-appointed spokesman for "the spirit of the age." As early as the 1890s, Santayana attacked certain key concepts in Bergson's philosophy, above all his view of the New and the indeterminate: "the possibility of a new and unaccountable fact appearing at any time," he writes in his book on Lotze, "does not practically affect the method of investigation;...the only thing given up is the hope that these hypotheses may ever be adequate to the reality and cover the process of nature without leaving a remainder. This is no great renunciation; for that consummation of science...is by no one really expected." According to Santayana and Russell, Bergson projected false claims onto the aspirations of scientific method, which Bergson needed to make in order to justify his prior moral commitment to freedom. Russell takes particular exception to Bergson's understanding of number in chapter two of Time and Free-will. According to Russell, Bergson uses an outmoded spatial metaphor ("extended images") to describe the nature of mathematics as well as logic in general. "Bergson only succeeds in making his theory of number possible by confusing a particular collection with the number of its terms, and this again with number in general," writes Russell (see The Philosophy of Bergson and A History of Western Philosophy). Further still, the élan vital was seen to be a projection of the inner life, a moral feeling, onto the world at large. The external world, according to certain theories of probability, provides less and less indeterminism with further refinement of scientific method. In brief, the moral, psychological, and aesthethic demand for the new, the underivable and the unexplained should not be confused with our imagination of the universe at large. A difference remains between our inner sense of becoming and the non-human character of the outer world, which, according to the ancient materialist Lucretius should not be characterized as either one of becoming or being, creation or destruction (De Rerum Natura).

Criticisms

Élan vital
Philosophy of biology
Process philosophy