Hello there! Diego here! (That… that’s seriously my name.) As some of you may know, I am of Mexican origin, and I would like to make a few things clear about May 5th you may or may not be aware about.
1. Cinco de Mayo is NOT the date of the Independence of Mexico.
That’s right! Mexico celebrates its independence in September 16th, or more likely, the night of September 15th, when traditionally they make the traditional Grito de Independencia by midnight, which is a reenactment of the legend of the night revolutionary priest Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla called mass in 1810 for the people to rebel against the Spanish government.
“Cinco de Mayo” also known as “La Batalla de Puebla” (The Battle of Puebla) is a commemoration of a victory in the battle against French invaders that arrived from the port of the state of Veracruz. Albeit not a strategically decisive battle on the war, it is important on national pride as a moment in which a tiny new country without virtually any funds by the time of 1860s defeated such a super powerful army which were the French.
2. “Sombreros”.
Ah yes.
The “sombrero”.
Just to put it straight: Sombrero just means “hat” in Spanish; at least Mexican Spanish. We tend to call sombrero to any kind of hat, that is if we are not using the word “gorro/gorra” alternatively.
The “sombreros” you usually see in every single stereotype you may imagine are based a mixture of the charro outfit and the way poor proletariats would dress around the dawn of the 20th century whom also were an emblem of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. (Another national celebration that goes in November 20th.) Slavery was already illegal in Mexico, but these people were exploited in a disguised system in which the workers were paid (miserably) and all of their expenses would be controlled in stores they were only allowed to spend at; those stores were also owned by the proprietors of the land they worked at.
The stereotype has been so reflected in so many places inside and outside the border it has even been reclaimed by the Mexican people themselves.
“Oh, so is it okay for me to wear one?”
No.
By the way when I mentioned “charros”, I mean a traditional type of horsemen that follow their own set of etiquettes and styles, and it’s also practiced by women who are not only beautiful but also super badass.
3. Maracas.
I SERIOUSLY DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH MEXICAN STEREOTYPES AND MARACAS TO BE HONEST.
LIKE, THEY ARE USED IN A FEW CULTURES OF MEXICO SUCH AS THE YAQUIS, BUT OTHER THAN THAT IT REALLY DOESN’T HAVE MUCH OF A CULTURAL BACKGROUND FOR MEXICO. ALMOST ANY OTHER COUNTRY IN LATIN AMERICA, BUT NOT MUCH IN MEXICO.
THEY ARE MORE OF A BRAZILIAN THING.EDIT: Actually no, they are not Brazlian at all either.
Much like the sombrero, if you “went to Mexico” (Tijuana, Cancún, Mazatlán, Rocky Point) and they gave you maracas with vivid colors on them, there is absolutely no cultural importance behind it as souvenir of Mexico. Mexicans love to point at, laugh, and exploit the cultural obliviousness of tourists. Especially American tourists.
…
*cough*
4. The mustache.
This one is a bit strange, albeit kind of true in some regards.
The mustache is an international symbol of masculinity, and Mexico is a country full of machismo, albeit “caballerosidad” is also one of the qualities in the Mexican etiquette which involves respecting the autonomy and individual identity of women, always approach to a non-violent solution, and a general attitude of politeness to both men and women; that said it is not impossible for a Mexican to be misogynistic as well.
ANYWAY, the mustache is kind of a downhill-snowball stereotype that may have started in just seeing many Mexicans having a mustache, but so do a LOT of American males as well, so uhhhh… it’s a very strange label to pin on Mexicans over all.
5. Tequila.
I actually don’t mind if you drink tequila. You kinda support the economy of my country and it’s an actual cultural thing that I like it when it’s spread around.
Just remember that it is NOT drunk with a worm in it. That is mezcal. Its like tequila’s wilder cousin. And no, it has no mescaline.
6. Other stereotypes.
Sugar skulls are a cool thing, I guess. No, they have absolutely nothing to do with Cinco de Mayo, they are part of Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) which is celebrated in November 1st.
“Do not drink the water” is a weird stereotype I have heard. I would not simply recommend you to drink untreated tap water anywhere. Period. We have water purifiers everywhere.
Mexico is what I call a “second world country”. It is not as developed and advanced as the United States, but it IS civilized in a great way we count with continuous technological developments and lots and lots of progressist enthusiasts.
Mexico is not proud of drug trafficking. It’s an extremely serious problem that has the entire country terrorized and I am really exhausted of all the attention they get from dumb Hollywood movies rather than the real Mexico. Do not talk about drugs. Do not talk about narcos. This is a very delicate topic that many people overlook the impact it’s had with Mexican people in their identity. Please.
I persist. Do not, seriously, DO NOT associate Mexican people with drug dealers, drug lords, “narcos”, or any other extension. If you seriously STILL wonder “what the big deal is”, I dare you to Google “narcos” on the image search and look at all the horrible things they do to the innocents. (It’s seriously fucked up and triggering with blood, gore, body horror shit.)
Mexican people have contributed with some groundbreaking contributions to science and technology and the way we are leading our lives.
> Mario J. Molina is a chemist who discovered the causes of ozone depletion in the atmosphere.
> Guillermo González Camarena patented the first trichromatic TV color transmitter in 1940. 8 years before Peter Carl Goldmark presented it to CBS and took most of the credit.
> Luis Ernesto Miramontes co-developed “the pill”. Props.
> Andrés Manuel del Río discovered vanadium in 1801 which is used to strengthen steel further and is applied from bicycles and hardware tools, to dental implants and jet engines.
Yes, Mexicans are actually laid back. No, they are not inherently lazy.
Mexican people are culturally masters of improvisation and creativity, this leads them to engineer creative solutions to everyday problems. Just felt like sharing this fact.
Ok so this is all I have right off the bat, and I wish you a happy Cinco de Mayo. Have fun, get drunk, party on; I don’t care, we don’t care. Just have these things on mind.
TL;DR: Please do not do/say anything racist.
Signal Boosting this because it needs to be said.
Much love to you brother – from a fellow indigenous man (Native American Mohawk) @vinceschilling – thanks for sharing @cybercitrus
malachite is a poisonous mineral. please do not fuck the malachite stalactite
@lizaleigh do you know any rock people that can confirm/deny because I am very curious and really don’t feel like getting into a conversation with my geophysicist brother that MAY somehow get back to the fact I saw a malachite that looked like a weird dildo.
…sadly, I am not on good enough terms with any of our partner geologists to just attach this to an email with the subject line: “EXPLAIN.”
Although I think @mollisaurus is a mineral person. Thoughts?
oh geeze, i’m kinda rusty on minerals but malachite is just copper carbonate and is really common in both antique and modern jewelry so i think like if you were really gun-ho about it you could go ahead and put it wherever you want?
It’s really only a problem if you’re polishing or cutting it. The particles would be bad to breathe. It’s rather porous too, so I would worry about bacteria growing. Well, being literal anyway… Better to leave the poor thing alone. ._.
I mean it kinda depends on where you stick it because malachite does not like acidic environments very much and the malachite will degrade and also might dye your bits blue-green as the copper dissolves out.
So use a condom when fucking rocks is the takeaway here.
Oh my god guys it’s poisonous
It is super poisonous
There is a reason we do not use it in make up any more
Not even with a condom, do not fuck the rock
Try this one instead.
malachite literally explodes in water does it not?
I… no… I think you’re thinking of pure sodium?
Malachite is however water soluble, which really just means it will poison you quicker
This is both hilarious and cool as fuck because you’re getting all this information on minerals and rocks. You’re also watching people argue over wether or not you can fuck this rock
I go on hiatus for a week and come back to find tumblr molesting my post, but hey, at least we all learned something so yay tumblr, you just keep on being you.
I’m still not sure if I can fuck this rock.
I’m looking into it.
UPDATE:
Today in “I’m so sorry, coworkers, it’s for Tumblr,” I brought this post to the attention the science reporters at BuzzFeed. Dan Vergano did a some research and weighed in on the question “Can you use malachite as a dildo or is it toxic?”
The answer is “It’s probably fine, just wash it first and maybe use a bunch of lube.”
Oh man this got so much better than the last time I saw this post
This is my favourite. Science side of tumblr: asking the REAL questions
*biologist crashes through the underbrush*
Ok so here’s the thing though
Malachite is not poisonous to YOU. BUT fucking this stalactite will probably wreck your vaginal flora and leave you with a gruesome infection within a couple days.
Want details? SO GLAD YOU ASKED, ‘CAUSE HERE THEY ARE.
• Malachite is not copper oxide. It’s Cu2CO3(OH)2. Like most carbonates it’s water soluble– that’s how it became a stalactite in the first place! And technically any given chunk of “malachite” isn’t just malachite– it’s a mix of various copper carbonates & oxides. This will become important later.
• When malachite dissolves it makes a bunch of copper (Cu++) ions. Cu++ is GREAT at killing bacteria and fungi– so good at it that sprays with Cu++ get used a lot as a spray in agriculture to stop plant disease. It takes such a large dose to harm larger organisms that copper sprays are used a lot in organic agriculture (like Bordeaux mixture).
So bottom line, yes malachite is technically nontoxic to humans. But it kills bacteria when it dissolves and releases Cu++.
• Malachite dissolves somewhat slowly in water– but vaginal secretions aren’t just any water. A healthy human vagina has a pH of 3.8-4.5 and a salinity of about 0.9%. It’s also warmer than your average underground cave at 37°C (or 98.5°F in American meat units). As luck would have it, acidity, salinity, and warmth all make malachite dissolve faster.
• In other words, the human vagina dissolves malachite.
• I have no deeper explanation for why human females can dissolve rocks with our genitals. It simply is.
• Gonna to take a quick moment to point out that sex toys that dissolve when you use them are maybe not the best investment.
• Anyway the key question now is “how fast does the human vagina dissolve malachite?” Are we talking geological timescale, a Nazis-in-Indiana-Jones situation, or something in between? If the reaction kinetics of dissolution are very slow, then there’s nothing to worry about. An encounter with a stalactite would have to last years for enough Cu++ to leach out to cause problems. If it’s quick then we’re in trouble.
• Unfortunately it looks like nobody really knows. One of the best sources on how malachite dissolves & precipitates in water– an EPA document on how to avoid too much Cu++ in municipal drinking water systems– helpfully says “The kinetic constraints on the formation of these solids in water systems are largely unexplored” (p. 42) because end equilibrium points are all you need to run a city water system safely. In other words, the experiments that would tell us how fast malachite dissolves in various types of water just don’t exist because nobody’s ever needed to know before. So we’d better assume it’s going to happen reasonably quickly, #for safety.
• So in best scientific fashion, we’re just going to bullshit our way ahead using what facts we DO have on hand: endpoint equlibria.
That orange box is how many moles of dissolved Cu++ Scaife got from sticking malachite in some water that had 0.171 moles NaCl/L (body salinity is about 0.154 moles NaCl/L so this is slightly more salty than people) at 30°C. He’s got no acidity in there, and again the salinity and temperature are slightly off from the vaginal standard. But this is probably the closest we’re going to get to data on how malachite behaves in vaginas anytime soon, folks. From this we can take away that if you leave malachite alone in a vagina you’ll get AT LEAST 9.12 x 10^-4 moles/L, or 5.8 ppm, of Cu++ at equilibrium.
• Recall from above that most “malachite” isn’t actually pure malachite, it’s a mix of various copper carbonates & oxides. The EPA document elaborates: “[T]raditional ‘eyeball’ identification of malachite by its blue-green color is extremely
unreliable, because almost all cupric hydroxysulfates, hydroxycarbonates, hydroxychlorides,
and even fresh cupric hydroxide can be some shade of blue-green. … Thus, the uncertainty in the computed copper
concentration in equilibrium with malachite is at least about a factor of 2 … until further experimental data focusing on this problem is generated.”
In other words, “do your math and then double how much Cu++ you think is going to be in the water, just in case.” So that gives us 11.6ppm Cu++, at equilibrium, with malachite in a (til now!) healthy vagina.
• Next step: do we have any idea what happens to bacteria in acid conditions with copper? OH MY GOD WE TOTALLY DO. Gyawali et al 2011 checked this out in the context of “so what if we rinsed tomatoes with a solution of lactic acid and copper, because that would be a safe & organic way to get rid of E. coli?” So now this post has officially ruined stalactites, vaginas, and tomatoes.
^This would happen. These are the counts of 4 E. coli strains exposed to various levels of lactic acid & Cu++ for 8 hours. This table only shows the end counts but it represents the death of 99.7% of bacteria*.
• Losing 99.7% of your vaginal flora is seriously bad news. You’re looking at really good odds of a yeast infection, bacterial vaginosis, and/or other infection issues. And that’s if you’re lucky enough to not be in the 4% of the population or so that’s sensitive to skin contact with copper.
• The good news? Biochemically speaking, you’re probably ok to put it in your butt. It’s not as acidic or salty in there, plus there’s a huuuuuge stockpile of gut microbes right upstream that can quickly repopulate the colon after spelunking is complete. However this stalactite is not flared at the base so it is the wrong shape for putting in your butt. Do not put this stalactite in your butt.
• This all looks like fun and games, but I think it’s really interesting that the internet’s mistake in concluding that this stalactite is fuckable is very similar to the mistake made by the Flint water management system. Hear me out.
• Central to the Flint lead poisoning crisis is that authorities only looked at & tested Flint’s water in its central treatment plant before it went out through the pipes. Not after it went through the pipes. They did not consider what would happen biochemically as it went through the pipes and metals started dissolving.
• Similarly, in concluding that the stalactite is fuckable, the internet only considered the stalactite itself. Not the biochemical processes that would happen to it as it, welp, went through the pipes.
• Media frequently reports that the Flint River’s water is “corrosive,” leading many to believe the river is full of industrial waste. This ain’t the case. You’d need industry to fill a river with industrial waste, and industry left decades ago. That’s why Flint’s so poor. So what IS in the water? Road salt. Plain old stupid road salt. The old Detroit-based source didn’t have salt because it came from Lake Huron which has a large, mostly rural watershed. Meanwhile the Flint River runs through a lot of towns, making it slightly salty as everything melts down in spring. And as we recall from the stalactite experience, a little salt is all it takes to get metals to dissolve.
• Information on this engineering problem was not coming through clearly from the engineering or chemistry sides. It took a biologist, pediatrician Mona Hanna-Attisha, to document the real-time results and provide the data to kick-start a high-level investigation.
• Morals of the story: when dealing with a biological system pls consider asking a biologist, your vagina and/or city could depend on this
• Pls use a condom when fucking any water-soluble material
• Still don’t put the stalactite in your butt -3/10 do not recommend
What. The. Hell. Actual.
This gets more scientific every time it crosses my dash.
Now I really wanna see Bill Nye’s reaction to this post. Because reasons.
I like to have white or ambient noise playing while I study, so I thought I’d share a list of my favourite websites in case anyone else was interested.
Rainymood – Allows you to play rain, with suggestions of ambient music to play at the same time. Has an iOS and Android app, my personal favourite.
Calm – A visually beautiful website. Provides moving backgrounds and an option for guided calm which allows you to immerse yourself in the music and to relax. Has a free app for iPhone. Another one of my favourites.
Showertime – The experience of taking a shower without the water. Allows you to control features such as length of shower, size of room, water pressure, etc.
Coffitivity – The background noise of a coffee shop. Allows you to choose between different locations such as lunchtime lounge, morning murmur etc. Has an app for iOS and Android as well as a desktop app for OS X.
Soundrown – A website with a sleek minimalist design, allows you to choose between rain, coffee shop, ocean, fire, bird noises, or a combination of the five.
Relaxing Snow – Visually beautiful falling snow, the website gives you the opinion to play music with the scenery, or to choose your own.
Raining.Fm – This website gives you the ability to adjust the rain to exactly how you’d like it, with options to tweak thunder, rain and storm noises. Has an app for iOS and Android, as well as a timer and snooze option.
Rain For Me – Simple rain effects with the option to download the audio files for offline listening.
Snowy Mood – Inspired by Rainy Mood, this website really makes you feel like it’s winter. Perfect for playing while snuggled up in a warm bed.
Rainy Cafe – Combines the sounds of a bustling cafe setting with the sounds of drizzling rain. Allows you to select the volume of each setting, or turn one off completely.
Here are some useful resources I’ve found while I’ve been in the community, so I thought I’d share! PLEASE ADD YOUR OWN IF YOU HAVE ANY! And please reblog and share!
References
askmiddlearth – A great blog where you can send in questions and receive answers regarding just about any aspect of the Legendarium.
coco.raceme – A collection of quotes, songs, and important passages from The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, arranged by book and chapter.
Fish in Middle Earth – Did you ever want to know what kinds of fish there were in Middle Earth? No? You’ll probably end up reading this anyways. The curiosity will get to you.
henneth-annun – The HASA story archive has mostly moved to AO3 now, but this website still contains hundreds of timelines, character bios, quotes, object descriptions, and more.
silmarillionwritersguild – Essays, meta, biographies, and more – all about the plot and characters of the Silmarillion.
Languages
almare – Tumblr user almare has a great collection of Tolkien language resources, including a handy graphic of the relations between Elvish languages.
councilofelrond – A good resource for translations of canon texts, glossaries, conlang discussions, a dictionary, etc. Of particular interest is their Sindarin mutation chart, which is necessary pretty much whenever you’re stringing more than two Sindarin words together.
Hiswelókë’s – A delightfully thorough dictionary available in a variety of arrangements ( English-Sindarin, Sindarin-English, thematic, etc. ). Available in English, French, and German.
midgardsmal – The blog of David Salo, one of the people who worked on the languages in Peter Jackson’s Tolkien films.
realelvish – A handy phrasebook that provides categories for easy searches, dialects, pronunciation, and multiple translations of the same phrase. Includes fun categories, such as ‘in the bedroom’ and ‘on the internet’, as well as many others that are more in keeping with Tolkien’s tone.
sindarinlessons – A collection of rules, references, and explanations of Sindarin grammar.
your-sindarin-textbook – On this site, a duck teaches you Sindarin. What more could you want? Includes exercises and references.
Books
All the books in PDF – These two posts both contain links to Tolkien’s works and where you can find them online.
HoME reading order – tumblr user lintamande has put together a list of Tolkien’s texts beyond the Silmarillion, in case you were wanting to dip your toes into HoME but didn’t know where to begin. They also have a general Silm resource page that’s worth looking at, as well as all their meta.
Tolkien’s letters – A collection of many of Tolkien’s transcribed letters, useful for all those really obscure facts you need to check and to impress your friends.
Non-Tolkien
A shameless plug– I do my best to collect useful references, notes, and masterposts on writing, Tolkien, and more in my ‘references’ tag.
howtofightwrite– This blog contains discussions on weapons and how they’re used, as well as some particularly useful weapon primers that will give you the basics on the weapons your character uses.
Medieval references – A collection of a few useful references for medieval-type jobs, terms, and more.
Mood music – Themed music playlists for just about anything you could ever want to write.
Traveling – The methods of traveling in the Middle Ages, and the time it would require.
Adding links for the Lord of the Rings Family Project, which has the best set of genealogies hands down and I constantly reference it.
Ardalambion is a high quality language resource and has extensive wordlists. Good for obscure languages like Nandorin and Taliska. It’s more in-depth than a dictionary and has notes on in-universe and out-universe history for the languages.
Textual Ghosts Project, a list of unnamed and missing female characters from Tolkien’s works.
Notes: some of the book links don’t work any more.
The working link for OP’s resources tag is now here.
This is really useful! Thanks to OP for collecting these! (I totally looked at the fish essay.)
Buy a bat (I have my old color guard rifle) or similar. Keep it in your room/near your bed.
Get a lock for your bedroom door.
If you’re moving into a new place, change the locks. Who knows who had a key to your place before you.
Keep your phone/a phone in your room.
Get a weather alert system set up. App, weather call, little weather radio that tells you about major weather events.
Adopt a pet
Wave at your neighbors. Take note of the ones that make you uneasy. Watch out for kids always.
Be nice to your mail person. No matter what.
If you choose to drink/etc alone, unplug your wifi router. You’ll thank me.
Have extra seating. People sit when they visit. Your one comfy chair is great for you. Not so great for you + grandma + ur five cousins, your aunt, and a couple others.
Learn the self-Heimlich
When you take a shower, bring your phone to the bathroom in case you fall your phone is no longer halfway across the house, it’s just on your counter
Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Idk what else
If you live in an one-room apartment, put a screen around your bed. It’ll feel less like you visit people, esp. strangers, into your bedroom. Also you’ll feel much safer sleeping in the enclosure.
Cook enough for a few meals each time you cook, and freeze the extra food. That way you’ll prevent things from expiring and it’s great when you don’t feel like cooking or have no time or energy for it.
Give a key to someone near you trust, or hid it somewhere few people will look, like up in a tree. Shutting yourself out isn’t nice, esp. not at night.
Put something translucent like curtains or stickers for windows where people can walk past or look in. You’ll feel less watched that way.
Put some contant money somewhere in your room. Good to have in case your bag gets lost or stolen.
Feeling lonely? Remember, online contacts are not less valuable.
I would say maybe set reminders for everything too. Taking meds/vitamins, working out, going to sleep, waking up.
Buy a small fan for white noise at night if you’re the kind (like me) that gets anxious at all the little ambient noises that ANY building can supply in the dark.
Don’t watch scary movies in the dark by yourself, with no visitors.
NETFLIX, if you can afford it. It’s also useful because you can watch movies / shows with your online buddies at the same time, miles and states and (sometimes even) countries apart.
get an app like safetrek. never walk into allies or empty streets if there is a more populated/well-lit route to your destination. keep emergency contacts in your wallet and a red cross card with your blood type on it in case anything happens. carry a list of medications you’re allergic to, if any.
walking around with a headset or headphones discourages people from yelling at you on the street, and it’s easier to escape from hasslers. however, it’s pretty advisable to not have anything actually playing so you can be aware of your surroundings. if anything, have it at low volume.
if you get grabbed on the street (this used to happen to me a lot), immediately scream, and the person will usually get startled, giving you time to get away.
if you feel like you’re in a really bad place, call someone, or even pretend like you’re calling someone. say where you are. act like you’re planning on meeting up with them. be loud about it. make it seem like someone will notice if you go missing, even for a little bit.
also u should look up manufacturer’s coupons like damn i feel like a successful suburban mom every time i walk into cvs and save 2 dollars on my toothbrushes
No, this is not “Can I touch your butt” in Elvish. This is “Can I touch your butt?” in English, transcribed using the letters of the Elvish alphabet. There is a difference.
In Elvish, the letters of the alphabet correspond to sounds, not to words. The above text spells it out using one symbol to represent one letter of the original English, which is incorrect:
c-a-n i t-o-u-c-h y-o-u-r b-u-t-t
If you really want to spell out an English phrase using the Elvish alphabet, you would do so phonetically, which would basically equate to one symbol per phoneme (sound):
c-a-n a-i t-u-ch y-o-r b-u-t
If you actually wanted to write “Can I touch your butt?” in Elvish, one (very rough) translation would be:
Annog nin daf pladan tele ci?
Which, in Sindarin Elvish, roughly translates to, “Would you give me permission to touch your rear?”
Written in tengwar (the Elvish alphabet), it would look like this:
why do we have butt cheeks i dont understand why did we evolve this way
what use do butt cheeks have
oh my god I HAVE THIS KNOWLEDGE
fun fact: butt-cheeks are one of the things that make us superior to other animals okay note that other apes do not have butt-cheeks
okay don’t quote me on this because I only did sixthform-bio and I’m sure of forgotten loads of stuff but here’s the down-low
back when we were evolving from ape to human, one of the most important things that happened was when our spine started meeting our brains at a sort of 90 degree angle instead of like 45 degrees, which meant that we could straighten up and walk on two legs which was a pretty rad development
except alas oh no our muscles weren’t built to allow us to walk around on two legs because that requires a sort of twisty motion of your hips as opposed to whatever the fuck it is everything else does AND SO ape-people started evolving with longer, narrower waists so that our bodies could twist with every footstep and we could strut along the fashionable catwalk that is neanderthal evolution
but then once this had happened, people realised that we had an advantage over other animals and we would be better at chasing and killing them but we weren’t very good at running
so that’s when we developed the glutenus maximus which is a really badass-sounding name for the muscle in your derriere which helps us to support our spine in an upright position so we don’t get tired, and helps the legs to rotate nicely so that we can run, and has a nice big fat storage around it to help us get energy so that we can run
and that, basically, is the butt-cheek
tl;dr – butt-cheeks were the result of thousands of years of natural selection so that we could run fast and slaughter things
thank you so much for such a fabulous, informative and detailed explanation on the evolution of the butt
i feel enlightened and empowered to know my butt is for such a worthwhile purpose, so thank you
Mashups and Exports 