The old days when Shell ads showed how they made asphalt salad, or something like that

Shell Research: as delicious as rocks slathered in crude
[Via Boing Boing]

For reasons I am at a loss to explain, someone at Shell Research once believed that their mission could be made attractive to the public if it was summarized in this advert featuring a slimy petroleum salad.

Shell Research

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I love the little cruets with oil in them. And the ‘salad’ in the wooden bowl. And the obviously female hands are supposed to be from our POV so we are the ones fixing the salad.Did this kind of stuff ever work? Or did people just remember that Shell made nice salads?

Where not to breath in the world

Global map of air pollution
[Via Boing Boing]

Image: NASA’s satellite-derived map of air pollution, throughout planet earth, between 2001-2006. Specifically, the “warmer” areas of the color map (yellow, orange, red) indicate higher densities of problematic particles known as fine particulate matter, or PM2.5. These are 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter, roughly 1/10 the width of a strand of human hair. They’re small enough to sneak past your body’s defenses, and lodge inside your lungs.

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Sure makes China look like a place to stay away from. Now, you have to be careful with rainbow maps like this because we react very strongly to red but not much at all to blues. Also, did you notice that the scale is non-linear.

There are 20 different shades of color for 0-20 but only 12 for 20-80. So the map is really designed to help differentiate the lower levels from each other while screaming out the higher levels. This is actually a much better way to display a rainbow color scheme. Provide less differentiation between each shade of red since we really see all of the as hot, while providing a ot of different shades of blue for the lower scale, since most of the world is lower and it allows greater differentiation.

So, the scale, while non-linear is effective in allowing us to rapidly see what parts of the world are doing poorly while getting a good idea of how to differentiate the large part of the world that is doing much better. So the ‘brightest’ region in the US has 1/5th the level of particulates as China.

Great ads for Star Trek repeats

Sie sind unter uns!
[Via Bad Astronomy]

Translated from German, this means “They are among us!” and it’s a slogan the German SciFi channel has been using. And just to prove that every country is cooler than we are, they ran this commercial:

Now don’t get me wrong– I love me some Sharktopus — but I wish we had more TV ads like this one. Awesome.

And, of course, highly logical.

There are others, too, like this one, and this one, and this one, and this one which made me seriously LOL.

I love being a geek.

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Why Spock would not make a good date. Some of the other ones are pretty cute. Of course, every one requires a prior knowledge of the show for it to work. Here we need to know that Spock could knock people out with his nerve pinch. Or that Data was a robot without a tan. Or that Quark would need a lot of Q-tips.

But then, anyone who has not seen Star Trek before is not likely to watch them anyway.

I wish the American SyFy channel would get the same ad agency.

Money well spent by the government

by Dimitry B

Undergrad Education: New Challenges, New Strategies
[Via AAAS News]

AAAS Report Highlights Promising Innovation for Undergraduate STEM Education

A AAAS report, sent to Congress this month, details how learning is improved in undergrad classes ranging from biology to computer security under an ambitious NSF program.

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Academia must do a better job educating young scientists. And, from this report, it appears that some really exciting experimental approaches are being examined. In particular, there are real attempts to show students what the real world implications of a life in science or engineering are, not only for them personally but for the rest of us.

Truthfully, many of us went into science and engineering because of that type of excitement but generally the undergraduate experience has done a poor job revealing that sort of excitement.

I particularly like the program started at Western Washington University where students can use online technology to work with cutting edge equipment from around the country when the equipment would normally be idle. This not only enhances the value of the equipment, most of which was likely bought using Federal grants, but it also provides the students with up-to-date training on the latest devices.

People complain all the time about how the modern Research University is not serving the undergraduates well. But here is an example of schools that are working hard to make the undergraduate research experience a very rich one.

Maybe things will change.

An art contest I might have had a chance in

Stick Science cartoons
[Via A Blog Around The Clock]

Stick Science cartoon winners announced – see all the finalists and winners here. My favourite, #6 did not win, unfortunately:

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I can draw stick figures. I’ll have to watch out for this next year.

I have to agree that the best ones in my opinion did not win. The one above is excellent and demonstrates not only a wonderful point but also has a witty style – style not being something normally associated with stick figures.

I like that Great Granddad has a hat and cane, Granddad has a hat, Dad is bare-headed and you have a gimme-hat. Also, I love the hairstyles of the mothers and that the correct number of each generation is shown.

And the figure does an excellent job demonstrating a key point about evolution – it is not linear with each point leading to the next without any branches. It demonstrates nicely how there can be two species alive today that are related by a last common ancestor. It demonstrates the fallacy of the “If were are descended from apes why are there still apes around?”

How giving your stuff away for free can make you money

by jenny downing
One Working Musician Explains How Pay What You Want Works For Him
[Via Techdirt]

We’re going to try something a bit new here at Techdirt. Usually, we post stories based on some news event or stories elsewhere, but since we talk so often about various business models, and often try to highlight business model experiments that work, I wanted to start a regular series of “case studies,” on content creators doing interesting things. Sometimes it will include success stories. Sometimes, perhaps, failure stories. Sometimes we won’t even know yet. But the goal is to call out examples of the interesting things that have been done, and to dig into them a bit, and hope that we can all learn from them and maybe see if others are inspired by them. We’re looking for content creators (not just musicians, by the way) who might be interested in sharing info with us as a part of this series, so if you are doing something interesting, or know of someone else who is, hit us up at the feedback link above.

The first one in this series of posts is about jazz musician Jason Parker, who also blogs at the site OneWorkingMusician.com, where he details his various experiments with making a living as, yes, a working musician.

Back when Radiohead did their pay what you want offering a few years ago, one of the widespread critiques of the idea was that it would only work if you already had a huge following. We’ve seen, of course, that isn’t true. Last year, we wrote about a few experiments with bands trying pay what you want CDs at shows and having some success with it. This doesn’t mean, of course, that if you just toss up some music and say “pay what you want,” it will work. But if you really do cultivate a fanbase, and offer them a way to support you, it’s often quite amazing what they will do… and that’s exactly what Jason discovered.

It started with a “weekend experiment,” late last year, where Parker reduced the required price of the download of his albums, to $0 from $5, and tweeted to his followers that they could pay whatever they wanted for it. He had considered setting a minimum of $1, but decided to see what happened if he went totally free. And the results were quite impressive:

Sunday night at midnight I checked my Bandcamp.com stats and was amazed. The three Jason Parker Quartet CD’s, “No More, No Less”, “Live @ JazzTV”, and “The Jason Parker Quartet” had been downloaded 128 times! That’s more downloads than I’ve received in the last few months combined. Most days I was lucky if a track or two were downloaded, let alone full albums.

And what’s even more impressive to me is that many of the people who downloaded the CD’s actually paid for them, even though they didn’t have to! In fact, I made more money from sales this weekend than in any other three-day period since the days right after the release of our latest CD, “No More, No Less”. All while giving them away for free!

After the weekend, he raised the prices back up to $5… but after thinking through it some more, and seeing these and other results, he’s now permanently set the price at “pay what you want,” with $0 being a perfectly acceptable price. I asked Jason how it’s going, and he says that before, when he had the price at $5, he would sell maybe 3 per month. However, these days, with the price set at $0, he’s averaging 8 sales per week with an average price of $8.50. Yes, his sales have increased from one every ten days or so, to more than one per day, and the amount people pay has gone up. The CDs, by themselves, are obviously not a huge moneymaker, but still, the revenue has gone from about $15/month to around $300/month. By giving it away for free and letting people pay what they want. Not bad.

[More]

He did a couple of other experiments with pay what you want. at concerts he was selling more CDs for more money than when he priced them himself. A very novel but successful model.

People will support others in the community when given the opportunity, particularly if they feel you are providing something of value. In this case, by letting people decide for themselves how much his music is worth, he is making more sales at a higher average price than what he had previously been asking for. It is a digital ‘pass the hat’ exercise that can be highly leveraged because of the size of the Web. You may only be able to reach a handful in person but can reach hundreds online.

So, life may not be fair but sometimes it is just.

Another in a series “Life is not, never was and never will be, fair.”

Cop drives 126 MPH while texting, kills 2 teen girls, lies to cover it up, gets probation. Now he wants workman’s compensation for his injuries.
[Via reddit.com: what's new online!]

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Life is not fair but does it have to rub our noses in it?

The article starts with this:

Former Illinois State trooper Matt Mitchell is asking the state to compensate him for injuries from a crash in which he hit and killed two Collinsville sisters at triple-digit speeds. Mitchell filed a worker’s compensation case on Sept. 13 against the Illinois State Police. The case is pending.

He pled guilty to reckless homicide and reckless driving and got 30 months probation. Here is what happened:

Mitchell was driving 126 mph in busy day-after-Thanksgiving traffic on Interstate 64 near O’Fallon while sending and receiving e-mails and talking to his girlfriend on his cell phone moments before the crash.

He crossed over the median and hit the girl’s car head on. And he may get hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax-free money.

I hope the family sues him and actually gets some compensation, small though it can be compared to the death of their two daughters.

Not too surprisingly, the paper had to close the comments sections:

Comments have been removed from this story due to the nature of the content and because of numerous inappropriate comments by readers on previous editions of the stories.

I’ll bet there were some inappropriate comments. But there were certainly some comments on reddit. It is another example of why revenge fantasies are such a common staple of our stories, ranging from Dexter to Boondock Saints, from Death Wish to The Brave One.

Life may not be fair but our stories can sure be.

Apple demonstrates that profits ARE king

by London looks

In 1H 2010, Apple took 39% of the industry’s profit, more than 3 largest handset makers combined
[Via MacDailyNews]

Canaccord Genuity initiated coverage of Apple (AAPL) Tuesday…

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Apple has only 4% of the total market for mobile phones yet owns 39% of the total profit. The three largest handset makers – Nokia, Samsung and LG – only have 32% of the profit yet sell 25 times the number of phones.

This is why Apple does not really care about market share. They are not selling commodities like the others. And as long as that is only what the others sell, they will not make the profits.

La Niña may be strengthening at record pace, with potentially dangerous consequences

La Niña may be strengthening at record pace, with potentially dangerous consequences
[Via CEJournal]

With data acquired by satellite, this map depicts La Niña conditions in tones of blue spreading across the tropical Pacific Ocean. For a more detailed explanation of the map, please see NASA’s Earth Observatory Image of the Day.

See my update with comments from Klaus Wolter below.

By one measure, the tropical Pacific Ocean has plunged into La Niña conditions at a record pace over the past three months. The result: as of September 3, this La Niña is the second strongest on record for this time of year.

This is the judgment of Klaus Wolter of NOAA’s Earth System’s Research Laboratory, writing in a recent update.

If moderate to strong La Niña conditions persist, as scientists expect, the should alter weather patterns around the world, including over the United States. Already dry conditions in the Southwest could worsen, further depleting lakes Mead and Powell on the Colorado River.

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Probably why our summer/early fall has been so rotten. La Ninas bring a lot more rain/snow to this region. It looks to be a miserable winter here but at least we will have water. Not like the South.

This is why people should be allowed to tinker

by blakespot

Einstein brings Newton OS to the iPhone, handwriting recognition and all
[Via Engadget]

Palm OS on the iPhone? Check. Android on the iPhone? Quasi-check. Newton OS on the iPhone? As of today, that’s a trio of affirmations. Developer Matthias Melcher has wisely used a good bit of his free time to port one of the world’s forgotten-but-not-forgotten operating systems onto Apple’s iOS platform, and while things are understandably sluggish right now, he’s currently working on performance optimizations that’ll hopefully have it running like a clock before long. He’s also made the source code available to anyone willing to tinker with the emulator, and somehow or another, he’s even managed to bring over the much-hyped handwriting recognition aspect. Don’t believe us? Hop on past the break and hit play.

[More]

Emulating a decades old OS may not be to great in and of itself. But, like so many things, the little ideas that come up while implementing this can lead to all sorts of important advances.

Why this is kind of cool is that so many of the things we expect on a smartphone today were available on a Newton 15 years ago. It was just to far ahead of its time. Now the circle can be completed.

Yet, if companies like Intel have their way, you would not be allowed to tinker with something because you really do not own it.

Another Nobel laurate in the White House

Senate Confirms Final White House Science Policy Nominee
[Via ScienceNOW]

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate confirmed Carl Wieman as associate director for science at the Office of Science and Technology Policy. The Nobel physics laureate is expected to spearhead the Administration’s push to improve science education, drawing upon his pioneering work at the University of Colorado, Boulder, to strengthen the undergraduate training of science and math teachers.

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We need better education in science and math. I hope he can begin to accomplish this.

The right mix in a social network is more important than anything else for driving innovation

[Crossposted at SpreadingScience]

by Stig Nygaard

Is Narcissism Good for Business?
[Via ScienceNOW]

Narcissists, new experiments show, are great at convincing others that their ideas are creative even though they’re just average. Still, groups with a handful of narcissists come up with better ideas than those with none, suggesting that self-love contributes to real-world success.

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The narcissists – a term I think may be misused here – are more likely to draw from the disrupter or mediator side of a network. They deviate from the normal flow of things in a network.

I hate the term ‘innovators’ applied to the earliest adopters in a network. Anyone can be innovative. WHat we are looking for here are those that most rapidly adopt changes and then are the most able to convince the community to adopt them

These experiments showed that a passionate pitcher could get people to adopt their idea, even when the idea was rated average by reading about it. The personal interactions were needed to pitch even an average idea.

But what was really interesting in the work was that teams of only disruptors (called narcissists) or only doers (no narcissists) were very poor at coming up with great ideas and innovations.

There are 5 steps everyone goes through when presented with a new idea and when deciding whether to adopt it. A key one is evaluation. I would suspect that teams with only disruptors race through this step so fast – that is why they are the earliest to change – that they really do not arrive at much that is worthwhile. Every idea seems as good as any other.

On the other hand, doers usually get stuck at the evaluation stage, only slowly taking the leap to adoption.the slowness to adopt change. So a team of doers would not get much done because they could never decide, getting stuck at evaluation.

But a well mixed team, one with both disruptors and doers, was the best one. This makes absolute sense. Because the doers slowed down the disruptors, forcing them to explain and rationalize all those novel ideas. The doers are also forced to make a decision because of the pressure from the disruptors.

By mixing both types, the ideas get much better evaluation, making it more likely that the best ideas will be adopted by the group. Each type overcomes the blind spots of the other – preventing the disruptors from moving too many ideas too rapidly through evaluation, while forcing the doers to pick the best ideas to adopt.

I can hardly wait for this paper to come out. It demonstrates that the best communities has the right mix of traits and that a community that is overbalanced in any one sector will be very slow to create and adopt innovative ideas.

The truth does eventually come out

Mount Sinai Says Misconduct by Postdocs Led to Retraction of Gene Therapy Papers
[Via ScienceNOW]

Earlier this week, the blog Retraction Watch called attention to four recent paper retractions by noted gene therapy researcher Savio Woo of Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Today, the school said in a statement that two of Woo’s postdoctoral fellows have been fired for research misconduct and that an internal investigation has cleared Woo of any wrongdoing.

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Science is done by human beings, human beings that can, and sometimes do, game the system. But, especially in something of real importance, it is very hard to fake it for long.

Someone else will try and repeat it, or use it for their own research. Then they will discover some problems and contact the authors. If it is important work, more and more people will start seeing discrepancies and start asking questions.

Most times it is easy to discover fraud when an investigation is done. Often big labs do not do this before every publication. It would take a lot of effort for really little benefit. We rightly trust the authors.

Because trust is a huge part of doing science. We have to trust that others are doing it right. If that trust is lost, it may never be regained. And there are usually huge career penalties for being untrustworthy.

Savio Woo may not have been shown to have done anything wrong but all of his papers will be well scrutinized from now on. It may make it much harder to get grants and good post-docs, who might want to stay away from a ‘tainted’ lab. I have to wonder what sorts of pressures were going on in the lab if someone took the egregious tactic of falsifying data. His lab’s work will have to be exemplary to remove this blot. Other labs have done this because even great scientists can be duped but it really complicates the normal pressures of a large lab.

This is all part of the vetting process of science, as we try and construct models that do the best job of describing the world around us. Because most of us know the career implications of taking shortcuts, we do not do it.

And when someone is caught, the longterm effects can be severe. But in the end, we do get a much stronger model, even one built by frail human beings.

Making $455,000 a year and out of touch

by U-g-g-B-o-y-(-Photograph-World-Sense-)

In Which Mr. Deling Responds to Someone Who Might Be Professor Todd Henderson
[Via Grasping Reality with Both Hands]

I had published a link and a long excerpt from Michael O’Hare’s rant after reading University of Chicago Law Professor Todd Henderson.

And now somebody purporting to be University of Chicago Professor Todd Henderson writes:

I’m shocked and saddened at the personal nature of these attacks. Wow.

As for Mr. Deling’ attacks…

I would like to note for the record that I have not made any attacks, or indeed comments at all–that all I did was to republish pieces of Michael O’Hare’s attack. And I was thinking if I had any comments worth reading or any time to write them down, and deciding that I did not.

But being called “Deling” makes me think I have no choice.

So here is the rest of the comment by Professor Henderson (or the guy purporting to be him):

let me make just two observations. First, according to several tax sites, my taxes will go up by thousands, not down. I’m not a tax lawyer, so I’m not sure why.

Second, his [i.e., Michael O'Hare's] attempted budget leaves out a large category–education and daycare. This year, they will come close to $60,000, which is about $165 per day. Subtract this from the crude budget and that leaves $80 per day for five people.

But all this avoids the question of why we think the government will better allocate some part of whatever my income is.

So here is what I have to say:

Back in 2000, the U.S. government’s long-term budget was out of balance–although not by all that much. The government had, you see, made promises–very popular promises–for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security without proposing sufficient funding streams to pay for those promises. So back in 2000, looking forward, we had a choice: raise taxes, or “bend the curve” by cutting the growth of spending.

Instead of doing either of these, we elected George W. Bush. Two wars. A big (and ill-advised) defense buildup that is very unsuited to protecting us from Al Qaeda and company. A huge unfunded expansion of Medicare. Plans for the unfunded expansion of Social Security that came to nothing. However, instead of raising taxes George W. Bush reduced them.

This simply does not work. As Milton Friedman liked to say, to spend is to tax. If the government spends somebody will pay for it. And if you don’t levy the taxes to pay for it now all that means is that the person who owes the taxes does not know it yet.

So unless Professor Henderson (or whoever) has plans for serious cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and National Defense–and I see none on offer–his last point about government allocation is simply moot. George W. Bush has already allocated it with his defense buildup and Medicare Part D. Taxes are going up over the next decade–barring cuts of 1/3 to Medicare, etc. They can either go up smartly or we can pretend they don’t have to go up, in which case they go up stupidly. The argument for small government was lost long ago, and was lost again and anew in the past decade with Medicare Part D and the wars of George W. Bush. I believe Todd Henderson was a deserter in that war–a supporter of George W. Bush, and of his unfunded Medicare Part D expansion, and of his wars of choice. So I don’t think he has standing to make the small government argument–some people do, but he does not.

But Mr. Henderson’s (or whoever’s) comment and his post were, overwhelmingly, not an argument for a small government.

They were an argument that whatever taxes were paid, he should not have to pay more than he is currently paying because it is unfair: he is not “rich”.

As best as Michael O’Hare could determine (and Professor Henderson or whoever it is does not challenge him), the Henderson annual family budget is this:

$455,000 a year of income, of which:

• $60,000 in student loan payments
• $40,000 is employer contributions to 401(k) and similar retirement savings vehicles
• $15,000 is employer contributions to health insurance
• $60,000 is untaxed employee contributions to tax-favored retirement savings vehicles
• $25,000 building equity in their house
• $80,000 in state and federal income taxes
• $15,000 in property taxes
• $10,000 for automobiles
• $55,000 in housing costs for a $1M house (three times the average price in the Hyde Park neighborhood
• $60,000 in private school costs for three children
• $35,000 in other living expenses

And of this budget, Professor Henderson (or whoever) writes:

Like most working Americans, insurance, doctors’ bills, utilities, two cars, daycare, groceries, gasoline, cell phones, and cable TV (no movie channels) round out our monthly expenses. We also have someone who cuts our grass, cleans our house, and watches our new baby…. [W]e have less than a few hundred dollars per month of discretionary income. We occasionally eat out but with a baby sitter, these nights take a toll on our budget. Life in America is wonderful, but expensive. If our taxes rise significantly… the (legal) immigrant from Mexico who owns the lawn service we employ will suffer, as will the (legal) immigrant from Poland who cleans our house a few times a month. We can cancel our cell phones and some cable channels, as well as take our daughter from her art class at the community art center…

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His family has an income greater than 99% of all Americans. He contributes more to retirement savings than most Americans make in a year. His mortgage is more than the median income for Americans. Same with how much he spends on private education for his children. He has $100,000 a year going for retirement!

He makes choices about where to spend his money that are at levels simply beyond the reach of almost every other American.

His family’s discretionary income ($80 a day) is greater than the poverty level for a family of five, with 3 children under 18 (which is $25,603 according to the latest figures – PDF, page 55).

Think about that. The amount of money his family can spend on whatever they want each day – dinner out, new shoes, a movie, etc. – is greater than the total amount of money a similar family in poverty has to spend on everything they need – food, clothing, housing, utilities, etc.

And over 14% of all Americans are below the poverty level. One in seven in America must make do on less each day for necessities than this family has to spend on frivolities.

Yet, instead of being happy, he is sad. OMG, he might have to cancel their cell phones. How about just putting a little less away in retirement savings, like maybe only $50,000 a year?

My family never came close to his income but it was still pretty high, perhaps putting us in the top 10%. We worked really hard for that money, just like this guy. And I was glad every day for the fact that I had money left over for retirement, to go out to dinner, to not have to worry about a roof over my head.

Because I knew I was doing better than most people.

After paying for his million dollar house, socking away huge amounts for retirement , paying for his cars and paying for private school, he only has $35,000 or so for personal expenses. Here is someone in the top 1% and he is complaining about paying the baby sitter.

Sounds like an ass to me. Just an example of how having a education does not necessarily make one smart. Being able to think rationally does not seem to be a requirement for a law degree.

I guess the rich really are different than the rest of us.

No property rights for consumers

by XaYaNa

Intel + DRM: a crippled processor that you have to pay extra to unlock
[Via Boing Boing]

Intel’s latest business-model takes a page out of Hollywood’s playbook: they’re selling processors that have had some of their capabilities crippled (some of the cache and the hyperthreading support are switched off). For $50, they’ll sell you a code that will unlock these capabilities. Conceptually, this is similar to the DRM notion that I can sell you a movie that you can watch on one screen for $5 today, and if you want to unlock your receiver’s wireless output so you can watch it upstairs, it’ll be another $5.

I remember the first time someone from the studios put this position to me. It was a rep from the MPAA at a DRM standards meeting, and that was just the example he used. He said: “When you buy a movie to watch in your living room, we’re only selling you the right to see it in your living room. Sending the same show upstairs to watch in your bedroom has value, and if it has value, we should be able to charge money for it.”

This idea, which Siva Vaidhyanathan calls “If value, then right,” sounds reasonable on its face. But it’s a principle that flies in the face of the entire human history of innovation. By this reasoning, the company that makes big tins of juice should be able to charge you extra for the right to use the empty cans to store lugnuts; the company that makes your living room TV should be able to charge more when you retire it to the cottage; the company that makes your coat-hanger should be able to charge more when you unbend it to fish something out from under the dryer.

[More]

In this nice business model, we never actually own any property – the companies do. And they get to decide exactly what we are allowed to do with ‘their’ property. If we figure out something else to do that has value, the companies get that value not us.

How about this analogy – a home builder could sell you a house. But if you want to paint it – adding value to the house – you have to give them a fee. Put up a picture on the wall – pay a fee. Remodel the bathroom – pay a fee. We would not actually own the property but simply be a tenant for the real owner.

And if you added value with paying the fee – they could take you to court,

In this model, Intel could assert the right to prevent us from using their chips for anything that Intel has not approved. And it they approve it, then we owe them money.

And it could be a federal crime to do it ourselves. As Cory states:

Moreover, it’s an idea that is fundamentally anti-private-property. Under the “If value, then right” theory, you don’t own anything you buy. You are a mere licensor, entitled to extract only the value that your vendor has deigned to provide you with. The matchbook is to light birthday candles, not to fix a wobbly table. The toilet roll is to hold the paper, not to use in a craft project. “If value, then right,” is a business model that relies on all the innovation taking place in large corporate labs, with none of it happening at the lab in your kitchen, or in your skull. It’s a business model that says only companies can have the absolute right of property, and the rest of us are mere tenants.

If Intel sells us a physical object, than they should have no say in what we decide to do with it, what code we decide to run or not run on it. They should not get to control our physical access to the chip in perpetuity.