I attended a variation of this program and I can't say i remember too much of it. However, i do remember these things:

  • the teacher was really excited that i had memorized the Hail Mary. I didnt understand why since it wasnt very long. To this day I still remember it word for word.

  • I was scared shitless at the start of the Gulf War because our 'teacher' was talking about ww2 and for some reason thought the gulf war would be world war 3.

  • I liked to climb around in a juniper tree around the church. Climbing down through its branches made the walk from the parking lot to the classrooms a bit closer.

  • Once I bitched out the lady in charge of the program .. i was a mean little kid.

  • Our church was near the beach and I perfectly remember the way the fog came over the hill moving so fast that if you ran as fast as you could to the east and looked straight up it seemed like you werent moving at all. However, sometimes this would cause me to crash into the chain link fence. Also, sometimes when it rained there would be a huge 'waterfall' off the edge of the terraced parking lot. I saw a lot more of God in the weather those Wednesday afternoons than i did in that class.

  • the lady teaching my brother's class told him that he had 'black marks' on his soul for every time he had sinned. I argued and fought with my brother as much back then as anyone does with a little brother but even back then it made no sense to me that hed deserve/need to have black marks on his soul. That was one of the many things that killed organized religion for me
  • A CCD is a type of imaging chip. The letters stand for Charge Coupled Device.

    A short introduction to the CCD

    CCD chips are frequently used in digital cameras, video cameras (also the analogue type), security cameras (Such as CCTV) and a range of other imaging appliances. The original CCD technology was developed in the 1970s, but has been constantly refined since then.

    A CCD chip is really range of light sensors (or photosites / photodiodes), with anything from a few hundred to several million sensors placed on a little chip. These sensors do not measure color, just light strenghth. To have a CCD sensor produce a color image, a grid of color filters is placed over all the little sensors. Usually the shape of this grid is:

    BGBGBGBGBGBGBG
    GRGRGRGRGRGRGR
    BGBGBGBGBGBGBG GRGRGRGRGRGRGR
    BGBGBGBGBGBGBG GRGRGRGRGRGRGR
    BGBGBGBGBGBGBG GRGRGRGRGRGRGR

    (R means Red, G means Green, and B means Blue) Because of how the human eye works, to be able to cover the whole color spectrum, there have to be twice as many green sensors as red ones.

    How a CCD chip works

    Next to every photodiode, there is a small "Image holder" (charge holding region). When a picture is taken, the light that hits the photodiodes is turned into an electrical charge, which is stored in the image holder. After all the charges are stored in the image holders (of which there are as many as there are photodiodes. This means that a 3 mpx chip has 3 million image holders). This information is then scanned line-by line, and the information is stored.

    Unfortunately, this technology uses a lot more resources (electricity) then a CMOS chip - currently it's biggest competitor.

    Then, what is four megapixel image?

    As you might have figured out, a 4megapixel CCD chip has about 4million pixels. For the sake of simplicity, let us assume that there are exactly 4,000,000 sensors on our chip. of these, 2M would be green, 1M would be red, and 1M would be blue.

    However, the final image doesn't have lots and lots of blue, red and green dots next to each other - in the final picture, every pixel has a specified value of red, green and blue. To achieve this, the data from the CCD chip is interpolated, so that the color of every pixel is one particular color.

    The essence of interpolating the image, therefore, is changing 2 million greens, 1 million reds and 1 million blues into 4 million pixels that make up the final image.

    -30-

    The acronym for Cleidocranial dysplasia, a genetic disorder affecting the clavicles, teeth, and pubic bones. Also common in this disorder is spina bifida occulta. Rare with just over 500 cases reported worldwide. It is also commonly associated with craniofacial disorders.

    See: Cleidocranial Dysplasia
    Also: Cleidocranial Dysostosis, Spina Bifida Occulta
    Sources:
    {1} Beighton, Peter. McKusick's Heritable Disorders of Connective Tissue, Fifth Edition. Mosby-Year Book, Inc., 645-646, 1993.
    {2} Cleidocrenial Dysostosis, http://www.icondata.com/health/pedbase/files/CLEIDOCR.HTM, 2003.

    Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.