How Fifth Graders Calculate Ice Volume - 2

In the first post of this series I felt compelled to engage those who have been indoctrinated by Oil-Qaeda propaganda engines to the point that they have forgotten what they learned in Fifth Grade geometry.

Their minds are so damaged that they can no longer discern the meaning and difference between extent and volume.

That is, they have lost the fundamental ability to do the simple arithmetic for calculating and discerning the difference between square feet and cubic feet or square miles and cubic miles.

The people I am talking about have forgotten the formulas:

l * w = area (e.q. square feet, ft²)
l * w * h = volume (e.q. cubic feet, ft³)

Nevertheless they spout off as if they had the power to change natural laws simply because they can change man-made laws:

A myth being used by deniers uses Antarctic ice extent to falsely say that Antarctic ice volume is increasing, which is false because it is impossible to determine volume using the formula for area, for extent, because when calculating area/extent one does not need to consider the thickness of the ice caps.

When competent scientists determined that in fact Antarctic ice volume has been decreasing for some time, they speak in terms of thickness of the ice cap when they are calculating the volume / amount of ice::

To map the changing thickness of almost all the floating ice shelves around Antarctica, the team used a time series of 4.5 million surface height measurements taken by a laser instrument mounted on ICESat from October 2003 to October 2008. They measured how the ice shelf height changed over time ...

(NASA, emphasis added). Remember that volume is length x width x height (thickness), but also remember that extent or area is only length x width.

Elementary kids ("do you know as much as a fifth grader") know this, but deniers either do not know it, or if they do then they are trying to deceive us:

Within just a few days in September, Arctic sea ice extent reached the lowest minimum ever recorded by satellites since 1979, while at the same time, Antarctic sea ice reached the greatest extent ever recorded.

(Tucson Citizen, emphasis added; see also this). These guys in the desert are trying to tell us that a low extent in the Arctic as well as a high extent in the Antarctic inform us of the volume, i.e. the amount of ice at both locations.

(How Fifth Graders Calculate Ice Volume). A follow up report uses language that may help those deniers grasp the geometry:

The Arctic sea ice expands during the Northern Hemisphere cold season, reaching a maximum areal extent in March, and then melts during the Northern Hemisphere warm season, reaching a minimum in September. In 2013, during the growth season, Arctic sea ice extent reached its annual maximum on 15 March at 15.13 million square kilometers according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). This was approximately 0.5 million square kilometers below the 1981–2010 March annual maximum average and the sixth smallest maximum sea ice extent since satellite records began in 1979. During the entire 2012/13 growth season, Arctic sea ice extent grew by a record-large 11.7 million square kilometers. This growth can be explained by the large variation in the sea ice extent from the record small sea ice extent at the end the melt season in September 2012 to the large amounts of first-year ice forming through the growing season ending in March 2013. According to the University of Colorado-Boulder (USA), for the peak in March, ice four years of age and older has decreased from 18 per cent of the ice cover in 1984 to 3 per cent in 2013. In March 1984, 56 per cent of the peak ice pack was composed of first-year ice. In March 2013, first-year ice comprised 78 per cent of total ice cover. Overall, March Arctic sea ice extent is decreasing at an average rate of 2.6 per cent per decade.

The Arctic reached its lowest sea ice extent in its annual cycle on 13 September, at 5.10 million square kilometers, marking the sixth smallest extent on record. This value was 18 per cent, or nearly 1.1 million square kilometers, below the 1981–2010 average minimum and notably higher than the record low of 3.41 million square kilometers, recorded last year on 16 September 2012.

(World Meteorological Organization, 2013, emphasis added). Arctic sea ice extent has to do with how large of a surface area in square kilometers, square feet, or square miles the ice covers, but it has absolutely nothing conclusive to do with how much volume of ice there is, because that value is expressed in cubic kilometers, cubic feet, or cubic miles.

Notice that I highlighted (in red) the word "areal" in the WMO report quote above.

Areal is a word that is associate with area, not volume:

Areal ar·e·a [air-ee-uh] noun 1. any particular extent of space or surface ...

(Dictionary, "Areal"; cf. Areal formula). The Tucson Citizen newspaper quoted above says global warming is false because the "extent" of the ice has increased.

They do not realize, as astute Fifth Graders would, that "extent" expresses area in square kilometers (km²), square feet (ft²), or square miles (mi²) rather than expressing volume in cubic kilometers (km³), cubic feet (ft³), or cubic miles (mi³), as the following table details:

Table 1. Estimated potential maximum sea-level rise from the total melting of present-day glaciers and polar ice caps. Source: USGS
Location	Volume (km3)	Potential sea-level rise, (m)
East Antarctic ice sheet	26,039,200	64.80
West Antarctic ice sheet	3,262,000	8.06
Antarctic Peninsula	227,100	.46
Greenland	2,620,000	6.55
All other ice caps, ice fields, and valley glaciers	180,000	.45
Total	32,328,300	80.32
[Note: 80.32 meters equals 263.5 feet]

Perhaps it would not be so bad if I was talking about Fifth Graders who learned some arithmetic then forgot it during the following summer break.

But it is egregiously bad because I am talking about adults who can severely damage our nation and our planet:

Over 56 percent — 131 members — of the current Republican caucus in the House of Representatives deny the basic tenets of climate science. 65 percent (30 members) of the Senate Republican caucus also deny climate change. What this means is that they have made public statements indicating that they question or reject that climate change is real, is happening, and is caused by human consumption of fossil fuels.

(Thank goodness we’re on top of this!, emphasis added). These people who govern in the legislative branch of government have been indoctrinated to the point their minds are actually damaged and not functioning sanely.

The military knows that the dementia of Republican congress members is quite dangerous (Will This Float Your Boat - 3, see video).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

The Penn State of Mind - 2

On this date in 2011 Dredd Blog discussed the phenomenon of university students being incensed by a football coach being fired at Penn State.

The perplexing thing was that none of those rioters were arrested, but those who were protesting the evolution of our middle class based economy into a plutocratic plutonomy were arrested and/or harassed en masse (Occupy Wall Street).

That post is revisited today for history's sake:

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What is up with Penn State University students rioting because their football coach was fired for covering up the sexual abuse of children?

The rioting students destroyed news vehicles and other property, but there were no arrests of the rioters by campus police or any other police.

Meanwhile peaceful protesters (who are unhappy that the 1% have established a coup and have installed a plutocracy to rule over the 99%) are shot and arrested around the country.

And don't forget the Kent State of mind where students were shot down and killed on their university campus for wanting a war stopped, shot down in cold blood by American storm troopers who were in disagreement with the students' want for peace.

This is The Penn State of Mind, which should now dampen the laughter and skepticism concerning Dredd Blog posts entitled This is Your Brain on Propaganda.

This public behavior by a university and its students, an American institution that is supposed to be the seat of American intelligence, the seat of American learning, yes, the seat of the future of America, comes at a time when most Republican primary candidates are advocating war and torture on the public airwaves in public debates.

These young riotous Penn State students, after attending this university, after watching leaders clamoring to be the warmonger in chief, the torturer in chief, yes, after graduating, are going to sit down at the seats of power, they are going to be given the helm of government sooner or later.

You can bet that over six billion people in the world (who are watching these events take place in a nation that has military bases strewn across the world, who are watching a warlike nation that has been invading and occupying other nations for a decade) are wondering "what ... is this the future of America?"

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Since that time Dredd Blog has discovered the probable reason for the perplexing scenario discussed in the post above.

Highest paid public employee by state

The map to the right (click to enlarge) was discussed in the Dredd Blog post Ecosystems & Microbes, where we were amazed to find that the highest paid public employee in most states of America was a football coach or basketball coach.

The priority or lack thereof is why American Education is failing, thus, students complaining that our nation is a feudalistic, degenerating, poverty festering plutocracy are arrested or worse, while students protesting the dismissal of a football coach for covering up child molestation is not policed even though they destroy valuable property (see photo at top).

The previous post in this series is here.

ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 7

Click to enrage

The effort to shut down the government by the neoCon elements within the U.S. House of Representatives has temporarily stalled this case.

The government lawyers in the DOJ who are ticking some judges off, asked for an extension of time in which to respond because. Just because.

The chief judge gave them some time in all civil cases pending in that district in which they were appearing as counsel, an extension which they really liked, so, then they came back to ask for even more time.

In response, the judge (Pauley) on the specific case issued this order:

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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK

AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION;
AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION
FOUNDATION; NEW YORK CIVIL LIBERTIES
UNION; and NEW YORK CIVIL LIBERTIES
UNION FOUNDATION,

Plaintiffs,
                                                                           Case No. 13-cv-03994-UA
v.                                                                        Hon. William H. Pauley

JAMES R. CLAPPER, in his official capacity as
Director of National Intelligence; KEITH B.
ALEXANDER, in his official capacity as Director
of the National Security Agency and Chief of the
Central Security Service; CHARLES T. HAGEL, in
his official capacity as Secretary of Defense; ERIC
H. HOLDER, in his official capacity as Attorney
General of the United States; and ROBERT S.
MUELLER III, in his official capacity as Director
of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,

Defendants.

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WILLIAM H. PAULEY III, District Judge:

    On October 1, 2012, Chief Judge Loretta A. Preska stayed all civil actions in the Southern District of New York where the United States Attorney represents the United States, its agencies, or its employees. By letter dated October 10, the ACLU seeks to lift the stay in this case. By letter dated October 11, the Government opposes that application.

    The Government argues a stay is appropriate because funding for the Department of Justice has expired and appropriations have lapsed. But Plaintiffs allege they are suffering ongoing irreparable harm. An indefinite shutdown cannot shield the Government from defending against claims of ongoing constitutional violations.

    This case presents issues of public importance to the nation and deserves resolution in a timely and efficient manner. As Plaintiffs note, other district courts faced with pressing issues have required the Department of Justice to continue to litigate, despite the shutdown. See ECF No.14, First Unitarian Church of L.A. v. Nat'l Sec. Agency, No. 13 Civ. 3287 (JSW)(N.D.Cal.); ECF No. 11, Priests for Live v. U.S. Dep't of Health & Human Servs., No. 13 Civ. 1261 (EGS)(D.D.C.).

    Accordingly, the stay is lifted and the Court adopts the following schedule:

        1. The parties will file reply briefs on their pending motions on October 25, 2013;
        2. This Court will hear oral argument on November 22, 2013 at 10:30 a.m.

Dated: October 15, 2013
    New York, New York

                                SO ORDERED;

                                /s/
                                WILLIAM H. PAULEY III
                                    U.S.D.J.

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The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

The Peak Of The Oil Wars - 9

The damaged Global System

Fossil fuel use has damaged the Global Climate System and continues to do so (Will This Float Your Boat - 3).

The war on Oil-Qaeda has yet to be declared, even though commerce in the products of Oil-Qaeda is the greatest threat to the U.S. Navy (Has The Navy Fallen For The Greatest Hoax?).

In this and related series on Dredd Blog the origin and history of the oil wars has been documented (Viva Egypt - 2, The Universal Smedley - 2).

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog has pointed out how the technical needs of the military combined with fears of The Battle of Armageddon led leaders of Western Nations to enter into a struggle for the control of the oil and other resources of Middle Eastern nations (Viva Egypt - 2, The Universal Smedley - 2).

During that time, like now, the warnings of scientists about green house gases did nothing to dissuade the fateful decision to addict Western Civilization to fossil fuel use (The Exceptional American Denial).

As part and parcel of the oil wars, the military NSA has kept its spying eyes on OPEC and other oil rich nations:

The National Security Agency has managed to infiltrate the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), according to documents from former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden.

(NSA, GCHQ Spied on Oil Cartel, OPEC). This, even as the U.S. Navy and USCENTCOM have surrounded those nations with massive military fleets (The Fleets & Terrorism Follow The Oil).

And so the struggle continues unabated down through time to our day, culminating in a civilization-affecting-doublespeak syndrome where there are two concurrent logically-opposite dynamics that drive the oil wars now.

The first of the two is the fossil fuel damaged Global Climate System, which has produced many typhoons this year, culminating so far with typhoon, Haiyan.

The second issue is the peak oil crisis which Oil-Qaeda is spending billions to cover up:

Lloyd's of London and The Guardian are not "professional lefty" agitators whom White House Press Secretary Gibbs was talking about in one of his glib fibs that outraged a lot of the president's election campaign supporters recently.

Yet they both warn of the dire consequences of ignoring the reality of peak oil:

One of the City's most respected institutions has warned of "catastrophic consequences" for businesses that fail to prepare for a world of increasing oil scarcity and a lower carbon economy.

The Lloyd's insurance market and the highly regarded Royal Institute of International Affairs, known as Chatham House, says Britain needs to be ready for "peak oil" and disrupted energy supplies ...

(The Guardian). The Lloyd's / Chatham House report quotes the U.S. Government treating peak oil as anything other than a conspiracy theory:

“Peak oil presents the world with a risk management problem of tremendous complexity.”

US Department of Energy 2007

(Lloyds / Chatham Report, page 15 of PDF). They go on to point out where the remaining oil will come from along with some reasons for the notion of "risk management":

Production from Iraq is the wild card. The current target of 12 million barrels a day by 2016 would make Iraq the world’s number one producer, potentially increasing global spare capacity and sending the oil price down. However, numerous legal, security and administrative problems hinder this development.

(ibid, page 16 of PDF, emphasis added). Dredd Blog has pointed out that the wars which are devastating the U.S. middle class but radically increasing the wealth of MOMCOM's one-percenter elites were and are being fought for oil.

(The Peak Of The Oil Wars). In the Dredd Blog post The Peak of Sanity - 3 it is pointed out that this dichotomy is a damned if you do use the oil, and damned if you don't use the oil type of conundrum.

Our energy policy is the result of being governed by psychopathic ideology which informs the Epigovernment policy makers who guarantee the continuing institutionalization of catastrophe for the foreseeable future.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Now for some more serious language:

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Will This Float Your Boat - 3

America divided by Climate Change

In the first post of this series we took a look at the overly "cautious" or overly "conservative" outlook scientists have traditionally had regarding the Eastern Antarctica Ice Sheet.

In the second post of this series we expanded on that history of overly cautious  estimations of polar ice cap melt based upon new studies and reports that updated our knowledge about the potential for melt in Antarctica.

In today's post we will review some and consider sea level rise that comes not only from ice cap melting, but rather sea level rise that takes place from just the warming of the waters of the Earth, without any additional amounts of water being added to the oceans.

"Table 1" below shows ice cap locations, volume of ice at those locations, and the potential sea level rise, in meters, should ice at that location completely melt.

Table 1. Estimated potential maximum sea-level rise from the total melting of present-day glaciers and polar ice caps. Source: USGS
Location	Volume (km3)	Potential sea-level rise, (m)
East Antarctic ice sheet	26,039,200	64.80
West Antarctic ice sheet	3,262,000	8.06
Antarctic Peninsula	227,100	.46
Greenland	2,620,000	6.55
All other ice caps, ice fields, and valley glaciers	180,000	.45
Total	32,328,300	80.32
Note: 80.32 meters equals 263.5 feet

When these sea level rise events are going to take place is even more well known (it happened "yesterday").

That is, the oceans are already rising from ice cap melt, as well as from the warming of the waters of the oceans (see e.g. Has The Navy Fallen For The Greatest Hoax?, Government Climate Change Report, Perfect Storm: New Global Ground Zero, The Illusion of Environmental Security - 3).

The Eastern Seaboard is already experiencing the sea level rise even as republican right-wing legislators succumb to denial, and even fraud:

“We’ve got the highest rate of sea level rise on the East Coast,” said Skip Stiles, executive director, Wetlands Watch, who will be making a presentation on the historic, current and future sea level changes and potential impact on the Eastern Shore.

Stiles said some of the evidence of sea level rise visible to people who spend time around the water include seeing wetlands disappear, ditches going tidal, backyard vegetation changes, and “ghost forests” — full grown trees that are dead along the shore because the water is “moving in underneath them.”
...
Stiles said all of the Virginia tide gage measurements are showing about the same rise of a foot and a half over the last 100 years.
...
There is virtually universal agreement among scientists that the sea will probably rise a good meter or more before the end of the century, wreaking havoc in low-lying coastal counties. So the members of the developers’ lobbying group NC-20 say the sea will rise only 8 inches, because … because … well, SHUT UP, that’s because why.

That is, the meter or so of sea level rise predicted for the NC Coastal Resources Commission by a state-appointed board of scientists is extremely inconvenient for counties along the coast. So the NC-20 types have decided that we can escape sea level rise – in North Carolina, anyhow – by making it against the law. Or making MEASURING it against the law, anyhow.

(Social Dementia Causes Heated Misunderestimations - 2). Most heat comes from the Sun, and a portion of it is being trapped in the Earth's environment by green house gases.

The portion that is not radiating back into space is now being stored in the oceans, which in and of itself makes sea levels rise as the average global temperature rises:

Sea level is rising — and at an accelerating rate — especially along the U.S. East Coast and Gulf of Mexico

• Global average sea level rose roughly eight inches from 1880 - 2009.
Global Sea Level Rise
• The average annual rate of global sea level rise accelerated from 1993 - 2008, increasing 65 - 90 percent above the twentieth century average.
• The U.S. East Coast and Gulf of Mexico experienced some of the world's fastest rates of sea level rise in the twentieth century due to local and regional factors.
• From 1880 - 2009, Miami faced 12 inches of local sea level rise; Boston, New York, and Charleston, SC, 13 to 16 inches; Virginia Beach, 30 inches; and Galveston, TX, nearly three feet.

Human activities, such as burning coal and oil and cutting down tropical forests, have increased atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping gases and caused the planet to warm by 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880.

Climate-Related Contributions to Global Sea Level Rise
• Rising temperatures are warming ocean waters, which expand as the temperature increases. This thermal expansion was the main driver of global sea level rise for 75 - 100 years after the start of the Industrial Revolution, though its relative contribution has declined as the shrinking of land ice has accelerated.
• Land ice—glaciers, ice caps, and ice sheets—is shrinking at a faster rate in response to rising temperatures, adding water to the world's oceans.
• As the rate of ice loss has accelerated, its contribution to global sea level rise has increased from a little more than half of the total increase from 1993 - 2008 to 75 - 80 percent of the total increase between 2003 - 2007.

(Union of Concerned Scientists). The T-Party republicans in the U.S. government, as they yell jingoistic warmongering slogans, deny science.

That ideological trance, along with observations of Veterans who do not deny science, clearly reveal that such demented denial is exposing the nation's military to security threats:

America’s top military officer in charge of monitoring hostile actions by North Korea, escalating tensions between China and Japan, and a spike in computer attacks traced to China provides an unexpected answer when asked what is the biggest long-term security threat in the Pacific region: climate change.

Navy Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, in an interview at a Cambridge hotel Friday after he met with scholars at Harvard and Tufts universities, said significant upheaval related to the warming planet “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen ... that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.’’
...
This Navy Admiral even believes that Singapore will no longer be the greatest ocean port, but that a port in Greenland will take that honor, because after the polar ice caps melt in the Arctic, the fabled Northwest Passage will become strategic, and the Panama Canal will become somewhat of a museum piece.

(All Weather is Local - 4). The latest typhoon, Haiyan, has reaped great destruction and an estimated 10,000 human deaths.

Don't forget the many other typhoons before Haiyan (a.k.a. Yolanda) this year.

All weather is local to the global climate system, thus, fossil fuel use because of the power of Oil-Qaeda, has turned the global climate system into damaged goods.

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Weekend Rebel Science Excursion - 25

Faith Detector

The dark stuff that makes up "26.8" + "68.3" (95.1) percent of the stuff of the universe or cosmos could be God, imagination, indiscoverable, or just plain old bad science (Wikipedia, "Dark matter").

It reminds me of the history concerning what establishment scientists thought about "germs" in the 19th century ("germs were considered to be tiny unseen entities which would pop into or out of reality, into or out of existence, at will").

The epidemics of disease which that bad science about the imaginary world brought upon us (What is Pseudo Science?) were horrific.

Regular readers know that the Dredd Blog System has been criticizing cosmologists for a similar and still furiously ongoing hypothesis, based on faith in a hypothesis rather than evidence in support of that hypothesis:

The basis of something that has never been seen, never been felt, never been measured, but a lot of people believe exists anyway, is faith:

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed ... so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible ...

(Bible, Hebrews 11:1, emphasis added). What is seen in our universe by scientists is called matter. No faith needed.

What is not seen is what cosmologists and physicists are now calling "dark matter", and its existence really by definition is a matter of faith.

Dark Matter has never been seen, measured, touched, felt, put in a test tube, or any other things experimental, but scientists do believe that it exists.

(Rebel Science: The Dark Matter of Faith). Or as the New York Times puts it:

On Wednesday, an international team of physicists based in the same cavern of the former mine announced a new milestone of frustration, but also hope — this time in the search for dark matter, the mysterious, invisible ingredient that astronomers say makes up a quarter of the cosmos.

In the first three months of running the biggest, most sensitive dark matter detector yet — a vat of 368 kilograms of liquid xenon cooled to minus 150 degrees Fahrenheit — the researchers said they had not seen a trace of the clouds of particles that theorists say should be wafting through space, the galaxy, the Earth and, of course, ourselves, knocking out at least one controversial class of dark matter candidates.

But the experiment has just begun and will run for all of next year. The detector, already twice as sensitive as the next best one, will gain another factor of sensitivity in the coming run.

“Just because we don’t see anything in the first run doesn’t mean we won’t see anything in the second,” said Richard Gaitskell, a professor of physics at Brown University and a spokesman for an international collaboration that operates the experiment known as LUX, for the Large Underground Xenon dark matter experiment.

(Dark Matter Experiment Has Detected Nothing, Researchers Say Proudly). Normally one would find some competent evidence, form a falsifiable hypothesis, then test the hypothesis.

One of the foremost advocates of the dark matter of faith seems to be losing that faith, to instead begin to grasp normal science practices once again:

if the hypothesis fails then get rid of it, develop a new one based upon what has been learned during the falsification process:‘We are on the verge of finding out what dark matter is’, Professor Carlos Frenk told the British Science Festival in Bradford. Frenk, director of Durham University’s Institute for Computational Cosmology, predicts that within the next few months, ‘Either dark matter will be discovered, or our model of the universe is not quite right.’

(Heretics Deny The Dark Matter of Faith - 3). But in the dark matter faith world scientists are using a technique that religionists and philosophers use:

In [Dark Matter] in Proof, Nathan Schneider offers an entertaining, well written, and historically comprehensive account of the philosophical and religious business of presenting proofs for [Dark Matter]’s existence (and sometimes nonexistence). His is a frenetic dash through the history of philosophy of religion and theology that leaves little out (except, as he admits, the voices of women). Part intellectual biography, part history of philosophy, and part autobiographical spiritual-quest narrative, [Dark Matter] in Proof moves fluently and easily from ancient Greece to the internet age, looking at those who have tried to argue for their belief in [Dark Matter].

(Only God Knows). To emphasize the point, I inserted "[Dark Matter]" in place of "God" in that quote from a book review about trying to prove the existence of God.

Perhaps the dark matter scientists have found evidence of God during their faithful search for the unseen, the untouchable, and the not-yet-found object of their faith?

The previous post in this series is here.

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A Persian band:

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